Here is the question of my message today: Does God make a difference? Yes! I absolutely believe that. If a man or a woman -- you watching this terrific television program, you are sitting there alone or surrounded by your family -- if you know God through Jesus Christ, it will make a tremendous difference in your life. The thing that saddens me is that Elvis Presley was brought up in a church, but somehow along the way he lost his way and he had no assurance of eternal life.

God makes a difference in your life and in my life. I am going to touch six areas today. First, he makes a difference when you are lonely, when you are sad, when you have no friends, when you appear to have nobody to support you.

Second, God makes a difference if you have Jesus Christ, when you feel wild and out of control, when you feel you are losing it and life is spinning out of control. God makes a tremendous difference.

Third, I want to let you know that God makes a difference in your life if you have Christ, when temptation comes, whether it's temptation about cash, about pride, or about sex. He makes a tremendous difference if you have Christ in your life because God gives supernatural power.

Four, God makes a difference if you have Christ in your life when family troubles hit, when tensions come on and you wonder what the future holds. Or if you are young and single, if your father and mother have divorced or on the verge of separation and divorce, Christ makes a big difference in your life as a teenager.

Five, God makes a difference -- and this is where Jesus Christ shines -- when guilt depresses you and your conscience hammers away and you wonder if there is forgiveness. Believe me, that's where God shines the most.

Lastly, God makes a difference when eternity calls and you've got to face the fact that death is looming ahead. Now that can happen as a teenager or you could be 80 years old, but we all have to face eternity.

Let's go back to number one. Does God matter? Does God make a difference in an American's life today with all the progress, with all the advances of science, with all the modernity that we've got? Does God fit, does he make a difference in life?

First of all, God makes a tremendous difference when you are lonely and when you are sad. Many Americans today feel like losers. They feel rejected. They feel lonely. They feel like nobody cares. How many widows today feel that nobody remembers them?

I remember a story that came out of Chicago many years ago. An elderly widow jumped out of a seventeenth floor window in one of the apartments here in Chicago. She left a note behind and said the phone never rings, no letters ever come. I am lonely -- it's not worth it all. So she jumped out the window and took her life. A woman across the hall, when she saw the police and found out about the note, said, "If only we had met. I am as lonely as she is and I live across the hall." These two women lived across the hall but they didn't know that they were both there.

There is loneliness in America. Perhaps you yourself are going through a time of loneliness. Jesus Christ said these beautiful words in John 15:14, "You are my friends if you do what I command you." What does he mean by that? In another verse, Hebrews 13:5, he says, "Never will I leave you, never will I forsake you. I am with always even to the end of the age." Now what that means is this: If you feel lonely and sad, like a loser, rejected, nobody wants you, nobody writes you, the phones never ring, there is a friend that sticks closer than a brother and it's Jesus Christ. But you have to have him in your heart. You have to have him in your life. It isn't enough to be a church person or to have a Bible in your hand or a crucifix on your neck, you have to have him in your life. So if you're lonely and sad today, God can make a big difference in your life.

Secondly, God makes a difference when you're wild, out of control, and you feel like your life is spinning out of control and you are about to do something erratic and crazy that could destroy you. You know, there are thousands of men today -- in the old days we thought of teenagers as going crazy -- forty, fifty, sixty year old men and women who do wild things, completely out of character. They will destroy their reputation, they will destroy their family, they will sink their business in a moment of wildness. It isn't just teenagers who lose it. The Bible teaches these words that I learned as a teenager and that have helped me all my life. In the book of Romans, chapter 6, St. Paul says, "Sin shall not have dominion over you because you are not under religious law but under the grace of God." And you know, God makes a difference. If today you are sitting there and you are about to do something wild that could destroy your future, your reputation, your family name, so that you could lose everything that you've built up, quickly turn to God. Bow the knee to Christ and say, "Lord, I am going in the wrong way. Come into my life." God makes a difference in America today.

Number three: God makes a difference when sexual temptation comes -- when any temptation comes. I was in the Quad cities of Illinois a few years ago and we were in a big stadium having a campaign. A teenage girl came up to my wife and myself and she said, "Dr. Palau, I need your help. I don't want to fall into sexual sin but I am about to do it."

And we said, "What is the problem?"

She said, "When I was thirteen, one of the boys at our school, a Christian school by the way, a football player said, 'Let's do it. Let's go all the way.' To put him off I said that when I turn fifteen we'll do it."

She thought fifteen sounded like far away. Now she was three days from being fifteen and the boy reminded her: "You said when you turn fifteen we would go all the way and we're going to do it."

And she said, "I don't want to do it. I love God. I want to be holy. I want to be pure." And the guy was pressing her.

I said to her, "Look, go home tonight and tell your dad to sit beside you by the phone. Call this boy and tell him: I love you, I'd love to go with you; let's marry; let's be husband and wife; but we cannot have sex now; I want to be holy; I want to honor God. If he really loves you, he will say: Alright. I'll honor you. If he says it's either now or never, it means he doesn't really love you. Because the Bible says: "Be holy, because I am holy says the Lord."

She said, "Shall I do it?"

I said, "You better believe it. Call our hotel room and talk to my wife when you've made the call." She called about midnight and said, "Dr. Palau, I talked to him. He got very angry. He said that I lied to him, and I said maybe I did but please love me. Let's get married, but don't ask me for sex before marriage." The boy said that it was over. She said, "I am glad it's over because now I am free."

You see, the Bible says: "Be holy because I am holy says the Lord." And he can give you power even under temptation to overcome the temptations that we all have. But you have to open your heart to Jesus Christ.

Have you opened your heart to Jesus Christ? Have you ever received him into your life? That's the key, that's what makes the difference. Now many people think going to church is the same as having God in your life. I am afraid not. So many of us have gone to church, we have read our Bibles, we've said our prayers, we've gone through the prayer book, but we've never experienced the power of God for ourselves.

Now, number four: God makes a difference when family troubles come. You may be going through tensions maybe as husband and wife, maybe the misunderstandings are growing. I want to tell you, God can make a tremendous difference as husband and wife. But the first step you have to take is both of you have to humble yourselves before God Almighty. If your spouse doesn't want to, then you yourself get on your knees as soon as this program is over and say, "Lord, step into my life. Lord, I don't want our home to be destroyed. Lord, you be the glue." But particularly, if you as husband and wife together are honest with each other and with the Lord our God, then you can open your heart to Christ and together let him join you together.

I want to say a word to teenagers. So many American kids today they're parents are breaking up and they feel anger. I was on television in southern Texas just a few weeks ago and teenagers were calling me, mostly boys -- fourteen, fifteen, sixteen -- and I was so impressed. They were denying God because their families were breaking up. If you are a teenager, listen to these beautiful words from the book of Psalms. In Psalms 20:27 it says: "Though my father and my mother forsake me, the Lord will lift me up." Now that's a tremendous promise. God will make a difference in your life as a teenager. "Though my father and my mother forsake me, the Lord will life me up." And then the Lord Jesus says to you as a teenager, "I'll never forsake you. I'll never leave you. I am with you always even to the end of the age." He makes a difference in the home.

Number five: Jesus makes a difference because he is the son of God. When guilt depresses you, when your conscience is hammering away, when you feel shame and guilt and you feel terrible. You may feel like many Americans feel -- God must be so disillusioned with me because I've done such awful things. Whatever your church may be, maybe you feel you've broken the Ten Commandments, which we all have by the way. Or you feel you knew the Lord's Prayer, you did communion, and you went to church and then you went off the track and you married wrongly and you feel terrible and you feel guilty over some business deal and you wonder if God will ever receive you. A friend of mine once said, "You know, God is never disillusioned with us because he never had any illusions to begin with." Isn't that good? And it s true.

Now that is the mystery of the cross of Christ. On the cross God did a miracle that we don't quite understand, but it is real. That is that God the Father laid on Christ the guilt and the sin of us all. If you feel a sense of guilt tonight or today wherever you are, and if you have never opened your heart to Christ, I beg you, do it now. The Scriptures says these beautiful words: "Your sins and evil deeds I will remember no more, says the Lord."

I was reading the biography of Warren Buffett, the most successful investor in America. Several times in the book he says that he is so afraid of death that the thought of death absolutely sends chills. The famous actor Steve McQueen called on Billy Graham just before he dies of cancer in Bakersfield, California. He said, "Billy, I'm dying and I don't have eternal life. How can I be sure that I have eternal life." Mr. Graham sat down with Steve McQueen, showed him the verse in the Bible where Jesus says, "I give you eternal life. You will never perish and no one can snatch you out of my hands." If you are searching for eternal life and if you want God to make a difference in your life why don't you open your heart to Christ right now?

Let's bow our heads, shall we, in a little prayer and right wherever you are -- in a bar, in a hotel, at home -- you can pray this prayer and receive Christ in your life. Shall we pray? Join me in this prayer:

Oh God, my father, I love you and I want to know you. Lord Jesus, I don't understand the mystery of the cross, but I trust you, I believe you, and I receive you into my heart. Lord forgive me, cleanse me. Please give me eternal life. I will serve and follow you forever. In Christ's name, Amen.

Lydia Talbot: Your message was inspirational. Extraordinary. It's amazing to know how you keep pace with all that you're doing, the crusade experience especially, Dr. Palau. Tell us what you think, reaching millions through your broadcasts and crusades, is the most important contribution that the crusade phenomenon makes to the toughest part of the Biblical mandate.

Luis Palau: Well, I think that the great thing about a crusade is that you really get a city's attention. Sometimes a whole nation. And the city becomes God conscious. Everybody is talking about God, talking about Jesus Christ, about spiritual issues. Secondly, that leads to the central message. You're emphasizing the cross, the resurrection of Christ, His living power, his power to change people's lives. Then because we use TV and on TV people often see testimonies of lives changed, they suddenly realize that talking about God and remembering the cross has an actual impact on your life. Those are some of the things. And then the churches grow and there is great excitement among the Christians sometimes called a revival.

Talbot: Let me ask you now, there are many Christians who would say that the crusade experience may be an emphasis on personal salvation rather than personal sacrifice, on moralistic absolutes rather than alleviating human suffering, for example. How do you answer them?

Palau: It can be if you get careless, but the answer is that when a person encounters Jesus Christ, it has to start on a personal basis, otherwise where are you going to start. And it is the difference good news and good advice. All religions say be good, be good, be good. But Jesus Christ gives you supernatural power to live out that goodness. So, first you must be converted, then you begin to love your neighbor as yourself. And then you begin to sacrifice for others. A true conversion implies surrendering to the Lordship of Christ and beginning to obey. The people I see, I don't think fall in that category because I've heard people say that. People's lives are changed and when you change it means Christ is lord and master, and you begin to live out the implications of the Christian life.

Talbot: The British Broadcasting System has called you second only to Billy Graham. That's quite a legacy to be living with. What is your message, though, in a pluralistic culture in which we live and to the multi-cultural, multi-religious twenty-first century, what is your message?

Palau: It is an honor to be compared with Billy Graham, but nobody can match up to him. So I leave that aside and be myself. But I am multi-cultural myself. My dad was born in Spain, Scottish grandpa, French grandmother. My wife is American. So I come from that background. I think the world wants to know what is Jesus, who is he, and we have to tell. And that's all you can do without offense.

Talbot: Thank you so much, Dr. Luis Palau.