Resistance - Jarena Lee

1783–?

“Go preach the gospel!”

Imagine hearing that message directly from God himself. Would your reaction be something like this? “God, you’ve got the wrong person. Someone else would be better.” It’s an excuse as old as Moses.

Now imagine it’s around the year 1800, and you’re a young black adult—the child of freed slaves, uneducated, poor, and a woman. That woman was Jarena Lee.

Convinced that God was calling her to preach, Jarena Lee ignored her doubts. She went to Richard Allen, the founder of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, and told him what God had said to her. Allen shut her down, insisting that women should not preach. Jarena was silenced by Allen’s words . . . for a while. But years later, Jarena couldn’t contain herself. While Richard Allen was preaching about Jonah resisting God, Jarena stood up and said that she, too, had resisted God’s calling.

The congregation must have been shocked. A woman had interrupted the preacher! Surely there would be consequences. There were, but not as anyone expected. Allen granted her permission to preach. And so Jarena Lee became the first woman preacher in the African Methodist Episcopal Church. At the height of her ministry, she was preaching more than seven hundred times a year.

It’s easy to make excuses for ignoring what God says to do, especially when it seems that people are trying to block your path. Their words of doubt can be a good excuse for you to ignore God when he has something uncomfortable or scary for you to do.

The thing is, God can move those people aside. If God has asked you to do something, he will give you what you need to do it. The strongest obstacle may be your own resistance.

What have you been putting off because of doubts that others have put in your head? If you’re sure God wants you to do it, take their doubts out of the equation and figure out how to move forward.

Now go! I will be with you as you speak, and I will instruct you in what to say.

Exodus 4:12