Prayers of a God Chaser by Tommy Tenney
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Chapter 1Prayers of a God Chaser What is prayer? When I started writing this book, I believed I was writing a book about prayer. I plunged into the theology of prayer and began to research the subject with stacks of books new and old. Then I realized God hadn’t commissioned me to write an anthology of prayer. Theological scholars and church leaders far wiser than I have categorized and subdivided the spiritual act of prayer into an incredible variety of forms, types, and methodologies. Mine is a much humbler goal: to share the prayers and principles of prayer that energized, transformed, and revolutionized my life, my relationship with God, and everything I thought I knew about ministry. I still remember when the first flickering prayer flame sprang to life in me. I was sixteen and had casually pulled a book from the shelf of my dad’s library. (More because it had a “cool” cover than for any other reason.) It was Leonard Ravenhill’s book on prayer, Why Revival Tarries. I can still quote it:
I also have some favorite prayers in the Bible that have greatly affected me: Moses’ prayer to see God’s glory, Elijah’s pointed and powerful prayers, David’s passionate pursuit of the presence of God and his heartbroken plea to “be back where I was with you” before the sin with Bathsheba. All of these are verbal voicings eager for encounters, but some of the greatest prayers were “unspoken.” I remember growing up hearing pastors in church services ask, “Are there any unspoken requests?” John leaning on Jesus’ breast was prayer, a silent plea for intimacy. Often, when my children come into my arms, they cannot express how they feel. Prayer can be as simple as curling up in a ball and hearing God say, “I know what you need.” One of my favorite authors, Richard Foster, subdivided prayer into twenty-one categories with excellent explanations and examples for each one in a book entitled Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home.2 This is just one of many excellent books I recommend to “God Chasers” who want to “plumb the depths” of prayer in their pursuit of God’s presence. Richard Foster, a Quaker who serves as the Jack and Barbara Lee Distinguished Professor of Spiritual Formation at Azusa Pacific University, lists his twenty-one categories of prayer as follows: Simple Prayer, Prayer of the Forsaken, The Prayer of Examen [examination], The Prayer of Tears, The Prayer of Relinquishment, Formation Prayer, Covenant Prayer, The Prayer of Adoration, The Prayer of Rest, Sacramental Prayer, Unceasing Prayer, The Prayer of the Heart, Meditative Prayer, Contemplative Prayer, Praying the Ordinary, Petitionary Prayer, Intercessory Prayer, Healing Prayer, The Prayer of Suffering, Authoritative Prayer, and Radical Prayer. But the most common approach to describing prayer follows a simpler path and views it through seven simple categories based on the seven segments of The Lord’s Prayer.3 Jesus simplified things even further and divided prayer into two categories when He said, “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.”4 He described the first prayer category this way: “The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself.”5 The Lord went on to describe the content of the man’s prayer in detail, but the most significant thing I noticed about the Pharisee’s prayer is that he prayed with himself. His “audience of one” didn’t seem to include God as a major participant. (It seems God wasn’t really interested in joining that private prayer meeting!) The second category of prayer was epitomized by someone far less prestigious, powerful, and respected than the Pharisee. He was a sinner, and he had sense enough to know it. In his desperation, humility, and hunger for God, he prayed a prayer that was totally different from that of the politically correct petitioner. I suspect that many modern readers unconsciously discount the second man’s prayer because it was punctuated by embarrassingly passionate episodes of chest pounding and desperate cries of repentance. (Perhaps modern “passion police” would have been on him in a split second for disturbing our church services!)6 Perhaps you’ve noticed the dulling glaze that seems to settle over the faces of most churchgoers when someone introduces the subject of prayer from the pulpit or during a dinner conversation. Why does this happen? We think prayer is boring, because we think of it as hard work done in secret with few if any results. The only time we perk up is when a gifted orator steps forward to entertain us with a flowery “performance” prayer in public. There is nothing wrong with public prayers—God just seems to dislike “professional prayers.” He prefers “passionate prayers.” The church faces a serious problem today because Jesus said the Father hears and answers the prayers of desperate sinners and passionate saints, but He seemingly ignores the fancy prayers of the pompous and the religiously correct. What kinds of prayers fill your church services, prayer meetings, and private devotions? Is God drawn to the passion of your pursuit? Is He distracted by your desire and attracted to the desperate hunger of your longing for your first love?7 Most of us find it hard to pray at times (if not most of the time), and I confess I have far to go and much to learn as a God Chaser and as a man of prayer. While working on this book I discovered another “brother of the heart” in a campus minister and author named Ben Patterson, who wrote:
I don’t claim to have climbed the Mount Everest of prayer, but I am still inspired by its summit. I’ve walked with God since my boyhood and have served as a minister of the Gospel since my teens, but I still long for more intimate moments in His presence. To tell you the truth, some of my greatest encounters with God occurred in places far away from stained-glass windows, carpeted worship facilities, or exciting Christian gatherings. With the hectic schedule I keep in the ministry, I openly confess that my best “prayer closet” is in the shower (cell phones and pagers are the bane of intimacy with a spouse or with God). The shower stall seems to be my primary place of refuge. (When God is speaking, I’ve been known to take as many as three showers a day!) Perhaps I need to install a kneeler—and some stained glass! God often prefers to meet us at the point of our desperation, our passion, and our hunger. He finds that ground more sacred than our monuments to accomplishments and self-reliance.
God often prefers to meet us at the point of our desperation, our passion, and our hunger. I want to inspire you to desire to pray, and also provide you a resource to help you pray. Sometimes you may have to do as King Hezekiah did when he spread out a letter in the temple. Spread out this book in your prayer closet. Perhaps the prayers offered here will help you pray and teach you until you can fly on your own. You can’t do it by praying my prayers, but you can use patterns of prayer to create your own prayers. Some may view any reference to weapons or violence as politically incorrect, but the apostle Paul also lived in a violent era and he viewed things differently. Although he did not advocate spiritual violence, he had no problem describing our “mighty” weaponry of spiritual warfare or advocating their diligent use.9 In the natural realm, we understand the sorrow created when the forces of evil bring death and injury to innocent victims. However, prayer is our primary weapon, providing the ability to slip incognito behind the lines of the forces of darkness and destroy the works of our spiritual foes and their human agents.10 In the natural realm, the power of a crooked finger on a slender piece of metal is trivial except when that piece of metal is the trigger of a loaded gun! In the spiritual realm, your voice and heart lifted in prayer is the “trigger.” God’s Word and will are the explosive charge. His divine answer is the bullet of inescapable change speeding toward its divinely inspired target. Ready. Aim. Pray!
NOTES1. Leonard Ravenhill, Why Revival Tarries (Bloomington, Minn.: Bethany House Publishers, 1959), 17–18. 2. Richard J. Foster, Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, a division of HarperCollins Publishers, 1992). 3. Jesus’ teaching on prayer, often called “The Lord’s Prayer,” appears in Matthew 6:9–13 and Luke 11:2–4. 4. Luke 18:10. 5. Luke 18:11a. 6. For more information on the negative role played by self-appointed passion police in our churches, see chapter 3, “No P.D.A.—Passion Police on Patrol” in my book God’s Eye View (Nashville, Tenn.: Thomas Nelson, Inc., 2002). 7. I’m referring to the Lord’s command in Revelation 2:4 that we return to our first love. 8. Ben Patterson, Deepening Your Conversation With God: Learning to Love to Pray (Minneapolis, Minn.: Bethany House Publishers, 2001), 18. 9. Paul describes the nature and effectiveness of our mighty weapons of warfare in 2 Corinthians 10:3–6 and Ephesians 6:10–18. 10. Jesus made it clear that He came to destroy the works of the Devil. That privilege and authority has been passed on to us (see 1 John 3:8).
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