What are Jennie Allen\u2019s beliefs? How have her personal experiences led to these beliefs?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Author Jennie Allen was inspired by her own experiences and beliefs while writing her book Get Out of Your Head<\/em>. You may be able to resonate with someone of Jennie Allen\u2019s beliefs and anecdotes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here\u2019s a list of Jennie Allen\u2019s beliefs, gained from her personal experiences. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n In her book Get Out of Your Head, Jennie Allen offers advice for tackling inner spiritual and mental battles. Jennie Allen’s beliefs include the dangers of victimhood, the idea that people are made for community, and that religious doubt<\/a> is the work of Satan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here’s a list of Jennie Allen’s beliefs, from Get Out of Your Head:<\/p>\n\n\n\n The first of Jennie Allen’s beliefs is that people generally live as victims of their own minds. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Many of us are consumed with negative thoughts, and we\u2019ve bought into the lie that we can\u2019t control them. We live as victims of toxic thinking, trapped in depression and defeat.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The author found this confirmed at another women\u2019s church meeting when she asked attendees to identify the thoughts playing in their minds as they arrived. Negative thoughts (worries about finances, feelings of low self-worth<\/a>, and so on) dominated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is the spiritual war of our generation, a battle between you and the enemy of your mind (and soul). Your enemy in this war is Satan, whose objective is to prevent you from learning to take your thoughts captive. He wants you to waste your God-given life in feelings of helplessness, because this inner defeat will accomplish his overall goal: to prevent you from doing and becoming all that God wants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The enemy\u2019s attacks show up as <\/strong>negative mental spirals<\/em><\/strong>. <\/strong>Many people\u2019s lives work like this: Emotions \u2192 Thoughts \u2192 Decisions \u2192 Behaviors \u2192 Relationships. Emotions drive everything else down the chain, with end results feeding back up the chain when consequences reinforce emotions and thoughts. When you live like this, your life is on autopilot, spiraling ever downward into dysfunction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here are some examples of negative spirals in action, to illustrate their deep grip on us:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Make no mistake, taking charge of your thoughts is challenging. At times it may feel like trying to catch a sparrow that flew into your house and is now flitting madly about. But you must<\/em> catch your thoughts if you want to break free of negativity and lead the life God wants for you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For deeply entrenched negative thought spirals, healing may take time. For other spirals, healing may be instantaneous. In either case, the applicable principles are still the same.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Jennie Allen learned a critical lesson about God\u2019s plan for community when she and her husband went through the process of adopting their son Cooper from an orphanage in Rwanda: For children to thrive, you have to make them feel seen and loved. Moreover, this insight applies to all of us. The old saying \u201cit takes a village\u201d applies to more than raising a child. We\u2019re \u201cvillage people,\u201d built to thrive in communities that gather together and share each other\u2019s lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The way you defeat your enemy of shame and its lie that you don\u2019t need others is by <\/strong>choosing <\/em><\/strong>community.<\/strong> In other words, choose to know and be known by others. In this endeavor, it\u2019s important to remember that God\u2019s Spirit lives in you<\/strong>. Trust the Spirit to be with you in reaching out to others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To illustrate this last point, the author relates a painful past experience from when she started her IF organization. A misunderstanding about her motivations brought public criticism<\/a> from prominent women whom she admired. She reached out to them by phone, forged a relationship, apologized, and asked for their wisdom. They proved open and accepting. Allen\u2019s risk in reaching out ended up bringing healing and new friends and allies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Finally, share \u201cthe last 2 percent.\u201d <\/strong>This refers to the final, deep thing that you tend to hold back from family and friends even when you\u2019re otherwise being open and authentic. It could be a long-ago mistake, anger issues, or something else that you feel you need to conceal. Airing and sharing such things creates healing. Bringing your dark struggles into the light breaks their power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A Christian friend of the author\u2019s demonstrated this principle when she confided that she had been strongly attracted to another man (not her husband) at work and had even started texting him. She told Allen that when she shared that \u201clast 2 percent\u201d at an IF:Gathering, the attraction immediately evaporated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The author\u2019s most striking personal example of religious doubt is her account of a demonic attack that launched her into an 18-month dark night of the soul. It began when she told a women\u2019s gathering that there\u2019s a real spiritual enemy opposing them, served by demons, who wants to steal their faith and make them useless to God. During a break, a woman approached her with a dark expression and said, \u201cWe\u2019re coming for you. Stop talking about us.\u201d Allen told one of the security guards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Partway through the author\u2019s final talk, shrieking erupted in the hallway outside. She later learned it was both the strange woman and her daughter. Then the church\u2019s power went out. It was the most undeniable manifestation of a spiritual attack the author had ever seen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Initially, she wasn\u2019t terrified but on fire with faith. The day\u2019s events overwhelmed her with their confirmation of the reality of God, Satan, and spiritual warfare<\/a>. That night she told everybody she ran into about Jesus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But immediately afterward, a downward spiral caught her off-guard. Starting that night, she woke up regularly every day at 3 a.m. in a panic, wondering about the laundry, her kids\u2019 safety, and other things. This anxiety rapidly progressed to bigger fears about whether she was wasting her life serving a God who might not exist.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n She remained outwardly faithful and productive, but inside she felt caught up in a war for her mind. When she tried to lean into her lifelong relationship with God<\/a>, she found her very passion for God eroding under the weight of her toxic thought-spiral. She felt as if her life were crumbling to ash and blowing away like the characters in Avengers: Infinity Wars<\/em>. She feared she and her life\u2019s work would all vanish and be meaningless because if there\u2019s no God, then nothing matters, and when you die, it\u2019s the end.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She later realized that the whole crisis was an attack by the enemy, but in the midst of it, she couldn\u2019t see that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The resolution of Allen\u2019s dark spiritual crisis illustrates this principle. With the help of a friend, she finally recognized the lie that had ensnared her: that she had lost her faith. In fact, such a thing had never happened<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This resolution occurred in connection with a trip the author took to Uganda with two friends to observe a hunger relief organization. At a devotional meeting, one of the Ugandan leaders of the relief organization read aloud the passage from Psalm 139 about God\u2019s inescapable Spirit that Allen had been repeating to herself as a lifeline for months during her crisis. This astonished Allen and reconfirmed her faith that God has to be real. But it also shattered her and brought on an emotional meltdown. <\/p>\n\n\n\n She later told her two friends (who witnessed her meltdown) about her months-long spiritual struggle. Her friend Ann responded with an observation that created a breakthrough: \u201cThis isn\u2019t who you are<\/a>.\u201d Ann told Allen she hadn\u2019t lost her faith at all, that the whole thing was actually an attack by the enemy. The statement pierced through Allen\u2019s emotional chaos and set her free because it made her realize that she had a choice<\/em> to disbelieve the lie and believe something different.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When the three women got back from Uganda, Allen\u2019s two friends staged a 24-hour vigil to fast and pray for confidence and faith in Allen\u2019s life. Her 3 a.m. wake-ups into panic stopped immediately afterward, when she became vigilant about minding her mind. She realized that she had never actually lost her faith. She had just stopped feeling it.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The enemy\u2019s basic lie in this battle is that you\u2019re a victim of your circumstances. <\/strong>It tells you that you\u2019re doomed to a life of misery because of the negative things that have happened to you, because of your situation, because of what other people have done to you or withheld from you, because of what you lack or can\u2019t do, and so on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This lie can use circumstances both major and relatively minor to perpetuate itself. The author shares several stories about people in her life who have encountered serious troubles, ranging from racism to terminal illness to disability, that presented potential points of access for the lie of victimhood. The next section below describes some of these stories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A friend of the author\u2019s actually bought the lie. This young woman worked as a clerk at a retail clothing store, and since the job didn\u2019t line up with her ambition to use her skills and her college degree for something \u201cbetter,\u201d she was caught up in frustration and disillusionment. The circumstance was less serious than, say, a terminal illness, but it was still sufficient to allow the lie of victimhood to worm its way into the woman\u2019s mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The author\u2019s youngest daughter, Caroline, is dyslexic. This causes Caroline exhaustion and sometimes frustration. But she\u2019s also persistent and tough. She hasn\u2019t let her disability con her into adopting a victim identity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After a time of frustration, the author\u2019s friend at the clothing store began to learn the importance of gratitude<\/a>. She realized that she could choose her attitude toward work<\/a>. She began praying during her commute, using her interactions with customers and coworkers as opportunities to serve others, and recognizing her circumstances as a chance to advance God\u2019s kingdom. The result? She came to love her job.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A married couple named Roddy and Dee experienced heartbreak when Dee was diagnosed with ALS, which is fatal. His condition rapidly degenerated until he could only communicate through a speech synthesizer. After he died, when the author asked Roddy if she had felt any anger toward God, Roddy found the idea unthinkable and said she and Dee had both viewed his illness from the start as something that God could use for good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This principle also enables a powerfully God-affirming and life-affirming response to injustice. Christ enables us to call out and oppose real oppression\u2014racism, sexism, cruelty toward women and children and minorities and immigrants and unborn children\u2014without defining ourselves by other people\u2019s wrongdoing. In Christ, you fight from a place of reconciliation and confidence instead of outrage and insecurity. You affirm God\u2019s commitment to redeeming all things.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The author gives many real-life examples of distraction from God, and of its seductive gravitational pull:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Learn to \u201cbother\u201d others, and let them bother you. Be the friend you wish they\u2019d be for you. <\/strong>For example, if you notice that a friend or family member seems \u201coff\u201d or not herself, straightforwardly \u201cbother\u201d her until she opens up. Offer to pray, ask her to lunch. \u201cBug\u201d her into community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Once when the author\u2019s daughter Kate traveled out of town with a friend and the friend\u2019s family, she called home, and it was obvious that she was upset about something. She said she wanted to enter counseling when she got back. Her mother affirmed this over the phone but also talked at length with her daughter, emphasizing her motherly love for her and drawing her out into healing conversation. This is an example of lovingly bothering someone to maintain community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Also learn to accept the same bothering from others.<\/strong> Open up. Risk getting hurt. Allen says her closest girlfriends at various stages of her life have shaped her, elevated her goals, refused to let her \u201csettle,\u201d and helped her in all kinds of ways through their friendship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n According to Jennie Allen’s beliefs, <\/strong>anxiety is the fear that God isn\u2019t actually in control of the world and your life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some typical thoughts associated with fear include the following. Look for these in your own mind:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Your weapon against fear is <\/strong>surrender<\/em><\/strong>, an attitude of total trust in God\u2019s goodness, power, and provision.<\/p>\n\n\n\nJennie Allen: Beliefs and Anecdotes<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
1) People Live as Victims of Their Own Mind<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
2) We Are Made for Community<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
3) Religious Doubt Is the Work of Satan<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
4) Reframe Hardship to Beat Victimhood<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
5) Avoid Becoming Distracted From God<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
6) It’s Important to Ask Others for Help<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
7) Anxiety Is a Common Struggle<\/h3>\n\n\n\n