Sid Roth

SID:  Hello, Sid Roth your investigative reporter here with Tommy Tenney and this is unlike any television show you’ve ever seen because it’s interactive. What do I mean by interactive?  Normally you are used to sitting back on your couch and kicking off your shoes and saying “Come on, entertain me.” Well this is two-way communication, which the supernatural will literally go through your television set and people will be physically healed and physically touched by the presence of the living God. Now my guest, Tommy Tenney, I believe just as in the book of Esther, it says, “Who knows if you’ve not been called to the kingdom for such a time as this.” The reason I have him on this show is not because he has a best selling series of books “The God-Chasers.” It’s not because he is about to do a Hollywood motion picture with Peter O’Toole, on the book of Esther, it’s not because his books on the Esther series are becoming best sellers. It’s none of the above.  It’s one reason and one reason only. Somehow, someway, Tommy Tenney has touched the heart of God and where he goes he walks in supernatural favor. And I believe that if we can talk to him and pull out of him what he has learned in his adventure with God, some of you will begin walking with God in an extraordinary fashion. As a matter of fact, Tommy Tenney, if someone were to say to you, “What is the purpose of your life thus far, you would say?” 

TOMMY:  To find my assignment and fulfill it. 

SID:  And what is your assignment? 

TOMMY:  I love to teach people about the presence of God and to give them a road map of how to enter His presence, and what pleases God. 

SID:  Now, before you became a best selling author I have to believe that you experienced the presence of God and were probably teaching on it before anyone ever heard the name Tommy Tenney beyond little areas that knew it. Am I right? 

TOMMY:  Absolutely.  I have been in ministry 32 years and people only have heard about me about the past ten years and they said, “You’ve an overnight success.” 

SID:  Right. 

TOMMY:  I wanted to slap them and say, “You have no idea how long that night was.”   It really is not all about that, it is just that all of a sudden, I’m saying the same things, it’s that all of a sudden everybody wants to listen. But God puts you through school, so that you thoroughly learn what your assignment is and you stay on that theme. And God gives me particular themes to preach on and that’s what I do. And not just preach; write. 

SID:  Was there a point in your life, Tommy, where you can say there was a measurable difference in your own intimacy with God and in the favor God put in your life? 

TOMMY:  But they didn’t come together. 

SID:  Explain. 

TOMMY:  There was a sense of, it was three phases. There was a sense of incredible hunger, and ironically Sid, it was nine months of that kind of hunger.  Birthed an incredible experience to which I can.. 

SID:  Would you say that God put the desire that hunger within you, or was it an act of your will? 

TOMMY:  Oh, it was a combination of circumstances.  God does not mind sacrificing our comfort to develop our character, or point us to our assignment. And I went through nine months of a frustrating period in my life and got so desperately hungry that I really prioritized God, and all of a sudden He showed up in a way unprecedented. I had know God, I was saved been in ministry nearly twenty years at that point. 

SID:  And I know just as you are saying that, I’m like most of us can feel the presence of God. And just as you said the word unprecedented I felt the presence just zoom right up. Just as you said that, I guess just remembering what God did. 

TOMMY:  I have some interesting experiences Sid.  I’m in airports all the time. I was in London last week, and I’m sitting on an airplane and my assistant is beside me, and on the opposite side of him is, what I didn’t know then but what I now know is a professional soccer player. I’m talking to my assistant, actually he’d made a mistake, and I said, “You really can’t do that.” And this professional soccer player leans around and he says, “That voice, I know who you are, I know what you do. And I said, “Why?” And he said, “Your voice carries something.” And he was a believer.   I don’t even know about it, I have no clue, I’m just who I am.  I tell about God, I tell His stories 

SID:  But you had that hunger.  But tell me the time that it just increased? The power where people sensed it, where you just had that favor with God? 

TOMMY:  Well, after hunger comes an encounter. If you handle the encounter properly, comes favor. And that’s what happened in my life. I tell people, you know, we talk about my past. If I knew what created the favor, I would have pushed those buttons twenty years earlier. 

SID:  Of course. 

TOMMY:  But it’s not about me, so the fact that is not about how smart I am… 

SID:  You know what?  I believe that if you had pushed those buttons twenty years earlier, you might have failed the test. 

TOMMY:  That’s right. 

SID:  You needed the gray hair and the experiences… 

TOMMY:  Well, experience births humility because you realize you are not the one who created or caused that moment. I had an incredible encounter with God.  And everything in my life, it’s now, instead of shouting and people still not listening, I can speak quietly and, people listen. 

SID:  Tell me, when this was, and if you have any ideal of the ingredients that caused it? 

TOMMY:  Sid, I would be remiss to sit here and tell you there is a formula, there is not. It is not about an equation, it is about a relationship.  If I have to enumerate; if I have to

SID:  I’ll tell you what, hold that thought. We’ll be back in just a moment but he is going to tell you how you can have intimacy with God, favor with God.  We’ll be right back after this.