One of the great things about travelling is it gives me lots of time to read. One of the books I read on this trip was, "If You Want to Walk on Water, You've Got to Get Out of the Boat," by John Ortberg. It impacted me through the "Bob Challenge."
In the book, he tells a story about a guy named Bob who was basically dared to pray for something specific every day for six months. In fact, they made a bet about it. If nothing happened Bob would get $500, but if it did, he'd have to pay $500.
He chose to pray for Kenya. For a long time nothing happened, but then one night at a dinner he met a lady from the largest orphanage in Kenya. He began asking her lots of questions about Kenya and she invited him to visit. He went, was moved by the poverty and came home and arranged for prescription drugs to be sent there worth one million dollars.
The orphanage invited him back to celebrate. While he was there, he met the president of Kenya, who ended up taking Bob on a tour of Nairobi. While on the tour Bob saw a prison full of political prisoners. Bob told the president he should let them go. Sometime later the US state department called to thank Bob as they'd been working for a long time to get those prisoners released.
Several months later the President of Kenya called and asked Bob to come pray for him for three days while he selected his government.
After telling this story, the author challenged me to take the Bob Challenge. He didn't say he'd give me $500, but he said if I pray for every day for six months for something and don't get it he'll give me back the price of the book. If I pray every day for six months and something happens, I have to write him an email and tell him about it. I'm looking forward to writing that email.
3 comments:
I had heard about the Bob Challenge last night at church and looked it up today and saw the post on your blog. My question is did you write him an email or did he reimburse you for the book?
I actually never finished the challenge. Guess I ought to take it up again.
I took the challenge three times. It takes discipline to pray even a short prayer each day for something unrelated to you personally. I posted a note by my bed to remind me. My first challenge was for Eritrean Christians imprisoned in metal shipping containers. A few days after starting an amazing thing happened. We ran into a long lost friend from our time in Madagascar in a really random place in Australia. We thought he was from Ethiopia but I found out he is from Eritrea. My next challenge was for children to be protected from abuse and God put me in a really odd situation connected with that. My next was for the invisible children of Uganda and God gave me a friend working in Uganda to support. In researching the Bob Hunter story it was actually Uganda not Kenya. Happy praying!
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