Skip to main content

May 23


No Regrets

When Karen Watson felt God’s call to go to Iraq, she responded by resigning her job, selling her car, her house and other possessions. When she left, everything she owned was contained in a duffle bag. Today, her duffle bag has become a reminder of the work she did in telling people in Iraq about Jesus Christ.

Watson’s family shared her story with the President of the Southern Baptist International Mission Board, Jerry Rankin, at her funeral. Rankin then took Watson’s message of sacrifice to a Missions Conference in New Orleans. He encouraged students, faculty, and staff at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary to consider missions not out of obligation to fulfill the Great Commission, but because they are compelled by the Love of Jesus.

Rankin said, “Media and culture, they just don’t get it. Why would anyone go to a place where their lives would be at risk?” He added, “We have all succumbed to a culture and a philosophy where it is all about us, it’s all about our comfort, all about our security, all about our future in this life. They never understand that there is something worth giving your life to. There is a purpose that’s worth dying for. But the world doesn’t understand that.” Rankin says no one becomes obedient to the point of giving one’s life through a sense of obligation because Jesus told them to go. He says, “No, you are driven by a passion in your heart for a lost world.”

In addition to her duffle bag, Watson left a letter with her pastor that was to be opened only upon her death. When the letter was opened after she and three other workers were murdered in Iraq, Watson made it clear she had counted the cost of going. In handwritten capital letters she wrote, “THERE ARE NO REGRETS.”

2 Cor. 5:14 (NIV) “For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died.”


Jim L. Wilson, Fresh Start Devotionals (Fresno, CA: Willow City Press, 2009).

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Furnishings of the Tabernacle

Furnishings of the Tabernacle . ‎The book of Exodus details the construction of the tabernacle and its furnishings. As Yahweh’s sanctuary, the tabernacle served as God’s dwelling place among the Israelites—the expression of the covenant between Yahweh and His people ( Exod 25:8–9 ).
Post a Comment
Read more

A Threshing Floor

A Threshing Floor In the ancient world, farmers used threshing floors to separate grain from its inedible husk (chaff) by beating it with a flail or walking animals on it—sometimes while towing a threshing sledge. Sledges were fitted with flint teeth to dehusk the grain more quickly. Other workers would turn the grain over so that it would be evenly threshed by the sledge.
Post a Comment
Read more

Modern Mount Calvary

Modern Mount Calvary ‎Great authorities are marshaled in favor of both claimants—the church within and the mound without the walls. For a long time, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was the only traditional spot pointed out as the place of burial. But with the growing influence of the Grotto of Jeremiah, the modern Mount Calvary, a picture of which we give, increased in favor. This whole discussion as to the place where Christ was crucified, and as to the tomb in which His body was placed, turns upon the direction which the walls about Jerusalem took at the time of the crucifixion. If the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was outside the wall at that time, as Dean Stanley thinks it might have been, the chances in favor of its being the place of crucifixion and burial are increased. If, however, the site of this church was inside the wall at that time it is sure that the place of burial and crucifixion was not there, for Christ was crucified outside of the walls of Jerusalem. And ...
Post a Comment
Read more