Equipped For The Job - Jessie Penn-lewis

1861–1927

According to her spiritual autobiography, Jessie Penn-Lewis grew up “in the very heart of the religious life of Wales.” Her grandfather was a Methodist minister, and her home was a “rendezvous for the ministers as they passed hither and thither on their Master’s work.”

Growing up around religion and having ministers constantly in your home doesn’t automatically mean you’ll make their faith your faith. It wasn’t until Jessie was older that she embraced Christianity. She was about nineteen years old when she realized that if Christ returned, she wasn’t ready. It was then that she made her family’s faith her own faith.

Right about that time, Jessie contracted tuberculosis, but she was healed. She saw this as a miracle and chose to use the health she regained to serve God. In her early thirties she began to teach all over the world and, along with her husband, became a central figure in the Welsh Revival of the early 1900s.

Jessie was a gifted speaker, and she traveled to countries like Russia, India, and the United States to speak at conferences. She was also a prolific writer, authoring fifteen books and starting a magazine, the Overcomer, that is still being published today.

Despite her evident gifts, Jessie struggled to believe she was qualified for what she was doing. She felt that God had given her a specific commission, but not everyone saw it that way. She said that some doors “were fast closed to the message I bore, purely, and only, because I was a woman.” At times, she wondered if she was only supposed to teach until a qualified man could take her place. God finally showed her that there was no man who would be taking her place. No woman either. God had given her the job, and he was the only judge of her qualifications.

That’s an important lesson for everyone to embrace. Do you believe that when God chooses you to do a job, you can be assured that you’re qualified—or as the Bible puts it, equipped—to do that job?

May he equip you with all you need for doing his will. May he produce in you, through the power of Jesus Christ, every good thing that is pleasing to him. All glory to him forever and ever! Amen.

Hebrews 13:21