“OK, Bob Jones, now is the time.”
I wrote this to my friend a few days ago. What did I mean by this? I will tell you.
When Al and I were in Kansas City (from ’89 through ’93), I felt that the Lord wanted me to interview Bob Jones concerning his life. I approached Mike Bickle, under whose authority he had placed himself, to receive his permission. Mike graciously agreed.
Al and I began to record small portions of Bob’s life—5 years at a time. We started at 0-5 and then 5-10. After the second week a city-wide church explosion occurred. The target of this explosion was Bob Jones. The one igniting the explosion was a well-known church leader. All camps withdrew into their bunkers. Bob Jones quietly began a sabbatical.
I returned to Mike Bickle. “Mike,” I said, “I will stop recording this story if you say so—because Bob is under your authority. But just think what it would be like to have interviews with Jeremiah or any of the prophets during the time they were going through their trials. What a treasure that would be for the body of Christ.”
Mike thought a moment and then said: “Wait two weeks and then continue.”
We did. Every week we visited Bob and recorded five years of his life. Of course, we also went out to eat with Bob and his wife—which put quite a few pounds on me.
It has taken a very long time and I cannot tell you how much money to get the cassette tapes put into CDs and then to hire a person to transcribe the CDs. It has taken twenty years—twenty years to be exact—to prepare the material for a detailed story of his life.
In the meantime, I began to write of my own wondrous experiences with the Lord. But, I never stopped having the material from those interviews transcribed. Our house burned, taking the next two books in the series after the ones presently published and my husband began his decline into the darkness and death that is brought about by dementia. I was his care-giver until his death—which halted my own writing for years. But any time we had two pennies to rub together, we never stopped having those interviews transcribed.
Now—now is the time to bring this collective treasure to the body of Christ…and what a treasure it is. There is nothing like the recordings taken during this period of time. My husband and I archived them carefully on CDs to preserve them for present and future generations. Now the Lord has indicated that He is ready for me to take this sprawling material and condense it into the Bob Jones story.
Twenty years—a lot of life and living in between—a lot of heartache and love—thousands upon thousands of dollars spent in preparing this material and now the Lord has said that it is time. I think the most exciting part of this to me is that it is the Lord who is calling for this. I am excited because He is excited. Therefore, with the Lord’s permission and with His help, I will begin to write the Bob Jones story.
