From story telling to trusting God

Today we were privileged to have David B. to share some updates at the rally. Haven’t heard his sharing for quite some time (I think almost a decade more), today sharing was quite inspiring and interesting. As he returned to Singapore, he’s been thinking how to move the gospel effectively. There are two platforms he has in mind: a muslim-christian dialogue and story telling. Well, he shared the latter part (maybe we will have chance to hear the former in near future?).

The thought of story telling began when he and his discovered that the way of his bible study sharing was monotonous and boring. So to make things interesting, one must tell story, like Jesus told story when he was teaching. And he joined a story telling club, which at that time most of the members were female. Not surprising as most storytellers are mothers and early childhood educators.  

Later on, the group joined a story telling competition. Other contestants chose popular Chinese fore-lore but David chose to tell his own real life story. Now here’s the story within the story.

In 1980, he was chosen to attend a conference in USA. He wanted his wife to join him. But they were ashamed to ask for fund raising for his wife air ticket. Of course, would you give to someone for leisure purpose. So he began to pray that God would open a door for him to get a free ticket. An idea came. There was a Monopoly tournament to be held in Singapore soon. The winner would be sponsored to Bermuda to compete in Monopoly World Tournament. So he signed up for the Monopoly Asia Tournament. And he practised. Played six rounds of Monopoly and did the post-mortem after each round. Now we now what he was good at.

To cut story short, he won the tournament. He got a sponsored ticket. But he did not want it. It would be better if they prize him in cash so that we could buy the airline ticket as he wish. He prayed. The other thing was, the tournament would be held in December while the conference would be held in coming March. So he asked that the tournament would be postponed to the date near the conference. These two requests were answered.

So what does it take for an effective prayer? I see that there should be a genuine request and it comes with faith. And of course if that's according to God's view.

By the way, he didn't win the Monopoly tournament. He got the last place. That was not God's purpose  for him to win. That story opened the door for faith sharing among the club members.