When God feels distant but your beliefs haven’t changed, the place to look may be smaller than you expect: one area of your week where he has no say. This guide helps you find that area and spend seven days giving God a say in it. You are not being asked to overhaul your whole life. You are being asked to move one fence. Alone, the first half takes about thirty minutes with a notebook, and the practice carries through the week. A group can cover the first half in one meeting and gather again after seven days.
The idea comes from a Jude 3 Project conversation between Lisa Fields and Dr. Tony Evans, founding pastor of Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship in Dallas. Evans describes a common pattern among Christians: “we’ve given God certain areas of our life, not the comprehensive rule over every area in our life.” Before you test that claim, take an honest look at your own week.
Start with a map of your week
Write down the main areas your days actually run through. Use plain, specific names: the budget, the job search, the group chat, the person you are dating, the way you speak to your mother, what you do on your phone after midnight. “Stewardship” hides more than “my credit card balance” does.
Next to each area, write one of three marks:
- Open if you regularly pray about it, bring decisions in it to God, and would welcome correction there.
- Visiting hours if God gets a say only when something goes wrong.
- Fenced if you would rather he not bring it up at all.
The middle mark matters. Evans’s sharpest image is that “for many people, God is a spare tire,” kept close for emergencies and returned to the trunk once things are fixed. Most people find more spare-tire areas than fenced ones. Distance from God usually lives somewhere ordinary, not in dramatic rebellion.
Circle one area marked fenced or visiting hours that you can actually work on in a week. If several compete, pick the one that shapes your daily decisions most, even if it isn’t the one that brings the most shame. You are only naming where the work will happen.
Read the passage Evans points to
Evans grounds his point in John 2. Read it slowly, out loud if you can:
Now when he was in Jerusalem at the passover, in the feast day, many believed in his name, when they saw the miracles which he did. But Jesus did not commit himself unto them, because he knew all men, And needed not that any should testify of man: for he knew what was in man.
That is John 2:23-25. Before reading any explanation, write answers to three observation questions:
- What did the people in Jerusalem do, and what prompted it?
- What did Jesus not do? The older phrase “commit himself” means roughly “entrust himself.”
- What reason does John give for Jesus’ response?
Now compare your notes with Evans’s reading. He says the passage shows that “many got saved, but because they were not all in, he was not committed to them.” Look again at your third answer. John’s stated reason is that Jesus knew what was in people. He doesn’t say exactly what was lacking in their faith, and Christian interpreters differ on whether these were true believers at all. Many read it as excitement stirred by miracles that had not yet become trust.
So hold the passage carefully. It clearly shows that Jesus sees past the crowd’s enthusiasm to the heart. It does not, by itself, give a full theory of how much of God each believer experiences. Evans’s wider point rests on more than one text. He notes that Scripture is full of “instruction and exhortation” about commitment, “because that will affect our level of experience.” The rest of this guide tests that broader claim against your own week.
The claim you are testing
Here is the core of Evans’s argument: “God will relate to you on the level of your engagement with him.” That raises a fair objection. If God’s engagement scales with ours, is his love conditional after all? Does a believer who holds back become less of a child?
Evans’s own family comparison answers this. Every child in the house is a child. Not every child shares the same amount of life with the parent. Belonging is settled; what varies is how much of the house the child lets the parent into. This is why Jude 3 can teach both that salvation is by grace through faith, not earned by works, and that genuine faith bears fruit. Your standing as God’s child is the root. Moving a fence is fruit.
Evans offers two safeguards against treating surrender as a performance. First, he describes it as an invitation that includes being told you are wrong. Picture a believer speaking to God: “I’m also inviting you to tell me when I’m out of alignment so that I can get reengaged.” Lisa Fields names this “the openness to be corrected.” Your fenced area does not need to be cleaned up by Friday. It needs to stop being off-limits to the conversation.
Second, Evans calls what God offers a gift: “I wanna give you me showing up, ruling your life, and it’s a gift.” Nothing in the practice is a payment toward that gift.
Read Psalm 139:23-24 with that in mind: “Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.” The psalmist does not audit himself and report back. He asks God to look. That is the posture the practice aims for.
Why the fence stays up
Most fences guard something. Evans and Fields name two common reasons.
One is the fear of losing out. Fields observes that “when we see God’s commandments as a infringement on our own rights, and not the true key to liberation, we end up never experiencing that abundant life that we’re in quest for.” She connects this to John 10:10, where Jesus says, “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.” If you believe God’s say over your money or your dating life will shrink it, you will keep him out.
The other is wanting benefits without authority. Evans describes grown children who want independence while still living at home: “you want the provision of the parent without the authority of the parent.” The area you circled may be one where you gladly ask God for help but keep the final say.
Write one honest sentence that starts with the words I keep this to myself because. Take your time. It will shape the prayer you pray each morning.
The practice: seven mornings, one fence
Evans recalls the daily pledge of allegiance from his school years and suggests a daily pledge to God instead. In his closing words he puts it this way: “God, you can own me today. Whatever comes my way, I wanna link it to you.” Earlier he describes what that pledge covers: “I want you involved in all of my activities today, all of my decisions today, all of my corrections today, I give you ownership of my life.”
This week you will make that pledge narrow on purpose. A prayer for “all of me” is easy to say and easy to forget. A prayer that names one area by its real name is harder to ignore by noon.
Each morning, before you open your phone:
- Name the area out loud in one sentence that hands it over for today, something like God, you have the say over what I spend today.
- Name one specific decision in that area you expect to face before tonight. Ask God about it before you make it.
- Ask once, plainly, to be shown where you are out of line in that area. Then go about your day.
Each evening, write two lines:
- Where did I bring God into this area today?
- Where did I take it back, and what was going on when I did?
The second line is for learning the pattern, not for guilt. By midweek, most people can see when they take the fence back: when tired, when a certain person calls, when money feels tight. Bring that pattern to God and, if you have one, to a trusted friend.
One honest expectation before you begin. Evans points to Luke 12, where Jesus tells anxious followers again and again not to worry and ends with this: “Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom” (Luke 12:32). From that, Evans draws a strong conclusion: “the more engaged you are with the king, the more he controls your emotional wellbeing.” The verse grounds courage in the Father’s generosity. It does not promise that calm arrives on schedule, and Scripture also includes faithful people who sought God and still felt his absence, bringing that grief to him in lament. If you feel nothing on day three, you have not failed. Saying the words when nothing stirs is part of the surrender.
If the distance you feel comes with exhaustion, hopelessness or numbness about everything, this is not only a surrender question. Talk with a doctor or counselor as well as a pastor. Seeking therapy is not a failure of faith; God works through trained counselors and clinicians. If you are having thoughts of harming yourself, call or text 988 to reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.
Questions for the end of the week
Use these alone after seven days, or as a group when you gather again. Answer the ones that help. Nobody has to name their area out loud.
- When you read John 2:23-25 closely, what did you notice that you had not seen before? Does it support Evans’s reading, complicate it, or both?
- What did your evening notes show about when and why you take the fence back?
- Evans links engagement with God and emotional wellbeing. What in your week supports that link, and what challenges it?
- How did inviting correction differ from simply trying harder to behave in that area?
- Evans warns that “we’ve taken dessert and made it the main meal.” Did the area you chose turn out to be a good thing given the wrong place, or something else?
- Look back at the sentence about why you keep this area to yourself. Is it still true? What would you write now?
- What would it take to keep this one fence moved for a month before choosing another?
If you are leading a group
Let people keep their circled area private. The practice works whether or not anyone else knows what it is.
Watch for two drifts. Some will try to move every fence at once and burn out by Wednesday; bring them back to one area. Others will stay vague, saying they gave God everything without naming anything; ask kindly what one decision in their area looked like on Tuesday.
When someone says the week changed nothing they could feel, don’t hurry to explain it. Ask what they noticed in their evening notes. A faithful week can still feel flat.
If something heavier comes up, such as an addiction, a despair that won’t lift, or a situation where someone is being harmed, don’t treat it as a discipleship gap to coach through. Stay with the person and help them reach a pastor, counselor or doctor.
Before you choose the next fence
Fields insists that “you’re not missing out submitting your life to God.” A week cannot prove that. It can give you evidence from one specific area of your own life. Read your seven evening entries in one sitting, then decide on that evidence whether this fence stays where you moved it.