Anything: The Prayer That Unlocked My God and My Soul

by Jennie Allen

Twenty-four hours later God met with him and gave him a vision to reach the world: Campus Crusade for Christ. Bill said in the interview before he died, “Had there been no contract, in my opinion, there would have been no vision. God brought us to the place where we made total, absolute, irrevocable surrender. Then He knew He could trust us.”3 Until there is total surrender, there is no vision.

I know that being unified in surrender to God may not be your reality, but God controls the hearts of kings and the hearts of our spouses and loved ones. He says things like this over and over again: “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:35). So if God is moving in you and calling you to surrender, but your loved ones are not there, love them and wait on God. Obey God. If you’re married, be careful not to create a grand plan that God and your husband aren’t a part of. Through our love, we display our God, especially to our spouses and those closest to us. And through our radical submission to them, God moves.

Or God is real and he really sent his son in the form of a man to bleed out on assembled pieces of wood, to be the only worthy sacrifice, buying us from our sin, winning us back when we were running from him. And then he came back to life, because he was God. It’s easy for us to take the resurrection for granted. But if you saw a man die and then three days later he was walking and eating and talking and appearing out of thin air, that would be a life-altering thing. He showed he was God. This is what we believe about Jesus.

at some point in the weeks that followed that sermon: Revival April 20, 2009 Here we go—this is what’s been taking place: 1. It is as if everything I have said I believe is all of a sudden and miraculously real to me . . . heaven, God in me, freedom from bondage, my purpose here. 2. And because it is real, I am living as if it is real. 3. And living that way costs me something—costs me everything. 4. So we start to consider our priorities and realize we value things like comfort and people’s opinions and happiness. 5. Then God says to die and sell everything we own and hate this life. 6. And we say okay. 7. We start thinking things like, Should we sell our new house? Or We have an empty bed—let’s fill it with a child who needs a home and let’s invite our neighbors to Easter dinner. 8. And then the people around us start saying things like, “Don’t do it for the wrong reasons”—like the love of adventure or for our own glory. And we say, “Ok, thanks for the heads-up.” 9. Then we have people who are praying the same prayers and thinking the same thoughts, and something is happening—not a feeling or love of adventure or desire for glory but something within us that is from God, a call to more: to die—to live. 10. My heart is bleeding and I can’t make it stop. So we are praying and willing and dreaming of living for heaven instead of the American dream, and it is changing everything. And I am strangely okay with that.4 We were both ready and willing, and so were a lot of people ...

We knew that this was not about accomplishing some visually stunning display of martyrdom or philanthropy. This surrender was simply an agreement with the living, active God of the universe saying he could have us for anything. We were his, and only through his Spirit would we know what to do—and only through his Spirit could we do it. Again, the only thing we knew to do was pray.

“God we will do anything. Anything.” That night, after we prayed anything, as I was falling asleep, I looked into God’s eyes and asked him, What do you want me to do while I’m here? We weren’t as scared as we should have been. We were just so tired of normal. We loved our simple, sane life, but now we wanted to find the kind of life you only find if you lose normal, simple, and sane. God was real and heaven was coming,

God i will do anything this is being said by Jennie and her husband. Im tired of being normal i want beyond normal i want awesome surrender to you God. I want to lose normal sane and comfort because God is real i have felt him recently and this hunger i feel its coming from Him.

I was ready to forsake this life for the next. I wanted him to unreservedly have me, so that when I faced him, we would both know that my life was spent on everything he had dreamed for me. I wanted to be right with God at the end of my life rather than right with all the people in it.

The night we prayed anything, God was ready to have his way with us. Actually, he sits around waiting for that sort of thing. “For the eyes of the LORD run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to give strong support to those whose heart is blameless toward him” (2 Chron. 16:9).

“The world has yet to see what God can do with and for and through and in a man who is fully and wholly consecrated to Him.” I don’t know if the world has seen it yet, but I do think we’ve found ourselves in the midst of a generation who would like to try. I want to try. I look around and see currents that have dug deep crevices in our culture and eventually carved into our souls. Currents that make us think, · This seventy to eighty years of a life feel long and important. · Comfort and safety are worthy pursuits. · Stuff matters. · Happiness is my right as an American. · Moral living pleases God. As a generation, I believe we are all yawning and waking up, identifying these currents, and comparing them to the truth of God. We’re considering this simple but game-changing thought: If God is really real and we are going to live with him forever, shouldn’t he be the only thing? Shouldn’t he be the controlling force of our lives? If we really believe this . . .

When my son Conner was four, he was learning to take everything to God and believe that he is real, that God hears him and answers him. This was about the same time he was learning about snow, which he had never seen, since we’re in Texas. So he stepped out in full surrender to God and he passionately prayed for weeks for God to let it snow.

Zac and I wanted in. We wanted into the stories that last forever. We wanted to quit chasing the wind and building this short life. We wanted to not just offer God words but truly offer up our lives and all that was in them, letting go of every expectation of what he would say. “God, we will do anything. Anything.” Our lives now lay in the hands of a reckless, invisible God.

I was shockingly content with whatever he said. I felt little connection to this thing that had once completely mastered me. God had shifted everything, and I truly couldn’t believe how joyful we felt while dreaming about what God could do with the money from our house. But for reasons I see now, it wasn’t time for that yet, and God knew we were going to need a secure and stable place from which to navigate the things he wanted us to do next.

God wanted some of the things we offered, and he sent some back to our pockets for our use with not so much as a nod. He did not reveal what he wanted us to do with all of it yet. He was just clearly showing us the pieces of our lives that he would like to use in the coming years. He was sorting through our Monopoly pieces and claiming all of them but selecting a few he wanted to cash in immediately. A THOUSAND PROBLEMS Praying anything was just the beginning for us . . . it was the beginning of something reckless and unknown. I knew God would change our circumstances. I knew he would begin to divide us up and pour us out wherever he wanted. But I did not realize the impact it would immediately have on my soul.

A. W. Tozer once wrote that if we exalt God to his right place in our lives, “a thousand minor problems will be solved at once.”8 Christ wrote it this way: “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you” (Matt. 6:33). Before praying, I had been living so stuck . . . so numb . . . so screwed up and broken. I had a thousand minor problems, and everyone I knew had them too. I wanted to be fixed and healed, and I read all the books and followed all the steps and quite honestly was more stuck and broken than before.

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.

We press through the doubts and the fears and we trust because God is trustworthy, and he knows how life is best lived. The more we jump and see our God come alive around us, the more we jump without fear—and the bigger the cliffs get. *** I love this verse in Romans 6: “One who has died [with Christ] has been set free from sin” (v. 7). Something about dying to this life, all our rights and expectations, frees us.

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. Suffering affects my life for eternity in a positive way.

Suffering kinda of hurts a lot but it is used to bring great blessings. It can be used for good and for positivity. Jennie and i are in the same boat not fully understanding why suffering happens, but when you give everything and are willing to do anything, then suffering brings more faith and love to God and to his will and purpose

Most of my life I was looking for God to lead me loud and clear as he had for Mary with the angel. I had listened to sermons and read books about how to know the will of God. And with one simple, sincere prayer, he came flooding out of the woodwork as though he had been just waiting for this all my life. In the days to come, as I processed this, God started clearly bringing to life Scriptures I had read a hundred times. Through these Scriptures God was explaining to me, Jennie, you hear me now so loudly and clearly because . . . “I am the LORD, that is My name; my glory I give [or share] to no other.” (Isa. 42:8) And that is what you have been asking me to do until now. To share my glory. And I knew, Jennie, that “no servant can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other.” (Luke 16:13) So I was waiting. I was waiting to be the only thing. As with Martha, when I was in her living room while I was here in the flesh. She was worried and upset about many things, but only one thing was needed. Mary had chosen the good portion, and it would not be taken away from her (Luke 10:41–42). Mary had chosen me above every other thing—nothing was more important to her than me. Nothing mattered here but me. When the rich man wanted me but wasn’t willing to do anything, I had to show him he still loved something more, that he had another master, so I told him, “You lack one thing: go, sell all that you have ...

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).

Even though the thousand problems in my soul had shifted toward one goal and one hope and I felt free, I had one new problem: life was getting hard, the pace was picking up, and I felt reluctant. I wrote this as I began this journey. Reluctance May 5, 2009 What if he actually told me what it is he wants me to do . . . and I don’t want to do it? We are in a vulnerable spot. We have told him we will do anything. Anything that he calls us to, we will do . . . anything. Go. Stay. Speak. Be quiet. Stand up. Sit down. Redeem children. Redeem dirty dishes. Something big. Something small. Anything drastic. Nothing fancy. Anything. That I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead. (Philippians 3:10–11, emphasis added) I want to know Christ . . . Yes! And the power of his resurrection . . . Yes! And the fellowship of sharing in his suffering . . . um . . . maybe? Becoming like him in his death . . . not at all! Could I have Starbucks while I decide? And somehow to attain to the resurrection of the dead . . . big YES! Please, somehow, God save me! Some days I am willing and some days I feel reluctant. Maybe I could do whatever big or small things if he would help me . . . God, overcome me. Please.

I have felt like this many times in my walk with God and in my life. Am i doing enough should I do more what about if i become overwhelmed i want to do anything but what will i give up for total surrender to His glory and purpose. I want to be a beacon of light and blessings for Him and for others around me. I want God to be proud of me at the end of it all

Most of the things God was asking us to do required faith and trust deeper than we had previously tasted. 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. Moses and Jonah and Esther all wished their callings away. But in their obedience, God was changing the world and building his stories.

I think my journey to total abandonment started over a period of time. I think God brought me to my knees, mostly through tragedy. That’s when I realized just “why” we were put on this earth. It wasn’t to live for myself, to hold tightly to my family and friends, to give half of myself to Him . . . it was to give 100 percent of myself to Him 100 percent of the time no matter what the cost. Scary? Of course. But I have to believe that “I will see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living! Wait for the LORD; be strong and take heart and wait for the LORD!” (Psalm 27:13–14). What happened when I gave in to God? I felt freedom and purpose in my life for probably the first time.

Radical acts were not the goal; we were truly moved by a person, in love with him, with Christ. And out of that love came a willingness to trust and hand over our lives. Out of that, Jesus, because he is merciful, led us to the unique places where we would each give our lives away.

In other words, truly knowing our beautiful and terrifying God will make us willing to do anything. Chambers goes on to say, Service is the overflow which pours from a life filled with love and devotion. . . . Service is what I bring to the relationship and is the reflection of my identification with the nature of God. Service becomes a natural part of my life. God brings me into the proper relationship with Himself so that I can understand His call, and then I serve Him on my own out of a motivation of absolute love. Service to God is the deliberate love-gift of a nature that has heard the call of God. Service is an expression of my nature, and God’s call is an expression of His nature. Therefore, when I receive His nature and hear His call, His divine voice resounds throughout His nature and mine and the two become one in service. The Son of God reveals Himself in me, and out of devotion to Him service becomes my everyday way of life.11 Service, or living your anything, is simply an expression of what is true about my God: he is trustworthy. I adore my God, and so he has me . . . all of me. I don’t choose my own path anymore. It is set for me, laid before the foundations of time. God prepared in advance the good works I would do (Eph. 2:10). That is the beautiful call on my life, on our lives.

God has all of me i will do anything i mean anything for His purpose and will to grow and be within me. Service to God it is an expression of God love and trust in me.

One of the most powerful and intimate views into our Savior’s soul can be found in a prayer. It’s a prayer that allows us to access the beautiful conversation between Jesus and his father the night before he was to be killed. As we look into the chambers of Christ’s soul right before he faced death, we see what most matters to him. It’s an example of what he lived for and what we are to live for. With very different words, Jesus prayed anything. He prayed it for himself over and over again in his life, but here he prays it for us during the most crucial event in all of history.

Jesus heart is shown in a deep prayer the night before he was to die. We want to be like Jesus giving interceding being authentic and honest. We give God our heart and soul we want to fulfill God purpose and will. Courage strength love compassion i mean anything for God and for Jesus.

“Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you . . . I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do. . . . I am glorified in them” (John 17:1, 4, 10). 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.

Not only did Jesus pray for himself but he prayed for his disciples and for us. He said, “They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world . . . As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world” (John 17:16, 18). The night Jesus prayed this prayer there was no oxygen left in the Upper Room. His death had just been set in motion, he had just told his men he was leaving them, and he had just explained to them that the world would hate them just as the world hated him. Then he prayed this prayer: “Father, glorify yourself through me. Glorify yourself through them” (John 17, paraphrased). Everyone sitting with him that night felt the weight of a call so large, so costly, so significant: the call to show the glory of God to the earth. A few men meant to display God. Eventually, most of those men were killed for this call. Jesus went on to pray, “I do not ask for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word” (John 17:20). He also said, “I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world” (John 17:11).

She left that night with a plan to not only tell him that she wasn’t going to live with him but also that she wanted to stop having sex until they were married. We never told her what to do. We sat in awe of this movement of the Spirit of God in her, calling her to her own costly anything. We prayed for her, and she left our house that night so heavy and so afraid. She was about to risk all she had on a God who had not even occurred to her a few months prior, departing from a world full of conventional wisdom and practical choices.

But we all wake up and put our feet down every day, and we move through our time here according to the rules, expectations, demands, and hopes of our given space in this world. The given place in which I grew up issued a script that spelled out a life lived near family, in a safe neighborhood where you had a fence and cute curtains, and where life wasn’t too hard, especially if you loved Jesus.

The morning after Jessie nervously left our living room to tell her boyfriend she wouldn’t live with him, I got an incredibly long text. I assumed their relationship wouldn’t make it through this. I just thought her boyfriend, Matt, would never understand. Part of me thought God’s timing seemed poor. I hated that God might cost her so much so early. To quote my daughter Kate, they were just getting to know each other, Jessie and God. And yet he was asking her to potentially walk away from the most important person to her. We don’t follow God just because he is God, just because he is boss. We follow God because he builds beautiful stories, even if they are not easy. Jessie’s text read: Last night I was so nervous, but I told Matt everything we talked about, everything I was feeling about God. Matt listened and then he told me that God had been moving in him too. He was also convicted and wanted to please God with our relationship but he had been scared to tell me. Together they began growing and pursuing purity. In the months that followed, I would see them sitting in church together, so peaceful and so happy. God was real, and in living for him, they were finding a story that was not easy—but it was beautiful. If Jessie had not risked and obeyed her new invisible God, they would have missed so much.

If we pray anything, we will all, like Christ, be called to give up this life and things we love. We will be called to risk for his glory. Christ never intended those who walked with him to feel comfortable and safe. This was meant to be a risk-it-all pursuit. The glory of God will be made great on this earth, but what a privilege to be part of his plan to restore it.

However, as I was teaching on fear, I was living it right in front of them, doing my best to get over my own fear of being so exposed while teaching and writing. There was no denying that God was using this. People were growing and giving their lives away and finding freedom. Women were questioning their nominal faith, and others were accepting Christ for the first time. It was beautiful. This was not just producing more knowledge; God was using it to produce obedience. We were all changing.

He gave me a vision that our generation would start giving him away rather than just learning about him. He wanted me to call and then equip women who already know and love God to gather friends, coworkers, neighbors, and others into conversations—experiences centered on God. God was calling all of us who were spoiled with so much truth to live that truth and to give it away to those who may not have ever attended church or a more traditional Bible study.

I was already teaching the Stuck study, and something about it felt different—something that God was calling me to expand. He was using Stuck to cross over and bring people together of all ages and struggles, and I knew my assignment would start there. Maybe these experiences could bridge the gap between deep believers and those just considering God.

That group of friends has gone on to hold me up as this call has fleshed itself out. They gather to pray for me regularly, they text me Scripture when I feel inadequate, they celebrate with me, and, when I have many times wanted to say no and stop the chaos, they have pushed me further into obedience. God knew I could never do this alone. He always gives us what we need to accomplish his purposes.