NO RESERVES, NO RETREATS, NO REGRETS

No Reserves, No Retreats, No Regrets 

Ken Barnes

Don’t put out the Spirit’s fire. (1 Thessalonians 5:19 GW)

William Bordon, after he graduated from high school in 1904, was called to be a missionary. 

At different points in Bordon's short life, he wrote in the back of his Bible, no reserves, no retreats, no regrets.

Though he came from a very wealthy family, wealth did not possess him. 

Early on in his life, a friend expressed that he was throwing his life away by becoming a missionary—he wrote in his Bible, no reserves. 

After he graduated from Yale, he was offered very lucrative positions—he penned, no retreats. 

His missionary call narrowed to a Muslim group in China. 

After doing graduate work at Princeton Seminary, he left for Egypt to study Arabic before arriving in China. 

In Egypt, he contracted spinal meningitis and within a month was dead at age twenty-five. 

Before his death, under the other two notations he had made in his Bible, he wrote—no regrets.

Was William Borden's seemingly untimely death a waste of human life? 

Absolutely not. 

Thousands of people have read his story and have been encouraged in their missionary call. 

God never wastes any of our sorrows.

Things happen to Christians. 

We experience what we don't expect, and some expectations don't come to fruition. 

The Christian life often entails disappointments that we can't understand, but God knows and cares.

Church history is littered with people who have done great things for God yet had become sullen and cynical at the end of their lives. 

Things happened to them that may have seemed unfair or unjust. 

We, like William Borden, at the end of our journey, need to be able to say, no reserves, no retreats, no regrets.

Ken was a foreign missionary for YWAM for many years. Contact him and read more HERE.