Prayers of a God Chaser

I'm done reading books as "devotionals" - I was reading books a chapter at a time, here and there, but while that worked great for A Purpose Driven Life and maybe one or two other books, I've found that splitting most Christian books up weakens their overall message and flow. Worse yet, if the book is a mediocre book I tend to lose any benefit I might get from it. I'll continue to read the Bible in short segments, but not other books.

Prayers of a God Chaser, by Tommy Tenney, is one of those mediocre dime-a-dozen Christian books that fill Christian bookstores everywhere. I actually purchased this quite a while ago but never got around to reading it until recently. I've not read his first book, The God Chasers, but I guess it must have been pretty popular because it spurned a number of spin-off books, like this one. It seems like Tenney is merely trying to cash in on the success of his first book in this series, because there's not as much substance as I would have hoped from a book about prayer. 

Tenney goes through 11 types of prayer that he identifies. Each one gets its own chapter in which he briefly describes it, gives both a Biblical and real-life example, and then describes how it can be put into practice. The types of prayer are:

-Desperation

-Repentance

-Hungry Heart

-Wisdom and Guidance

-Intercession

-Total Surrender

-Inspired Faith and Divine Declaration

-Struggle

-Adoration

-Emptying

-Commitment

This book could be powerful, but it's pretty thin, both spiritually and literally (150 pages with generous double spacing, whole pages devoted to chapter titles, etc.). Tenney always included enough to make me think "Oh yeah, I know that kind of prayer" but never really compels the reader to do anything but pray. I could see this benefiting a new Christian, but there really isn't much here for someone who's been praying and going to a spiritually thriving church for years.

Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

(85/100)