During my two weeks off from Christmas until just after New Year’s Day, I was able to spend some time reading one of the many books in my “to read” pile; at the top of the pile was John Ortberg’s If You Want to Walk on Water, You’ve Got to Get Out of the Boat.

This 224 page book uses the story of Peter walking across the Sea of Galilee to help readers move outside their comfort zones. From the back cover:

John Ortberg invites you to consider the incredible potential that awaits you outside your comfort zone. Out on the risky waters of faith, Jesus is waiting to meet you in ways that will change you forever, deepening your character and your trust in God. The experience is terrifying. It’s thrilling beyond belief. It’s everything you’d expect of someone worthy to be called. Lord.

This book gave me a huge wake-up call about what it means to be a follower of Jesus. I learned (or, perhaps, re-learned) that deciding to grow always involves a choice between comfort and risk. As a follower of Jesus, however, I am called to renounce comfort as our my life’s superior value.

While the book covers lots of ways we can change our lives to become “water walkers,” the one that really caught my attention is an obvious one: prayer. Ortberg places an interesting challenge before the reader:

How about you? What are you praying for? Give it six months. I’ll make you a deal — I’ll give you the Bob Challenge. If you pray every day for six months and nothing extraordinary happens, write me. I won’t promise you five hundred dollars, but I will give you a refund on the cost of the book. To the contrary, if something extraordinary does happen, you have to write and tell me about it.

For me, that’s a huge paradigm shift for how I have been praying. I’ll usually pray about something for a week, maybe two, and if the prayer hasn’t been answered, I usually lose hope and give up praying about it. So, starting tomorrow, I’m going to take the “Bob Challenge” and pray every day for six months about something that I’ve been tossing around in my head for quite some time.

I highly recommend this book, especially if you’re struggling (or have struggled) with discerning God’s will for your life.