Posted on 07/14/2009 11:41:13 PM PDT by Quix
The God Chasers by Tommy Tenney Book Excerpt & Commentary
I recently finished THE SHACK by William P Young and HE LOVES ME by Wayne Jacobsen.
I found both of them deeply moving, Biblical, edifying and helpful in drawing me closer to God.
Subsequently, a Navy Friend/ Christian Bro of 30+ years read me the riot act about THE SHACK. I found his rants about “heresy” completely without substance. Turns out he had not read it. Sheesh. It is, after all, a NOVEL! And, I found it exceedingly Biblical.
Some important Biblical truths, doctrines are affirmed with a sentence and lain aside as the tale proceeds to illustrate particular aspects of our relationship with God and God’s character and priorities. However, having read it once, I can’t recall a single thing that struck me as unBiblical.
HE LOVES ME is similarly impactful. The two of them are, to me, truly in a class with Bunyan’s: Pilgrim’s Progress in terms of spiritual import and potential spiritual growth thereby facilitated.
My current volume has been one I’ve sought for some months. It was recommended by one of God’s Vagabond Prophet sorts of characters who knew that I have long sought a deeper, more intense relationship with God. Note: I added some extra paragraphing below.
WARNING regarding the following: It will be a test for many regarding their sensibilities, assumptions, biases, comfort zones, priorities, self-righteousness, smugness, attitudes, human understandings, !!!!TRADITIONS!!!!, customs, habits, idolatries, . . . The choice will be to lay all aside and choose whatever God is doing, wishes to do in each individual’s life—
Or not.
The consequences of such a choice will be far from inconsequential.
Here’s a good chunk from the first chapter:
Running hard after God—Ps 63:8
We think we know where God lives.
We think we know what He likes, and we are sure KNOW WHAT He dislikes.
We have studied God’s Word and His old love letters to the churches so much that some of us claim to know all about God. But now people like you and me around the world are beginning to hear a voice speak to them with persistent but piercing repetition in the stillness of the night:
I thought I did. At one time I thought I had achieved a good measure of success in the ministry. After all, I had preached in some of the largest churches in America. I was involved in international outreach efforts with great men of God. I went to Russia numerous times and helped start many churches there. I’ve done a lot of things for God…because I thought that was what I was supposed to do.
But on one autumn Sunday morning, something happened to change all that. It put all my ministerial accomplishments, credentials, and achievements in jeopardy. A long-time friend of mine . . . in Houston . . . had asked me to speak at his church. I somehow sensed that destiny was waiting. . . .
I am a fourth generation Spirit-filled Christian, three generations deep into ministry, but I must be honest with you: I was sick of church. I was just like most of the people we try to lure into our services every week. They won’t come because they are sick of church too. But on the other hand, though most of the people who drive by our churches, . . . may be sick of church as well, they’re also hungry for God.
. . .
Ironically, as a minister I was suffering from the same hunger pangs as the people who had never met Jesus before! I just wasn’t content to know about Jesus anymore.
. . .
It’s simply not enough to know about God. We have churches filled with people who can win Bible trivia contests but who don’t know Him. I am afraid that some of us have been side-tracked or entangled by everything from prosperity to poverty, and we’ve become such an ingrown society of the self-righteous that our desires and our wants and those of the Holy Spirit are two different matters.
If we’re not careful, we can become so interested in developing the “cult of the comfortable” with our comfortable pastor, our comfortable church building, and our comfortable circle of friends, that we forget about the thousands of discontented, wounded, and dying people who pass by our comfortable church every day! I can’t help but think that if we fail to even try to reach them with the gospel of Jesus Christ, then He sure wasted a lot of blood on Calvary. Now that makes me uncomfortable.
There had to be more. I was desperate for a God encounter (of the closest kind).
I returned home after speaking at my friend’s church in Texas. . . . the pastor called again. He said, “Tommy, we’ve been friends for years now. And I don’t know that I’ve ever asked anybody to come back for a second Sunday in a row…but would you come back here next Sunday too?” I agreed. We could tell that God was up to something. Was the pursuer now being pursued? We were about to be apprehended by that which we ourselves were chasing?
This second Sunday was even more intense. No one wanted to leave the building after the Sunday night service. “What should we do?” my pastor friend asked. “We should have a prayer meeting on Monday night,” I said, “with no other agenda. Let’s gauge the hunger of the people and see what’s happening.” Four hundred people showed up that Monday for the prayer meeting, and all we did was seek the face of God. Something was definitely going on. A minuscule crack was appearing in the brass heavens over the city of Houston. Collective hunger was crying for a corporate visitation.
I went back home and by Wednesday the pastor was on the phone again . . . He is a fellow God chaser and we were in hot pursuit. His church had fueled a flaming hunger in me. They too had been preparing for pursuit. There was a sense that we were close to “catching” Him.
That’s an interesting phrase, isn’t it? Catching Him. Really, it’s an impossible phrase. We can no more catch Him than the east can catch the west; they’re too far removed from each other. It’s like playing chase with my daughter . . . When she comes and tries to catch me . . . I really don’t have to run. I just artfully dodge . . . and she can’t even touch me, because a six-year-old can’t catch an adult. But that’s not really the purpose of the game, because a few minutes into it, she laughingly says, “Oh daddy,” and it’s at that moment that she capturesmy heart, if not my presence or body. And then I turn and she’s no longer chasing me, but I’m chasing her, and I catch her and we tumble in the grass with hugs and kisses. The pursuer becomes the pursued.
So can we catch Him? Not really, but we can catch His heart. David did. And if we catch His heart, then He turn and chases us. That’s the beauty of being a God chaser. You’re chasing the impossible, knowing it’s possible.
This body of believers in Houston had two scheduled services on Sundays. The first morning service started at 8:30, and the second one followed and began at 11.
When I returned for the third weekend, while in the hotel, I sensed a heavy anointing of some kind, a brooding of the Spirit, and I literally wept and trembled.
The following morning, we walked into the building for the 8:30 Sunday service expecting to see the usual early morning first service “sleepy” crowd with their low-key worship.
As I walked in to sit down in the front row that morning, the presence of God was already in that place so heavily that the air was “thick.” You could barely breathe.
The musicians were clearly struggling to continue their ministry; their tears got in the way. Music became more difficult to play. Finally, the presence of God hovered so strongly that they couldn’t sing or play any longer. The worship leader crumpled in sobs behind the keyboard.
If there was one good decision I made in life, it was made that day. I had never been this close to “catching” God, and I was not going to stop. So I spoke to my wife, Jeannie. “You should go continue to lead people into the presence of God as a worshiper and intercessor. She quietly moved to the front and continued to facilitate the worship and ministry to the Lord. It wasn’t anything fancy; it was just simple. That was the only appropriate response in that moment.
The atmosphere reminded me of the passage in Isaiah 6, something I’d read about, and even dared dream I might experience myself. In this passage the glory of the Lord filled the temple. I’d never understood what it meant for the glory of the Lord to fill a place. . . . God was there: of that there was no doubt. But more of Him kept coming in the place until, as in Isaiah, it literally filled the building. At times the air was so rarefied that it became almost unbreathable. Oxygen came in short gasps, seemingly. Muffled sobs broke through the room. In the midst of this, the pastor turned to me and asked me a question.
“Tommy, are you ready to take the service?” “Pastor, I’m just about half-afraid to step up there, because I sense that God is about to do something.”
Tears were streaming down my face when I said that. I wasn’t afraid that God was going to strike me down or that something bad was going to happen. I just didn’t want to interfere and grieve the precious presence that was filling up that room!
For too long we humans have only allowed the Holy Spirit to take control up to a certain point. Basically, whenever it gets outside of our comfort zone or just a little beyond our control, we pull in the reins (the Bible calls it “quenching the Spirit” in First Thessalonians 5:19). We stop at the tabernacle veil too many times.
“I feel like I should read Second Chronicles 7:14, and I have a word from the Lord,” my pastor friend said.
With profuse tears I nodded assent and said, “Go, go!”
My friend is not a man given to any kind of outward demonstration; he is essentially a man of “even” emotions. But when he got up to walk to the platform, he appeared visibly shaky. At this point I so sensed something was about to happen, that I walked all the way from the front row to the back of the room to stand by the sound booth. I knew God was going to do something; I just didn’t know where. I was on the front row and it could happen behind me or to the side of me. I was so desperate to catch Him that I got up and publicly walked back to the sound booth as the pastor walked up to the pulpit to speak, so I could see whatever happened. . . . “God I want to be able to see whatever it is You are about to do.”
My pastor friend stepped up to the clear pulpit in the center of the platform, opened the Bible and quietly read the gripping passage from Second Chronicles 7:14:
If my people, which are called by My name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways; then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.
Then he closed his Bible, gripped the edges of the pulpit with trembling hands, and said, “The word of the Lord to us is to stop seeking His benefits and seek Him. We are not to seek His hands any longer, but seek His face.”
In that instant, I heard what sounded like a thunderclap echo through the building, and the pastor was literally picked up and thrown backwards about ten feet, effectively separating him from the pulpit. When he went backward, the pulpit fell forward. The beautiful flower arrangement positioned in front of it fell to the ground, but by the time the pulpit hit the ground, it was already in two pieces. It had split into two pieces almost as if lightening had hit it [it was evidently a clear, thick walled, Lucite type plastic see through pulpit]! At that instant the tangible terror of the presence of God filled that room.
I quickly stepped to the microphone from the back of the room and said, “In case you aren’t aware of it, God has just moved into this place. The pastor is fine. [It was two and a half hourse before he could even get up, though—and even then the ushers had to carry him. Only his hand trembled slightly to give proof of life.] He’s going to be fine.”
While all of this happened, the ushers quickly ran to the front to check on the pastor and to pick up the two pieces of the split pulpit. No one really paid much attention to the split pulpit; we were too occupied with the torn heavenlies.
The presence of God had hit that place like some kind of bomb. People began to weep and to wail. I said, “If you’re not where you need to be, this is a good time to get right with God.” I’ve never seen such an altar call. It was pure pandemonium. People shoved one another out of the way. They wouldn’t wait for the aisles to clear; they climbed over pews, businessmen tore their ties off, and they were literally stacked on top of one another, in the most horribly harmonious sound of repentance you ever heard. Just the thought of it still sends chills down my back.
When I gave the altar call then for the 8:30 a.m service, I had no idea that it would be but the first of seven altar calls that day.
When it was time for the 11:00 service to begin, nobody had left the building. The people were still on their faces and, even though there was hardly any musiuc being played at this point, worship was rampant and uninhibited. Grown men were ballet dancing; little children were weeping in repentance. People were on their faces, on their feet, on their knees, but mostly in His presence.
There was so much of the presence and the power of God there that people began to feel an urgent need to be baptized. I watched people walk through the doors of repentance, and one after another experienced the glory and the presence of God as He came near.
Then they wanted baptized, and I was in a quandary about what to do. The pastor was still unavailable on the floor. Prominent people walked up to me and stated, “I’ve got to be baptized. Somebody tell me what to do.” . . .
Two and a half hours had passed, and since the pastor had only managed to wiggle one finger at that point to call the elders to him, the ushers had carried him to his office. Meanwhile, all these people were asking me (or anyone else they could find) if they could be baptized. As a visiting minister at the church, I didn’t want to assume the authority to tell anyone to baptize these folks, so I sent people back to the pastor’s office to see if he would authorize the water baptisms.
I gave one altar call after another, and hundreds of people were coming forward. As more and more people came to me asking about water baptism, I noticed that no one I had sent to the pastor’s office had returned.
Finally I sent a senior assistant pastor back there and told him, “Please find out what Pastor wants to do about the water baptisms—nobody has come back to tell me yet.” The man stuck his head in the pastor’s office, and to his shock, he saw the pastor still lying before the Lord, and everyone I had sent there was sprawled on the floor too, just weeping and repenting before God. He hurried back to tell me what he had seen and added, “I’ll go ask him, but if I go in that office I may not be back either.”
I shrugged my shoulders and agreed with the associate pastor, “I guess it’s alright to baptize them.” So we began to baptize people as a physical sign of their repentance before the Lord, and we ended up baptizing people for hours.
More and more people kept pouring in, and since the people from the early service were still there, there were cars parked everywhere outside the church building. A big open-air ball field next to the building was filled with cars parked every which way.
As people drove onto the parking lot, they sensed the presence of God so strongly that some began to weep uncontrollably. They just found themselves driving up onto the parking lot or into the grass not knowing what was going on. Some started to get out of their cars and barely managed to stagger across the parking lot. Some came inside the building only to fall to the floor just inside the doors. The hard-pressed ushers had to literally pull the helpless people away from the doors and stack them up along the walls of the hallways to clear the entrance. Others managed to make it part way down the hallways, and some made it to the foyer before they fell on their faces in repentance.
Some actually made it inside the auditorium, but most of them didn’t bother to find seats. They just made for the altar. . . . it wasn’t long before they began to weep and repent. . . .there wasn’t any preaching. There wasn’t even any music part of the time. Primarily one thing happened that day: The presence of God showing up.
When that happens, the first thing you do is the same thing Isaiah did when he saw the Lord high and lifted up. He cried out from the depths of his soul:
Then said I, Woe is me! For I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts (Isaiah 6:5)
You see, the instant Isaiah the prophet, the chosen servant of God, saw the King of glory, what he used to think was clean and holy now looked like filthy rags. He was thinking, “I thought I knew God, but I didn’t know this much of God! That Sunday we seemed to come so close; we almost caught Him. Now I know it’s possible.
People just kept filling the auditorium again and again . . . We didn’t have to announce our plans for Monday evening. Everybody already knew. Frankly, there would have been a meeting whether we announced it or not. The people simply went home to get some sleep or do the things they had to do, and then they came right back for more--not for more of men and their programs, but for God and His presence.
Night after night, the pastor and I would come in and say, “What are we going to do?”
What we meant was, “I don’t know what to do. What does He want to do?”
Sometimes we’d go in and start trying to “have church,” but the crying hunger of the people would quickly draw in the presence of God and suddenly God had us!
Listen, my friend, God doesn’t care about your music, your midget steeples, and your flesh-impressive buildings. Your church carpet doesn’t impress Him—He carpets the fields. God doesn’t really care about anything you can “do” for Him; He only cares about your answer to one question: “Do you want Me?”
We have programmed our church services so tightly that we really don’t’ leave room for the Holy Spirit. Oh, we might let God speak prophetically to us a little, but we get nervous if He tries to break out of our schedules. We can’t let God out of the box too much because He can ruin everything. (That has become my prayer: “Break out of our boxes, Lord, and ruin everything that isn’t of You!”)
Let me ask you a question: How long has it been since you came to church and said, “We are going to wait on the Lord”? I think we are afraid to wait on Him because we’re afraid He won’t show up. I have a promise for you: “They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength” (Is 40:31a).
Do you want to know why we’ve lived in weakness as Christians and have not had all that God wanted for us? Do you want to know why we have lived beneath our privilege and have not had the strength to overcome our own carnality? Maybe it’s because we haven’t waited on Him to show up to empower us, and we’re trying to do too much in the power of our own soulish realm.
. . .
. . . .
As far as I can tell, there is only one thing that stops Him. He is not going to pour out His Spirit where He doesn’t find hunger. He looks for the hungry. Hunger means you’re dissatisfied with the way it has been because it forced you to live without Him in His fullness. He only comes when you are ready to turn it all over to Him. God is coming back to repossess His Church, but you have to be hungry.
He wants to reveal Himself among us. He wants to come ever stronger, and stronger, and stronger, and stronger until your flesh won’t be able to stand it. The beauty of it is this: neither will the unsaved driving by be able to resist. It’s beginning to happen. I have seen the day when sinners veer off the highway when they drive by places of an open heaven. They pull into parking lots with puzzled looks, and they knock on the doors and say, “Please, there’s something here…I’ve got to have it.”
BTW, have you read THE SHACK?
I just read Colson’s critique.
I think he’s off base by a huge margin.
I found his attitude . . . well . . . not to match my experience of THE SHACK
and . . . sadly, uncharacteristically for him . . .
PRISSY.
God is Holy.
God is NOT PRISSY.
I found the GOD OF SCRIPTURE vividly in THE SHACK.
Colson’s rant about a low view of Scripture in the Shack is simply not true.
Well, that explains a lot. On religion threads, your choice of font has made it seem like you were screaming or hogging for attention. I know you’ve been called out on that. You should’ve told us. I’d recommend IE 7 or later, which allows you to magnify the entire screen by hitting the fire button and scrolling up.
ritual and hierarchy . . . and here I thought you represented folks vigorously hostile to RC ritual and hierarchy. Guess I really have misunderstood you a LOT!
Not sure where you’ve been.
I HAVE told folks about that repeatedly.
I’ve also noted that I happen to have a personality that LIKES vivid color and variety. There aren’t a LOT of options for expressiveness in text based communication. I like to use all I can get away with.
BTW, I don’t need to ‘hog for attention’ . . . I get plenty just walking down the street—even if I had a bag over my head! LOL. Goes with the territory of ‘merely’ being Quix.
I also know that text based communication which has some uniqueness to it will likely be notice or recalled more/longer than that which does not. When I think something is of above average importance, I’m likely to get ‘excessive’ in that department per some views.
The fire button?? the MS button on the lower left? I always have the latest versions of Explorer.
I use Firefox mostly but now it seems to have a bug where I can’t select and copy reliably. Sigh.
Thanks for your input.
This is anonymously from a fellow FREEPER:
I’m increasingly convinced by folks’ responses to books like
THE SHACK etc.
that
BIBLICAL, LIKE BEAUTY
AND TRUTH . . . RIGHTEOUSNESS . . . BALANCE . . . GODLINESS
seem to be very much in the eye and heart of the beholder.
. . . or not.
I read the Shack also...and was afraid to say outloud how much I liked it. I was prepared for it to be heresy but once you get halfway thru the real substance of it comes in and I was extrememly moved. It was truly a story about the Holy Trinity. People who have not read it have “heard about” or read passages and words that turn them off, which is a shame, really.
Thanks, Quix!
The Shack does not have a very biblical understanding of the father or the trinity.
The book does a good job with the issue of why does God allow evil to happen or why do bad things happen to good people. But the books views on authority and the nature of God leave a lot to be desired. And yes, I have read the book.
JM
INDEED.
I read it with a moderately close scrutiny/look out for heresy.
I just didn’t find any.
Imputing heresy out of one’s own junk is not very righteous, nor Christian, imho.
I don’t think the PURPOSE on the book was to elaborate on, clarify, explore . . . etc.
God’s authority.
That was just not the purpose of the book.
However, I did not find anything per se wrong or unBiblical about God’s authority as presented in the book. It just wasn’t the emphasis.
The emphasis was, imho, about God’s Love and God really Loving his prime creation . . . and God not being prissy. I loved that. Have long felt that was true.
Actually, I disagree that the book does not have a very Biblical understanding of The Father nor of The Trinity.
I think it enlarged my understanding and that it did so in very very Biblical respects and ways.
I am reminded . . .
I was all set to be outraged at GODSPELL before I saw it.
Instead, God said, essentially . . . see . . . it’s a pretty good representation of some of my truth, of me. I had to admit I was wrong.
I found that Scripture related rather straight forwardly to THE FATHER presented in THE SHACK as well as to THE TRINITY.
When I read Roland Buck’s ANGELS ON ASSIGNMENT after hearing him speak . . . I’d heard him speak much earlier while the experiences were still going on. . . .
anyway—I was all set to be wary with that book too. However, I found instead, a very blessed, uplifting, encouraging and BIBLICAL PRESENTATION OF THE GOD OF THE BIBLE I’D LOVED ALL MY LIFE.
I found that true in THE SHACK, too.
God will simply not fit in anyone’s tidy little box.
He even knocked out the sides of the boxes HE HIMSELF instructed to be built.
I was fearful that it was going to be a mumbo jumbo of new age-ism and was pleasantly surprised.
I have read the author say that he wrote it for his children to explain spirituality and had no intention of publishing it until his friends and family persuaded him to do so.
This explains it’s style a bit I think.
I’m sure you’re right.
The Lord of The Rings started out that way, too.
Very Biblical . . .
‘EXCEPT YOU COME AS LITTLE CHILDREN . . . YOU WILL HAVE NO PART . . . ‘
You pinged me/posted to me first on this thread.
You posted three links.
When you ping me on a thread I post, particularly with links,
you can expect me to respond.
When you engage a thread and a topic that I’ve started—particularly with links, you can expect me to respond meaningfully and attempt to have a dialogue.
You can call me names all you wish.
You can be as derisive and dismissive as you wish.
At some point, that will have to be between you and God.
Scripture in the New Testament is clearly
MUCH MORE INSISTENT
about
SUBMITTING ONE TO ANOTHER.
EXHORTING ONE ANOTHER
CONFESSING TO ONE ANOTHER THAT YOU MAY BE HEALED
than it is about hierarchical submission.
That’s just the Scriptural truth of the whole of the New Testament. That’s the Biblical EMPHASIS there.
Of course, as Isaiah said . . . and as THE GOD CHASERS illustrates so well . . .
at times, GOD IS HIGH AND LIFTED UP AND HIS TRAIN FILLS THE TEMPLE and the only fitting response is on one’s face on the floor.
That was not the aspect of God the author of the SHACK set out to emphasize and illustrate with his children.
I have no trouble with that.
When folks are blown sky west and straight by God’s overwhelming Love piercing every corner, nook and cranny of their hearts—they are EAGERLY submitted wholesale to God in ways
NO amount of legalism, lists, authority issues etc. can EVER achieve.
HE LOVES ME makes that as clear (or clearer than) as my 62 years have.
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