Anything: The Prayer That Unlocked My God and My Soul

by Jennie Allen

Unbelief is not just something attributed to an atheist or agnostic. Unbelief is found in nooks and spaces within Christianity. Every sin, at its root, is based in something we do not fully believe about God.

It physically hurts to see our pride, to see our sin, to quit playing good, to feel broken and to need God. And it hurts even more to let others see it. So we run from falling; we choose large fig leaves to cover up with and not God. We run from that vulnerable feeling that we may not measure up, all while aching to measure up.

There is something so beautiful about people aware of their sin and their need for God.

God is reaching out to us, wanting us to see we need him. But since he is God, we think he wants some song and dance from us—in other words, behavior modification. He actually just wants us. He longs to set us free. And yes, to accomplish all that, he wants us entirely.

When we are saved, spiritual things begin working inside us and disrupting the way we used to think and live. Sin becomes distasteful because it fights with who we are.

Unless there is some craving for God and some distaste for sin in us, we should question if we are believers.

The gospel of grace fights every piece of pride in us. When God gives us grace, he is also taking something from us. He takes our control.

The weight of my sin grounds me. Breaks me. Shows me I need Jesus.

When I curl up on my sofa with God and his Word, that feeling that makes me want to bolt should be the feeling that keeps me there with him. It’s the weight of my sin pushing me down from the high and lofty places where my pride would rather keep me.

I prefer high places where I am numb to a place where my face is wet from tears because I realize how hopeless I am apart from Jesus. I want to be poised and together and cute and ...

If I view God rightly, I run to him the second any weight descends on my shoulders. He deals with it. I go to him broken, like the adulterous woman in the Bible, and he takes my hand and helps me up and says to me as he said to her, “Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more” (John 8:11).

“The Lord is on my side; I will not fear. What can man do to me?” (Ps. 118:6).

Was I the only one torn like this? In love with God and yet eagerly serving everybody but him?

He knows we keep chasing other loves until we love him most.

It is too easy in this country for blessings to become rights, for stuff and money to become what calls the shots in our lives. And before we know it, God’s gifts have replaced God himself.

What is it about norms, about sameness, that feels so good? There are, of course, rebels who would rather die than be the same as anyone else, but deep down most of us feel most safe, most at home, with people to whom we are similar.

God wants to press us through our doubts so we can see the other eternal story going on, of which we are actually a crucial part.

What if heaven and God and forever became our normal?

What if he lets me suffer? What if he asks me to sacrifice? What if none of my dreams come true? The very thought of doing anything demands everything. We have to face our fears. If we believe he is real, if we believe he has an eternal heart, we have to face the fact that a God like that may mess with our temporary comfort and fictional scrapbooks.

There is no escaping it. He is God, and if our suffering brings him the most glory, let it be. Easy to preach, difficult to live.

“Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word” (Luke 1:38).

Our faith must remain greater than our pain and our fears.

God, give us enough faith for whatever the stories of our lives will hold, even on the worst of days.

Theologian Tim Keller says if you love anything more than God, even though you believe in God, if there is anything in your life that is more important to your own identity or significance than God, then that is a false god and it is a power in your life.

The life I was building was crashing before me. I grieved. I grieved the moment on my parents’ bed when I had cared more about their opinion than God’s quiet voice in me. I grieved the curtains I had pined for. I grieved the control I had given to everyone around me by caring so much about their opinions of me.

Why had I loved people more than him? Why had I sat on every gift he had given me to make him known? Because I cared more about being judged by everyone else but him?

Honestly, before, surrendering to God had felt like bondage rather than freedom, binding myself to him and his will on a daily basis no matter the cost.

When we’ve got our lives in our gripped hands and we consider handing them over, most of us get that feeling—fear mixed with adrenaline mixed with nausea. It feels as though we might die if we jump. But when I prayed anything, what I feared would bind me set me free. It stung like death, and it still feels like death, but that feeling is the key turning in the lock. On the other side of the pain is freedom, peace, joy, hope, the loss of control, and it is how I was made to live.

Because to suffer in this life, to sacrifice for the name of Christ, means your reward will be great in heaven. Suffering affects my life for eternity in a positive way. I’ve never lived that way. I’ve lived trying to fix everything hurting in me with counseling and a good latte. And while none of that is bad, it never fully worked. I still hurt.

In Scripture God promises we will have trouble in this world. Christ says, If you are for Me, then the world will be against you. If you are not willing to lose everything you have, including your life, don’t even follow me. Expect persecution, and consider that a privilege (Matt. 12:30, Luke 14:26, and Matt. 5:10, paraphrased).

She felt the eternal significance of her life and praised God that she got to be part of his plan, part of his plan to redeem people. No matter the suffering she would have in this life, she was praising God for a chance to participate in eternity.

God did not seem too worried about what the people in Scripture thought about their callings; he handed them out even if they felt reluctant or unsure about their assignments.

I beg you—all of us—to fall. Fall into obedience that will shape the glory of God in our generation. We don’t want to get to heaven and realize we missed it, that God rerouted around us . . .

Leaning into him for self-control when my nine-year-old talks back, for guidance on where to use God’s gifts in me, for words when I am fleshing out this book he led me to write, and for patience as the consequences of obeying flooded our lives.

When Jesus went to pray, when he went to meet and plead with his father before facing death, one word fell off his lips over and over again. He prayed for God’s glory. He longed for it. He said he had spent his life on earth building and displaying it. Nothing mattered more to Jesus before he died than God showing himself through him and through us.

Even as I write these words today, I wonder if I honestly care. I can barely obey God without thinking, What will it cost me? I don’t want to think that way. Left to myself, I am just that selfish. I want things. I want comfort and fun. I don’t want to suffer. I want things to feel in control. Today I don’t want to be typing and studying about God’s glory—I’d rather be at Target or on Facebook. Today, like many other days, I have forgotten. I have forgotten my glimpses of God, the moments when I actually taste and see him for a smidge of who he is, and the moments I would do anything. I forget what it feels like to glimpse him as he streams in through a Scripture that surely was written for me. Or as he blows in when I drive with my window down, singing my guts out worshipping, or over yogurt with my nine-year-old as she discovers what it means to embrace the freedom of forgiveness. I have forgotten his glory.

What if the true motive of my life and my heart were to make God known for a few years on this earth?

Christ never intended those who walked with him to feel comfortable and safe. This was meant to be a risk-it-all pursuit.

Our God is compelling. He is asking us to go compel people to him. To compel means to have a powerful or irresistible influence in the lives of others.

Many of us don’t do this much. We avoid compelling anyone to God because it may feel cheesy or annoying. Well then, we have to find ways to compel that aren’t cheesy or annoying. The problem with this new generation and their endearing disgust for “faking it” is that they run from church and organized religion. So, we’ll have to take God to them.

We have become such a pragmatic society with our pros and cons and schedules that when we get to matters of radical obedience, it’s easy for us to talk ourselves out of it. We rationalize that if the cost outweighs the benefit, then we shouldn’t do it.

We doubt because God, while he gets louder, is still invisible, because of the people questioning your sanity and the difficulty of just following a wild invisible God into uncomfortable spaces. We doubt because of the risk, the cost, the abandonment of rights and comforts, the disapproval of people you really love, and then on top of it all, because you have now officially picked a fight with the devil.

There is freedom in understanding that heaven is coming and we are not there yet.

He allows us to suffer because we change through suffering. We hurt with others better. We become humble. We want him more. “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness” (James 1:2–3).

God is still not very practical, and to follow him takes trust. Following him completely requires belief that he is good even if everything here and now is not, that he sees us and has an intentional plan for our few years here.

When we don’t love or feel joy or peace or passion, it’s because we do not know his love or his joy or peace or passion.

He is a person, not a magic pill you take when your life or your soul is broken. He is a person. He is a person you talk to and listen to and love and respect. He’s someone you decide to spend time with and dream with, whom you follow and learn from and hurt with, and to whom you ask things— someone you choose over anybody else, over anything else. He is a person—the person who defines my life, sweeps in and changes me. When I let him in.

We jump because he jumped. Jesus prayed his guts out for us, our joy, our mission, our future with him . . . and twenty-four hours later he bled out on a cross for us. And there was joy in that for him, all because in pouring out his life he was restoring mankind to himself. In his death there was life.

What a privilege to walk near to the heart of God. It is impossible to avoid the call in Scripture to take care of the poor, the widow, the orphan.

I don’t want to get to heaven and see what I could have been a part of but missed because I was numb or selfish or scared.