Book in Review

July 2022 Our 4th Anniversary! Page 7

Anything

The Prayer that unlocked my God and my Soul

Book by: Jennie Allen

Written by: Lynne Wood

Anything the prayer that unlocked my God and

my Soul, is a great book written by Jennie Allen. Jennie graduated from Dallas Theological Seminary with a Masters in Biblical Studies; she serves alongside her husband Zac in ministry. She grew up in a good Christian family; her parents did their best teaching them about God. Jennie felt like she was going through the motions, she felt God was a plastic invisible God. She asked the question of one of her professors, "How does someone know God?" He said you come to know God by studying scripture, prayer, church, worship and so on. Then he said many people who study the Bible never find God; many people who go to church don't know Him. The one thing that will draw you closer is risk and to risk is to willingly place your life in an unseen God and watch Him come through for you. To really know God is to count on Him for everything and watch Him hold you up.

Jennie had been going to the same Christian camp since she was twelve. She would sit at the campfire and look at the three crosses and feel nothing. When she was seventeen, she was looking at the crosses and for the first time in her life, she felt Jesus was real. She said she saw Him; she saw her sin and how it put Him there. She saw the cost and His mercy and her heart moved. Her plastic God broke. She felt Him; He was real. After that night, things changed; she wanted more of Him, He was real and now she belonged to Him. Jennie also met her future husband Zac at the camp. Jennie and Zac were married with three children and in ministry when they had dinner with a lady from Uganda. She was telling them about a young girl who gave up everything to live in Uganda. At home shared about her and how she was helping girls living on the street, and how she couldn't be happier living for Jesus. That's what Jennie wanted, to give everything to God. She went to bed that night and prayed anything - we will do anything and everything for you.

She felt God was leading her to start writing and for them to adopt. This wonderful feeling of wanting to give God everything started spreading through their friends and congregation. They adopted a four year old boy from

Rwanda. They were right into doing anything for God when the devil stepped in to try to disrupt.

They started fighting, some friends turned against them and the church was going through conflicts. However, two years after they prayed that simple prayer, anything God, their lives have changed completely.

Their family has grown after adopting a little boy who has brought them so much joy. Jennie is writing and doing Bible studies and telling everyone about Jesus. Zac's church is growing into the vision God gave Zac six years ago. Everything in life is not always perfect; people contend with sickness, divorce and death; God hates that. That was not God's plan; that's what sin did. Jesus is the story; through Him we see God, and through faith in His death and resurrection we will spend eternity with Him. You have nothing to give, nothing to earn, nothing to pay; you couldn't! Salvation is a free gift...that's grace. "Your Kingdom come, Your Will be done, On earth as it is in heaven," Matthew 6:10