Why I Wrote a Book
I was sitting in my pastor’s car on a Monday. He said that he was planning to preach on prayer the coming Sunday. I paused before I spoke. I knew exactly what I wanted to say but wasn’t sure that I should. Then I remembered that I’m too old to keep my advice under wraps. I gathered my conviction and responded.
“You can preach on prayer but nobody will remember what you said. They don’t want to hear what you know about prayer; they want to know how you pray. They don’t want to hear you talk about what you think they should do, they want to hear you talk about what you do.”
Then, I suggested “Why don’t you let me interview you and get your relationship with God out in the open for everybody to see behind the curtain?”
Everything got very quiet in that car. I could tell he was thinking about it. I knew my instinct was right but I wasn’t sure that he would go for it — he did. In fact, not only did he consider it to be a good idea, but he also decided that he should not even know the questions prior to the interview. So we walked into Sunday morning with a list of questions designed to pull out the essential DNA of his walk with God in prayer. He showed up wide-eyed and delivered like a champ.
As I suspected — once we got him talking about his private relationship with God it turned into a holy day. The presence of God moved into the conversation. The pastor wept (as he always does when God’s presence invades the room), and people were helped. Not because they got a “How to”, but because they got taste of real closeness with God. The Kingdom of Jesus is caught more than it is taught. That day we caught a taste pf compelling power, not of a pastor of a church, but from a chosen son playing chase with his heavenly Dad.
The Book
It was after that day that I got the idea for this book. I realized that the world didn’t need another “How to” book, but that putting my private pursuit of God into words might be helpful. Even if nobody else needed to hear it, it would help me to write it down.
I wrote the whole thing in about four months. Then began the long and arduous climb of second-guessing and re-writing. I kept shaping it privately because I wasn’t sure I would put it out. Eventually my next-door neighbor Matt, shared a podcast with me. This podcaster said that your message to the world should be the one problem you’ve been trying to solve your whole life. I laughed to myself and whispered, “That is the book I’m writing. It’s me talking about the thing I’ve been trying to solve my whole life!” I set the course of my life to know God personally and have been working on it ever since. You may object to the thought of talking to God as a puzzle? Not me. I find talking to God challenging. He, of course, is not the problem, but there are very real obstacles in the way. So, I embraced the resolve to finish the book and show it to the world, because we all carrying the longing to know God but we puzzle over how to speak to him personally, consistently, and with bold reverence.
Prayer stands as an open invitation to us all but that doesn’t mean we do it very often, or even feel any sense of personal confidence in it. That’s why I wrote the book and put it out. Like the sermon that turned into an interview, I have endeavored to uncover what I’ve learned about chasing God in prayer. After all these years I am still building a life of pursuit. Imperfect, but as the years accumulate, our history together is satisfying in the dearest of ways. If you carry similar desires to know God and want to build your own personal dialogue with him, maybe you will find some help in its pages.
I’ll end this post where the book begins.
When God is chased, he lets himself get caught.
This is good news.
You can find the book here on Amazon Playing Chase with God
