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This article is called, “The Jeff Allen story. Of course, someone is saying, “NEVER HEARD OF HIM.” There are millions of people in this world that we have never heard of. Someone else will think, “what’s so special about him? (Does someone have to be a superhero before you know something about them?). I believe that he is a simple normal guy like the rest of us. I write this article because he is interesting, and I intend to use his story about his life as he wrote it. I always want to give credit to the writer when I use their own story. I believe Jeff has some very good advice. Here is an interview with Jeff. I may add a few pictures to this article. He is really a funny comedian so please watch some of the video below. 

Our next guest is comedian Jeff Allen, the creator of the phrase “happy wife, happy life.” Jeff is in his fifth decade as a working comedian, and early in his career, while he was doing the work of bringing joy to others, he battled a personal darkness: a lifelong addiction to alcoholism. Jeff shares the events of his life that culminated in seeking help over his addiction, and how he found God—and His Grace—in the process. 

“Jeff Allen: I am Jeff Allen. I’m a father, a grandfather, a husband, a comedian. I do standup comedy, and I’ve been doing it since 1978. 

My brother was a musician. He was five years older than me. So when I was about sixteen, he was playing in a club in Chicago. And I saw some comedians that opened for him and I thought, Boy, that would be kind of cool to do. But it’s not like they have a job fair at high school for standup comedy, so I had no idea what or how you did stand-up comedy. 

And then probably five or six years later, I was working for a jewelry company, and they went to a comedy club after setting up a jewelry show, and I was hooked. That was it. And I got into doing comedy clubs and it really didn’t get serious until I got married and had kids. It was like, I better start paying attention to what I’m doing, and my income literally doubled in one year. So apparently my DNA is wired for panic. 

The Thing You Think Will Make You Whole Could Destroy You

I started drinking at thirteen, fourteen years old, I guess. And from the minute I drank, I drank until my body rejected it. I threw up every time I drank. You’d think a normal human being, you know, wouldn’t pour that poison into their system. And, you know, if I ate beets and beets made me retch, I probably wouldn’t eat another beet. But anyway, I kept drinking until I kept it down. You know, they say alcoholics remember their first drink vividly. I was at my sister’s wedding, and the minute I took a sip of it, it was like, Holy cow, I found it, the magic elixir. And as you learn in the Bible, anything apart from God that you think will make you whole usually destroys you. So it pretty much destroyed me. From the minute I picked it up, to the minute I stopped, I just didn’t know how to quit.

I hit the age of thirty—I went to Alcoholics Anonymous when I was twenty-five. Didn’t stay very long. I wasn’t as sick as those people. You know, you hear the stories, you go, Oh, boy, I got a lot more living to do. And so I started back up again, and then I got married. And about a year into my marriage one night, I got on a stool in the kitchen, and I screamed at my wife in the middle of an argument until she fell to her knees and she sobbed on the floor. And I put my son to bed that night and he goes, “Daddy, you win.” I go, “What do you mean I win?” He goes, “You yell, Mommy cries, you win.”

And I said, “Holy cow.” You know, not one of my finer moments as a man. I went downstairs and told my wife, “I’m going to get some help from a therapist. I don’t know how that works or whatever, but I’ve got to get help.” And that was the start of the sobriety. 

Find Something in the Universe Bigger Than You

I had no relationship with God. I didn’t believe in God, but they said, “Find something in the universe bigger than you.” And it’s amazing how arrogant—I always said the only thing that exceeded my arrogance was my ignorance. And I couldn’t think of anything bigger than me in the universe. As broken and beat up and as bad as my life was, I wasn’t going to get on my knees and pray to something I made up. So that kind of started me on the search: Okay, if God exists, what is it? What does that even look like? 

And I didn’t buy the higher power thing, I thought, Look, if I’m making up a deity, that makes me delusional. So anyway, I set out through self-help, through Buddhism, the New Age, and eventually wound up on Ayn Rand. I thought, Well if there is no God, then I better figure out a way to live without it. 

But, you know, it’s funny reading Atlas Shrugged as a nonbeliever and then reading it again ten years later as a believer, you realize how dark and it’s just black and white. There’s no color in there, there’s no children, there’s no joy, there’s no nature—you know, looking at trees, the sublime, there’s nothing sublime about it. It’s just hard core reason down the line, black and white, and it’s just very cold to me. So it was interesting how Jesus changed my lens in how I look at the world. 

They told me to pray, and I did, because I wanted to stay sober. I knew if I drank again, I’d lose my wife and kids. And I prayed the third step prayer, they call it: “God, remove me from the bondage of myself so that I may better do Thy will. Take away my difficulty, that victory over them may bear witness to Thy strength, Thy power, Thy way of life.” And I prayed that prayer not believing in God. I just said, “I’m going to do what they tell me to do.” And it’s interesting. I drank and I loved being around comedy. I loved the whole process of standup comedy, but it really wasn’t until I got on my knees and I said to Jesus, “I’m yours,” that it all kind of clicked and made sense to me.

I love what I do now. I don’t think I ever loved it prior to that. It became a job, which we all know that when work becomes work—unless you’re doing it for the glory of God, it becomes a chore. But I consider myself blessed that I had the disease of alcoholism because it got me on a journey that ultimately led to Him. And I kind of gave Him the reins twenty-five years ago, and I said, “Just give me the courage to follow your paths.” And that’s been kind of my mantra for twenty-five years.

The Healing Power of Laughter

You know, there are just humorless people in the world. I don’t know if there’s hope for them. First of all, I know for a fact—I’ve read this a thousand times—that if you can’t make a woman laugh, she probably won’t date you. So one of the most attractive things about a man from a woman’s point of view is the ability to make her laugh.

So it’s interesting to me, you know, the Bible’s clear on it, laughter does good like a medicine [Proverbs 17:22]. But I never realized it until men would come over to me with their wife. [They] would go to the bathroom, and they’d have tears in their eyes and say, “It’s the first time they’ve heard their wife laugh for two years, and I fell in love with my wife because of her laugh. Her laugh is so important to my well-being.”

God knows the world is broken, this world is broken, and He has charged us with repairing a broken world. And that’s our tikkun olam. So find your tikkun olam. What are you going to do to help repair the broken world? That could be a smile, you know? That could be a prayer. A prayer ministry would be great. If I can heal through laughter, that’s wonderful, you know?

Ask Jesus to Show You What’s in Your Heart

I have a daily prayer: a morning prayer and an evening prayer. And then we pray at dinner, and that’s how we connect. Prior to this relationship, I was a lunatic, you know? I smashed things, broke things, and was snotty and sarcastic and bitter, jaded, cynical, nihilist.

Pray to Jesus and ask Him to show you what He sees in your heart. “What do you see in my heart?” And be ready, because there will be things revealed to you that you never thought you could possibly be that dark and sinister. That’s what I am without my prayers.

You have no control over much of today, but you can just put one foot in front of the other and smile at your fellow man and go, “It’ll get better, that’s all. Just, it’ll pass. Whatever you’re experiencing right now, it’ll pass. Trust me.”

Just pray and stop where you’re at. That’s the beauty of the Holy Spirit, you can talk to Him without moving your lips, and the Holy Spirit will speak. This is from Sarah Young‘s prayer devotional Jesus Listens, and it’s dated August 6th:

Dearest Jesus, 

Whenever I wander away and leave You out of my life, I no longer feel complete. The restlessness I experience in these times is actually a gift from You, reminding me to return to my First Love. I need to make You central in my thoughts and feelings, my plans and actions. When You are the Center of my life, I’m able to live meaningfully, according to Your will. 

You have set my feet on a pathway to heaven, and You are my constant Companion. When I encounter trouble as I journey with You, I love to hear Your words of reassurance: “Take heart! I have overcome the world.” 

O Lord, in Your Presence I am indeed safe, secure, and complete! 

In Your victorious Name, 

Amen”

CONCLUSION

I do hope you enjoyed listening to Jeff Allens testimony about his life and how he overcame his addiction through Jesus Christ and a new birth. Dear Reader, you may be in the same place that Jeff was in, during his life. Any addiction is hard to break, and it always carries consequences with it. You may feel there is no end, or no way to beat and addiction. I do know the first step is making a real commitment to get rid of the addiction. That help only comes one day at a time. You cannot live tomorrow today. 

I have been a Christian for 48 years and Jesus Christ is still real in my life. We live in a very wicked, evil world where anything goes, and God is being totally rejected. God is real, heaven is real and so is hell. God will do for you what he did for Jeff Allen. He will change you for the better and give you a completely new life, if you are willing to let him. As Jeff Allen said, he humbled his life and simply stated, “GOD, I AM YOURS.” He surrendered himself.” He knew he could not do it by himself. It is the same way for us. Only God can do for us, what we cannot do. That is surrendering to Jesus Christ who died on an old cross, and paid for our suffering, pain and sin. Ask, pray and call out to God and he will answer and make you a totally new person. Romans 10:13 says “FOR WHO SO EVER SHAL CALL UPON THE NAME OF THE LORD SHALL BE SAVED.”

Your thoughts, opinions and comments are welcome so leave them below in the comment section.                            PLEASE WATCH SOME OF THE VIDEO BELOW AND ENJOY. RAY