On one of my morning power walk prayer times, I kept running into a couple as they sat on a bench seat, chatting on their cell phone. Loop after loop, I kept seeing them, and I was very much drawn to want to speak to them, but it never worked out as they never got to finishing their phone conversation while I was around.

A couple of days later, though, I walked past the man again. He was in the very same spot, but he was alone this time. It didn’t register in my mind that he was the same man until I was further down the trail, so I purposed that if he was there again on my next loop around, I would approach him. As I was purposing this, I was feeling strongly that he might be a preacher.

The man (Bobby) was still there on my second round, so I made a light comment to him and then stopped to chat. I immediately asked him if he was a preacher, and he said yes. I asked some questions and discovered that he is born again of water and of the Holy Spirit, and he said he preaches to his congregation the necessity of both of these baptisms. However, Don later went on to Bobby’s podcast and found some messages that seemed to focus on the sinner’s prayer as the way to salvation, with no mention of the need to be born again (John 3:5; Acts 2:38, Acts 19:2, etc.). Though many of his other sermons mentioned water baptism and being filled with the Holy Spirit, these other “just give your heart to Jesus” themes appeared to be contradictory.

I had no idea about this at the time when I was chatting to Bobby. But, I did feel the Holy Spirit move upon me to kind of “cut to the chase” so to speak, to make the most of the short amount of time I felt I would only have with him. Bobby did say he’d get together with our group before he and his wife checked out of their hotel, but they never did.

Interestingly, I was out on another power walk the day after Bobby was meant to leave, and he and his wife passed by me as I was sitting on a bench seat this time (dealing with an important text that had just come in). Unfortunately, it seemed that Bobby’s wife was holding him back from getting together with us, but this last “stumbling upon each other” (which was most certainly the perfect and miraculous hand of God - again!) gave me an opportunity to text Bobby with some reinforcement of what God was trying to tell him. I pray Bobby will have an open heart and mind, and that he and his congregation will be blessed through our brief connection here in Florida.