From: Next Steps for New Christians
By: Kenneth Taylor
One Sunday afternoon I was reading a biography of Bill Borden, a Yale University student many years ago.
...[Bill's] father had been a millionaire and had left his fortune to Bill. But I was unsettled when I learned that Bill gave away his inheritance to missionary societies...so that more people would hear and accept the good news....I read that Bill had decided to become a missionary.
As I read on...I learned that only a few weeks after arriving in Cairo to begin his work as a missionary...Bill woke up one morning feeling sick...because of a high fever. The fever didn't go away, but became worse.
I heard heard and read enough missionary stories to know how God sometimes heals people, so I was completely unprepared to find out that God didn't heal Bill. Instead, Bill died. I was utterly shocked....
God was unfair. God was ungrateful. "I would never serve a God like that," I thought. So I decided, as I sat there reading, to go on my own way and run my own life....
Then a strange thing happened. God had mercy on me. Even as I was defying Him and deciding to go my own way and do my own thing, my mind changed and I saw the fatal foolishness of that decision. A moment later I was down on my knees beside the chair where I had been reading. And I found myself praying and telling God that He could have my life, and I would do whatever He wanted me to do. It was as though He reached out for me as I was going over the edge and pulled me back and gave me a second chance.
From then on, although with some bumps, relapses, and detours along the way, I have stuck to my goal: to belong to Him alone and to be what He wants me to be, to do what He tells me to do. What happiness and joy I have had as a result!
By: Kenneth Taylor
One Sunday afternoon I was reading a biography of Bill Borden, a Yale University student many years ago.
...[Bill's] father had been a millionaire and had left his fortune to Bill. But I was unsettled when I learned that Bill gave away his inheritance to missionary societies...so that more people would hear and accept the good news....I read that Bill had decided to become a missionary.
As I read on...I learned that only a few weeks after arriving in Cairo to begin his work as a missionary...Bill woke up one morning feeling sick...because of a high fever. The fever didn't go away, but became worse.
I heard heard and read enough missionary stories to know how God sometimes heals people, so I was completely unprepared to find out that God didn't heal Bill. Instead, Bill died. I was utterly shocked....
God was unfair. God was ungrateful. "I would never serve a God like that," I thought. So I decided, as I sat there reading, to go on my own way and run my own life....
Then a strange thing happened. God had mercy on me. Even as I was defying Him and deciding to go my own way and do my own thing, my mind changed and I saw the fatal foolishness of that decision. A moment later I was down on my knees beside the chair where I had been reading. And I found myself praying and telling God that He could have my life, and I would do whatever He wanted me to do. It was as though He reached out for me as I was going over the edge and pulled me back and gave me a second chance.
From then on, although with some bumps, relapses, and detours along the way, I have stuck to my goal: to belong to Him alone and to be what He wants me to be, to do what He tells me to do. What happiness and joy I have had as a result!
