YOU ARE NOT ALONE . . .

L ive a small life? I cannot. And neither should you! The same power
that raised Jesus Christ from the dead lives in each one of us. God has
given us that life-changing power so that we are able to do the very thing
He has placed us on the earth to do.
Then why do we feel a sense of restlessness? I believe it is because deep
down we know we were made for more than where we are and what we are
doing right now. There is something to be birthed through us. Whatever
our history has been we know we are somehow a part of destiny and we
want to play our part in realizing that.
God gave us more than our own gifts, talents, and abilities. He gave
us more than inspirational quotes and motivational pep rallies. He gave
us His very self in the person of the Holy Spirit so that we would never be
limited to achieve only what is possible on our best day.
Jennie, thank you for bringing us to this because it is to our Father’s
Glory that we bear much good fruit during our brief sojourn on this earth.
And dear reader, I pray that you dream big, believe big, and dare big dur-
ing your one and only life on this planet. Impossible is where God starts
and miracles are what God does. Go on, I dare you to let God be God in
you so he can be God through you!
CHRISTINE CAINE
AUTHOR OF UNDAUNTED

T hey say the world is made up of individual atoms. But the truth of it is
that the world is made of individual stories. In the beginning was the
Word—not atoms—and that very Word exhaled and breathed you into
being and every story connects to another story that is changing the story
of time—His Story.
Now is your story, and you and your story matter beyond time.
Now is your space on stage. Now is your time and now you are here for
such a time as this. You will not pass by this way again. There is only one
now. Eternity is worth the risk. Now is not the time to be demure with the
gifts you’ve been given. Share them lavishly. Now is the time to let your life
be poured out as ink in an epic story of bold sacrifice and startling courage.
Now is the time to live upside down. Herein is rest for our restless souls.
 There is a darkness that tries to spread the disease of “be big.” Christ
whispers the cure to the ego’s disease: Decrease so I can increase. There is
a lie that tries to convince that giving yourself for the world is what really
matters. Christ is the Truth who whispers that giving yourself for one
person is how you really change the world.
A N N VO S K A M P
AUTHOR OF ONE TH O U S A N D G I F T S

I keep hearing this common tension among women. It’s funny because
we are a generation that is so advantaged. We have more than our par-
ents have—most of us have more schooling, bigger houses—we have
every privilege, luxury even, and advantage. We’ve been given so much,
and we are so blessed, and yet I keep hearing over and over, “I’m restless.
I don’t know what it is, I don’t know what more I could possibly want,
what am I missing? How could I still feel at all dissatisfied with this happy
beautiful life that I’ve been given?”
I love it because I know that God is calling us deeper and deeper into
the kingdom where things like houses and salaries and success simply can-
not satisfy. He has set this longing in our hearts for more of Him, more of
the gospel, more of His goodness, more of the kingdom, and so we find
ourselves at this interesting crossroads as people of privilege who have been
given much. But like Jesus told us, to whom much has been given, much
will be required.
The life that God has set in front of us is exciting, and adventurous,
and risky. Sometimes it’s even dangerous. And it’s going to ask everything
of us, because apparently it doesn’t care much for our comfort or our hap-
piness or our safety, and yet it is the kingdom that satisfies. It is the gospel
that makes us whole and gives us purpose.
My deepest hope for these years we have on this planet is that col-
lectively we reach across and grab each other’s hands and chase after God
together. Where we’re willing to risk anything for it, or sacrifice anything
for it. I think that is the secret to this life. That’s the secret to this king-
dom Jesus was always trying to explain to us in the gospel. I believe it is
worth it, and it is precious. So if you feel restless you are not alone. Let’s
join hands and chase after God together.
J EN H ATM A K ER
AUTHOR OF SEVEN
RES TLES S
R E S T L E S S
B E C A U S E Y O U W E R E
M A D E F O R M O R E

J E N N I E A L L E N
© 2013 by Jennie Allen

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning,
or other—except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written
permission of the publisher.

Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by W Publishing, an imprint of Thomas Nelson.

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Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are taken from HOLY BIBLE: NEW
INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by International Bible Society. Used
by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved. Scripture verses marked ESV are
taken from THE ENGLISH STANDARD VERSION. © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News
Publishers. Scripture verses marked NASB are taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD
BIBLE®. © The Lockman Foundation 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977. Used
by permission. Scripture verses marked KJV are taken from the King James Version of the Bible.
Scripture quotations marked NLT are taken from Holy Bible, New Living Translation. © 1996,
2004, 2007. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All
rights reserved.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013914161

ISBN 978-0-8499-4706-3

Printed in the United States of America

13 14 15 16 17 RRD 6 5 4 3 2 1
“ Y O U H A V E M A D E U S F O R Y O U R S E L F, O L O R D , A N D
O U R H E A R T I S R E S T L E S S U N T I L I T R E S T S I N Y O U .”
—SAINT AUGUSTINE

G O D, YO U A RE H OME TO ME.
TA K E T H E S E WO R D S A N D L I G H T F I R E S
T H A T C A N N O T B E P U T O U T—
F O R YO U R FA M E O N T H I S E A R T H I N O U R T I M E .
 CONTENTS

PA RT 1: THE C A L L

1. A Call to Dream 3
2. Tangled Threads 9
3. Die to Live 16
4. Permission to Dream 25
5. Uncertainties 32
6. Pleasing God 44
7. A Parable 54

PA RT 2: THE THRE A DS

8. The Process 63
9. The Project 72
10. The Immovable Fabric 80
11. The Starting Place 90
12. Threads of Gifts 98
13. Threads of Suffering 108
14. Threads of Places 120
15. Threads of People 130
16. Threads of Passions 142
17. The Tailor 150
18. Your Threads 160

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 CONTENTS

PA RT 3: L I V ING ON PURP OSE

19. Untangling a Dream 167

20. Shrinking Back 177
21. When Women Dream 186
22. Focused and Steady 199
23. The End of Mundane 204

How to Find God 209

Leaving Behind & Moving Forward 211
Acknowledgments 213
Notes 217
About the Author 221

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 PART 1

THE CALL
 CHAPTER 1

A C ALL TO DRE A M

A s I stared at the ceiling, I saw the scrape marks. Right after

we had moved into our first house, Zac, my husband, scraped
off the popcorn-textured ceiling. You’d think that would be some-
thing you’d never really notice—the ceiling—but it was something
I stared at every afternoon. I stared as my newborn son slept. I had
nowhere to be. Nothing to do.
I would lie on my beige sofa and stare at the marks that had
been left in, trying to make something perfect of it. And in the
quiet, surrounded by everything I thought I’d ever wanted, I felt
that everything I’d ever wanted was strangling me.
I loved my family, but in the process of making a family I
had somehow lost myself. Passions were pushed aside, dreams had
trickled away, and the needs of other people outside my family
had escaped me. My entire former life had been shut down for the
immediate demands of one little person. I wondered if it was wrong

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 RESTLESS

to care about anything or anyone outside of these four walls. I won-

dered if I would feel permission to dream again.
I didn’t need to find a career or even a calling. I had one.
Motherhood. What I needed was a sense of purpose. I felt restless.
Was this feeling pushing me toward something bigger, or crip-
pling me from loving the life I was given?
Maybe it was both.
Something in me still feels restless.
As we stare at the marks on the lives we have tried to make
perfect, we ache a little.
The word calling has always seemed to tease me, like a mysteri-
ous secret containing the answer to my ridiculously restless spirit.
We wonder if we are missing some mystical, great, noble purpose
that was supposed to squeeze into the holes of our ordinary lives.
We feel numb.
We feel bored.
Let’s assume that if we are breathing, then we have a purpose
for being here. Every one of us with breath in our lungs still has
something left to do.
I want to dream of what our purposes may be.
The conviction to write this book was born out of conversations
with many of you. Since I wrote the first book, Anything, the most
consistent thing I have been asked is some version of this question:
“I am in. I am all surrendered to God. But now what? I don’t
know what he wants me to do.”
Every single one of us is designed to fit into a unique space with
unique offerings. God’s will for every one of us will look different.
There is a framework within the commandments of Scripture, and
within it we are free to create lives reflecting God and his passions
here.
As I have wrestled with calling and purpose and dreaming this
year, I have fallen deeply in love with the life of a man who surely

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 A CALL TO DREAM

lived restlessly in Scripture. Joseph’s story, told throughout Genesis

37–50, is the story of a life that at times felt wasted, and yet God
was working in every moment that felt mundane and unfair and
dark, moving all of the mess into his unique purpose and calling.
This is a book about God.
And this is a book about us and God. And this is a book about
the moment we close our eyes and see God. This is a book about
facing the God of the universe and answering to him about the life
and resources he gives us while we are here.
And because I think we all want that moment to go well, this is
a book about discovering ourselves and getting over ourselves all at
the same time. This is a book about being brave enough to imagine
a better world, and how we may be used to make it that way. This
is a book about changing the world and changing diapers. This is
a book about fears and suffering and joy and gifts. This is a book
about all that lies in our control and how nothing is in our control.
This is a book about vision and obedience.
I feel a weight.
An indescribable burden.
A holy, God-given passion burning in my soul for you, for us,
for our time here. Because I know we will blink and be together
with God forever and there is life to be lived here, in our generation,
on this earth, with our breath.
So I humbly ask you, dream with me.
We will lay out the unique threads of our lives that feel ran-
dom, potentially even tangling us up, but we will lay them out and
dream about eternal purposes for seemingly mundane moments
and consider that it is possible to waste our lives.
And then let’s not.
I’m not good with catchy titles. I just name projects based on
how I feel . . . so here it is—here is what I feel, and I have a hunch
I am not the only one:

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 RESTLESS

Restless . . . because you were made for more.

I believe this is from God, and I pray it will spark something in
you . . . a vision, perhaps, of the unique reason God keeps issuing
you breath.
I want to dream of I am going to ask you to join me in
what our purposes what might be a very uncomfortable pro-
may be. cess: I want you to dare to believe that
God has a vision for how you are to spend
your life. Because finding and accomplishing this vision is quite
possibly the greatest responsibility we have as a generation, second
only to knowing and loving God.
I wish I could promise magical moments with angels scripting
visions in the sky just for you. I wish I could promise that at the
end of our time together, you would never feel empty, numb, or
bored again. I can’t. But if you go here with me—I think we will
see God move.
We have a call to dream.
The Old Testament described a day in the future about which
God said:

I will pour out my Spirit on all people.

Your sons and daughters will prophesy,
your old men will dream dreams,
your young men will see visions. (Joel 2:28)

God promised a day would come when his people would be

filled with his own Spirit. And when they were full of God, God
himself would give his people dreams and visions.
Dreams and visions.
This day has happened. The Holy Spirit flooded the earth
at Pentecost, and immediately after, Peter reminded them of the
promise of that day:

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 A CALL TO DREAM

No, this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel:

“In the last days, God says,

I will pour out my Spirit on all people.
Your sons and daughters will prophesy,
your young men will see visions,
your old men will dream dreams.” (Acts 2:16–17)

We live in the last days. We are filled with the Spirit of God, and
we’re living on this earth for relatively few days to accomplish the will
and work and wonders of God. Why do we do this? So that “everyone
who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” (Joel 2:32).
Our creative God has an infinite number of creative plans to
make himself known through us, his image bearers, so he sent his
Spirit to give unique visions to unique people to reach the world in
unique and beautiful ways.
The Spirit of God has dreams for you.
And he has given you an abundance of gifts, resources, people,
and vision to accomplish his dreams for you. If you do not feel that
way yet, you will.
What if?
What if the things you love to do collided with the plans God
has laid out for you from before the foundations of the earth?
What if the random relationships and activities in your life all
of a sudden had a focus and felt intentional and meaningful?
What if the things that have caused the most hurt in your life
became the birthplaces of your deepest passions?
What if you could get past your fears and insecurities and
spend the rest of your life running your guts out after his purposes
for you?
The beige sofa upstairs is unthinkably dirty with the stains of
over a decade of beautiful messy life; my quiet, sleeping baby turned

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 RESTLESS

into four big kids; and my minutes are overflowing now, filled with
it all. Life. But I still feel it sometimes . . . a whisper of more. Not
more because what I am doing isn’t important, but because I so
rarely believe that it is.
May this be the place where your restless soul meets God, and
where dirty, beige sofas become beautiful, and where no life or min-
ute or breath ever feels small again.

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