Anything: The Prayer That Unlocked My God and My Soul

by Jennie Allen

“Laura, God can handle your questions, but don’t drag this out. Go there and then decide if he is real or not.” She cried, fearing what her family would think, fearing what life would feel like if she did not believe in the God everybody she loved feared. But it was as if God was giving this good little girl permission to wrestle with him. The God of the universe was lovingly saying, “It’s okay.”

A. W. Tozer wrote, “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.”1 Nothing defines a soul more than what that soul believes about God. And no outward observer can know what is in the soul of a person. The most important thing about us is truly only known and defined by the owner of the soul and the one who created it. Everyone else only sees what we want them to see. Nothing defines us more . . . nothing is more important than what we believe about God.

The answer that followed went on to shape my view of God. He began by listing all the ways we grow or know God: prayer, studying Scripture, church, worship, experiences, suffering, confession, community, and on and on. Then he said, “But obviously each of these is unpredictable . . . many people who study the Bible never find God. Many people who go to church never really know him. The only exercise that works 100 percent of the time to draw one close to the real God is risk.”

Then he went on, “To risk is to willingly place your life in the hand of an unseen God and an unknown future, then to watch him come through. He starts to get real when you live like that.” We were all speechless. Knowing God, really knowing him, was getting more complicated. But if he was real, if he was God, then certainly he was worth knowing—not just the facts, but knowing what it is like to run with him, lean on him, have his hand alone holding us up.

Stepping out wholly dependent on God to come through, stepping away from what is secure and comfortable exposes the holes in our faith. And then if God comes through, it expands our faith. Something about stepping off cliffs where God leads allows God the opportunity to move in greater ways. When we step off and he shows up, we see him differently than we would if we were standing safely looking over the edge.

But that night I saw him. I saw my sin and how it put him there. I saw the cost. I saw his mercy, and my heart moved. What Christ did on a cross—he bought me; he died so I wouldn’t. My plastic god broke, and a new, unsettling God rushed in. I felt him. We are fleshy, feely creatures. We love things to feel real; we want them to feel warm and tangible and to move through us, and at least make our hearts beat faster.

However, we can believe in Christ and be free and still be stuck. God was my new master, but I didn’t know how to shake all the old ones. I knew a lot about God, but I still did not know him. I believed he was big enough to save me forever, but now I would have to grow to believe he was big enough to weave in and out of my every day, leading me, changing me.

We think we can appear okay . . . okay to God and to each other, and that if we construct really pretty coverings out of our leaves, no one will know. But God is clear. The state of our invisible hearts takes precedence over all the good behavior, over all the bad. From Adam and Eve to the churches described in Revelation, God addresses the inner parts of man. This is what he takes issue with the most.

remember the first time it occurred to me that my life looked more like the lives of the people Jesus rebuked than the people Jesus drew near to. I was reading his words to the religious in Matthew, “So you also outwardly appear righteous to others, but within you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness” (23:28). Ugh. I felt that way. I knew deep down I was screwed up. I also knew nobody really knew it, and I liked it that way. I did not want to be facedown in the sand like all the sinners Jesus healed. I wanted to stay bright and shiny and good, and comfortably on my feet. Yet when I read the words of Christ, I felt this call. A call to fall on my face.

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.

God’s people have always been good at running from him. Jeremiah was one of the people God sent to remind them that God was real and that they needed him, and that he wanted them back. So he sent Jeremiah to the home of a potter. When Jeremiah arrived, the piece of clay in the potter’s hands was misshapen and ruined. As Jeremiah watched, the potter reworked the same clay into something beautiful, an altogether different vessel. As Jeremiah walked away, God asked him, “Can I not do with you as this potter has done? . . . Like the clay in the potter’s hand, so you are in my hand” (Jer. 18:5–6).

Repent, because you are not good; you are not okay. Come back to me. You need me. He says, Go and sin no more (John 8:11), which is impossible apart from the righteousness Christ offers to those who come to him in faith. He is what makes us right. There is something so beautiful about people aware of their sin and their need for God. That is beautiful to God. He can work with that, enter into that. Jesus’ first command after nearly every encounter with a needy person was for them to repent. He promised these broken people hope and healing. He promised to make a way for them. Often, after these encounters, he would turn to the religious people who seemed to have it all together and confront their sin of pride and pretending.

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. God is home to us. He is where we were made to be. He is what we were made for. We just forget all that while we are trying to be good and independent.

We are all hiding from each other with big fig leaves, but God says, “You could stop because I am a way better covering. I have an actual payment for all the sin you are hiding. But it will take coming out from behind your leaves. It will take humility to see that you need me” (John 11:25, 1 John 1:8, paraphrased). The irony is that Jesus’ blood takes the least good and makes them the most good. It’s beautiful.

But when our sin distances us from God, what do we do? When I sit with one of my kids after he or she repents for lying or clobbering a sibling, never has my child said, “I feel so much better because that sin was really detracting from my prayer life.” We aren’t so bothered by what sin and mistakes do to our relationship with God. Maybe he doesn’t feel real enough, or maybe we think God just accepts our sin. When we are saved, spiritual things begin working inside us and disrupting the way we used to think and live.

I grew up thinking that revealing the worst parts of me, especially in church, would be unacceptable. If grace is real, how could I ever feel that? The places that hold grace should be the safest places to unveil our humanity. But they usually aren’t. 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. So many of us don’t live in grace even though we may have grown up singing about it since birth.

I think even those of us who appear bright and shiny feel a little twinge of this kind of shame. I think we all do. Even if we call ourselves good, deep down somewhere we know we are not. Darker, more disconcerting things sit just under everything nice about us. Paul says, “I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out” (Rom. 7:18). If nothing good lives in us, how can anyone feel self-righteous? We should all be safe before each other if we are all equally messed up. But we don’t feel safe—because it is not safe. People judge, especially those who claim Jesus.

Often when I go to be alone with God—to really meet God, not just say a quick prayer or read some verses—I feel as if I can’t. I feel as though I would rather be anywhere but there. And I think other people feel that way too. I know good and well that God sees my sin, my junk, and that is not comfortable or easy to reconcile. So often I will say a prayer and read my verses and go along my way. And inside I am like King David in the Bible, after he had committed adultery and murder: “When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me” (Ps. 32:3-4).

Even if we find gracious people, are we safe? While Jesus was here he spent his time with the most broken people. The put-together, bright-and-shiny people would ask, “Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?” (Mark 2:16). And Jesus would answer them, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners” (Mark 2:17). As I said, I believe the weight we feel was meant to remind us we are all in the latter category. We are all sinners in need of repentance. That ache and weight is pushing us to our knees, begging us to repent and look to God for forgiveness. So why don’t we go to God? Why do we bolt instead of stay? Sometimes we bolt because we hate to repent. It feels like death to confess. But when God calls us to something that feels backward, it is usually his path to our freedom. The path out of shame is to see our sin and turn from it toward our God. And there we find peace and a God who can say, I can take care of this . . . Actually it’s already been taken care of.

When David finally went to God, everything changed. “I acknowledged my sin to you. Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity” (Ps. 32:1, 5). 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).

Romans 2:4 says, “God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance.” Sometimes, when we sit down on our couches with God, we’re afraid he’s the mean teacher from second grade, when instead he is the safest place we’ll ever be. His presence is the only place where invisible weight is lifted. The only place where hidden, broken spaces are mended. The only place where we are defined apart from our successes and our failures. This is the gospel: [We] all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Rom. 3:23). And then God did what the law, could not do. He sent his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh (Rom. 8:3, paraphrased). Christ did what none of us, no matter how bright and shiny, could do. We get to be free.

I grew up knowing the facts about God, and one of those facts was that he wanted to possess my heart completely. That I would love the Lord, my God, with my all my heart, soul, mind . . . that all of me would love him the most (Deut. 6:5). But I couldn’t live it then. I was busy making most everyone in my life happy, and it was working for me—at least most of the time. I’m lying. It wasn’t working. I was completely wrecked inside. How does anyone ever make everyone happy? I waited for my parents’ answer.

But I know Julie. Julie is afraid. She just protects herself differently than I do. I think we all care on some level what others think. If we do not desire the acceptance of those we love, we are barely human. It is one of the attributes that defines us—our desire to be accepted first by God and then by others. Most people don’t need everybody to be happy with them. But everybody wants somebody to be happy with them.

When I get still and hear the loudest thing in me, it is often that I am chasing everyone but God. And I fear if he gets too close, he’ll see it. But if I let him close anyway, we sit together on days like that, looking over the frantic river that is wearing me out. He never says, I told you so. He could, but he never does. Love is jealous . . . especially God’s love. He wants me, and I want everybody else. God knows we all have this problem, loving everybody but him. So he called a prophet to dedicate his days to answering the same question I ask: how do we stop chasing everybody else and come back to God?

But then, in the midst of this dramatic metaphor, God says about those of us chasing other loves, Therefore, behold, I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak tenderly to her. And there I will give her her vineyards and make the Valley of Achor a door of hope. And there she shall answer as in the days of her youth, as at the time when she came out of the land of Egypt. And in that day, declares the LORD, you will call me “My Husband,” and no longer will you call me “My Baal.” For I will remove the names of the Baals from her mouth, and they shall be remembered by name no more. (Hos. 2:14–17) Every time I sit by the banks of my sin and my other loves, right as I think he is about to wipe me out because my heart feels so out of control, he steps into the river and redirects it. “The king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the LORD; he turns it wherever he will” (Prov. 21:1). It is only God who moves my heart. He chases me down and lures me back to him; while I am running to everyone else, he runs after me. God brings me back to the place where it fares well with me, reminding me he is my husband. There is no spinning, no fear, only perfect acceptance and peace.

When God became real to me in high school, I came home from the crosses at camp and gathered an assortment of younger girls so we could talk about him. I don’t remember thinking I was supposed to do that. After I fell in love with God and was filled with his Spirit, I just did it. I started gushingly teaching everything I knew about him. I’ve lived since then with a very clear sense of what he wants me to do, and usually it’s to talk about him in some form. His gifts in my life were never a secret to me or those who saw them used. As he did with every believer, he gave me something to make him bigger.

Rather than dying to my need for approval, I died to the clear callings God had put in my soul and the clear gifts and equipping he had given me. I just wished it all away . . . it was costing too much. It was costing me my people, everyone’s approval, the thing I loved most. So I sat on it. The little portion of his work that God gave me to do for a few years before I see him again, I sat on, praying it would go away. I was no different than Jonah running from God’s clear call to share him with Nineveh. I was not going. I’m thankful he didn’t have me eaten by a whale. I did wonder sometimes, when I closed my eyes and let it get scary quiet, if I was missing the best things, the things that matter most, because I was afraid. He knows we keep chasing other loves until we love him most. We keep spinning. We keep searching, restless. We keep missing all he has for us. He’ll always feel far away, drowned out by other louder rivers, until every other thing fades away and he becomes the only thing.

Surrender is a process for us. In the years since we completely gave ourselves over to God, our lives have changed drastically, but so far we have not moved and sold all we own and given the money to the poor. (We’re thinking about it, but we’ll get to that later.)

The ironic thing about believing in God and supernatural things is that the invisible stuff is actually the most trustworthy, the most stable. So the concrete things we can see and touch, they become the wind, they become the things we try to catch, and over and over, they pass through our fingers and souls, keeping us empty. But when I take my empty self to God, he feels familiar and stable and more like concrete than wind.

But God often seems unconcerned with helping us maintain same, simple lives where everything fits and works. I don’t know what God’s plans are for you, but I do know that we don’t hear from him until certain things die. He doesn’t compete. And when he does speak, it typically costs something. Somehow I thought most of my life following God was not supposed to be too costly. Following God is flat costly. It always has been. It doesn’t make sense to us, but since this life, these few years, are not the climax from God’s perspective, he’s okay throwing a little wrench into the short plans we have to be normal here.

Watching a person live recklessly and radically for God resonates deeply with someone who does not know God. Something about that life just feels appropriate—to live based on what we believe. That’s refreshing. People who believe in living forever with their God don’t totally love this earth. We may feel very different from those who don’t believe, but we’ll find that they are intrigued, as long as we don’t judge them or keep them at arm’s length because they live differently. But I’ll tell you who we mess with when we live radically: It’s not the pagans; it’s the Christians.

They are displaying the gospel, and there is nothing normal about their lives. And every time I get off the phone with her, all I want is to have nothing normal about our lives. She still bleeds God, and her life is being poured out on the neediest and the most broken. She traded entitlement for surrender, and God took her up on it. What if heaven and God and forever became our normal? Wouldn’t that change everything?

To display the gospel in our life like Jennie friend Aimee did is beyond awesome to read. She gave up a life of comfort and luxury to bring people to God Jesus and proclaim the good news which is the Word of God. She traded entitlements for complete surrender to God and its something that we all should want to have and be

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.

It didn’t take long to get to the subject she and I often wove our way toward . . . singleness. Natalie, now in her mid-thirties, longs to be married. But she isn’t, and sometimes, almost like a storm, the feelings of helplessness and desire roll in. So much about Natalie defines her more than her marital status. She travels the world with her job, passionately building and serving a ministry in Africa. When she is home, she sacrificially loves and serves the rest of us.

God is saying, I am God! I know what I am doing. I know this feels excruciating, but I am about something here, and I am asking you to trust the one who tells the ocean where to stop and the sun when to launch. There is no escaping it. He is God, and if our suffering brings him the most glory, let it be.

We read about the angel who came to announce the highest calling given to a human. But the high calling was a costly calling, and it came with tremendous suffering. Mary faced the rejection of her fiancé, persecution from her community because of a seemingly illegitimate pregnancy, the pressure of raising the son of God, and ultimately the pain of watching him die a humiliating and excruciating death. All of this lay ahead of her that day the angel came, and the first words out of her mouth were, “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word” (Luke 1:38). Let it be as you say. God, I want to live that way.

Are we truly willing to completely and finally forsake this life? To yield ourselves to God without restraint? If anything has “buts,” it wouldn’t be anything. When we look at the God of the universe, who willingly sent his son to be brutally murdered so that we get to live in his kingdom forever as his own kids . . . saying that you will do anything “but” just doesn’t go over well.

God is an anchor in the midst of the difficult chaos of this world. The chaos will be resolved. It will. As Oswald Chambers said, “Faith is deliberate confidence in the character of God whose ways you may not understand at the time.”4 But it is so hard, isn’t it? To dream about heaven, to hope in an invisible God?

Then she said a line I will never forget: “You have to thank God for the seemingly good and the seemingly bad because really, you don’t know the difference.” The hardest things in her life have brought her the deepest relationships. The hardest things have become the things that define the most beautiful things about her. The hardest things in her life have given her more of God.

The desire of God’s heart is to deal with suffering—and it is not just his desire; it is his plan. Once he deals with it, it is over. He is patient in his judgment, desiring that none be lost (2 Peter 3:9). If we believe the Bible, we must believe that the heart of our unpredictable, sovereign God is good, that he sees us and is for us, even though he allows this pain.

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.5

In Luke 14 Jesus had a large crowd following him. I am sure he was thinking something like, You are following me now because it is easy, but you do not know that following me may cost your lives. And so he started talking about the cost of following him. He began with family, saying, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters . . . he cannot be my disciple.” And he moved even closer to home: unless you hate “even [your] own life, [you] cannot be my disciple.” We know from Jesus’ strong commands to love even our enemies that he is not advocating neglecting our relationships or those who depend on us (Luke 6:27). He is saying, Wake up! This pursuit of me, it may cost you everything you hold dear, everything you love here. It may cost even your life. And until this life gets small, really small, and I get big, really big, you won’t truly follow me. Because loving this life too much will affect your love for me. It also will affect what you are willing to do for me.

Following God putting Him before everything is what he calls all to do. God doesn't mean literal hate but that He is a priority in everything. When He wants us to do something we drop all to do it no excuses cause we are called to His will and purpose

Abraham adored God so much he was willing to leave everything he knew and follow him out into the wilderness. He had so much faith that God was real. He knew it, and he spent his life chasing after him. In Genesis 17 God promised Abraham a son who would father many nations and be the hope of the world. Abraham longed for God to deliver on this promise, even though his wife, Sarah, was infertile and could not have children. As they continued to age past the years of childbearing, Abraham began to question God. But finally, in their extreme old age, God miraculously blessed them with a son, and they called him Isaac.

So God did something terrifying and gruesome. He asked Abraham to sacrifice and kill his only beloved son. This is insane. Those of us who have heard this too many times need to stop and consider that this is the passionate and jealous nature of our God. Life is short to him, and eternity and having the God of the universe in the right place in our lives is more precious than our brief lives here.

Christ said, “So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:33). This covers literally everything. In essence, “Stop eating the flowers! Wake up!” ***

We love our earth. We love our people. We love our stuff. We love our schedules. We love our short lives here. And God is saying, Look up. This is going fast. Your life here is barely a breath. There is more, way more. Time is almost gone. Our lives are only spent well on him and whatever stories he has written for us. What are we really so afraid of losing?

All my life, I had everything this world says is important. In high school I was class president, homecoming queen, top of my class. I dated cute boys and drove a cute car. I had supportive parents who so desired my success that they would pay for me to go to college anywhere my heart desired. BUT, I loved Jesus. Jesus says to Nicodemus that in order to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, one must be born again. Check. Jesus says to another guy that in order to enter the Kingdom of Heaven one must sell everything they have and give it to the poor and then COME, follow Him. Oh . . . I realized that I had loved and admired and worshipped Jesus without doing what He did. So I quit my life. Originally it was to be temporary, just a year before I went back to normal Brentwood life and college. It wasn’t possible. I had seen what life was about and I couldn’t pretend I didn’t know. So I quit my life again, but for good this time. I quit college, I quit my cute designer jeans and my little yellow convertible. I quit my boyfriend. I no longer have everything that the world says is important. BUT, I have everything that I know is important. I have never been happier, and I have never been closer to the Lover of my Soul and my Savior. JESUS wrecked my life, shattered it to put it back together more beautifully. I am in LOVE with Him. Period.1

I weep now again as I write this. I weep because I almost got away with a wasted life. What if I had blown off the interruptions he was offering? I might be stuck with the mediocre life I was so afraid of losing at the time. But it was like he lifted my head, while I was in a puddle on the bathroom floor, and let me see into his heart, into heaven, into the brokenness of those suffering, into my own soul. And in a moment what had never occurred to me made perfect sense. So much sense that I was willing . . . desperately willing . . . to do anything.

That night on the floor I told him, “From this point on things are changing. I am living for the moment when I will face you. I want to get to heaven out of breath, having willingly done anything that you—God of the universe—ask . . . anything.” Katie was a teenage girl in a remote African village who left her scrapbook and is now actually choosing suffering because she adores Jesus. He alone changed everything.

Im living for God im living for the moments when i will see you in heaven. I want to work for God i want to be out of breath for God im willing to do anything i mean anything you ask me God. Im here use me God like Jennie like Katie Miller complete surrender

I had a constant, nagging feeling that God was real and this life wasn’t a game; it wasn’t about my comfort or my curtains or how much everyone liked me and approved of me. Heaven was coming, God’s voice was clear, and I needed to quit pretending everything was lovely. At another point I read this from Katie’s blog: Someone asked me the other day, “Really? Is it really as great as you make it sound? I could never do that! Are you really happy?” For all of you who wonder, this is my response. You know what I want sometimes? To go to the mall and spend a ridiculous amount of money on a cute new pair of shoes. I want to sit on my kitchen counter chatting with my girlfriends and eat a whole carton of cookie dough ice cream. I want to watch Grey’s Anatomy, or any TV for that matter. I want to cuddle with my sweet boyfriend. I want to hop in my cute car, go to the grocery store, and pick up any kind of produce I want. I want to wake up in a house with my loving family, not all by myself. I want to go to Blockbuster and pick out a movie to watch with my little brother and his friends and I want to cook for them at midnight. I want to spend mindless hours with my best friends talking about boys and fashion and school and life. I want to go to the gym. I want my hair to look nice. I want to wear cut-off jean shorts. I want to be a normal teenager living in America. I do. But. You know what I want more? ALL the time? I want to be spiritually and emotionally filled every day of my li...

Wow Katie life really changed Jennie for the better. To have that complete surrender and faith to God. I want to live my life like that to fully let go of this temporary life because eternity is waiting in heaven with God the Father Jesus the Son and that beautiful spirit