How I’ve Learned to stop Living for Approval, And Live For Heaven Instead

As one of most vulnerable friends that I’ve been walking with over the last decade, I’ve watched Jennie Allen model living a life on mission for Jesus for years. Jennie never gives up, she stays the course, and even in the hardest moments she’s the first person to remember that the cost of loving Jesus is worth it. I’ve been keenly waiting Jennie’s newest book, The Lie You Don’t Know You Believe: How to Find It, Fight It, and Live, this guidebook to becoming a warrior. In it she unmasks the enemy’s oldest trick: the core lie he is constantly whispering to you. Jennie is our biggest cheerleader as we move from a life rooted in shame to a life thriving in freedom. It’s a an honour to welcome Jennie to the farm’s table today… 

Guest post by Jennie Allen

The moment sin entered the world, shame followed.

Not as a fleeting feeling but as a force.

A distortion.

A gap.

Adam and Eve sinned, and what did they do? They hid. They covered. They ran from the voice of God.

We’ve been doing the same ever since.

The enemy works to widen the gap between us and God, us and others, us and our own hearts, our own souls.

We breathe in lies until shame becomes the air we live in – thick, heavy, and suffocating. We build our lives around the ache. We memorize its script. Often we don’t recognize this pattern until a real challenge hits.

And when we come face-to-face with the gap, we don’t sit still. We scramble to close it. We try to build bridges. We carry planks of performance and glue them together with self-help strategies and Christian platitudes and hustle and willpower and “just get over it” mantras.

All the things we do in reaction to that shame gap tend to fall into one of three strategies:

“We breathe in lies until shame becomes the air we live in – thick, heavy, and suffocating. We build our lives around the ache. We memorize its script.Often we don’t recognize this pattern until a real challenge hits.“

Try Harder

Give Up

Pause and Reflect

I was talking with my friend and counselor Curt not long ago, explaining how I keep up with doing the things I think I should be doing.

“It’s this voice I keep hearing, a voice that seems like the voice of wisdom, because it helps me take stock of what I’m doing and be more intentional about working hard and getting things right.”

Curt didn’t flinch. He looked at me and said, “I think that voice sounds like it’s straight from the pit of hell.”

“Jennie,” he said, “it’s like you’re living for some kind of cosmic report card.”

“Yeah, well, isn’t there one?” I said.

Deep down, I feared I was a disappointment to God. That fear kept me on track. Or so I thought. You couldn’t convince me otherwise. And what terrified me was that if I turned off the voice of shame, I would run off the rails and destroy my whole life. But maybe that voice wasn’t protecting me. Maybe it was imprisoning me.

Imagine living your entire life as if God is constantly grading your performance – keeping meticulous records of your failures, comparing you to everyone else, and always finding you slightly disappointing. That’s the cosmic report card.

It tells you God’s love depends on your performance, your worth is tied to your productivity, and every struggle is punishment for failure.

The cosmic report card is discouraging and ridiculously exhausting. And it fundamentally misrepresents who God is and how he relates to you.

I realized I was still grading myself. Still assuming my good had to outweigh my bad.

But God doesn’t deal in shame. He deals in grace.

That was Curt’s message to me. I knew he was right. Romans 8 says it plainly: “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”

God replaces our shame with joy! Scandalous.

Then Curt said something that resonated deeply.

“Jennie, the best students don’t study for grades. They study because they love the subject. You’re not being tested for heaven. You’re practicing how to live there.”

We’re learning to live in God’s freedom, his peace – like we’re already with him…

already home.

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What lie are you believing about yourself & how can change the narrative of your life? Ann Voskamp and Jennie Allen’s discuss her new book, “The Lie You Don’t Know You Believe”

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