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PREPARING FOR YOUR MOMENT IN HIS PRESENCE TOMMY TENNEY 5 Tommy Tenney, Finding Favor with the King Bethany House, a division of Baker Publishing Group, © 2003. Used by permission. (Unpublished manuscript—copyright protected Baker Publishing Group) Tenney_FindingFavor_AH_wo.indd 5 12/10/14 11:51 AM © 2003 by Tommy Tenney Published by Bethany House Publishers 11400 Hampshire Avenue South Bloomington, Minnesota 55438 www.bethanyhouse.com Bethany House Publishers is a division of Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan Printed in the United States of America All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Con- gress, Washington, DC. ISBN 978-0-7642-1172-0 Unless otherwise identified, Scripture quotations are from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Scripture quotations identified &1*` are from the New American Standard Bible®, copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lock- man Foundation. Used by permission. Scripture quotations identified &/# are from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNA- TIONAL VERSION®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 Biblica. Used by permission of zondervan. All rights reserved. Scripture quotations identified &5+ are from the Holy Bible , New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2007 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved. Scripture quotations identified {|# are from the King James Version of the Bible. Cover design by LOOK Design Studio Cover illustration by Paul Higdon Author is represented by Winters, King & Associates, Inc. 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Tommy Tenney, Finding Favor with the King Bethany House, a division of Baker Publishing Group, © 2003. Used by permission. (Unpublished manuscript—copyright protected Baker Publishing Group) Tenney_FindingFavor_AH_wo.indd 6 12/10/14 11:51 AM To the ones who taught me most. The four queens of my life. I can’t imagine life in my humble “palace” without them. My three daughters and my wife. May I rise to the level of their royalty. Tommy Tenney, Finding Favor with the King Bethany House, a division of Baker Publishing Group, © 2003. Used by permission. (Unpublished manuscript—copyright protected Baker Publishing Group) Tenney_FindingFavor_AH_wo.indd 7 12/10/14 11:51 AM Tommy Tenney, Finding Favor with the King Bethany House, a division of Baker Publishing Group, © 2003. Used by permission. (Unpublished manuscript—copyright protected Baker Publishing Group) Tenney_FindingFavor_AH_wo.indd 8 12/10/14 11:51 AM Contents 1. From Peasant to Princess 11 What a Di"erence a Day Makes! 2. The King or the Kingdom? 21 The Palace or His Presence? 3. Protocol of the Palace 44 You Cannot Worship What You Dethrone 4. Intimacy and Influence 70 How Relationship Trumps Protocol 5. Courting a King 81 What Do You Give a Man Who Has Everything? 6. The Secret of the Chamberlain 98 Finding Favor With the King 7. Favor Has an Entourage 116 Purpose and Jealousy Often Accompany Favor 8. Risk Versus Reward 132 Spending Favor to Pursue Purpose 9 Tommy Tenney, Finding Favor with the King Bethany House, a division of Baker Publishing Group, © 2003. Used by permission. (Unpublished manuscript—copyright protected Baker Publishing Group) Tenney_FindingFavor_AH_wo.indd 9 12/10/14 11:51 AM Contents 9. Learn to Worship With Your Enemy 154 But Keep Your Eyes on the King 10. Divine Insomnia 168 Indulgent Worship Creates a Sleepless King 11. Right Question, Wrong Time 185 Don’t Ask Him Now 12. Happily Ever After 201 Living in the King’s House and Wearing the King’s Ring Twelve Protocols of the Palace 221 Notes 223 10 Tommy Tenney, Finding Favor with the King Bethany House, a division of Baker Publishing Group, © 2003. Used by permission. (Unpublished manuscript—copyright protected Baker Publishing Group) Tenney_FindingFavor_AH_wo.indd 10 12/10/14 11:51 AM 1 From Peasant to Princess What a Difference a Day Makes! Introduction Divine secrets of transformation await you in this life-and-death saga from Esther’s pre-Islamic Persia. It is here that God uses the most unlikely of heroes to save His people from genocide at the hands of a powerful and highly placed madman named Haman. Not only did God use unlikely heroes—but He also used unlikely weapons! How does this story from the antiquity of ancient Iraq apply to us today? If it was a mere children’s story, it wouldn’t apply at all. But it isn’t. This story has the feel of a fairy tale! Hidden among the secrets of palace protocol is an encoded portrayal of Bible purpose— access to God’s presence . The book of Esther literally contains a spiritual roadmap to God! We cannot aord to shrug o this story as something we heard 11 Tommy Tenney, Finding Favor with the King Bethany House, a division of Baker Publishing Group, © 2003. Used by permission. (Unpublished manuscript—copyright protected Baker Publishing Group) Tenney_FindingFavor_AH_wo.indd 11 12/10/14 11:51 AM Finding Favor With the King about in church decades ago or dismiss it as some “irrelevant Old Testament book.” God reveals through Esther’s life just how He worked through one young woman to save the Jewish people from total annihi- lation by an impossibly powerful leader. Esther’s story reveals eternal wisdom about your own future and destiny ! ost little girls I’ve known have dreamed of becoming Ma princess (most young boys secretly dream of being a king too). The “princess and king” dream lives on into adult- hood for most of us. Why else would the contemporary world be so captivated by the storybook wedding of Princess Diana to Prince Charles years ago? An estimated 750 million people in seventy-four countries dropped what they were doing and crowded around television sets to watch the ceremony of the first English woman to marry an heir to the British throne in over three hundred years. Every eye followed Lady Diana as she walked down the aisle of St. Paul’s Cathedral in a royal procession to meet Prince Charles. In the words of the archbishop of Canterbury, “Here is the stu of which fairy tales are made.” 1 Otherwise happy and contented women around the globe suddenly felt the familiar pangs of their childhood, longing to be a “princess bride” once again. Very few modern nations or cultures continue to have royalty or princesses, but little girls still dream of one day being a princess bride, and little boys still imagine becoming a king. Is it any accident that the dream of a “princess bride” is so persistent even in contemporary societies, generations after true earthly royalty became rare? 12 Tommy Tenney, Finding Favor with the King Bethany House, a division of Baker Publishing Group, © 2003. Used by permission. (Unpublished manuscript—copyright protected Baker Publishing Group) Tenney_FindingFavor_AH_wo.indd 12 12/10/14 11:51 AM From Peasant to Princess Could it be that our Creator planted this dream deep inside our hearts as a hidden seed, an eternal dream waiting to be fulfilled at just the right time? This dream has divine destiny at its core. Authors, playwrights, and poets in virtually every culture since the beginning of human history have dabbled with the theme of commoners morphing into royalty at the whim of a king. Hans Christian Andersen penned his renowned children’s story “The Ugly Duckling,” describing the miraculous transfor- mation of an “ugly duckling” into what it was always intended to be, a beautiful swan. How many of us can still recite the theme and story line of Cinderella’s transformation from lowly youngest sister to queen of the land? Proof of the multigenerational intrigue of the fairy-tale sto- ries is founded on the fact that accounts like this continue to be bestsellers. It is amazing that such an ancient theme would have such enduring interest—whether in the form of Cinder- ella, King Arthur, or the contemporary Broadway production of The King and I . The sensational elevation of a common person into royalty ignites the dreams of potential in every one of us. Our Fascination With Elevation Is a God Thing Perhaps the most intriguing of these fairy-tale transformations is found in the biblical account of Esther. In fact, the story of Esther is far more ancient and powerful than any of the more recent transformation tales. It is the true story of a young Jewish peasant girl who is herded through the back door of a Persian king’s palace and wins his heart to become queen against all odds and save her nation. The biblical account of Esther has convinced me that 13 Tommy Tenney, Finding Favor with the King Bethany House, a division of Baker Publishing Group, © 2003. Used by permission. (Unpublished manuscript—copyright protected Baker Publishing Group) Tenney_FindingFavor_AH_wo.indd 13 12/10/14 11:51 AM Finding Favor With the King our lifelong fascination with transformation through love and choice is a “God thing.” If the story of Esther portrays a peasant who became a princess, then the story of her predecessor portrays the fall of a regal Persian queen to a lowly commoner (and possibly a dead one at that)! Long before Esther was suddenly elevated to princess and then queen of Persia, another queen, named Vashti, fell from grace.