Anything...

From the insane amount of issues in the swirling vortex in my head, there is one resounding theme right now--

Anything

 This is the one that always separates itself from the rest, the one that wakes me up in the middle of the night, the one that I see when I open my eyes in the morning.  It has been something that has been presenting itself to me for acceptance or rejection for years now, ever since I got real in my quest to follow Jesus.  

Anything is just another way of saying 'everything.'  If you tell God that he can have anything, then you are telling God he can have everything.  Nothing is off-limits:  your wealth, your family, your comfort....your life.  

Anything was always such a scary concept to me.  I always knew it was what was required of me--the only thing required of me.  God didn't require some skill, he didn't require anything I was able to do for him, he just required that I give him all of me.  Because he knew that if I didn't, I wouldn't really know him.  I wouldn't really know joy. 

And, if we won't give him anything, then there is very little chance that we are going to help others know him.  And that's the only other thing he wants from us:  he wants us to help him rescue everyone else.  So that's two things he wants--he wants us, and he wants everyone else.  

Isn't that just like God?  Sometimes I feel like he is so selfish, wanting me to give him my comfort.  Wanting me to give him my American dream.  Wanting me to give him all my plans.  But really, it's for my benefit.  It's because he knows good and well that my weak heart does not have room for those things and him.  And he knows that as long as those things rule my weak heart, that I will not be able step out on the street and tell another soul about him.  God wants me....but he wants that soul too.  He is willing to sacrifice our comfort so that another of his children can receive his grace.  And we should be willing too.

So when I stumbled upon the book Anything by Jennie Allen I ordered it on the spot.  I read it in a couple of days, mostly over Easter.  It was the struggles of my heart inked on a page.  It was exactly and profoundly what I have been pondering, wrestling with, meditating on for the last few months.

Anything is about the moment Jennie comes to the point in her life and in her relationship with the creator that she tells God he can have anything.  She asks him to just tell her, just point to it--what does he want from her?  He can have it.  It's the moment that she really got real with God, and it tells about everything that led her up to that point.  And the beautiful story that God has written since.  

I loved this beautiful quote from her life before she prayed the 'anything' prayer:

"As I stand back and look at myself as I was, sitting in the counselor's office whining and crying after years of chasing things that were supposed to work for me, that were supposed to make me happy here, that God was supposed to do, I see that my ache was actually his mercy showing me that everything I loved other than him was never going to work.  It was never supposed to work."

Y'all, that's truth.  That's truth wrapped up in grace and tied with a bow.  The reason we feel empty, and the reason this life feels mediocre is because that's what we have filled it with--mediocre, vain pursuits.  Vanities.  And God is so merciful that he doesn't leave us there.  He continues to talk to us in that small aching voice, assuring us there is more.  Not letting us sit content with rubbish.  Reminding us that we will never be fulfilled with anything other than him.

It's funny that one of the things that I read at the beginning of my 'anything' journey, is one of the same things that began Jennie's. It is the story of an amazing girl named Katie who at 18, left her safe, cush, comfortable, well-off life and moved to Uganda.  Alone. Worked at an orphanage, loved on kids.  Then adopted, like, a zillion of them.  By herself.  I seriously have lost of count, I think she has legally adopted something like 14 or 15 little girls.  

Here is a quote from Katie's book Kisses from Katie that I read a couple of years ago, that was also in Jennie's book.  It is a quote from Katie explaining her choices:

"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."

There just isn't any arguing with that.   Jesus' plan for our life is SO much more beautiful than which schools our kids get into, than which drapes we decided on, than whose name is on our shoes.  Jesus' plan for our life is more beautiful than the noble things we hold on to, too.  His plan is more beautiful than everything, because his plan gets Him us, and gets Him others.  All of those beautiful little Ugandan girls would not have had a mommy, especially not a mommy that told them about Jesus, if Katie had said 'No.'  If she had said that her car, house, comfort, friends and family were more important than Jesus.

Jennie says in  Anything "Until there is total surrender, there is no vision."  Until we decide Jesus is worth our 'anything' then I don't think we will know his plan for our life. We won't know what ministry he has called us to, we won't know his perfect plan.  He isn't going to give us a sneak peek so we can see if it is worth it.  We have to go all in.  We have to open up our sweaty palms and release the two-year-old-like grasp we have on our stuff.  

Ben and Lisa Morrell are a couple who have been in my Sunday school class for the last few years.  They came to Houston to receive treatment for the cancer he was diagnosed with just a few short weeks after they were married.  A couple of weeks ago, they headed back to Seattle.  They are living the rest of the time that God has given Ben at home.  With hospice.  As of yet, there has been no miraculous healing.  

Their 'anything' is probably the reason that most Christians won't pray it.  Their worst-case scenario has been coming to life in front of our very eyes.  But Ben and Lisa's journey has undoubtedly shown God and his grace to countless unbelievers.  Their stalwart faith in God and his goodness every step of the way has illuminated God and his love for us.  Their positive, yet realistic attitude every day has been....unreal.  I look at their status updates on Facebook and the peace that they have chosen to hold on to during this time points to a God who holds them in His hand, and to a plan that ends gloriously.

I don't know your 'anything.'  I am just beginning to see mine.  But the reality is, that if we are not willing to tell God that he can have anything, then we are settling for a dull, mediocre shell of a life that had nothing to do with God and nothing to do with eternity.  I don't want to go out like that.  I want to chase after what will still be around in eternity.  I want do what the God of the universe wants me to do, because you know what?  He knows more than me.  He knows the pain of giving up mediocre in this life will be miniscule compared to the joy of what we will gain, in this life and eternity.

And on the heels of Easter, it all of the sudden occurs to me that Jesus prayed 'anything' too. In the Garden of Gethsemane.  He cried, and he sweat blood and he prayed 'anything.'  Praise God, he prayed 'anything'.  Now we have the chance to, too.

Ben and Lisa will spend eternity with Jesus, be it in two months from now or fifty years.  And I have faith that they will have brought others there with them because of their love for Jesus and their agreement to his plan, to their 'anything.' Because their 'anything' showed Christ to those who hadn't seen him yet.

Katie will spend eternity with Jesus, and will undoubtedly not just have 14 or 15 beautiful Ugandan girls there with her, but hundreds or thousands of Ugandans AND Americans who were touched by her love and came to know about Jesus through her.

I will spend eternity with Jesus. I hope when I get there, I have more to tell him about than shoes and drapes and how comfortable I was.  I hope I can lay a life of the Gospel lived out at his feet.  I hope there will be others there with me who came to know Jesus because I lost my life and prayed 'anything.'

I hope that for you too.