Selection from Next Steps for New Christians

[AngelAmidala]

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!

 

[Godbrain]

inspiring story. doesn't this show how mercyfull god is. To show us the errors of our own ways. A lot of times it seems god is unfair, but who are we to judge his decesions?

 

[berol06]

I agree, who are we to judge His decisions. The book of Job is a great example. We don't know why Bill died, we don't how Bill's death affected others or all things happened after as a result of his death.

One thing we do know, or so it appears, is that Bill is in a better place now.

 

[ZiSunka]

The first time I read this, someone had added the commentary that God had allowed Bill to die because He knew that Bill would mess up and not glorify God through his mission work. That really teed me off, because the commentator was trying to look into God's mind and know what He was thinking! And because it took the name of a most godly man (Bill) and cast doubt about his soul.

I hate when people think that they see what God sees, or when they add to a person's lifestory things that aren't true, especially when it makes the person look bad, instead of godly. Whatever things are true and lovely should be passed on about a person, not whatever things are made-up and ugly.

Thanks for sharing with me a version of Bill's story that didn't have the ugly commentary attached. It is the way it should be!

 

[AngelAmidala]

I hadn't heard of that commentary...and I'm glad I hadn't!
If it was part of this devotional, I certainly wouldn't have posted it. But I posted it as just as I have it in devotional Bible.