ENDORSEMENTS

I have personally had the joy of knowing James and the late Michal Ann
Goll for more than thirty years. I commend to you these vintage writings, A
Call to Courage. The Golls are among those who long to see Jesus receive
the rewards for His suffering. I give a hearty amen to the lineage and legacy
of Michal Ann’s ministry and to the teachings found in this book.
—Mike Bickle
Founder of IHOP-KC, Kansas City, Missouri
Author of Passion for Jesus and many other titles

We loved our years ministering together with Michal Ann and James Goll.
Their writings have impacted the global body of Christ. Beautifully, they
have called us to take courage, dwell in the secret place, and to let
compassionate love take action. These many anecdotes and examples from
both the past and the present from those who made a difference in this life
call us to follow in their footsteps. Michal Ann used to exhort us to have
our own Hall of Heroes. As you read these Women on the Frontlines books,
I am sure she will be added to yours. Now it is our turn to answer the call of
the Holy Spirit and volunteer freely in the day of His power. Above all, like
Michal Ann, let love have the final say.
—Wesley and Stacey Campbell
Revival Now! Ministries
Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada

When seeking the Lord for a prophetic leader to move to our city to help in
equipping the church, I searched the United States. The Lord highlighted
James Goll to me. But in choosing him we got two for one: Michal Ann
too! This couple exemplified godly living with a prophetic edge, prayerful
actions, and an unusual partnering that still resounds across the globe yet to
this day. The Holy Spirit chose well when he pointed them out to me. Now
it is your turn to be impacted by their life and ministry.
 —Dr. Don Finto
Pastor Emeritus, Belmont Church, Nashville, TN
Founder of the Caleb Company

I have personally known the Golls for years, and I had the honor of
commissioning them as apostolic prophets within our HIM global network.
Sue and I cherish our years with them as a couple and cheer James on as he
continues to carry the kingdom message of Jesus around the world.
Together they birthed a fresh movement, now stewarded by others, called
Women on the Frontlines. I applaud their work together and the distinct
lineage and legacy of Michal Ann’s life message as expressed in
COMPASSION ACTS.
—Dr. Che Ahn
Founder of HRock Church and Harvest International Ministries
Chancellor of the Wagner Leadership Institute

With a balanced presentation, Michal Ann and James challenge women and
men both to fulfill their potential in God without compromise. I have
known this family well for years and had the pleasure of serving on their
Encounters Network board of directors. They have lived their message well.
In the Women on the Frontlines series, this “Female Hall of Fame” of
courage, intimacy, and compassion will especially inspire our younger
sisters, who have so few heroes and heroines to look up to as examples.
—Elizabeth Alves
Founder of Increase International
Author of Mighty Prayer Warrior and other books

Michal Ann herself was a woman on the front lines as she became more and
more courageous with each fresh revelation from her Lord. In my opinion,
she stands alongside the nine “ordinary women” of this book as one who
knows an extraordinary God, becoming strong, standing firm, and doing
exploits for Him. May the Holy Spirit use this book to open each reader’s
eyes to see her awesome potential in Him.
—Mary Audrey Raycroft
Pastor of Equipping Ministries and Women in Ministry
Catch the Fire Toronto
Author of Releasers of Life
This book is intelligent, wise, inspiring, and warm because it flows from the
life of the late Michal Ann Goll and her husband, James. Clearly, this
remarkable woman was chosen to tenderly lead the women of this
generation into their destined wholeness and kingdom impact. Michal Ann
is one of the women I would tell my daughter in her formative years of
growing up to follow as Michal Ann followed Jesus. I can give no higher
praise.
—Stephen L. Mansfield
Author and founder of the Mansfield Group

While reading the Women on the Frontlines series, my spirit was stirred,
motivated, and encouraged to never settle for less than God’s purpose and
call for my life. This first book will take the reader from feeling
unimportant and ordinary to realizing that she is God’s chosen vessel with a
powerful purpose. I believe the Holy Spirit intends us to experience more
than mere enjoyment and inspiration from this book’s pages; He desires us
to receive the invaluable impartation of Michal Ann’s zeal and heart to
fulfill all of God’s mandate.
—Shirley Sustar
Copastor of Heartland Worship Center
Author of Women of Royalty

Few people have touched my life like Michal Ann Goll. Her life, her love
for God, her ministry, and her writings have left our lovely Savior’s impact
upon me. For years, James and Michal Ann have been friends of Life
Center in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and of my husband, Charles, and I.
Though Michal Ann has graduated to heaven, I continue to read these
Women on the Frontlines series books over and over. You will want to also.
—Anne Stock
Life Center, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania
BroadStreet Publishing Group, LLC
Racine, Wisconsin, USA
BroadStreetPublishing.com

A Call to Courage
Overcoming Fear and Becoming Strong in Faith
Copyright © 2016 James W. Goll
ISBN-13: 978-1-4245-5183-5 (softcover)
ISBN-13: 978-1-4245-5184-2 (e-book)
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, except for brief quotations
in printed reviews, without permission in writing from the publisher.
All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New
International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by
permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com. The “NIV” and
“New International Version” are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark
Office by Biblica, Inc.™ Scripture quotations marked amp are taken from The Amplified Bible.
Copyright © 1954, 1958, 1962, 1964, 1965, 1987 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.
Scripture quotations marked KJV are taken from the King James Version of the Bible. Scripture
quotations marked NASB are taken from the New American Standard Bible.® Copyright © 1960,
1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by
permission.
Cover design by Chris Garborg at www.garborgdesign.com
Interior by Katherine Lloyd at www.theDESKonline.com
Printed in the United States of America
16 17 18 19 20 5 4 3 2 1
 DEDICATION

We would like to dedicate this first book in the Women on the Frontlines
series—A Call to Courage—to two groups of people: the pioneers and
those who carry on the modern-day and future legacy of Women on the
Frontlines.
First of all, we desire to dedicate this book to all the dear women from
the past—countless numbers of known but mostly unknown courageous
saints who have paid the price of service and true devotion to our Lord.
Thank you for passing along to us the baton of faith, hope, and love. Thank
you for watching us and cheering us on as we fight our daily battles to “win
for the Lord the rewards of Christ’s suffering.”
Second, we wish to dedicate this book to all those dear ones who have
their future still ahead of them, who are ready and waiting to serve and love
the Lord wholeheartedly. May you press forward and be courageous
champions for God. Always give Him everything, for He gave everything
for you.
Michal Ann, who has joined the “great cloud of witnesses,” has simply
shifted positions from cheering on this side to cheering from the
grandstands of heaven.
 CONTENTS

Foreword by Cindy Jacobs

Introduction

PART ONE: DOWN WITH INTIMIDATION

Chapter 1
No More Fear

Chapter 2
I’m in the Army Now

PART TWO: WOMEN OF COURAGE

Chapter 3
Joan of Arc
The Cost of Courage

Chapter 4
Vibia Perpetua
Faithful Unto Death

Chapter 5
Sojourner Truth
“Ain’t I a Woman?”
Chapter 6
Harriet Tubman
Go Down, Moses

Chapter 7
Aimee Semple McPherson
Yesterday, Today, and Forever

Chapter 8
Lydia Christensen Prince
The Peace of Jerusalem

Chapter 9
Bertha Smith
Walking in the Spirit

Chapter 10
Corrie ten Boom
No Pit So Deep

Chapter 11
Jackie Pullinger
Lighting the Darkness

PART THREE: SEIZE THE DAY

Chapter 12
You Are Chosen

About the Authors

Acknowledgments
Notes
About God Encounters Training e-School
About Compassion Acts
 FOREWORD

Cindy Jacobs

I knew Michal Ann well, and my husband and I continue to walk alongside
her husband, James, to this day. Michal Ann was a woman of great courage.
We are family. So from years of perspective I share the following with you
from my heart.
As I read over the chapters of this wonderful book, my thoughts went
back to another woman who struggled with the same issues discussed in
these pages—a woman who couldn’t even pray aloud in a group of ten or
twenty; a woman who would rehearse words to prayers that she was never
able to pray openly. That woman was me, Cindy Jacobs. To this day I
marvel as I climb platforms in nations around the world and look into the
faces of crowds that sometimes number 30,000 or even more from nation to
nation.
A Call to Courage is full of compassion, exhortation, and
encouragement for women who are struggling to become the women of
destiny that God has created them to be. It is almost as if Michal Ann is
God’s cheerleader for the reader: Go on, Sister, you can do it! and, Fear and
intimidation don’t need to control you!
God is speaking in a clear voice to His women today, saying, Women,
daughters, handmaidens—it’s your time. Rise up, free of the bondages that
hold you back from your destiny. Don’t be content with second best. You are
a treasure!
Women and men of God, please read this book. It will change your life.
 —Cindy Jacobs
Cofounder of Generals International, Red Oak, Texas
Author of Possessing the Gates of the Enemy,
Women of Destiny, and other books
 INTRODUCTION

James W. Goll

I remember the night so well. In about the fifth week of visitations from
God in our home in the fall of 1992, Michal Ann and I had a pivotal
conversation. With the fear of God on me, I stated, “I don’t know who you
are or who you are becoming.”
She responded with equal intensity, “I don’t know who I am or who I
am becoming either.” I know this may be hard to comprehend, but we both
sighed with relief, because at least we were still in agreement, were still
very much in the Lord’s hands, and could continue on this revolutionary
journey of “becoming all that He has intended us to be.”
What does this have to do with this book, you say? Everything. My
wife’s life changed. Our lives continued to be challenged and changed. Now
I want to see this same God of change come and rock your boat, delivering
you from the shackles of fear and intimidation, and infusing you with this
same spirit of courage and might that so powerfully impacted my wife in
those days. That’s what this book is all about—the contagious change,
through the empowering work of the Holy Spirit, that is called courage.
If that is what you hunger and thirst for, then know that this book was
penned with you in mind. Let me give you a brief overview of what to
expect.
Part One, “Down With Intimidation,” tells of my late wife’s personal
journey in her walk with the Lord. This first part is filled with true-to-life
stories from an authentic, normal, everyday woman of God who was my
beloved wife.
Part Two, “Women of Courage,” takes a journey through church history
up to today and showcases examples of women used by God on the front
lines. The first chapter in Part Two is Michal Ann’s look at the life of Joan
of Arc, whose story dramatically inspired her in the final years of her life.
Then we move on to these women: Perpetua, a martyr for her faith in the
early Church; Sojourner Truth, a black woman leader in the antislavery
movement; and Harriet Tubman, another dedicated black pioneer of the
Underground Railroad to freedom in the time before the Civil War. We
consider the inspiration from the lives of Aimee Semple McPherson, a
woman healing evangelist at the turn of the twentieth century; Lydia
Christensen Prince, forerunner for the cause of orphans and the purposes of
God among the Jewish people; and Bertha Smith, a Baptist woman
missionary and revival leader in Shantung, China.
We also take a look at the courageous life of Corrie ten Boom, who
suffered for the cause of Christ and the Jewish people during the Holocaust
of World War II, and lastly, we shine a light on a courageous woman of this
generation: Jackie Pullinger, a British evangelist and missionary in the
Walled City of Hong Kong.
The third and last part of A Call to Courage, “Seize the Day,” takes us
back to some inspiring lessons of courage from my dear late wife’s life and
teaching. But please note—this is more than a women’s testimonial book.
The truths in this book apply to each one of us, whether we are men or
women, old or young. These lessons about the power of the Holy Spirit
learned in the trenches of authentic Christianity enable each one of us to be
more than conquerors through Christ Jesus, our Master and Lord.
I strongly recommend this book to you, and not just because I loved and
believed in the lady who wrote it. I recommend it because it shows the true
grit of ordinary women who were changed by God into vessels of honor and
courage. May the impact of this first book in the Women on the Frontlines
series, A Call to Courage, be as mighty as those weeks of visitation were to
us in the fall of 1992.
Go, Holy Spirit—overwhelm these readers and make them into radical,
courageous, God-fearing Christians for the honor of Your great name.
 PART ONE
Down with Intimidation
 Chapter 1

NO MORE FEAR

Don’t let your fears stand in the way of your dreams.” Does that statement
speak to you? It sure spoke to me the first time I read it. I had always been
by nature a very quiet and reserved person. But until then I had also been
bound by fear and intimidation, and I hated it. There was so much in me
that wanted to come out, but I felt tied down inside. I was like a runner who
longed to run but couldn’t because heavy chains and weights hung on her
ankles, holding her back.
Sometimes I wanted to just reach out to someone who was hurting and
give her a hug or an encouraging word—simple things—but I couldn’t. I
just wasn’t able to step out beyond myself. For years I cried out, “Lord, I
want to be totally sold out to You. I want to be so consumed with You that
my fear is completely annihilated.”
Eventually, God answered my prayer, granting me the grace to walk in
places where I had never walked before.
It all started when my husband, James, and I were leading a retreat in
Nashville, Tennessee. While there I found myself particularly preoccupied
with this whole issue of fear and intimidation. In my heart I wanted so
badly to be free. It weighed heavily on my mind, eating away at me on the
inside.
On the Sunday morning of the retreat, I was feeling a strong
intercessory burden from the Lord for the people there and was crying out
to Him on their behalf. Many of them were in situations that allowed no real
opportunity for service or ministry. They felt bottled up, as if they were all
crowding together trying to get a whiff of the tiny amount of oxygen that
was coming through the narrow neck of a bottle. In the middle of this
intercession, two ladies, dear friends of mine, came up to me and asked if
they could pray for me. We went into a little side room, and immediately
they began spiritual warfare over me, coming against the spirit of
intimidation. As soon as they started praying, I let out a loud scream.
Not long after that, someone came to the door and said that we were too
noisy. The group in the other room had gotten very quiet because they were
taking communion. I wanted to be sensitive to what was going on in there,
but I also was afraid that if I held back at that point, I would never get free.
It was as though the Lord was challenging me: How badly do you want to
be delivered from this thing?
My friends kept praying and I kept yelling until all of a sudden it was as
though something literally lifted right out of the top of my head, leaving an
empty space. The best way I can describe it is that this thing felt like a
railroad spike—six inches long and about two inches in diameter at the top,
tapering to a point at the bottom. It was the strangest sensation. I’ve never
felt anything like it either before or since. I knew something had happened
in me, but at first I didn’t really know what it was.
The retreat ended and the people went home, but Jim, as I always called
him, and I stayed an extra night. We had decided to remain at the retreat
center overnight so we could have some time alone. Later that day we went
for a walk. With the meetings over, Jim was in a relaxed, silly mood while I
was still in a contemplative frame of mind, trying to figure out what God
had done with me and what I was supposed to do now.
As we walked along, Jim was playfully clapping his hands and hitting
me on the shoulder. I didn’t really want that right then. He was invading my
personal space. So I said as nicely as I could, “Jim, please don’t do that.”
“Don’t do what?”
“Please don’t hit me.”
“Hey, I’m not hitting you,” he teased as he kept whapping my shoulder.
 After I appealed to him again, he turned to me, rolled up his sleeve, and
said, “Okay, you hit me.”
I looked at his arm and, seeing what a good target it was, doubled up my
fist and popped him good. I didn’t hit him very hard, but the fact that I did it
at all shocked both of us. I had never hit anyone in my life! The expression
on Jim’s face said, I can’t believe you did that! My jaw dropped too: “I can’t
believe I did that!” Then we both started laughing. We realized at that
moment that what my friends had prayed for had happened. God had truly
delivered me from intimidation.
To intimidate means to make someone timid or fearful; it is to frighten
them with threats. At one time the enemy’s threats had made me timid; I
lacked courage, self-confidence, boldness, and determination. He had filled
my mind with fearful thoughts: If you try this, you are going to fail. You’re
going to fall flat on your face. You will be misunderstood and all alone.
Sometimes panic welled up inside as I found myself saying, I can’t do
this! I’m not smart enough, not spiritual enough. I know I’m going to fail!
For a long time I lacked the courage and boldness I needed to press on
through.

No More Fear
Once God delivered me, however, it was as though He had attached jumper
cables to my spiritual battery. The life and energy of the blood of Jesus
flooded my being and set me free. The fear of man was gone—that anxious
dread and concern about what other people would think or say about me.
Now I could enter into a fuller dimension of the fear of the Lord.
The fear of man had filled me with shame and panic; the fear of the
Lord filled me with profound reverence and awe toward God. “The fear of
the Lord is clean, enduring forever” (Ps. 19:9, AMP). It brings my sins into
the light, not to shame or embarrass me, but to cleanse me, forgive me, and
justify me, just as if I had never sinned.
I still struggled with intimidation on occasion. Although it was no
longer in me, it tried to come against me from time to time, and I had to be
alert and ready to deal with it. Intimidation can be a demonic stronghold or
spirit, and many Christians, both men and women, are bound by it.
God wants us all to be free, not just for the sake of freedom, but so we
can truly commune with Him face-to-face. He wants to take us to a place
where we can walk with Him, full of the fear of the Lord, where the fear of
man is completely gone. He wants to deliver us from intimidation and its
companion spirits of comparison, shame, guilt, and the fear of man. He
wants us to be able to fulfill our destiny, to complete our calling in Him, to
do those things that each of us is uniquely qualified and designed to
accomplish.

Fearless and Free

God seeks and desires a personal relationship with each and every one of
us, and He is protective about that relationship. He is fighting on our behalf
to set us free from the cloaks of fear, intimidation, and comparison that the
enemy uses to try to smother the life breath out of us.
I was raised in a devout Methodist family, and I cherish that rich
heritage from which I received a deep deposit of the Word of God.
However, I did not understand the ways of the Spirit.
For a long time after I married Jim, I tried to hang on to his coattails; I
simply followed what he was doing. Unknowingly, I was comparing my
walk with God to his walk, thinking that his was better than mine. God did
not see it that way, and He told me so. One day the Lord said to me, Ann,
you can’t hold on to Jim’s coattails. Hold on to Mine. I am your God. I
created you, and I am jealous over you. I won’t settle for a relationship
through your husband. I want a relationship with you.
He desires the same for each of us. We cannot relate to Him through
anyone else—our spouse, pastor, parents, friends, or anyone. Our God is a
personal God.
We are His beloved and we are beautiful in His eyes. He sees us through
the precious blood of Jesus, His Son. He doesn’t see our faults; rather, He
sees only Jesus’ righteousness covering us. Instead of sin, He sees the
beauty of a forgiven soul. We are beautiful to Him whether we’re sweating,
lying on the floor in deep travail, or crying with a runny nose because God
is touching our hurting heart. We are beautiful to Him whether we’re
shaking, trembling, or jumping. We are beautiful to Him when we are alone
with our hearts breaking and we think no one knows or cares.
God looks for the beauty of the heart. I believe that anytime we bring
life into the world, or into some needy soul, is a time of unparalleled beauty
in God’s eyes. God loves life. Consider for a moment the appearance and
condition of a woman in childbirth: vulnerable, in pain, travailing. (Most of
us who have been through it don’t want to be reminded of our appearance!)
The important thing, though, is that a new life is coming forth; that’s what
God values.
Our approval from God doesn’t depend on whether or not our
fingernails are polished, our hair is combed, or our house is neat and tidy
with everything in order. God looks at the heart. He created each of us as a
unique individual with a fragrance all our own, and He waits in longing to
smell that fragrance rising to Him.

No More Fear
God loves us and fashioned us to be creative according to how He has
gifted us. Let Him release you to be who He made you to be: a creative
individual free from intimidation and the fear of man.
Have you ever found yourself at a buffet and, as you pick up your plate
to go through the line, you check to see how much food everyone else is
taking, then take the same amount? You don’t want to take “too much.”
After all, you have to be careful how you present yourself, right? That’s
intimidation speaking.
I have good news for you: God has a buffet all laid out, and He wants
you to take the biggest plate you can find and load it up. He wants you to
pull your chair right up to the table and dig in because the table is spread for
you. There are all kinds of breads, pastries, salads and vegetables, luscious
fruits, scrumptious desserts, and more. He is a God of abundance and you
don’t have to hesitate to receive from Him.

Exposing the Enemy

Let’s cast the light of God’s Word into the darkness surrounding this issue;
let’s expose the enemy.
The Lord wants all His children to be free. He has given His Spirit to
His children to help us obtain this freedom. Paul wrote to the Corinthians,
“Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is
liberty [emancipation from bondage, true freedom]” (2 Cor. 3:17, AMP).
The Holy Spirit in us does not produce fear, but power: “For God did
not give us a spirit of timidity or cowardice or fear, but [He has given us a
spirit] of power and of love and of sound judgment and personal discipline
[abilities that result in a calm, well-balanced mind and self-control]” (2
Tim. 1:7, AMP). His goal is to produce in us a full and perfect love that
eliminates and replaces fear.
There is no fear in love [dread does not exist]. But perfect (complete, full-
grown) love drives out fear, because fear involves [the expectation of
divine] punishment, so the one who is afraid [of God’s judgment] is not
perfected in love [has not grown into a sufficient understanding of God’s
love]. (1 John 4:18, AMP)

Favored and Forgiven

According to Esther 2:9, the young Jewish maiden Esther, who was
destined to be the queen of King Xerxes, found favor in the eyes of Hegai.
Now Hegai was the eunuch in charge of the king’s harem. He gave Esther
seven personal maidservants and moved all of them into the most favored
place in the harem. That is favor!
In the same way, God has given us, His daughters, the most favored
place. Unfortunately, many of us as women struggle with thoughts or
feelings of unworthiness and low self-esteem. Some have trouble trusting
men because men have stepped on them and held them back. God wants to
heal all that. He wants to reprogram our thinking. He wants to remove the
intimidation as well as the spirit of comparison that makes us think that we
can’t do anything until we first become like somebody else.
I believe God is saying to us, Be yourself. I created you, and I love you
just the way you are. What about the past? All of us have painful memories
of sins or mistakes that we have made. One of Satan’s most powerful
weapons is to bring those past things before us and beat us over the head
with them. Too many times we help him out by listening to his accusations
and agreeing with him. As a result, guilt, shame, fear, and intimidation rise
up and tie us down, holding us back from all that God wants to do in us.
Don’t be bound by the mistakes of the past. Don’t allow them to keep
rising up, or they will keep you from stepping out for fear of failure. There
is complete freedom and release in God’s forgiveness. John, the beloved
apostle, wrote:
If we [freely] admit that we have sinned and confess our sins, He is faithful
and just [true to His own nature and promises], and will forgive our sins and
cleanse us continually from all unrighteousness [our wrongdoing,
everything not in conformity with His will and purpose]. (1 John 1:9, AMP)
Whatever God forgives, He forgets. He says in Isaiah, “I, even I, am he
who blots out your transgressions, for my own sake, and remembers your
sins no more” (Isa. 43:25). King David reminds us, “As far as the east is
from the west, So far has He removed our transgressions from us” (Ps.
103:12, AMP).
When we confess our sins, God forgives them and then forgets them. He
remembers our sins no more, and we stand clean and pure before Him. He
wants to woo us, to draw us into His holy presence. When we come into
that place, all fear simply drops away. We walk unashamed with our heads
lifted high, our eyes meeting His eyes, like a bride approaching her
bridegroom. No shame, no embarrassment, no fear, no intimidation—all are
cast out by the power of His captivating and all-consuming love.
The sound of His voice delights us as we hear Him say, Oh, how I’ve
waited for you to come! How I’ve longed to embrace you, to be with you, to
be in union with you. His love goes far beyond what we can possibly ask,
think, or imagine (see Eph. 3:20).

Visitations in the Night

There was a time after we had started our family, when I got quite jealous of
my husband. Jim (James to some of you) would travel in ministry to
different conferences and meetings and such, and I would be at home with
the children. He would come back all pumped up and excited over what the
Lord had done, while I had spent the weekend with dirty diapers and a
house that showed all the evidences of four small children.
In addition, I was attempting to homeschool our oldest child and our
family was in the midst of a major move. Jim was getting all these neat
blessings from God and I was missing out. I simply had no time for
anything. One day, out of despair and frustration, I leaned against the wall
and said, “Lord, I want so much to be with You, but I am so busy. I just
don’t have the time to sit and soak in Your presence. From the time I get up
in the morning until I go to bed at night, my time is not my own. Even at
night my kids wake up, and I have to be there.”
The Lord answered me so sweetly and gently. He said, Ann, I know all
that. I am the God of the impossible, and what you think is impossible is
possible with Me. I will come to you. I will visit you in the night.
Shortly after that, He began speaking to me in dreams, which totally
rearranged my perception of both myself and Him. He showed me how He
could use me as I gave Him complete control of my life. He showed me
how much He loved me and longed for fellowship with me.
For example, I had one dream in which God was represented by an
older gentleman whom I could sense loved me deeply. He loved the
fragrance of my hair and yearned for me to reach out and hug Him. He
could hardly wait for me to embrace Him so that He could smell my hair. I
had never, ever imagined that anyone could love me that way, but that’s the
way God loves us!
During this time of visitation, the Lord gave me a dream that dealt with
this whole issue of intimidation—how strong of a force it can be and how it
can tempt us to do things that we would not otherwise do. In this dream, my
oldest son, Justin, and I were in China running food, clothing, and other
items to needy people. We had to be very careful, moving quickly from
place to place so that the enemy would not catch us.
As I was preparing to leave one house, the authorities broke in and
grabbed me. Justin had already left, so he escaped. I, however, was taken
into the yard to face the enemy leader. He wanted to punish me by torture—
hanging me by the neck, not until I died but long enough to choke me and
leave rope marks on my neck. There were several other prisoners in the
yard who had already been punished this way. It was a very intimidating
situation.
I almost consented to the punishment when all of a sudden a light went
on inside me. How foolish of me to entrust my life into the enemy’s hands!
Once the noose was around my neck, I would be completely at his mercy.
How could I trust the word of the enemy?
In the dream, rather than giving in to the intimidation and agreeing to
the punishment, I began preaching the gospel to the enemy leader. He was
intrigued and let me continue, leading me and the other prisoners into his
court chamber, where there were approximately fifty chairs around a huge
oval-shaped table.
 There was another table and a row of chairs on an elevated platform at
one end of the room. Both the room and the furniture were dark. As I
continued preaching the Word to this enemy leader, I felt like Paul
preaching to King Agrippa. I pulled from my pocket an uncut, unpolished
purple gem, like an amethyst. As I spoke, the gem grew larger and larger
and became brighter and brighter. The enemy leader reached out to take the
stone in his hand. It continued to grow as I continued to preach the Word.
He was holding a miracle, a wonder of God in his own hand, and with his
own eyes watched it grow and glow.
It seems to me that the gem in this dream symbolizes the Word coming
forth from within. When we are on the verge of a breakthrough, the enemy
will come and try to intimidate us and make us settle for something less
than we should. If we press through and confront the enemy of intimidation,
though, allowing the boldness of the Holy Spirit to come on us, we become
like the stone, growing and glowing with the truth and power of God’s
Word.
We must stir up the gifting and the calling that are within us. If we allow
intimidation to take over, it will choke us. We cannot speak with nooses
around our necks. When we let the boldness of the Lord come out, however,
those uncut gems in us glow and grow—a visible miracle to the world.
The time has come for us to do business with God and with the enemy.
It’s time to decide to not let intimidation and fear strangle us any longer; to
not give our lives to the enemy, trusting him to hurt us only a little. God has
set the day of deliverance! It’s time for us to take the nooses off, bring the
gems out of our pockets, and witness the miracle that God wants to do in us.

Building Bridges
Do you find it easier to believe that God will do something for someone
else than to believe that He will do something for you? Do you find it
difficult to accept the possibility that God could really use you, that He can
take you out of your shell and remove all fear from your heart? God does
not have favorites, and if He did it for me, He will do it for you.
Once I was on a plane, settling into my seat to read a book during the
flight. As it happened, it was a book about how to deal with intimidation,
and I was on my way to a conference to speak on that very subject. I was in
an aisle seat. Soon I became uncomfortably aware of a man in the aisle seat
across from me staring at me. I found myself thinking, Am I going to have
to walk through this issue of intimidation right now?
So I sat there with this man staring at me the whole time, and I was
telling myself over and over, I will not be intimidated…I will not be
intimidated…I will not be intimidated… while I sat there trying to read my
book and my Bible. This continued for the entire flight, a little over an hour.
Finally, as we were preparing to land, he leaned over and asked, “What
synagogue do you go to?”
At first I did not understand what he meant. Then I realized that he had
seen the Star of David I was wearing (a symbol of my love and burden for
the Jews and for the nation of Israel). I said to him, “Oh, I’m a Christian,
but I love the Jews.”
I think I totally confused him. He did not know what to do. Here he had
sat on the plane for over an hour trying to figure out how to ask me that
question; and when he finally did, my answer baffled him.
I mention this incident because as we learn to deal with fear and
intimidation, we will find that God will bring circumstances across our
paths that may intimidate us or make us fearful, when actually God just
wants to use us. We have to get out of our comfort zone and open our heart
and mouth for His sake.
As God uses us to draw people to Him, people will begin looking at us
and talking with us. We have to learn to not be fearful when that happens.
Instead, we need to recognize both the hand of God as He moves in that
other person’s life and the part we are to play in what He is doing.
We need to change our “stinking thinking.” Up with the positive, down
with the negative. It’s time for divine appointments. God wants to do so
much through us, but we have to get rid of our fear. For example, He wants
to release in us new ways of evangelism that we have not even dreamed of.
We have become so bound up in our minds by traditional ideas of what
evangelism looks like and how it should be done that God has trouble
getting through to us. He is saying, I have all kinds of creative ways and
ideas that I want to release, but you’ve got to get rid of your fear.
I’ve heard it said that the word F-E-A-R stands for “False Evidence
Appearing Real.” The devil is a liar and a thief; he will steal us blind if we
let him. God speaks the truth. It is vital to our life in Him that we reject all
the lies the devil has fed us and step out in faith into what God says. We
must get into the Bible, studying it and reading for ourselves God’s
promises toward us. It is only by knowing the goodness and faithfulness of
God and by applying the power of the name of Jesus in our lives that we
can cut down Satan’s plans.
We have to be free to see, but we can’t see if we’re bound up in fear.
Have you ever been introduced to someone and not caught his or her name
because you were so concerned about what you were going to say in
response? That’s intimidation. Once you are free of it, you can look at
someone and think about that person rather than worrying about yourself. In
that way you can be God’s hands and God’s voice to people and build
bridges of love, not fear.
Getting rid of fear and intimidation means getting out of yourself and
into Christ; moving from concern over how you look or what you are going
to say, to asking, Lord, what do You have for this person? It is when you get
out of yourself that you become truly free. Learning to be free is a lifelong
process; but in Christ you have everything you need, and it is never too late
to begin.

Dare to Dream
Several years ago I was scheduled to speak at a women’s conference in
Kansas City on the theme “Overcoming Intimidation.” At that time I had
not spoken at many conferences and still felt insecure about doing it. I knew
that I had to conquer the intimidation that was coming against me, and
thought I needed a lot of prayer time in order to prepare. But the only
“quiet” times I had came in fifteen-minute segments while I drove back and
forth between home and the school. On the Friday that the conference
began, just a few hours before the first meeting, my final desperate prayer
was, “God, let me do this with no fear!”
As soon as I uttered the words, I saw a picture in my mind of me
wearing a T-shirt with the words “No Fear” across the front. I said to God,
“All right, as I speak on Saturday morning, I will envision ‘No Fear’
written across my heart, guarding me. In faith I will believe that You will
accomplish this.”
When I told Jim about it later that evening, he insisted that I had to get a
“No Fear” T-shirt and wear it. I had no time for shopping, though, so he did
it for me while I was at the Friday night meeting. I returned home to find
laid out on the kitchen counter two T-shirts and two hats with “No Fear” on
the front. One set was for me; the other was for Jim. In addition, inside the
rim of my hat were the words that opened this chapter: “Don’t let your fears
stand in the way of your dreams.”
Here was yet another testimony to God’s faithfulness and to the
personal, individual care He gives to each of us. After years of trying to
deal with my fears and after many, many dreams through which God had
given me hope, the time had come for me to apply what I had been learning.
God was saying to me, Gird your mind with the dreams I have placed in you
and go, girl!
I want to issue this challenge to you: Dare to dream. Open your heart in
a fresh way and ask God to put a dream there. Ask Him to dust off the
promise book with your name on it and make those promises real and fresh
to you.
Don’t let your fears stand in the way of your dreams. Take out the spike
of intimidation and, like the Israelite woman Jael did to the Philistine Sisera
in Judges 4, drive it into the enemy’s head and kill the plans and schemes he
has devised against you. We must be ruthless with the devil; he surely has
no mercy on us!
There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to
do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. (1 John
4:18)

Father, in the name of Jesus I declare that Your perfect love working in me
displaces old vestiges of fear that have bound me. I shall know the truth and
the truth shall set me free. So I declare that intimidation is not my friend,
and that I am a new creation in Christ Jesus. Old things have passed away
and behold all things are new. Praise the Lord! Amen.
 Chapter 2

I’M IN THE ARMY NOW

Any army that hopes to achieve victory in battle must have disciplined
and well-trained soldiers, dependable supply lines, and a clear strategy. If
any of these elements are weak or lacking, the chance of success decreases
drastically. In the same way, before we as soldiers of the Lord can
successfully engage in battle with an enemy as ruthless and merciless as the
devil, we must become well-trained, well-equipped disciples committed to
carrying out our Commander’s plan of action.
We are individual soldiers joined together in a great army called the
church, and we are commissioned to do battle “against the powers, against
the world forces of this [present] darkness, against the spiritual forces of
wickedness in the heavenly (supernatural) places” (Eph. 6:12b, AMP).
Victory depends on all of us working together in obedience to our Lord and
not trying to move out on our own. None of us by ourselves is a match for
the enemy. In fact, any believer who tries to take on the devil alone is
embarking on a suicide mission.
When Jesus established His church, He promised that the gates of hell
would not prevail against it (see Matt. 16:18). His promise is for the church
—individual believers working together in unity and harmony to fulfill
Jesus’ commission to make disciples of all the nations. Just as soldiers are
trained to do specific jobs in conjunction with others to achieve the overall
mission, so each of us must find our place and operate in our gifts in
conjunction with each other in order to accomplish our mission as Christ’s
army, the church.

Annie, Get Your Gun

Years ago God spoke to me in a dream about the importance of being
thoroughly prepared to do battle with the enemy. The images were so vivid
and intense that they have remained with me ever since. In my dream I was
inside the comfortable old farmhouse of my childhood. Normally full of
warmth, charm, family love, and belonging, the house was now a place of
fear and panic. I was alone and in an upstairs bedroom, and an intruder had
entered the house.
Spread out on the bed before me were several handguns of different
styles and calibers, along with bullets for each of them. The intruder began
coming up the stairs. My mind screamed, Which one? Which one? as I
fumbled with the weapons, trying frantically to figure out which bullets
went with which gun so I could load one of them and use it to defend
myself. Before I could do so, the bedroom door burst open and the intruder
entered, pointing a gun at me. Rushing over to the bed, he quickly
overpowered me and dragged me to the floor. Then he was on top of me,
and I was fighting desperately to get him off.
My dream ended at that point, leaving me with a terrible fear in my
heart. I realized that I did not know the weapons of my warfare. Oh, I knew
that I had some, but I wasn’t familiar enough with them to use them
effectively. I didn’t even know how to load them, and I did not have any of
the guns loaded and ready. How could I possibly be prepared for attacks
from the enemy? I couldn’t very well say to him, Wait a minute! You can’t
come after me yet. I have to load my gun!
This started me on a major quest of asking the Lord, “Please, God, show
me what my spiritual weapons are and how to use them. Help me to be
ready to use them against the enemy whenever he comes against me.”
I needed to be a trick shooter like Annie Oakley, as skilled with my
weapons as she was with hers. Courage on the front lines of faith requires a
thorough knowledge of the spiritual weapons and other resources we have,
as well as supreme devotion to and confidence in the One for whom we
fight and who fights for us, taking our battles upon Himself. We can be
encouraged in the assurance that God’s banner is over us, His blessings are
upon us, and His boldness is in us.

God’s Banner Over Us

It is written in the Song of Solomon, “He has brought me to his banqueting
place, And his banner over me is love [waving overhead to protect and
comfort me]” (Song 2:4, AMP). God has stretched this great protective
banner of His love over our heads. As we look up, we can see written on it
the words “God is faithful, God is true.” Yet the words are hard to make out
because we who are believers have covered them with a film of unbelief
that clouds them. Whenever anything negative comes along, the enemy
infiltrates our thoughts and eats away at our confidence in God’s love and
care and protection. Here and there, we begin to see holes in the banner and
the film across the words makes them harder to see.
All of us go through bad experiences from time to time; and if we are
not careful, Satan uses them to eat away at our faith. Maybe you tried to do
something that you believed God wanted you to do. You stepped out like
Peter when he climbed out of the boat to walk to Jesus on the water, but
something went wrong and you sank. All of a sudden the banner over your
head that says “God is faithful” has a chunk out of it. You are left thinking,
Well, God is faithful, but maybe He’s not as faithful with me as He is with
someone else. The seeds of doubt begin to grow.
Perhaps you are praying faithfully and fervently for someone’s healing
and don’t understand when that person dies and goes to be with the Lord.
Another hole appears in the banner and you think, Well, if God is faithful,
why does He heal sometimes but not at others? Such questions enter our
minds, are written on our hearts, and block us from fully believing that God
truly is faithful and that He really will do everything that He says He will
do.
This process can reach the point where we believe that God will move
in somebody else’s life but not in ours. He will work in their church but not
in ours. He will come through for them but not for us. There are just enough
negative experiences for us to wonder about God. Is God faithful? Can we
trust Him to be true to His Word?
 King David wrote, “Your love, Lord, reaches to the heavens, your
faithfulness to the skies” (Ps. 36:5). Psalm 100 affirms, “For the Lord is
good and his love endures forever; his faithfulness continues through all
generations” (Ps. 100:5). The prophet Isaiah proclaimed, “O Lord, You are
my God; I will exalt You, I will praise and give thanks to Your name; For
You have done miraculous things, Plans formed long, long ago, [fulfilled]
with perfect faithfulness” (Isa. 25:1, AMP). The book of Lamentations says,
“Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his
compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your
faithfulness” (Lam. 3:22–23).
Yes, God is faithful! Yes, you can trust Him to be true to His Word. The
Lord wants to really shine down on you. He wants for you simply to believe
Him. It’s time for you to settle this issue once and for all. It’s time to
remove the questions from your mind and the doubts from your heart and to
acknowledge to God: “Lord, I have fallen for the enemy’s lies. He has come
in and chipped away little pieces out of me and out of my faith in You.
Forgive me, Lord. Please restore to me all those things that he has taken.
Give me the faith and courage to step out and remove the dark film from the
banner, to boldly reclaim Your promise that says, ‘God is faithful.’”

The Heavens Declare God’s Faithfulness

In fact, like Solomon’s banner, God’s faithfulness is written in the skies
above us (see Ps. 89:2). When our oldest son, Justin, was in the sixth grade,
all the students in his grade gave a presentation on the constellations for all
the parents and teachers. Each student took one constellation, made a large
replica of it, and identified by name the different stars that made up the
constellation. These are ancient names; some of them go back 5,000 years.
Each student also researched the meanings of these ancient names.
When I heard the word constellation, I tended to think of astrology and
the zodiac, so I was a little uneasy about the assignment. Then I realized
that Satan had taken what the Lord placed in the heavens as signs of His
faithfulness, and twisted and distorted them until we will barely see God’s
handiwork in them.
The presentation was wonderful. It was incredible to see all the pictures
and hear about the meanings behind the stars’ and constellations’ names. As
it turned out, all of it was a reminder of God’s lovingkindness and mercy,
which is displayed in the heavens. Some of the children showed pictures of
sheep coming into the sheepfold, and of Jesus the great Shepherd guarding
the sheepfold and protecting them. One was about Jesus, the strong and
mighty warrior, with His boots on, crushing the head of the serpent
underneath His feet.
Later, I told Justin’s teacher how impressed I was with the whole thing.
It was wonderful to hear about how God’s lovingkindness is displayed in
the heavens day after day, year after year. Those stars are millions and
billions of miles away. Some are closer to us than others, yet God has
arranged them in such a way that from our perspective we see shapes in the
night sky, sometimes almost as clearly as if they were pictures hanging on a
wall. The constellations are a constant reminder to us of God’s faithfulness.
Like a heavenly banner, He set the stars in place to remind us, generation
after generation after generation, of His faithfulness.
God wants to restore His banner of love and faithfulness not only over
each of us individually, but also over everyone. He wants us to stretch it out
over our families, our churches, and our communities so that we are no
longer saying only God is faithful to me but also, God is faithful to my
family, my church, and my city.
As we proclaim God’s faithfulness and as everybody takes their own
banner, eventually the banners interlace together as one large, sheltering
canopy. That releases the Lord to do more, because everyone together is
affirming His loving faithfulness. God has said that His banner over us is
love and that He is faithful, and God is always true to His Word.

God’s Blessings Upon Us

Courage for faithful service on the front lines also comes in the knowledge
that the Lord does not send us out on our own. His presence is always with
us, and His blessings are upon us to especially equip us for the work He has
called us to do. In Psalm 103, King David provides a wonderfully
encouraging list of blessings that God has given to His children.
Appropriately, David begins the psalm with praise: “Bless the Lord, O my
soul: and all that is within me, bless his holy name. Bless the Lord, O my
soul, and forget not all his benefits” (Ps. 103:1–2, KJV).
David calls the blessings of God “His benefits.” That makes me think of
an insurance salesman sitting down at the table and saying, Okay, now let
me show you all the benefits you will receive if you sign up for our policy.
God provides many benefits.
“Who forgives all your sins…” (Ps. 103:3a). God forgives it all: our
mistakes, our stubbornness, our pride. He forgives our attempts to control
Him and others. Whatever our sin, if we confess it to Him, He forgives it.
Whatever God forgives, He forgets. It is as if we were to hand God a piece
of paper with all our sins written on it (it would be a long piece of paper!)
and say, Lord, here are my sins. Please forgive me. He would return the
paper to us not with the sins checked or even scratched out, but with them
completely gone! The paper would be perfectly white without wrinkle or
mark; it would be fresh, clean, and new. God’s forgiveness makes it as
though we had never sinned. His forgiveness removes sin guilt as a weapon
for Satan to use against us. God is faithful.
“Who heals all your diseases” (Ps. 103:3b, AMP). God is our healer; He
heals all our diseases. Now I don’t understand why some people don’t get
healed, but I do know that God is faithful and that He has great compassion
for His children. My mother died of cancer in 1982. Before she died, I
really expected God to heal her. When He didn’t, I had some questions at
first about His faithfulness. Mom was a Christian, so I knew that she was
with Jesus. After she died, I had many dreams of her in heaven, happy and
at peace, a new creation with her health restored, and I knew that she was
much better off being with the Lord. My questions subsided. Once again,
God had proven His faithfulness.
There have been times, I confess, when I have felt cheated at not having
my mom. She and I were just becoming really good friends and were
growing very close at the time of her death. She also never got to meet any
of her grandchildren, although she had the feeling that someone in the
family was pregnant. As it turned out, I was carrying our first child, Justin,
but didn’t find out until after Mom died. Justin’s birth was a great balm to
my soul, coming as it did so soon after Mom’s death and after eight years of
barrenness. In the midst of it all, God showed once more that He is faithful.
“Who redeems your life from the pit, Who crowns you [lavishly] with
lovingkindness and tender mercy” (Ps. 103:4, AMP). Isn’t that beautiful?
Think of the transformation: Jesus lifts us from the slime, dirt, mud, and
refuse of the world. He cleans us up, giving us new clothes and a crown
engraved with the words “lovingkindness and tender mercy.” He elevates us
to reign with Him.
 “Who satisfies your desires with good things so that your youth is
renewed like the eagle’s. The Lord works righteousness and justice for all
the oppressed” (Ps. 103:5–6). God knows just how to meet our needs,
whatever our age or situation. His presence and provision always renew our
strength so that we can fly. Whenever we are oppressed by our employer or
a fellow worker, or under pressure anywhere else, we can trust that God is
faithful to see our need and respond in righteousness and justice.
“The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in
love. He will not always accuse, nor will he harbor his anger forever” (Ps.
103:8–9). How many times have you tried and failed repeatedly at
something until you felt that the Lord would be really mad at you if you
failed again? Repeated failure can bring discouragement. Maybe you
remember a time when you really messed things up and your mistake
affected the lives of a lot of people. Doesn’t the Lord remember too and
hold it against you? No way! He is merciful, gracious, slow to anger, and
never holds a grudge. Those negative thoughts are attacks from the enemy.
Shoot them down with the weapons of God’s faithfulness, mercy, and
lovingkindness.
The depth of God’s love, mercy, and blessings toward us is brought out
in the next several verses of the psalm:
He has not dealt with us according to our sins [as we deserve], Nor
rewarded us [with punishment] according to our wickedness. For as the
heavens are high above the earth, So great is His lovingkindness toward
those who fear and worship Him [with awe-filled respect and deepest
reverence]. As far as the east is from the west, So far has He removed our
transgressions from us. Just as a father loves his children, So the Lord loves
those who fear and worship Him [with awe-filled respect and deepest
reverence]. (Ps. 103:10–13, AMP)
Isn’t it wonderful that God hasn’t given us the judgment that our sins
deserve, but has instead poured out His mercy on us? What confidence we
can have in Christ when we know that our sins have been removed from us
“as far as the east is from the west”! God blesses us and supports us because
He knows how weak we are and how much in need we are; He knows that
we cannot last on our own. Both the confidence that our sins are forgiven
and the presence of the Holy Spirit in us give us a holy boldness as we
serve on the front lines of faith.
 After hearing a report from Peter and John regarding the threats they
had received from the chief priests for preaching the gospel, the church in
Jerusalem came together and prayed for boldness in the face of opposition.
Acts 4:31 says that after their prayer, the place where they were meeting
was shaken. They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and proclaimed Christ
with courage and boldness. It was because of this divine boldness and
power that the early church was so effective in spreading the gospel
throughout the world of its day. Today, God provides us that same boldness
and courage to spread the gospel throughout our world.

God’s Courage
Unfortunately, many believers have the wrong concept of courage. The
enemy has fed us a lie that says courage means being without fear,
completely fearless, and that if we struggle with fear, then we must not be
courageous enough. That is absolutely not true. All of us, even the most
courageous among us, have to deal with fears.
Courage does not mean having no fear. On the contrary, courage means
acknowledging fear, turning it over to God, and pressing ahead in spite of it.
Courage means regarding the dream as more powerful and worthwhile than
the fear that would keep us from it. Courage arises out of the security of
knowing who God is and our identity in relation to Him. We can take
courage in the Lord, not because of who we are or what we have, but
because of His indwelling presence with us through the Holy Spirit.
By ourselves we are weak and can do nothing. But because He dwells in
us, we have His power, wisdom, and courage. As we walk with Him, we
understand more and more how much He loves us, and He begins to reveal
His heart to us. We can take courage from these things.
Courage arises from confidence in the vision the Lord has given to us; it
comes from the quiet place of contemplation before the Lord where He
visits us and speaks to us. Courage comes out of glorying in our own
weakness and resting in His strength.
Courage also means taking one step at a time without demanding to
know the complete journey up front. We tend to want to have everything
mapped out in advance so we can know what we’re getting into before we
start. God rarely works that way. He says, I’m not going to tell you what it
looks like at the end. I’m giving you insight for right now. Trust Me and
follow Me.
There is a reason He does this: walking one step at a time builds faith.
God knows that our puny little brains can’t handle the whole picture all at
once. Sometimes God speaks things to us that seem so overwhelming that
we can’t see how in the world He will ever do it. Yet He pours out His
grace and leads us one step at a time. We take that step and then watch for
the next one. The Lord will open a doorway of grace to enable us to take the
next step and the next and the next. As we walk this way, our faith grows
and so does our courage.

Our Testimony
In the book of Revelation, John, the beloved apostle, presents a powerful
picture of the victory that lies ahead for the bold and courageous church:
And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the
dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, And prevailed not; neither
was their place found any more in heaven. And the great dragon was cast
out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole
world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.
And I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, Now is come salvation, and
strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ: for the
accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before our God
day and night. And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by
the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death.
(Rev. 12:7–11, KJV)
Satan and his angels were defeated and cast out of heaven; never again
could he accuse the brethren. It is the brethren—all believers—who have
overcome Satan. How did this happen? They overcame by means of “the
blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony.”
Sometimes when believers get together, the pastor or leader will ask if
anyone has a testimony to give. A testimony is simply a telling of what God
has done or is doing in your life. Your testimony may seem small and
insignificant in your mind compared to others that you hear, but it is still
important. There may be someone who needs to hear just exactly the word
from the Lord that your testimony would give them.
There is great power in our testimonies—power to defeat and overcome
the enemy. The power lies in what Christ accomplished for us on the cross.
Satan and his legions cannot stand against that kind of power. That is why it
is important for us to share our testimonies, to tell of God’s faithfulness and
of His showing Himself strong on our behalf. It doesn’t matter if the event
is big or little; if God does it, we should tell it. The more we tell it, the more
we take the chains off ourselves and off those who hear us, and put those
chains where they belong: on the enemy.
When you step out with His banner of love and faithfulness over you,
with the blessings of His grace, mercy, forgiveness, and healing upon you,
and with the boldness and authority of His Word on your lips, you can face
the world and the enemy with confidence and courage. No weapon that the
enemy can fashion against you will stand because the power and purpose of
God cannot be defeated. You have an unbeatable combination in the Word
of God: This is what the Lord says… And along with that, the word of your
testimony: Let me tell you what the Lord has done for me…
Satan will try to intimidate you with all sorts of things to keep your
mouth shut. He’ll try to convince you that it isn’t important or that no one
will be interested or that you were mistaken in thinking it was God who did
it. Shoot down all those attacks with the weapons that God has given.
Instead of being intimidated, claim the divine boldness that is yours by right
as a child of God. You need to have the courage and faith to open your
mouth and speak your testimony. God will do the rest. He hasn’t called you
to be successful—only faithful. When you are faithful, He will bring about
success through you.
The chapters that follow profile nine ordinary Christian women who
displayed extraordinary courage in following the call of God on their lives.
Because they were faithful, God used them to accomplish amazing things.
We can take courage from their examples. If God could use them, He can
use you and me.
Put on the full armor of God, so that you will be able to stand firm against
the schemes of the devil. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but
against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this
darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.
Therefore, take up the full armor of God, so that you will be able to resist in
the evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm. (Eph. 6:11–13,
NASB)

Papa God, in Jesus’ name I volunteer freely to be a part of Your strong and
yet humble army in the day of Your power. I choose to put on the full armor
of God, by which I will be able to put out the flaming arrows of the Evil
One. I purpose to arise above the attacks of the enemy and, together with
likeminded others, declare, “Greater is He who is with us than he who is in
the world,” for the glory of Your name throughout the earth. Amen.
 PART TWO
Women of Courage
 Chapter 3

Joan of Arc
THE COST OF COURAGE

Some of you may think that you are the most unlikely candidate for God
to use to do anything significant. Most of us think of ourselves in that way.
The world teaches us that it is the rich, the powerful, or the beautiful who
are important and make a difference in the world. That’s not what God
teaches. He doesn’t think or work the way the world does. The prophet
Isaiah recorded, “‘For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your
ways My ways,’ declares the Lord. ‘For as the heavens are higher than the
earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your
thoughts’” (Isa. 55:8–9, NASB).
I like the way Randy Clark puts it: “God can use little ole me!” Yes,
God can use anyone or anything He desires to accomplish His purpose. In
fact, He prefers to use people and means considered insignificant by the
world. The apostle Paul told the Corinthians:
God has selected [for His purpose] the weak things of the world to shame
the things which are strong [revealing their frailty]. God has selected [for
His purpose] the insignificant (base) things of the world, and the things that
are despised and treated with contempt, [even] the things that are nothing,
so that He might reduce to nothing the things that are (1 Cor. 1:27–28, AMP)
If, even after reading these words, you still wonder whether or not God
can or will use you, take courage, as I have, from the story of a young
woman who was, humanly speaking, one of the most unlikely heroes in
history: Joan of Arc. Her life has been a tremendous tool of inspiration to
me.

A Time for Leadership

The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were filled with great political and
national turmoil for France. From 1337 to 1453, France and England fought
a series of battles that became known as the Hundred Years’ War. At stake
was the territory of Aquitane, a rich land in southwestern France that had
been under English control since the twelfth century. France wanted it back;
England was determined to keep it.1
In addition, in 1338 King Edward III of England, through his mother a
direct descendant of King Philip IV of France, claimed title to the French
throne, thus setting off conflict between the two nations over royal
succession in France.
By 1380, when King Charles V of France died, the situation had
stabilized somewhat and a lasting peace seemed possible. The king’s son,
Charles VI, was only twelve years old when his father died. He was put
under the guardianship of a ducal council until 1388, when he began ruling
in his own right. He married Isabella of Bavaria and ruled well until 1392,
when he had his first bout with the insanity that plagued the remainder of
his reign.
During these times, Isabella served as his regent, and in effect she ruled
in her husband’s place. Charles’ insanity and the resulting internal power
struggle weakened the kingdom. The English eventually took advantage of
the turmoil and invaded France. In 1415, King Henry V of England
inflicted a devastating defeat on the French at Agincourt, leaving the
country divided into three parts. In 1420, Isabella, serving as regent for her
mad husband, signed the Treaty of Troyes. This treaty, among other things,
secured for Henry V accession to the French throne upon the death of
Charles VI. At the same time, courting Henry’s favor, Isabella disowned her
own son, the dauphin, Charles VII, and gave her daughter Catherine to
Henry in marriage. All this strengthened Henry’s claim to the French
throne.
Thus Charles VII, the otherwise legitimate heir to the throne of France,
was cut off. Around 1400 an ancient French prophecy was revived that said
the kingdom would be brought to ruin by a woman and restored by a
daughter of the people. Many came to believe that Isabella had fulfilled the
first part of the prophecy when she signed the Treaty of Troyes, giving the
French throne to the English king.2 But who would be the “daughter of the
people” who would arise to restore the kingdom?
The situation in France was made worse in 1422 when both Charles VI
and Henry V died and Henry’s infant son (Henry VI) was proclaimed king
of both England and France. The people of France were in a desperate state;
children died of hunger in the streets by the thousands. It is said that wolves
even came into Paris at night to feed on the bodies of the unburied dead in
the city streets. There was great lawlessness and immorality, and many
people lived little better than beasts.3 The disinherited Charles, from his
base in central and southwestern France, attempted to assert his authority
and claim to the throne, but with little success. The French people as a
whole would not recognize him as the legitimate king unless he was
formally coronated in the traditional place, the cathedral in the now
English-controlled city of Rheims.4 If ever there was a time for a strong and
courageous leader to arise, it was now.

An Unlikely Champion
In the midst of this political unrest and social upheaval, Joan appeared.
Born in 1412 in the village of Domremy, in the Champagne district of
northeastern France, Joan was the youngest in a family of five. Although
skilled in sewing and spinning, she never learned to read or write. From a
very early age she displayed an unusually deep devotion to God. She spent
hours absorbed in prayer and was known to have a tender heart for the poor
and needy.5
From her childhood on, Joan simply loved God. She never received any
theological training and knew very little about the formal structures and
official doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church, the only church in France
at that time. All Joan knew was that when she went to mass, God met her
there. Joan knew God, loved to spend time with Him, and would do
anything for Him.
In the summer of 1425, when she was thirteen, Joan experienced her
first heavenly visitation: a blaze of bright light accompanied by a voice. She
received numerous such visitations during the months that followed and
gradually discerned the identities of those who spoke to her. Joan identified
one of them as Michael the archangel. St. Catherine of Alexandria and St.
Margaret of Antioch, both early Christian martyrs, were the others.6
Although to modern minds these may seem to be strange messengers,
remember that, in the case of Michael, angelic visitations have biblical
precedent. As for the other two, it is natural that Joan would have
understood and interpreted her visitors in a manner consistent with the
religious environment of her day. From the historical records of her life, her
trial and execution, and the later rehabilitation of her reputation, in my
understanding there is little doubt today of the divine nature of her
visitations.
At first Joan’s “voices” told her such things as “Be a good girl and obey
your parents.” However, over the course of three years the messages began
to change. She had dreams of horses running in battle and of herself being
led away with an army of men. During this time she gradually became
aware of the call of God on her life. He seemed to be telling her that she
was to go to the aid of the disinherited Charles, the true king of France;
drive the English away from Orleans and out of the country; and lead the
procession to see Charles enthroned. At first she resisted: I’m just a girl. I
have no education, no training in military skills. Who’s going to listen to
me? Her voices continued, however, and became more and more insistent.
By May 1428, Joan was convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that
God was leading her to go to Charles’ aid. Her life of fellowship and
communion with the Lord had been such that once she was convinced of
her call, the vision so convicted and consumed her that she let nothing stand
in her way. She had such a concrete understanding of who her Father was
and loved Him so much that she would go anywhere and do anything to
fulfill His desire. Nothing was too great a task for Him to ask of her. She
believed that God was true and that He would back her up in everything
that He called her to do.
 A Divine Mission
A month later, under the insistent direction of her “voices,” Joan presented
herself and her mission to Robert Baudricourt, the commander of Charles’
forces in the neighboring town of Vaucouleurs. Baudricourt showed little
but contempt for Joan and her ideas, telling the cousin who had
accompanied her to “take her home to her father and give her a good
whipping.”7
Joan returned to Domremy, apparently defeated. In the meantime,
Charles’ situation worsened as the English besieged the city of Orleans on
October 12, 1428. By the end of the year, total defeat for the French seemed
near at hand. Joan’s visitations continued, her “voices” becoming
increasingly urgent. When she tried to resist, they told her, “It is God who
commands it.” Finally, in January 1429, Joan returned to Vaucouleurs for
another try.8
This time, she stayed in the town and gradually made an impression on
Baudricourt. According to one account, he waved a sword in her face,
saying, “What do your ‘voices’ say to this?” In response, Joan grabbed a
short dagger-like sword from a nearby attendant and brought its blade down
against the blade of Baudricourt’s sword, severing it as if it were paper.
Baudricourt then arranged for her to see Charles and sent Joan with a three-
man escort to Chinon, where Charles was staying. Joan traveled in men’s
clothing, probably for modesty and practicality.
Charles, not knowing what to make of this teenage girl who was coming
to see him, decided to test Joan by disguising himself and surrounding
himself with attendants. However, when Joan was brought in, she somehow
immediately recognized him and addressed him as the king. Despite this,
Charles was still skeptical.
Joan offered to prove that she had been sent by God by answering for
Charles three questions that were known only to him and to God: whether
or not he was the true heir to the French throne, that if France’s troubles
were because of his sins that he alone be punished and the nation spared,
and that if the war was due to the sins of the people that they be forgiven
and the troubles lifted.9
Joan’s divinely inspired insight convinced Charles, at least
halfheartedly, to believe in her mission. Before she was entrusted with
military operations, however, Joan was sent to the city of Poitiers, where
she was examined by a large committee of highly educated bishops and
doctors. This illiterate young woman held her own against the searching
and deep questions put to her. In the end, her faith, simplicity, and honesty
made a very positive impression on these learned theologians, who found
nothing heretical in her claims of supernatural guidance.10
Returning to Chinon, Joan began preparing for her campaign. It was at
this early stage that two significant events appeared to confirm even more
the divine nature of her mission. Joan needed a sword, and she knew where
to find one. She wrote to the priests at the chapel of Saint Catherine of
Fierbois, informing them that her sword was buried behind the altar. Indeed,
a sword was found at that exact spot.11
The second event involved a letter, which still exists, written on April
22, 1429, and delivered and duly registered before any of the events
referred to in the letter took place. The writer of the letter reported that Joan
had said that she would deliver the city of Orleans, she would compel the
English to raise the siege, she herself would be wounded but would survive,
and Charles would be crowned king before the end of the summer.12
As it turned out, all of these things were fulfilled just as Joan predicted.

An Army of the Lord

Joan had such an incredible presence of the Lord on her that she drew
people to her everywhere she turned. By the time she arrived on the field,
Charles’ army was at a very low point; they were exhausted, defeated,
discouraged, and disillusioned. Many of the soldiers had begun to desert.
Then Joan appeared, proclaiming, “I have a vision from God. He has called
me to raise an army for our nation and for Him.”
As Joan’s presence became known, soldiers began to rush to her side by
the thousands. The call was given and they came gladly. Rough, vulgar,
immoral, and intemperate though many of them were, the men found her
innocence, spiritual piety, and patriotic fervor irresistible. Her presence
filled them with new vigor and courage. She held up for them a standard of
righteousness, purity, and devotion to the Lord, and they rallied around her.
Even though she was a young woman in the midst of an army of men, Joan
had a holy quality about her that blocked their tendencies to regard her in a
sexual manner.
 Joan made clear what the requirements were for being a part of her
“army of the Lord.” First, she told the soldiers that the camp prostitutes had
to go. Second, the soldiers had to attend mass every day. Third, there was to
be no more cursing or swearing. Amazingly, Joan’s influence was so great
that her army embraced these standards enthusiastically. As miraculous as it
seems, they agreed as one body to come into holy living and purity.
Joan had absolutely no training in military operations or strategy, but
God gave her battle plans on the field. Some of the generals were still not
completely convinced, however, and tried to trick her by following other
strategies. God revealed to Joan what was going on, and she challenged the
generals: “In God’s Name, the advice of Our Lord is wiser and more certain
than yours. You thought to deceive me, but it is you who are deceived, for I
bring you the best help that ever came to any soldier or to any city.”13
The conviction from her words pierced their hearts. After the English
rejected a demand from Joan that they leave French soil, Joan and her army
moved rapidly and entered the city of Orléans on April 30, 1429. Within a
week they had captured all the English forts surrounding the city. Although
Joan was wounded in the breast by an arrow on the last day of battle, she
was insistent on pressing forward with the campaign. One reason for this
was her warlike instinct. The other was that her “voices” had already told
her that she had only one year. She knew time was important.14
Joan’s insistence prevailed against the reluctance of the king and his
advisers. A short campaign along the Loire River led to a great victory on
June 18 at Patay, where English reinforcements sent from Paris were
completely defeated. Joan pressed on, still laboring to overcome the
reluctance of the commanders. Nevertheless, they captured the city of
Troyes, opening the way to Rheims where, on July 17, 1429, Charles VII
was solemnly crowned king with Joan standing by as a witness.15

Reversal and Betrayal

Although the principal purpose of her mission had been accomplished, Joan
remained with the army throughout the rest of the summer. An attempt to
retake Paris from the English failed, and in a later battle Joan was wounded
again, this time in the thigh. The king signed a truce with the Duke of
Burgundy, who was allied with the English, and there was no further
fighting until the following year.
Joan spent a miserable winter among the worldly and jealous members
of the king’s court. On December 29, 1429, Charles raised Joan and her
entire family to the rank of nobility, perhaps partly in an attempt to console
her. She was probably more than ready when she took to the battlefield the
following April when the truce ended.16
Her “voices” continued to speak to her, telling her that she would be
taken prisoner before midsummer. This happened on the evening of May
24, 1430, while Joan and troops under her command were defending the
city of Compiègne against Burgundian attack. The commander of the city
accidentally raised the drawbridge while Joan and many of her soldiers
were still outside. She was pulled from her horse and made a prisoner of
war.17
Although they had several important English prisoners whom they
could have traded for Joan, Charles VII and his advisors did nothing to try
to rescue her. The English, on the other hand, were desperate to get their
hands on her. They both feared and hated her because of the defeat and
embarrassment they had suffered at her hands and were determined to
somehow take her life. The English struck a deal with Joan’s Burgundian
captors, who sold her for a sum of money that today would equal hundreds
of thousands of dollars.18

Trial and Martyrdom

The English knew that they could not legitimately execute Joan simply
because she had defeated them in battle. Instead, their strategy was to have
her condemned to death as a witch and a heretic. To this end, they claimed
that Joan’s “voices” were satanic in nature and that the only way she could
have defeated them in battle was with the help of the powers of darkness.
Joan’s practice of wearing male dress was also used against her as evidence
of her heresy.
The trial of Joan of Arc is one of the most thoroughly documented
events of that period of history. After months of imprisonment in
disgraceful conditions, she was questioned intensively by the most learned
theologians of the day. There is a complete record both of the questions she
was asked and of her answers. Throughout the entire proceeding, Joan’s
faith, integrity, and spiritual insight shone brightly.
Despite being a young woman not yet out of her teens, unable to read or
write and without any formal religious training of any kind, being examined
and questioned about fine points of religion, faith, and theology by men
who were determined to find something with which to condemn her, Joan
stood firm. God held her up.
He gave her the wisdom and the words to answer every question. The
record of her trial leaves little room to doubt either her absolute devotion to
God or the courage with which she stood for Him. At this time when the
institutional church held almost absolute authority over the people, here is
how Joan responded to questions regarding her spiritual allegiance:
Q: If the Church Militant tells you that your revelations are illusions, or
diabolical things, will you defer to the Church?

A: I will defer to God, Whose Commandment I always do. … In case the

Church should prescribe the contrary, I should not refer to anyone in the
world, but to God alone, Whose Commandment I always follow.

Q: Do you not then believe you are subject to the Church of God which is
on earth, that is to say to our Lord the Pope, to the Cardinals, the
Archbishops, Bishops, and other prelates of the Church?

A: Yes, I believe myself to be subject to them, but God must be served first.

Q: Have you then command from your voices not to submit yourself to the
Church Militant, which is on earth, not to its decision?

A: I answer nothing from my own head, what I answer is by command of

my voices, they do not order me to disobey the Church, but God must be
served first.19
In the end Joan was condemned to death for heresy. She signed a
retraction that she probably did not fully understand, and her sentence was
changed to imprisonment for life. A few days later, however, she resumed
wearing male dress in the prison, which gave her enemies the excuse to
condemn her again as a “relapsed heretic.” Joan was turned over for
execution by burning at the stake. Sadly, that execution was carried out on
May 30, 1431.
Joan’s behavior when facing death was admirable, moving even her
bitter enemies to tears. The normal practice when someone was burned at
the stake was for the wood to be laid at the front and, after the flames and
smoke had risen up, for the executioner to strangle the victim from behind.
It was a merciful gesture intended to spare the victim the agony of the
burning.
This practice was not followed in Joan’s case. She faced the flames fully
conscious. As the flames rose, Joan called out for the cross. When it was
held up before her, she called repeatedly on the name of Jesus, forgiving
those who had wronged her and pouring out words of love and devotion to
Him.
Apparently everyone who watched was deeply moved by her witness.
Many were deeply convicted by what they had done, recognizing that Joan
certainly could not have been a heretic. In fact, some were so convicted that
they were moved to repentance on the spot. According to some accounts,
some people claimed to have seen the name of Jesus written in the flames,
while others said they saw a white dove fly out of the flames.20
The executioner himself is reported to have said that Joan’s heart would
not burn.21
Twenty-five years after her death, Joan’s case was reopened and the
facts reexamined. As a result, Joan was declared to be completely innocent
of all crimes, being neither a witch nor a heretic but a victim of jealousy,
hatred, and political intrigue. For centuries she has been considered a
French national heroine, and in 1920 the Catholic Church canonized her.22

Joan’s Legacy
What does the life of this fifteenth-century teenaged girl have to say to us
today?
First, I believe that we can take courage from the simple fact that Joan
was so ordinary. There was nothing obvious that made her stand out. By
normal human standards she had no qualifications for the mission she
undertook. She had no education, no religious training, no leadership
experience. She was not ordained to the ministry. In fact, she lived during a
time when women’s freedom in both church and society was greatly
restricted.
What made the difference? Joan possessed the only qualification that
mattered: she loved God with all her heart, soul, mind, and strength. She
was completely sold out to Him. God chose her and used her because she
made herself available to Him. Her executioner claimed that her heart
would not burn. If this was so, perhaps it was because her heart had already
been burned by her passion for God.
She was so consumed by Him that nothing else could touch her. We can
all take courage from the fact that the only thing God requires of us in order
for Him to use us is that we know Him, love Him, and make ourselves
available to Him. God’s army is an army of volunteers.
The standards Joan laid down for her army show us that the Lord has
called His army (us) to a life of purity, holiness, and complete devotion to
Him. If we are to be effective and fully usable, we must put away all filth
and uncleanness, all sin and evil thinking, and be clean vessels before the
Lord. God has raised His standard of righteousness for us to rally under and
has told us, “You shall be holy, for I am holy” (1 Pet. 1:16b, NASB).
The apostle Paul expressed it well when he wrote:
Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer
your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true
and proper worship. (Rom. 12:1)
We must be blameless in our behavior, wholesome in our speech, and
consistent in our walk. Regardless of what the world tries to do to us, we
can walk blamelessly, undefiled before God. The purity and holiness that
He places in us can come out as an extension of us, and we can then pass
them on to other people. We don’t have to be tainted by the world. On the
contrary, we can influence the world for Christ. It isn’t easy, and it costs
everything, but with God’s help it can be done. And He receives the glory!
Joan’s example encourages us to dare to believe that we can do
whatever God calls us to do. It assures us that He will back us up in our call
and bring it to pass as we obey and follow Him. It is inconceivable that
Joan could have done what she did without the hand of God on her life.
One thing that the Lord told Joan again and again was, Go on! Go on,
daughter of God! Go on; I will be with you and I will be your help. He says
the same thing to us today: Go on into your destiny, into your calling, into
your place before the Lord. Go on! Push through! Endure! Let Me show
Myself strong on your behalf.
God is looking for men and women who will be sold out to Him; He
wants people who will let their hearts and minds be so consumed with Him
that nothing else matters. All that mattered to Joan was reaching Rheims
and seeing her king crowned according to God’s will. Doing so required
pressing through the heart of the English army, moving through the hardest
and greatest difficulties to reach the place of victory. It is the same for us.
We need to go to the place that is the most difficult for us, where the enemy
seems to have the greatest stronghold, and enthrone Jesus there. We need to
raise His banner and make a way for Him to come and receive the honor
due His name.
The cost to Joan for courage was her life, but her reward was the
company and presence of God and the fulfillment of His purpose in and
through her. To have courage will cost us everything as well: our whole
lives given completely to the Lord in sacrifice and devotion. What is our
reward? Life! We want to proclaim life, not death; blessing, not cursing;
and light, not darkness. However, it is only in losing our life that we find it.
And what we find is His life, not ours.
Courage is not something we can drum up from within ourselves; it
comes from knowing God and trusting Him completely. As we learn to
depend on Him rather than on ourselves, He releases His power in and
through us—and that power can change our families, our friends, our
communities, our nation, and even the whole world. God is not a respecter
of persons. If He used someone as ordinary as Joan of Arc, He will use you
too. Dare to believe!
Your people will volunteer freely in the day of Your power; in holy array,
from the womb of the dawn, Your youth are to You as the dew. (Psalm
110:3, NASB)

By the grace of God, I choose to take up my cross, deny myself, and follow
Christ Jesus wherever He may lead. I declare I am being clothed with the
supernatural authority of the Holy Spirit to enable me to do mighty exploits
for His holy name’s sake. Counting the cost, I also ask that I be filled with
the very courage of God. What You did before, Lord, You shall do again!
Amen.
 Chapter 4

Vibia Perpetua
FAITHFUL UNTO DEATH

I saw a golden ladder which reached from earth to the heavens; but so
narrow, that only one could mount it at a time. To the two sides were
fastened all sorts of iron instruments, as swords, lances, hooks, and knives;
so that if any one went up carelessly he was in great danger of having his
flesh torn by those weapons. At the foot of the ladder lay a dragon of an
enormous size, who kept guard to turn back and terrify those that
endeavored to mount it. The first that went up was Saturus, who was not
apprehended with us, but voluntarily surrendered himself afterwards on our
account: when he was got to the top of the ladder, he turned towards me and
said: “Perpetua, I wait for you; but take care lest the dragon bite you.” I
answered: “In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, he shall not hurt me.”
Then the dragon, as if afraid of me, gently lifted his head from under the
ladder, and I, having got upon the first step, set my foot upon his head. Thus
I mounted to the top, and there I saw a garden of an immense space, and in
the middle of it a tall man sitting down dressed like a shepherd, having
white hair. He was milking his sheep, surrounded with many thousands of
persons clad in white. He called me by my name, bid me welcome, and
gave me some curds made of the milk which he had drawn: I put my hands
together and took and ate them; and all that were present said aloud, Amen.
The noise awaked me, chewing something very sweet. As soon as I had
related to my brother this vision, we both concluded that we should suffer
death.1
With these words Vibia Perpetua, a young noble-woman of Carthage in
northern Africa, recorded a vision that she received from God in response to
her prayer asking whether or not she faced martyrdom. Her question was
quite relevant, for at the time of her vision Perpetua and five others were in
prison; they had been charged with defying Emperor Septimus Severus’
prohibition against conversions to Christianity.
The year was a.d. 203, and a general persecution that had begun a few
years earlier in the European part of the Roman Empire had finally reached
Africa. Perpetua’s companions in prison were a slave named Revocatus;
Revocatus’ fellow slave, Felicitas, who was seven months pregnant; and
two free men, Saturninus and Secundulus. All five were catechumens (new
believers who were being instructed in doctrine and discipline before being
admitted to baptism and church membership). As it happened, they all
received baptism while in prison. They were joined in prison by their
instructor in the faith, Saturus (the one mentioned in Perpetua’s vision),
who, although not present when the others were arrested, had given himself
up voluntarily in order to be with them during their ordeal.

An Allegiance Higher Than Family

Vibia Perpetua, twenty-two years old, came from a good family and had
married a man of quality in Carthage, although he is strangely absent in the
existing accounts of her imprisonment and martyrdom. It is possible that
Perpetua was a widow; she released her infant son, who was brought to her
regularly for nursing, into the care of her mother, since apparently her death
would make the child an orphan. Perpetua’s two surviving brothers (a third
had died as a child) were believers, as was her mother, but her father was a
pagan. He loved Perpetua more than all his other children and made several
attempts to persuade her to recant or deny her Christian faith in order to
spare her life.
 One day shortly after her imprisonment began, Perpetua’s father visited
her, appealing to her, for the sake of her life and for that of her nursing
baby, to renounce her faith. Pointing to a waterpot or some other container,
Perpetua asked her father, “Can that vessel, which you see, change its
name?” When he answered that it could not, Perpetua said to him, “Nor can
I call myself any other than I am, that is to say, a Christian.”2
On another occasion, as Perpetua’s trial before the Roman procurator
approached, her father tried again. In Perpetua’s own words:
My father came over from the city worn out with exhaustion, and he went
up to me in order to deflect me, saying: “My daughter, have pity on my
white hairs! Show some compassion to your father, if I deserve to be called
father by you.…do not bring me into disgrace in all men’s eyes! Look at
your brothers, look at your mother and your aunt—look at your son, who
won’t be able to live if you die. Don’t flaunt your insistence, or you’ll
destroy us all: for if anything happens to you, none of us will ever be able to
speak freely and openly again.” This is what my father said, out of devotion
to me, kissing my hands and flinging himself at my feet; and amid his tears
he called me not “daughter” but “domina” [my lady]. And I grieved for my
father’s condition—for he alone of all my family would not gain joy from
my ordeal. And I comforted him, saying: “At the tribunal things will go as
God wills: for you must know that we are no longer in our own hands, but
in God’s.” And he left me griefstricken.3
A short time later, as Perpetua stood before Hilarian, the procurator of
the province, her father made a final attempt. Apparently Perpetua was the
last of the prisoners to be examined, because she records that all those who
were questioned ahead of her boldly confessed Jesus Christ. When it was
her turn, her father suddenly appeared, carrying her infant son. He appealed
to her motherly instinct, begging her to consider the misery that she would
bring on her son if she persisted. Even the judge Hilarian joined in, saying,
“What! Will neither the gray hairs of a father you are going to make
miserable, nor the tender innocence of a child, which your death will leave
an orphan, move you? Sacrifice for the prosperity of the emperor.”
Perpetua replied, “I will not do it.”
Hilarian asked her directly, “Are you then a Christian?”
 “Yes, I am.” After this reply the judge sentenced Perpetua and all her
companions to be exposed to wild beasts at the emperor’s festival games.4

A Vision of Victory
Secundulus apparently died in prison, but Perpetua and the others faced
their impending deaths with anticipation. In the spirit of the apostles of the
New Testament, they rejoiced that they were considered worthy to suffer for
their Lord (see Acts 5:41). During the final days before the games, the Lord
encouraged each of them through dreams and visions that assured them of
victory and of His presence with them throughout. In Perpetua’s vision, a
deacon named Pomponius led her to the center of the amphitheater,
encouraging her to not be afraid. Then, according to Perpetua:
I saw much people watching closely. And because I knew that I was
condemned to the beasts I marveled that beasts were not sent out against
me. And there came out against me a certain ill-favored Egyptian with his
helpers to fight me. Also there came to me comely young men, my helpers
and aiders. And I was stripped naked and I became a man. And my helpers
began to rub me with oil as their custom is for a contest; and over against
me saw that Egyptian wallowing in the dust. And there came forth a man of
very great stature, so that he overpassed the very top of the amphitheater…
bearing a rod like a master of gladiators, and a green branch whereon were
golden apples. And he besought silence and said: The Egyptian, if he shall
conquer this woman, shall slay her with the sword; and if she shall conquer
him, she shall receive this branch.…[The Egyptian] tried to trip up my feet,
but I with my heels smote upon his face. And I rose up into the air and
began so to smite him as though I trod not the earth.…And I caught his
head, and he fell upon his face; and I trod upon his head. And the people
began to shout, and my helpers began to sing. And I went up to the master
of gladiators and received the branch. And he kissed me and said to me:
Daughter, peace be with you. And I began to go with glory to the gate
called the Gate of Life. And I awoke; and I understood that I should fight,
not with beasts but against the devil; but I knew that mine was the victory.5

Courage and Faithfulness

By all accounts, Perpetua and her companions remained steadfast in faith
and witness throughout the days of their imprisonment and on the day they
met their deaths in the arena. In fact, the keeper of the prison, a man named
Pudens, was himself converted to Christ by the faithful testimony of his
prisoners. During the customary final meal, which was eaten in public, the
Christians did their best to turn the affair into an agape meal or love feast,
talking freely with the crowd watching them, testifying to Christ,
threatening the judgments of God, and rejoicing in their own sufferings.
Their steadfast faith and courage so impressed the onlookers that several of
them were converted.
On the day of the games, the condemned marched from the prison to the
amphitheater, joy in their eyes and characterizing their every word and
gesture. The two women, Perpetua and Felicitas, walked together. An
eyewitness wrote that “Perpetua walked with a composed countenance and
easy pace, as a woman cherished by Jesus Christ, with her eyes modestly
cast down.”6
Felicitas was especially joyful to be with her friends because it had
appeared for a while that her pregnancy would prevent her from dying with
them. (Roman law forbade the execution of pregnant women.) But through
her prayers and the prayers of her friends, she had safely delivered a
daughter while in prison. The baby was taken into the home of a Christian
woman who raised the child as her own.
As they reached the gate of the arena, they were given the customary
robes that had been consecrated to the Roman gods, to wear. The
condemned Christians refused to wear the idolatrous clothing, however.
Perpetua forcefully stood her ground, telling the Roman tribune that they
had agreed to come of their own accord on the promise that they would not
be forced to do anything contrary to their religion. The tribune allowed
them to proceed in their own clothes.
Revocatus and Saturninus were dispatched rather quickly after being
attacked first by a leopard and then by a bear. Saturus’ death took a little
longer. He was exposed first to a wild boar, which promptly turned on and
fatally wounded its keeper. Then it did nothing more than drag Saturus.
Next he was exposed to a bear, which refused to come out of its den.
Finally, Saturus died from a single bite of a leopard.
Perpetua and Felicitas were exposed to a wild cow that, when it
attacked, tossed first Perpetua and then Felicitas. Perpetua landed on her
back, then sat up and gathered her torn clothes about her to preserve her
modesty. She stood up, tied up her hair, which had fallen loose, and helped
the badly mauled Felicitas to her feet. They stood together, expecting
another assault from the cow when the crowd cried out that it was enough.
Perpetua and Felicitas were then taken to the Gate of Life, which is where
victims who survived the beasts were put to death by gladiators. The two
women exchanged a final kiss of peace. The gladiator assigned to execute
Perpetua was a novice, young and very nervous. He was shaking so much
that he was able to inflict only a few painful but not deadly wounds.
Perpetua herself then calmly guided his hand and sword to her own neck
where he then finished the job.

Perpetua’s Legacy
There are several remarkable things about Perpetua and her martyrdom that
can encourage us. First, the existing account of her imprisonment, trial, and
death is regarded as reliably historical (as compared to some other martyr
accounts that contain much legend) and is one of the earliest historical
accounts of Christianity after the close of the New Testament. The fact that
much of the story was written by Perpetua herself makes it one of the
earliest pieces of writing by a Christian woman.
The story was so highly regarded that it was read widely in African
churches for the next several centuries and was treated as almost equivalent
to Scripture. Perpetua faced her martyrdom with a confidence and courage
that did not come strictly from within herself, but was given to her by the
Lord whom she so faithfully gave witness to. Her experience is full of
evidence of how Christ sustained her and the others throughout their ordeal.
He never abandoned them, but remained close to them. They drew constant
strength from His presence.
Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever (see Heb. 13:8), and
what He did for them He will do for us. He has promised never to leave us
or forsake us (see Heb. 13:5).
Perpetua’s courage inspires us even more when we remember that she
and all the others, with the possible exception of Saturus, were new
believers; it was only after they were in prison that they received baptism.
They were in the early stages of learning the doctrines and disciplines of the
faith. This shows us that what counts ultimately is our commitment to
Christ, not knowledge. Knowledge of our faith is very important, but
knowledge alone does not give us the courage to stand firm. That comes
only through the Person and presence of Jesus Christ in our lives.
Essentially, Perpetua was no different from any of us. She was an
ordinary woman who trusted Christ completely and was given the courage
and confidence to be faithful unto death. As we learn to trust Christ, we will
find that He gives us the courage and confidence to meet whatever
challenges come our way as well. Although not all of us are called to be a
martyr for our faith, each of us is called to die to ourselves, and it takes
courage to do that. May we learn how to gain strength for the journey from
the example of Perpetua, who was faithful unto death.
Jesus, You are my Lord, and you died for me on the cross. Now You show
me not only how to live but how to take up my own cross daily, living and
dying for you at the same time. I cannot manufacture the willpower to
follow you, and I often lack faith-filled courage. Come to my aid, Holy
Spirit, today and every day. I trust you wholeheartedly. Amen.
 Chapter 5

Sojourner Truth
“AIN’T I A WOMAN?”

On November 28, 1883, a crowd of nearly a thousand people gathered

before a modest house in Battle Creek, Michigan, to pay their final respects
to one of the most remarkable American women of the nineteenth century.
Silently, on foot and in carriages, they fell into line behind the hearse
bearing the body of Sojourner Truth: ex-slave, mother, evangelist,
abolitionist, author, women’s rights advocate, temperance activist, and
proponent of land grant benefits for ex-slaves. Her coffin borne by white
residents of Battle Creek, the eighty-six-year-old African American was
laid to rest in the Oakhill Cemetery. Many of her friends from the women’s
rights and abolitionist movements spoke of her “rare qualities of head and
heart” and remembered her as a “dynamic woman with strength, integrity,
poise, and wit.”1
Sojourner was a powerful public speaker, captivating her mostly white
audiences wherever she went. No one who met her or heard her speak ever
forgot her. Nearly six feet tall with a deep, powerful voice, Sojourner Truth
was an imposing presence. Never one to back down from a challenge, she
was one of the first black women in the United States to win a court case,
which she did not once but three times. Her influence brought her into
contact with many important leaders of the day, both religious and political.
She even had private meetings with three US presidents.
What makes the accomplishments of this formidable woman even more
amazing is that throughout her long life she was illiterate. Even though she
published an autobiography and knew large portions of the Bible by heart,
Sojourner Truth, like Joan of Arc centuries before her, never learned how to
read or write.

From Slavery to Freedom

Named Isabella by her parents but called “Belle,” Sojourner Truth was born
to a slave couple on a farm in upstate New York around 1797. From the
beginning, her parents instilled in her the importance and value of hard
work. Belle’s mother also taught her to pray to God during times of trouble.
Belle learned both lessons well even though she didn’t think about God
very much while she was growing up and, as a slave, had little opportunity
to learn about Him. By the time she was in her midtwenties, Belle had
belonged to five different masters. She had married another slave named
Tom and had given birth to five children.
In 1824 Belle heard the news that the New York state legislature had
passed a law abolishing slavery in the state. Under the terms of the law, she
and Tom would become free on July 4, 1827. In 1825 John Dumont, Belle’s
owner of fifteen years, was impressed with her hard work and offered her a
deal: if she worked extra hard for the next year, he would free her and Tom
a year early. Belle accepted eagerly and did her part. At the end of the year,
however, a poor harvest caused Dumont to feel he could not afford to free
them as he had promised. Feeling betrayed, Belle determined to run away,
even though by law she would be free in another year.
Belle wondered when to make her attempt. Running away during the
day would be foolish, and she was afraid of the dark. As her mother had
taught her, Belle prayed to God, and He showed her what to do: leave
around dawn, while everyone else was still asleep but there was enough
light to see. Taking her youngest child, Sophia, Belle fled to the home of a
Quaker couple a few miles away who gave them shelter. When Dumont
found them there the next day, Belle refused to return. The Quaker couple
bought her and Sophia from Dumont for twenty-five dollars, then promptly
set them free.
Belle looked forward to the day when all her family would be free. But
before that day arrived, Dumont sold her only son, Peter, to a doctor who
found the boy unsuitable to his needs. The doctor turned Peter over to his
brother, who sold Peter to an Alabama planter. Belle was furious because
Alabama was a “slave-for-life” state. She was determined, whatever the
cost, to get her son back. Encouraged by her Quaker friends, Belle sought
legal action to have Peter returned. An attorney assured her that Peter’s out-
of-state sale was illegal and began to work on her behalf. Things looked
promising but were then delayed because court was not in session. Her
lawyer asked her to be patient with the court system, but Belle could not.
While walking home that day, Belle cried out to Jesus, asking Him to
intercede for her before the throne of God. Her prayer was answered when,
on the road, she met a perfect stranger who asked her if her son had been
returned yet. When she said no, the stranger pointed to a nearby house and
told her that an attorney who could help her lived there. Belle went to see
him, and within twenty-four hours the court had returned Peter to her. For
the rest of her life, Belle testified that she was certain that the stranger she
had met on the road was sent from God to help her.2

“This is Jesus!”
Under the provisions of the New York emancipation law, slaves born after
July 4, 1799, were freed when they reached a particular age: twenty-eight
for men and twenty-five for women. For this reason Belle’s other three
daughters remained on the Dumont farm, where she could visit them
regularly. After a while Belle settled her differences with the Dumonts and
sent Sophia there to live with her sisters while Belle and Peter lived with
the Quaker couple who had originally helped her.
Years before her freedom, when Belle had prayed to God for help in
becoming free, she had promised Him that if it happened, she would try to
be good and remember to pray. Once she was free, however, and things
began to settle down, she forgot about God. Then, on a festival day, John
Dumont brought a wagon and invited Belle to visit her family on his farm.
What happened next was a pivotal event in Belle’s life. Years later,
Sojourner Truth described the event to Harriet Beecher Stowe, the author of
Uncle Tom’s Cabin, who wrote it down:
Well, jest as I was goin’ out to git into the wagon, I met God! an’ says I, “O
God, I didn’t know as you was so great!” An’ I turned right round an’ come
into the house, an’ set down in my room; for ’twas God all around me. I
could feel it burnin’, burnin’, burnin’ all around me, an’ goin’ through me;
an’ I saw I was so wicked, it seemed as ef it would burn me up. An’ I said,
“O somebody, somebody, stand between God an’ me! for it burns me!”
Then, honey, when I said so, I felt as it were somethin’ like an amberill
[umbrella] that came between me an’ the light, an’ I felt it was somebody,—
somebody that stood between me an’ God; an’ it felt cool, like a shade; an’
says I, “Who’s this that stands between me an’ God?”…I begun to feel
’twas somebody that loved me; an’ I tried to know him.…An’ finally
somethin’ spoke out in me an’ said, This is Jesus! An’ I spoke out with all
my might, an’ says I, “This is Jesus! Glory be to God!” An’ then the whole
world grew bright, an’ the trees they waved an’ waved in glory, an’ every
little bit o’ stone on the ground shone like glass; an’ I shouted an’ said,
“Praise, praise, praise to the Lord!” An’ I begun to feel such a love in my
soul as I never felt before,—love to all creatures. An’ then, all of a sudden,
it stopped, an’ I said, “Dar’s de white folks that have abused you an’ beat
you an’ abused your people,—think o’ them!” But then there came another
rush of love through my soul, an’ I cried out loud,—“Lord, Lord, I can love
even de white folks!”…I jes’ walked round an’ round in a dream. Jesus
loved me! I knowed it,—I felt it. Jesus was my Jesus.3
Belle’s conversion to Christ made a profound impact on her. Almost
immediately she began preaching and talking about Jesus every chance she
got. She took her children to church regularly and became very involved in
the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) church. In fact, one member of the
Dumont family described Belle during this time as a “roaring Methodist.”4
Taking her son Peter with her, Belle moved to New York City in 1829,
where she worked as a housekeeper until Peter was old enough to take care
of himself. After many years in New York City, Belle felt God leading her
to become an itinerant evangelist, going wherever He led her and depending
on His providence to care for her needs. She already had a reputation as a
powerful, forceful, and convincing preacher in her church; now God wanted
her to step out and preach to others.
Belle felt that the name given her as a slave was inappropriate for a
person setting out on a new life as God’s pilgrim, so she asked God to give
her a new name. She recalled a verse from Psalm 39: “Hear my prayer, O
Lord, and give ear unto my cry…for I am a stranger with Thee, and a
sojourner, as all my fathers were” (Ps. 39:12, KJV). She felt that “Sojourner”
was a good name for someone who wandered up and down the land,
showing the people their sins.5
She also wanted a new last name. Again remembering Scripture, she
was inspired by Jesus’ words, “And ye shall know the truth, and the truth
shall make you free” (John 8:32, KJV). Since Sojourner now had only one
master, God, and His name was Truth, she became Sojourner Truth.6
Years later, she explained her name change to Harriet Beecher Stowe:
When I left the house of bondage, I left everything behind. I wa’nt goin’ to
keep nothin’ of Egypt on me, an’ so I went to the Lord an’ asked Him to
give me a new name. And the Lord gave me Sojourner, because I was to
travel up an’ down the land, showin’ the people their sins, an’ bein’ a sign
unto them. Afterwards I told the Lord I wanted another name, ’cause
everybody else had two names; and the Lord gave me Truth, because I was
to declare the truth to the people.7

Rise of an Activist
Following God’s instruction to “go east,” Sojourner headed across Long
Island, preaching on the farms and in villages along the way. She had no
trouble gathering a crowd because a black woman itinerant preacher was an
oddity. Those who came to hear Sojourner were moved by the hymns she
sang and by the persuasive power of her message and personality. Before
long, her reputation spread until she was so popular that whenever she
showed up at a religious gathering in a town or village, people flocked to
hear her. Her message focused on the love and mercy of God and on the
evils of slavery, which quickly became the central focus of her ministry.
Sojourner’s travels eventually brought her to Northampton,
Massachusetts, where she stayed for a while at a cooperative community,
the Northampton Association of Education and Industry. The community,
which operated a silkworm farm and made silk, was run by Samuel L. Hill,
an ex-Quaker, and George Benson. Both men were ardent supporters of the
abolition of slavery, and Benson was the brother-in-law of William Lloyd
Garrison, who was considered by many to be the leader of the antislavery
movement.8
Sojourner’s stay at Northampton brought her into contact with many of
the prominent abolitionist leaders of the day: Garrison, Wendell Phillips,
Park Pillsbury, David Ruggles, and Frederick Douglass. Because of the
forcefulness of her personality and her captivating hold on audiences,
Sojourner was recruited by the abolitionists and began to travel with some
of them, lecturing in many towns and villages. Also during her stay at
Northampton, Sojourner heard lecturers advocating equal political and legal
rights for women. This call for women’s freedom struck a responsive chord
in Sojourner’s heart, and she became an active supporter and lecturer for
women’s rights. These were natural responses for her because she was
black and a woman in a society that placed severe restrictions on both
blacks and females.9
Where did Sojourner Truth get the courage to be so bold as a black
woman in such a repressive society? She was absolutely convinced that
God would protect her as she tried to follow His instructions and do His
will. Once, before a meeting, trouble was anticipated. Her friends
encouraged her to carry a pistol, but Sojourner responded, “I carry no
weapon; the Lord will preserve me without weapons. I feel safe even in the
midst of my enemies; for the truth is powerful and will prevail.”10
God honored her faith. Even though she suffered much ridicule and
abuse, at times being shouted down, spat upon, and even stoned, she never
gave up, never lost faith, never wavered in courage, and never was seriously
injured. The focus of Sojourner’s abolitionist message was different from
that of others. Whereas most abolitionists stressed the plight of the slaves,
Sojourner stressed the plight of the slave owners, who, she warned, would
end up in hell if they did not change. This was not speech tinged with
hatred but rather Christlike concern.
At a meeting in Syracuse, New York, in 1850, she shared the podium
with a popular abolitionist speaker named George Thompson. Some of the
audience who had come to hear Thompson were angry when Sojourner rose
to speak first. She demonstrated her remarkable ability to calm a crowd and
speak right to their hearts when she said to them, “I’ll tell you what
Thompson is going to say to you. He is going to argue that the poor
Negroes ought to be out of slavery and in the heavenly state of freedom.
But, children, I’m against slavery because I want to keep the white folks
who hold slaves from getting sent to hell.”11
On another occasion, when the radical abolitionist Henry C. Wright
bitterly attacked churches that cooperated with slavery, calling them “so-
called churches,” Sojourner disagreed. She said, “We ought to be like
Christ. He said, ‘Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.’ If we
want to lead the people, we must not be out of their sight.”12

Advocate for Women

Sojourner Truth is remembered most for an extemporaneous speech she
gave at a convention on women’s rights held in Akron, Ohio, in 1851. Her
attendance at the convention was unexpected. She had been lecturing in
another Ohio town when she heard of the meeting in Akron. When she
arrived, the church hosting the convention was already full.
Amid whispers and murmurs, Sojourner walked proudly to the front and
sat down on one of the steps leading to the pulpit. No other seats were
available. The others attending the conference had mixed reactions to
Sojourner’s presence. Some were eager to hear her speak, while others,
fearing that her involvement with the abolitionist movement would lead to
negative publicity for the Akron conference, appealed to Mrs. Frances
Gage, the convener of the conference, to not let Sojourner speak.
During the first day of the conference, Sojourner made no attempt to
speak. She simply sat quietly, listening to the different speakers. Both sides
of the issue were debated. Most of those in attendance favored equal rights
for women, but a number of people did not. Many of these were members
of the clergy who sought to attack the movement on biblical grounds.
On the second day of the conference, Sojourner listened as a succession
of ministers spoke. One claimed that men deserved greater rights and
privileges than women because men were more intelligent than women.
Another claimed that men should rule over women because Christ was a
man. A third said that women had a lower status because Eve had
committed the original sin. Still another minister said that women were
inferior to men because they were weaker and had to be helped into
carriages and over mud puddles and the like.
 After this verbal barrage the room was silent. In those days there were
few women who dared to speak up in a public meeting, particularly in the
face of a strong male presence. Sojourner, however, had no such timidity.
She stood up and moved to the podium, looking at Mrs. Gage for
permission to speak. There were hisses and murmurs from those in the
audience who did not want to hear her. Mrs. Gage hesitated for a few
moments, then introduced the speaker by saying simply, “Sojourner Truth.”
Sojourner calmed her audience by slowly and deliberately removing her
bonnet and waiting for a few moments before beginning. She addressed
point by point the arguments presented by the ministers who had preceded
her:
Dat man ober dar say dat womin needs to be helped into carriages, and
lifted ober ditches, and to hab de best place everywhar. Nobody eber helps
me into carriages, or ober mud-puddles, or gibs me any best place! And
ain’t I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed, and
planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain’t I a
woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man—when I could get
it—and bear de lash as well! And ain’t I a woman? I have borne…chilern,
and seen ’em mos’ all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my
mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain’t I a woman?13
Regarding the claim that men are more intelligent than women,
Sojourner said, “What’s intellect got to do wid womin’s rights or black
folks’ rights? If my cup won’t hold but a pint, and yours holds a quart,
wouldn’t you be mean not to let me have my little half-measure full?”14
To the minister who claimed women’s inferiority because Christ was a
man, Sojourner gave this rebuke: “Whar did your Christ come from? From
God and a woman! Man had nothin’ to do wid Him.”15
Concerning Eve’s position as the first sinner and thus relegating women
to a lower position than men, Sojourner said, “If de fust woman God ever
made was strong enough to turn de world upside down all alone, dese
women togedder ought to be able to turn it back, and get it right side up
again! And now dey is askin’ to do it, de men better let ’em. Bleeged to ye
for hearin’ on me, and now ole Sojourner han’t got nothin’ more to say.”16
Loud cheers and long applause followed Sojourner’s spontaneous
speech. It was the turning point of the conference, winning the day for the
supporters of women’s rights.

Sojourner’s Legacy
Sojourner Truth approached life with dignity, courage, and deep
commitment to the God who had shown His love to her in such a profound
way. She remained a staunch advocate for women’s rights and the abolition
of slavery. Like many others she rejoiced at President Lincoln’s signing of
the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863. After the Civil War she worked
tirelessly for the betterment and advancement of her race. We can take
courage from the life of Sojourner Truth because, by God’s help and
direction, she overcame obstacles and met challenges greater than any that
most of us will ever face.
She was black, female, and illiterate; yet she captivated and moved
countless numbers of white, educated, and highly refined people. She
conquered hatred and bitterness in her own heart and returned love and
compassion to everyone, even to those who hated her and abused her.
Sojourner’s motivation for everything that she did was her love for God and
His love shed abroad in her heart. She was endowed with a supernatural
courage from beyond herself that made her fearless in the face of
opposition. When she gave herself to the Lord, she gave herself completely,
and He used her accordingly. Sojourner Truth spent more than fifty years on
the front lines, and God sustained her and guided her steps.
God never changes in nature, purpose, or character. As He guided and
sustained Sojourner Truth, so He will guide and sustain you and me as we
trust and follow Him. The same courage He gave to her, He will give to us.
We can believe Him and claim His promise.
Lord, I see that each one of us is a sojourner for Your truth, going through
our lives in complete reliance on You. Help me to respond to your distinct
call on my own life, and to obey you with all my strength. Give me the
courage to face fear after fear, year after year. Whether or not my name ever
becomes famous to other people, may I come know Your joy in me. Glory
to Your holy name. Amen.
 Chapter 6

Harriet Tubman
GO DOWN, MOSES

One day in April 1860, a fugitive slave named Charles Nalle was captured
in Troy, New York. According to the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, it was
legal to capture runaway slaves found in the North and return them to their
owners in the South. Nalle had escaped from a Virginia plantation in 1858
and joined his wife and children, who had been set free earlier, in
Pennsylvania. They later moved to Troy, where Charles had found work.
Charles and his wife were “octoroons”—one-eighth black and seven-
eighths white—and therefore looked white. Nevertheless, a man in Troy
suspected Charles of being a runaway and had him arrested.
Charles was held in the city courthouse, which was soon surrounded by
angry protesters from the strongly antislavery town. The officials were
hesitant to bring Nalle down through the crowd to a waiting wagon. Then
an old black woman walked into the courthouse. Seeing a young boy
nearby, she told him to run outside and yell, “Fire, fire!” as loudly as he
could. In the ensuing chaos on the streets, the officials saw their chance and
brought Charles downstairs. The old woman yelled through a window to the
crowd, “Don’t let them take him! Don’t let them take him!” Then she
attacked the nearest officer holding Nalle, knocking him down. Grabbing
Nalle by the arm, she pulled him out of the courthouse and into the midst of
the crowd.1
Nalle was transported by the crowd down to the river where a rowboat
took him across. His mysterious rescuer followed in a ferryboat. On the
other side a policeman saw Nalle’s handcuffs and detained him. He was
taken to a nearby house. The old black woman and other rescuers promptly
stormed the house. Two of them were wounded by police gunfire, but the
woman and the others succeeded in rescuing Nalle once again. By chance, a
man was passing by in a wagon. Upon finding out what was happening, he
immediately relinquished his wagon. Nalle was put aboard with a few of his
supporters, and they escaped to Schenectady, New York, and subsequently
to Canada.2
The “old” black woman who so boldly secured Charles Nalle’s rescue
was in fact forty-year-old Harriet Tubman, herself a runaway slave with a
heavy price on her head. Since her own escape from a Maryland plantation
eleven years earlier, Harriet had repeatedly put her life on the line by
returning to the South to lead many fellow slaves to freedom. On that day in
Troy, Harriet was visiting a cousin and had heard about Nalle’s capture.
Although the broad daylight and public nature of the rescue were not
typical of Harriet’s methods, the bold action and unshakable courage were
certainly characteristic of her.

Liberty or Death
Harriet’s commitment to freedom—for herself as well as for others—was
forged by two major influences in her life. The first of these was slavery
itself. As a young child of six years, Harriet had been hired out by her
owner to work for a succession of different people, many of whom abused
her terribly. Very early she learned to endure the lash of the whip on her
back and was often beaten severely for minor offenses—sometimes for no
reason at all. As Harriet grew older, the conviction grew in her heart that
everyone deserved to be free. Slavery was unjust. Freedom was worth any
price.
 The second influence in the development of Harriet’s character was her
faith. Along with many other slaves, Harriet and her family found strength
and comfort in the community they shared together. Sundays afforded them
the opportunity to gather for informal worship services. They listened to
Bible stories, sang songs inspired by those stories, and prayed. The slaves
found hope and encouragement in the experiences of biblical characters
such as Job, Joseph, Noah, Paul, Abraham, and Moses. Jesus was especially
dear to them because He had suffered the way they suffered.3
By the time Harriet reached adulthood, her hatred of slavery had made
her determined to be free at any cost, while her faith in God had instilled in
her a confidence in her success and a fearlessness regarding her own
personal safety. Those who saw Harriet in action during her years of
personally leading slaves to freedom were impressed by the fact that she
displayed absolutely no fear for herself while taking every care to protect
the runaways she was responsible for. She believed implicitly that God was
directing her steps and protecting her, and that she would be taken only
when and if God willed it. As Harriet herself expressed it to friends years
later, “There are two things I have a right to, liberty or death. If I can’t have
one, I will have the other. For no man will take me alive. I will fight for my
liberty as long as my strength lasts, and when the time comes for me to go,
the Lord will let them take me.”4
When she was twenty-five, Harriet married John Tubman, a free black
man. John had been born free and therefore had never known what slavery
was like. He had a difficult time understanding Harriet’s burning desire to
be free. When Harriet made the decision to run away, she could not
persuade John to come north with her, so she determined to go alone.
Five years after her marriage, Harriet knew that the time had come to
make her escape. She was prompted to act by the rumor and fear that she
was about to be “sold south”—sold to another master in the deep South
where escape was much less likely and conditions for slaves much worse
than in Maryland. Harriet knew it was now or never. Carrying a slip of
paper bearing the name of someone who would help her, Harriet took off
through the woods one night. The paper had been given to her by a Quaker
woman who had also given Harriet directions for finding the house where
this person lived.
Harriet found the house and was welcomed and sheltered during the day
hours. Then in the night she was taken to the edge of town and given
directions for finding the next place of shelter. Harriet was now a
“passenger” on the “Underground Railroad” that she had heard about since
her childhood. Gradually over many days, traveling at night and taking
shelter by day, Harriet covered more than ninety miles, finally reaching
Wilmington, Delaware. She took shelter with a Quaker named Thomas
Garrett, who ran a shoe store. He allowed Harriet to rest for a day and gave
her new shoes to replace her worn-out ones. That night he took her to the
road north and told her to watch for the wooden sign that would mark the
state line between Delaware and Pennsylvania.
The moment she walked across the state line into Pennsylvania, which
was a free state, Harriet was overwhelmed with joy. For the first time in her
life she was free. Years later she described the feeling: “I looked at my
hands to see if I was the same person now I was free. Dere was such a glory
trou de trees and ober de fields, and I felt like I was in heaven.”5

The “Moses” of Her People

Harriet made her way to Philadelphia, where she found work as a cook and
maid at a hotel. She also found an inexpensive place to rent and began
enjoying life as a free woman. Her heart was burdened, however, at the
thought of her family—her brothers and sisters and her aging parents—still
in bondage. She resolved within herself that with the Lord’s help she would
see all of them to freedom. Before long she became involved with the
Philadelphia Vigilance Committee, a branch of the Underground Railroad.
The Committee helped runaway slaves in every way possible—from
organizing escapes to helping escapees adjust to freedom.
In 1850 the Committee learned that Harriet’s sister Mary Ann and her
family wanted to escape. They were in danger of being “sold south.” The
Committee made arrangements to get them as far as Baltimore, but they
needed someone to bring them the rest of the way. Without a moment’s
hesitation Harriet said she would go.
Some of Harriet’s friends were worried that she might be caught if she
went back into Maryland, but Harriet herself had no such fear. She traveled
to Baltimore, where she waited until her sister, brother-in-law, and their
children arrived. Harriet hid them for several days and then successfully
brought them to Philadelphia. This was the first of a total of nineteen trips
into Maryland that Harriet made in the decade before the Civil War. She is
credited with personally leading more than three hundred slaves to freedom,
including, as she had promised, her parents and all her brothers and sisters
and their families.
What is even more remarkable is that she never lost a single one. Every
slave who followed Harriet was delivered safely to freedom in the North.
Harriet was bold, fearless, creative, cunning, and, when necessary, severe.
Most of the runaways who followed her trusted her absolutely. Occasionally
one or two would give in to fear and want to turn back. Whenever this
happened, Harriet would pull a pistol from beneath her skirt and promise to
shoot anyone who turned back. (Any runaways who returned home would
be tortured into revealing information about the Underground Railroad,
possibly endangering many lives. There was too much at stake.)
Time after time Harriet ventured into Maryland on her missions of
freedom. Her reputation spread far and wide among the slaves, who called
her the “Moses” of her people, as well as among the slaveholders, who put
a $40,000 price on her head. Despite this, she labored on fearlessly,
working hard and giving God the credit: “Jes’ so long as he wanted to use
me, he would take keer of me, an’ when he didn’t want me no longer, I was
ready to go; I always tole him, ‘I’m gwine to hole steady onto you, an’
you’ve got to see me trou.’”6
Harriet talked to God constantly, and, in answer to her prayers, He
spoke to her through dreams and visions. As a child of thirteen, Harriet had
been severely injured when a plantation overseer, trying to stop a fleeing
slave, had thrown an iron weight at him. Instead of hitting the man, the
weight hit Harriet squarely on the forehead, crushing in the front of her
skull. For weeks she had lingered at the point of death, in and out of
consciousness. It took her months to recover. After this, she began to have
vivid, even prophetic, dreams.
For the rest of her life, Harriet also suffered periodic attacks of
narcolepsy—she would suddenly fall asleep in the middle of whatever she
was saying or doing, sleep for a few minutes, then wake up, picking up
where she had left off as though nothing had happened.
In 1851 Harriet made a trip into Maryland to lead James, her oldest
brother, to freedom. James and two friends left with Harriet in the middle of
the night. Unfortunately, their escape was discovered very early and they
were quickly pursued by bloodhounds and men on horseback. It seemed
that only a miracle could save them.
 As they ran through the woods, Harriet heard a voice inside warning her
of danger ahead. She turned to the left and the men followed, only to find
their way blocked by a river. Harriet’s voice told her to cross the river.
Without hesitation she plunged in and began wading to the other side. The
water rose to her waist, then to her shoulders, then to her chin. Then it got
shallower again until she reached the other side. The three men with her
hesitated at first, then plunged in after her with their pursuers close behind
them in the woods. The four of them soon came to a cabin where a family
of free blacks lived. There they received shelter and food. Later, Harriet
learned that just ahead of them, before they had turned to cross the river,
posters had been placed advertising rewards for their capture and officers
had been waiting for them.7
Had Harriet not listened to the voice inside her, she and her charges
would surely have been captured. This is just one example of the divine
guidance and providence that sustained Harriet and helped her succeed
against incredible odds. Harriet and those with her made it safely to the
Wilmington, Delaware, home of Thomas Garrett, the Quaker who had
originally helped Harriet during her own escape.
Garrett was quite impressed with Harriet, and particularly by her
confidence in and dependence upon God. He said of her:
For in truth I never met with any person, of any color, who had more
confidence in the voice of God, as spoken direct to her soul.…She talked
with God, and he talked with her every day of her life.…She felt no more
fear of being arrested by her former master, or any other person, when in his
immediate neighborhood, than she did in the State of New York, or Canada,
for she said she never ventured [except] where God sent her, and her faith in
the Supreme Power was great.8

Harriet’s Legacy
Harriet settled with her parents in Auburn, New York, in 1857 and made her
last trip into Maryland in November 1860, just a few months before the
Civil War began. During the war she was recruited as a spy and a scout for
the Union, and successfully carried out several information-gathering
missions behind Confederate lines. She also served as a nurse, gaining quite
a reputation as a healer. Harriet had learned from her father many native
remedies from herbs and tree roots, and the medicines she made from these
often worked better than the more modern kinds that the doctors used.
After the war she returned to Auburn, married Nelson Davis, a black
soldier she had met during the war, and became involved in the women’s
suffrage movement. (Her first husband, who had stayed in Maryland, had
also remarried.) She always opened her home to any who were in need—
particularly blacks—and was so generous with her resources that she
struggled all her life to have enough money for her own needs.
In her later years she established on her property a home for aged and
impoverished blacks. Eventually, Harriet deeded the property and the home
to the AME Zion Church, in which she was actively involved during her
years in Auburn. Harriet Tubman died in Auburn on March 10, 1913,
greatly admired and respected for her courage, service, and high Christian
and moral character. She was given a military funeral.
Harriet Tubman’s life is a testimony to what a person can do when he or
she learns to listen to God’s voice and obey without question. Because she
trusted not in herself but in Him, she found His courage, strength, wisdom,
insight, and protection available to her. Those same resources are ours as
well if we will trust God and not depend on ourselves.
Heavenly Father, I offer myself to You once again, asking You to show me
more clearly how to fulfill my destiny. I know that, like Harriet Tubman’s
call, mine will involve leading people out of slavery and bondage—of many
kinds—into the glorious freedom of the kingdom of God. Although I may
never speak on a public platform or see my name published, I want to serve
You with a steady and courageous heart. Yes and amen!
 Chapter 7

Aimee Semple McPherson

YESTERDAY, TODAY, AND
FOREVER

It was a sight no one in Mount Forest, Ontario, had ever seen before: a
slim, attractive young woman standing on a chair in the middle of the small
town’s main intersection. With her eyes closed and her arms raised, she said
nothing and did not move. The crowd that quickly gathered around her was
curious, amused, puzzled. Murmured questions were passed from one to
another, receiving shrugged shoulders in reply. There were a few snickers.
For several minutes the young woman stood silent and motionless as the
ever-growing crowd stared at her.
Suddenly, she jumped off the chair, picked it up, and ran down the
street, calling back to the crowd, “Follow me!” They did, and she led them
into a small mission church building where, after the doors were closed
behind them, she preached Christ to them. It was August 1915. The
audience-gathering technique was a Salvation Army tactic known as a
“Hallelujah run”; the meeting place was a tiny, struggling Pentecostal
church named Victory Mission; and the energetic woman preacher was a
twenty-four-year-old evangelist named Aimee Semple McPherson. This day
was a significant one for Aimee; until her death nearly thirty years later, she
never again had to work at gathering a crowd.1
One source of Aimee’s tremendous appeal to the millions who flocked
to her meetings over the years was that she never forgot who she was, a
simple Canadian country farm girl. In fact, her story of how God called her
from her simple origins to do the work of His kingdom became a major
theme in her preaching.
Another source of her popularity was her flair for the dramatic. Her
style was different from that of anyone else. Early on, she developed the use
of “illustrated sermons”—staged messages that eventually reached a
complexity and quality equal to those of Hollywood films and professional
theater. The primary reason for her lasting appeal, however, was the
sincerity and simplicity of her message. Aimee Semple McPherson was
genuinely concerned about the spiritual condition of the people who came
to hear her, and it showed in her actions.
She preached a simple gospel centered on Hebrews 13:8: “Jesus Christ
the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever” (KJV). How did a simple
Canadian farm girl rise up to become one of the most popular, prominent,
and influential Christian evangelists of the twentieth century, even being
referred to by many as “the female Billy Sunday”?

Humble Beginnings
Aimee Elizabeth Kennedy was born October 9, 1890, in Salford, Ontario,
Canada, to James and Minnie Kennedy. Minnie was James’ second wife
and was thirty-five years his junior—younger than any of his children by
his deceased first wife. Minnie was originally brought into the Kennedy
home to care for James’ first wife as she struggled with her terminal illness.
After her death, James decided to marry his wife’s nurse. It was a marriage
of convenience: James needed a woman on the farm, and Minnie, an orphan
who had been traveling with some Salvation Army officers, needed a
home.2
Aimee’s early life revolved around the slow seasonal cycles of the farm,
the Methodist church of her father, and the Salvation Army of her mother.
All these factors helped shape Aimee’s personality and character. Both
Methodism and Salvationism were major influences in the later
development of her spiritual attitudes and approach to ministry. From an
early age Aimee displayed a talent for public speaking; during her school
years she won several medals. She was a bright student, and by her teen
years was in demand locally for parties, concerts, plays, and other types of
entertainment. Popular, energetic, and fun loving, Aimee brightened up
whatever corner she was in.
One day on the way to a drama rehearsal in nearby Ingersoll, Aimee
stopped in at a small Pentecostal mission. She had heard a little about the
“Pentecostals,” was curious, and wanted to observe for a few minutes. In
spite of herself she was captivated by the handsome young visiting
evangelist who spoke with a melodic Irish brogue. His name was Robert
Semple. After only a few minutes, Aimee was hooked, not only by Robert,
but by his message as well. Realizing her need to repent of her sins and
come to Jesus, Aimee agonized for three days over the cost of following
God, then threw herself heart and soul into her newfound faith.3
For Aimee, once she had made her decision, there was no turning back,
no halfway measures. It was all or nothing.

A Rocky Start
Before long, romance blossomed between Aimee and Robert, and they
married at Aimee’s home in August 1908. The newlyweds embarked on
evangelistic work together, spending about a year ministering alongside
William Durham, a former Baptist and early Pentecostal leader in Chicago.
Answering the call for world evangelization that so many Pentecostals felt
at the time, Robert and Aimee left Chicago in January 1910 to go to China
as missionaries. They arrived in Hong Kong on June 1, 1910, and joined
several other Pentecostal missionaries who were already there.
Their excitement was short lived, however. In August, after barely two
months in China, both Robert and Aimee contracted severe cases of
malaria. Aimee, eight months pregnant, recovered slowly, but Robert did
not. On August 19, 1910, one week after their second anniversary, Robert
died.
Sad, lonely, and confused, Aimee returned to the United States with her
infant daughter, Roberta, and moved in with her mother, who was now
living in New York City. (Minnie had answered the call of Salvation Army
work in New York, leaving her aged husband James on the farm in Salford.)
Aimee did some Salvation Army work for a few weeks but was
increasingly restless. She took Roberta and went to Chicago to renew
relationships with friends whom she and Robert had known there. A brief
visit to her father in Salford followed. Aimee then went back to Chicago,
hoping to settle and get involved in Pentecostal work there. Roberta’s poor
health intervened, however, and Aimee returned to New York City.
Early in 1911 Aimee met Harold McPherson. After several months of
dating, he proposed marriage and she accepted. Minnie disapproved,
however, so Harold and Aimee eloped to Chicago, where they were married
in a civil ceremony. A church wedding followed a few weeks later. With
this marriage to an American, Aimee became an American citizen.4
Unfortunately, the marriage was troubled from the start. Harold wanted
Aimee to focus on him and their relationship, but Aimee quickly became
heavily involved once more with her Pentecostal friends and the activities
and ministries she and Robert had worked in a couple of years before.
During this time Aimee struggled with guilt over the feeling that she
had abandoned the call of God that had once seemed so clear. She began to
feel that she was being forced to make a decision between Harold and God.
Even the birth of a son, Rolf, in March 1913, did not settle the domestic
situation for Aimee and Harold. It took a severe health crisis for Aimee to
decide her direction in life.
Late in 1913 Aimee fell ill and required surgery. She did not recover
adequately and needed additional surgery. She resisted, apparently in the
hope that God would heal her. An attack of appendicitis made her condition
critical. Even after surgery she was not expected to live. While lying in a
room set apart for the dying, Aimee heard a voice she believed to be God’s
saying, “Now will you go?” Recognizing that she had a choice of either
entering eternity or entering the ministry, she yielded. Instantly her pain
went away and she could breathe more easily. Within two weeks she was up
and about.5
Harold did not understand Aimee’s renewed commitment to God’s call
to full-time ministry. Aimee believed that God had spared her only because
she had vowed to obey His call. She felt she had to follow God whether
Harold did or not. In late June 1915, while Harold was out of town, Aimee
took her children and went to Salford. Leaving them with her father and her
mother, who was visiting from New York, Aimee attended a camp meeting
in a nearby town where she ministered powerfully, speaking in tongues and
praying for people to receive the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Her career as
an evangelist was off and running.6
Immediately after leaving with their children, Aimee had sent a
telegram to Harold: “I have tried to walk your way and have failed. Won’t
you come now and walk my way? I am sure we will be happy.”7
After failing to persuade her to return through numerous letters and
telegrams, Harold did show up for the meetings in Mount Forest, Ontario,
where one night he received the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Following this,
Aimee and Harold embarked together on a full-time evangelistic ministry,
traveling up and down the eastern United States and holding meetings
wherever they could. Harold was not really cut out for this kind of life,
however, and they began to drift apart. Early in 1918, he and Aimee
separated. They divorced in 1921.

San Diego, California, 1921

The end of her marriage to Harold was difficult personally for Aimee, but it
enabled her to give single-minded devotion to her ministry. Once she began
in earnest in 1915, her fame spread and her popularity grew. This remained
true even later, despite the stigma of her divorce. Everywhere she went she
experienced overflow crowds and the apparent presence and power of God
in her meetings and messages.
By 1919 Aimee and her children had settled in Los Angeles, California,
the city that would be her home for the rest of her life and that she used as a
base for her itinerant evangelism. She always called her house on Orange
Grove Drive in Los Angeles the “House That God Built,” because the land,
the house, its furnishings, and the landscaping—all just a half block away
from a school for her children—had been donated to her by people
attending her meetings.8
The year 1921 was one of remarkable meetings for Aimee, beginning in
San Diego, California, in January. The meetings were held in the 3,000-seat
Dreamland Arena, which very quickly proved inadequate to contain the
crowds that turned out each day. Aimee conducted both preaching services
and healing services, and the public response to both was phenomenal.
Thousands had to be turned away every day, causing Aimee to institute a
reservations system, giving free tickets to and reserving half of the building
for those who had not yet been able to attend a service.9
Unlike many other evangelists of the time who stressed “hellfire and
brimstone,” Aimee focused on a message of love and acceptance. This was
undoubtedly one of the major reasons for her enormous appeal. Aimee’s
message was, in her own words, “the simple story of Jesus’ love, and the
outpoured Holy Spirit who has come to convict us of sin and draw us to the
cross of Calvary, where, as we confess our sin, Jesus…cleanseth us from all
unrighteousness.”10
She believed that the secret of her success was her emphasis on Christ.
Originally scheduled for two weeks, the meetings were extended twice.
Even after five weeks there was no ebb in the tide of people coming for
prayer, especially prayer for healing. Aimee tried at first to pray personally
for as many as possible, but the demand was too great. In response to the
overwhelming need, two outdoor healing services were scheduled in Balboa
Park. San Diego police, augmented by US Marines and US Army
personnel, handled traffic and crowd control. A Salvation Army band, an
orchestra, and a large combined choir were on hand. Aimee also depended
on a group of local ministers present to assist in anointing the sick with oil,
the laying on of hands, and praying for healing.11
As many as 30,000 people crowded into the park. The service began at
10:30 in the morning and by nightfall the sick were still coming. The
January 1921 meetings in San Diego are just one example of the enormous
popularity and influence that Aimee Semple McPherson enjoyed
throughout her ministry, particularly in the early years.

The Foursquare Gospel

On January 1, 1923, Aimee Semple McPherson dedicated the Angelus
Temple, the church building in Los Angeles that would become the hub of
the wide-ranging ministries of her Echo Park Evangelistic Association. The
full, or official, name of the church was the International Church of the
Foursquare Gospel. The name “foursquare” referred to a four-point theme
or emphasis that had become the doctrinal core of Aimee’s preaching by the
summer of 1922. The church history gives these details:
Aimee Semple McPherson explained Ezekiel’s vision in the book of
Ezekiel, chapter one. Ezekiel saw God revealed as a being with four
different faces: a man, a lion, an ox and an eagle.
To Sister Aimee, those four faces were like the four phases of the gospel
of Jesus Christ. In the face of the man, she saw Jesus our Savior. In the face
of the lion, she saw Jesus the mighty Baptizer with the Holy Spirit and fire.
In the face of the ox, she saw Jesus the Great Burden-Bearer, who took our
infirmities and carried our sicknesses. In the face of the eagle, she saw Jesus
the Coming King, who will return in power and victory for the church. It
was a perfect, complete Gospel. It was a Gospel that faces squarely in every
direction; it was the “Foursquare Gospel.” The four symbols perhaps most
identified with Foursquare today are the cross, cup, dove and crown which
stand for Jesus the Savior, Jesus the Healer, Jesus the Baptizer with the
Holy Spirit, and Jesus the Soon-Coming King, respectively.12
From the outset, Angelus Temple was one of the largest churches in Los
Angeles. Its 5,300-seat sanctuary was filled to capacity regularly. The large
platform area was built on hydraulic pistons so it could be raised or lowered
to accommodate the needs of Aimee’s illustrated sermons, which were an
ever-popular feature of the Temple’s Sunday night service. A full schedule
of services of different types and for different age groups kept the church
open seven days a week. Her message was so simple and straightforward,
her style so warm, and her methods so innovative, that she attracted a wide
and diverse audience: Hollywood actors and actresses, politicians, common
folk, African Americans, and even members of the Ku Klux Klan.
The various ministries of the Temple were very practical in focus,
seeking to meet human needs in any form. The Temple commissary, which
began operation in 1923, provided for the needs of thousands of poor and
destitute people in the Los Angeles area. Other ministries extended help to
women in trouble, alcoholics, prostitutes, and the uneducated. The Angelus
Temple Prayer Tower also began in 1923, receiving and praying for
thousands of requests and needs. From its beginning and for decades after
Aimee’s death, the Prayer Tower operated twenty-four hours a day, every
day of the year.
Each of these ministries reflected the heart of the woman who inspired
them. Aimee genuinely loved people. She reached out personally to them
wherever she went, often laboring far into the night to minister to them.
People everywhere responded to her and loved her for her compassion.
Her heart for people also made her bold. She did not hesitate to go into
a city’s “red-light district” to talk with the prostitutes, to love them and
share Jesus with them, and to invite them to her meetings. In San Diego in
1921, Aimee appeared between rounds at a boxing match to challenge those
attending to find the “worst sinner in the city” and bring that person with
them to the meeting the next night, where she promised to “go into the ring
for Jesus.”13
Aimee had a pioneering spirit and a vision for the future. This was
demonstrated by the fact that in February 1924, radio station KFSG began
broadcasting, making Angelus Temple one of the first churches in the
country to own and operate its own radio transmission facility. Aimee
Semple McPherson was also the first woman in America to own a radio-
broadcasting license and was one of the first women to preach over the
radio.
Another sign of her far-reaching vision was her establishment of a
training institute for ministers and other Christian workers. The institute
was named L.I.F.E.: the Lighthouse of International Foursquare
Evangelism. Through the years (under the names Life Bible College and,
today, Life Pacific College), this school has trained thousands of people for
Christian ministry.

Aimee’s Legacy
When Aimee Semple McPherson died on September 27, 1944, she left
behind a remarkable record of accomplishments. The denomination she
founded, the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel, still flourishes
today with hundreds of churches and thousands of members worldwide.
The Angelus Temple in Los Angeles still serves as the headquarters for the
denomination and still conducts services with capacity crowds. Aimee was
the most well-known and popular evangelist of her day. By all accounts, she
was very effective in reaching people with the gospel. During her life she
personally baptized over 100,000 people. Although she is known by many
for her healing ministry, her first priority was evangelism: winning people
to saving faith in Jesus Christ. Healing was a vital part of what she called
“full-gospel evangelism,” but preaching Christ to save sinners was
foremost.
Although she was a Pentecostal, she de-emphasized many of the more
controversial aspects and manifestations of Pentecostalism. She did not
prohibit them, but she kept things under control. Because of this and
because of her infectious personality, Aimee’s ministry enjoyed widespread
interdenominational support. At one time or another, she held ministerial
credentials from the Assemblies of God, a Methodist exhorter’s license, and
a Baptist preaching license.
Aimee Semple McPherson was a woman of courage. She overcame the
grief and trauma of early widowhood and the stigma of two divorces (one
from a later third marriage), and kept working to build a powerful and
effective ministry. In a society that still placed significant social and public
restrictions on women, Aimee prevailed against significant odds: prejudice
against women ministers, the belief that women were not capable of
succeeding without male guidance, and the belief that women did not have
the ability to head large “business” organizations.
She was not afraid to speak the truth even against powerful people. One
evening service at Angelus Temple was attended by hundreds of white-
robed Ku Klux Klansmen. Aimee pulled no punches, saying to them
plainly:
You men who pride yourselves on patriotism, you men who have pledged
yourselves to make America free for white Christianity, listen to me! Ask
yourselves how is it possible to pretend to worship one of the greatest Jews
who ever lived, Jesus Christ, and then to despise all living Jews? I say unto
you as our Master said, “Judge not, that ye be not judged.”14
Aimee even overcame the notorious scandal regarding her six-week
disappearance in the spring of 1926. Her claim to have been kidnapped was
never seriously investigated by the authorities, but their accusations of
fraud, lying, and a sexual affair on her part fell to pieces under investigation
because no evidence of any kind was uncovered to support them.
What was the secret of Aimee’s success in ministry? Perhaps it can be
summed up best in these words of triumphant declaration that Aimee
herself wrote in 1935:
O’er my head the lightning flashes,
Dark’ning clouds the heavens fill;
But I’m sheltered ’neath the cross-tree,
In the center of God’s will;
There I fear no power of darkness,
For tho’ man the body kill,
Yet my soul shall live forever
In the center of God’s will.15
 Chapter 8

Lydia Christensen Prince

THE PEACE OF JERUSALEM

By the time she was thirty-six years old, Lydia Christensen seemed to
have it all: a good job, a good salary, a generous inheritance from her late
father, a secure future, a growing relationship with a man who cared about
her, and the respect of her colleagues in her chosen profession. What more
could she want? Lydia had already achieved the personal goals she had set
for herself as a teacher. In addition to the standard certificates in history,
geography, Danish, and English, she was one of the first teachers in
Denmark to complete postgraduate study in domestic science. Now she was
the director of domestic science in one of the largest and best-equipped
schools in Denmark. Her department was used as a model for similar
departments being established in other schools throughout the nation.1
Lydia Christensen was at the height of her profession.
Like most Danish people of her generation, Lydia was a “good
Lutheran”—baptized as an infant into the Danish state church, instructed as
a child in its doctrines and beliefs, and settled in her religion as an adult,
keeping it and God comfortably at arm’s length. She had long since put
away the childish things of religious devotion in favor of the sophisticated
skepticism of the educated modern adult. Lydia had enough religion to be
respectable but not enough to be inconvenienced.
By all normal standards of human measure, Lydia should have been
happy, satisfied, and on top of the world. Yet she wasn’t. Something was
missing.

The Search for Meaning

As the Christmas holiday of 1926 approached, Lydia Christensen was
growing more and more restless with her life. She sensed that there must be
more than she was experiencing but had no idea what it was. Born into a
well-to-do Danish family, Lydia was the youngest of three children and the
only one still unmarried. While at home with her family over the holiday
break, Lydia discussed her yearnings with her mother. The elder woman felt
that what Lydia was missing was a home and children of her own. Although
Lydia couldn’t explain how she felt, she knew it was deeper than that.
Fumbling for the right words, Lydia told her mother, “If there was
something special in life that another woman wouldn’t do—even if it was
difficult or dangerous—that’s what I’d like to do!”2
After Christmas, Lydia returned to her apartment in the Danish city of
Korsor. She still had a week before school began again. Determined to find
an answer to her inner restlessness, she gave her housekeeper the week off
in order to spend the time completely alone. Bypassing the books of
philosophy and literature on her shelf, Lydia pulled down the Bible that she
hadn’t read since her college days. She opened it to the gospel of Matthew
and began reading. The Beatitudes in chapter 5 spoke to her heart,
especially the words, “Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after
righteousness: for they shall be filled” (Matt. 5:6, KJV). Hungry and thirsty
were just how she felt.
Reading further, she was particularly arrested by Jesus’ words in the
seventh chapter of Matthew:
Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be
opened unto you: for every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh
findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.…Enter ye in at the
strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to
destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: because strait is the
gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that
find it (Matt. 7:7–8,13–14, KJV).
Lydia realized that if she were to find the way of peace and fulfillment,
she had to enter through the gate. In order to find that gate, she would have
to ask God to show her.3 Kneeling in her living room, Lydia prayed aloud,
“O God—I do not understand—I do not understand—who is God, who is
Jesus, who is the Holy Ghost?…but if You will show me Jesus as a living
reality, I will follow Him!”4
God answered Lydia’s prayer. She saw a vision of Jesus standing before
her, and for the first time in her life she knew—beyond doubt—that Jesus
was real and that He was alive. Peace and joy flooded her heart. She
developed a constant hunger for the Bible and for prayer. In response to her
prayer, God delivered her instantly and completely from her smoking habit.
A couple of weeks later, while reading in First John about joy, confession,
cleansing, and forgiveness, Lydia was baptized in the Holy Spirit and spoke
in tongues, something she had not consciously sought or prayed for because
she knew very little about it.

Call to Jerusalem
During the same experience in which she spoke in tongues, Lydia received
her second vision. She saw a barefooted woman in a long dress with an
earthen jar balanced on her head. The woman was dancing slowly with her
hands on her hips and chanting in a shrill voice. She was surrounded by a
group of men who were clapping their hands in time to her song.5 Lydia had
no clue either to the woman’s identity or nationality, yet she felt as if she
were a part of the scene, as if she lived there or belonged there. It would be
weeks before Lydia understood what it meant.
Lydia’s conversion to Christ and baptism in the Holy Spirit created
some difficulties for her professionally. Soon after these experiences she
received water baptism by immersion and joined a small Pentecostal
church. When word of this got around Lydia’s school, she found herself
ridiculed by her students behind her back and ostracized by her fellow
teachers. There was even a movement begun among some of the faculty to
force her to resign. She was called before her superiors to explain her
actions. Although a formal review of her case by the Ministry of Education
reaffirmed her right to her beliefs and her qualifications to teach, Lydia
understood that her commitment to Christ had irreversibly changed many of
her relationships.
Throughout this time, Lydia was still trying to understand the meaning
of her vision of the dancing woman and was seeking to learn God’s will for
her future. When her pastor told her about some churches in Sweden where
people went to receive spiritual counsel, she decided to devote her summer
vacation of 1927 to visiting those Pentecostal churches. One Sunday, at the
largest Pentecostal church in Stockholm, Lydia listened to Dr. Bengt
Karlsson, a Swedish missionary to the Congo, speak of his work there and
his plans to build a small hospital in the jungle. Lydia felt the clear voice of
God that she should help. Under the Spirit’s leadership she gave $3,000—
most of what remained from the inheritance she had received from her
father—to help pay for the hospital.
Lydia had an opportunity to speak with the Karlssons later, and she
shared her own experiences, particularly her questions regarding her vision.
As she described it to them, they helped her see that the dancing woman
was dressed in the style of women in the Holy Land. From that moment
Lydia began to sense a growing awareness that the Holy Land, and
especially Jerusalem, figured significantly in God’s plans for her.
As her conviction grew that God was leading her to go to Jerusalem—
for what reason she had no idea—Lydia had to face several serious
questions. Was she prepared to truly be a woman of faith? Could she trust
God to guide her steps and to provide for her every need no matter what it
was? She had no inheritance left. If she resigned from her teaching position,
she would have no income. Because of her Pentecostal ties, no official
Danish missionary society would appoint her. If she went to Jerusalem, she
would be leaving behind everything and everyone she had ever known and
would be totally dependent upon God. Was she ready to make those
sacrifices? Did she have the faith to take that step?
Two events helped Lydia resolve these questions. On December 4,
1927, during a special day of prayer at her church in Korsor, Lydia received
another vision: the face of a baby girl staring up at her with solemn black
eyes. Lydia sensed that this child was a member of the growing family in
Jerusalem—a family yet unknown to her—that she felt an increasing
burden to pray for. The second event was a precise answer to a specific
prayer. Even though Lydia did not need money, she prayed, “Please God, I
want someone to give me five dollars before midnight tomorrow. If you will
do this, then I will know that you can cause people to supply my needs even
in Jerusalem.”6
At 9:30 p.m. the next night, the school librarian, who was a Christian,
stopped by and gave Lydia five dollars, saying that she had felt an unusual
urging from God to do it. The next day, when she saw Lydia at school, the
librarian gave her another fifteen dollars, explaining that God had laid on
her heart all along to give twenty dollars, but for some reason she had only
given five dollars the first time. Lydia realized that God had answered her
prayer in the precise terms that she had requested. She no longer had any
doubt that she was to go to Jerusalem.
During the spring school term of 1928, Lydia submitted her resignation,
effective with the end of the term in July. Still not knowing why God
wanted her in Jerusalem, Lydia began making preparations for her move.
She sold her furniture, bought her steamship ticket, and arranged to be met
in Palestine by a Swedish woman living in Jerusalem whose name Lydia
had gotten from a missionary magazine.
Lydia sailed from Marseilles, France, on October 8, 1928, and arrived in
Tel Aviv, Palestine, ten days later, where she was met by the Swedish
woman as arranged. They took a taxi to Jerusalem, where Lydia spent the
night with her new friend. The next day Lydia found a place of her own to
rent. It was a small, sparsely furnished basement room, which had a
separate door and stairway leading to the street above, in the home of a
British missionary named Lorna Ratcliffe. Lydia settled in with all her
worldly possessions: two suitcases and a little more than a hundred dollars
in cash. Now it was up to God to supply her needs and reveal to her why
she was there.

Care for the Children

As the first few weeks went by, Lydia’s money dwindled and she was no
closer to understanding why she was in Jerusalem. However, her conviction
that God had led her there and had a purpose for her continued to grow. Her
first impressions of the city of Jerusalem had been shocking, even
frightening.
 Only ten years before, at the end of World War I in 1918, thirteen
centuries of Muslim rule in Palestine—including the previous two hundred
years under the Ottoman Turks—had ended with the establishment of the
British Mandate that now governed Palestine and the adjacent land of
Transjordan. Relations between Arabs and Jews in the region—never very
good to begin with—were strained even more under the new government.
Tensions ran high. Yet early on Lydia began to develop an unshakable love
for the ancient city. She discovered two passages from the Psalms that
opened her eyes to God’s attitude toward Jerusalem:7
If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do
not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth; if I prefer
not Jerusalem above my chief joy. (Ps. 137:5–6, KJV)

Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: they shall prosper that love thee. (Ps.
122:6, KJV)
On Friday, December 28, 1928, a little more than two months after
Lydia had arrived in Jerusalem, there was a knock on her door. Upon
opening it, Lydia met a man named Eliezer Cohen. Mr. Cohen and his wife
had a baby daughter named Tikva, who was dying. He asked Lydia if she
would take Tikva.
Lydia was mystified. Was this her mission in Jerusalem, to care for a
sick and dying child? Besides, how had Mr. Cohen even heard of her? At
first Lydia put Mr. Cohen off, promising to pray about the situation. She
then discovered why Mr. Cohen had come to her. An old, blind Arab
woman named Nijmeh, a Christian who also lived with Lorna Ratcliffe, had
met Tikva’s mother earlier in the day and upon hearing of Tikva’s
condition, had recommended that they give the baby to Lydia. Nijmeh then
explained that she had prayed for years for God to send someone to
Jerusalem to care for children who had no home. Nijmeh believed that
Lydia was that person.8
As Lydia prayed, she became more and more certain that God wanted
her to take Tikva into her care. That very same day Lydia hurried over to
the Cohen’s house to pick her up. Tikva, though more than a year old,
looked much younger because she was so thin and frail from illness. Her
little body was burning with fever. Back at her basement room, Lydia
placed Tikva in her wicker trunk and suddenly realized that Tikva was the
baby she had seen in her vision during the church prayer meeting in Korsor.
God had once again confirmed Lydia’s calling to Jerusalem.
Lydia prayed for Tikva, claiming the promise found in James: “Is any
sick among you? let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray
over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord: And the prayer of
faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up” (Jas. 5:14–15a,
KJV). She took some olive oil and anointed Tikva’s forehead. Lydia then
went to find Nijmeh, and the two women prayed together for Tikva. After a
few hours Tikva’s fever broke, and it became clear that she would recover.9
Eventually, after being returned to her parents, whose marriage had
dissolved in the meantime, the little girl stayed with Lydia permanently and
called her Mama.

Lydia’s Legacy
Lydia Christensen’s life in Jerusalem is a wonderful example of a life truly
lived by faith. She left behind all she had known and, like Abram centuries
before, traveled to an unknown land simply by God’s direction. Her
circumstances demanded complete trust in God for the provision of every
need. Time after time her resources ran low, only to be replenished by the
unexpected arrival of letters or cards containing gifts of money. Some came
from her mother, some from her former colleagues at the school in Korsor,
some from other friends she knew. Some of the gifts were anonymous.
Whatever the source, Lydia continually found her needs met by a bountiful
and faithful God.
Lydia’s absolute faith in God also gave her courage. She endured much
hardship, privation, hunger, thirst, and also physical danger in a city and
land torn by the centuries-old hostilities and strife between Jews and Arabs.
In time, she came to understand that her calling was not only to care for the
homeless children of the city, but also to intercede in prayer—to pray
continually for the “peace of Jerusalem.”
Lydia lived in Jerusalem for more than twenty years, becoming “Mama”
to scores of Arab and Jewish children she kept and loved and cared for in
her home. In 1945 she met Derek Prince, a British soldier stationed in
Jerusalem. At this time Lydia’s “family” consisted of eight girls: six Jewish,
one Palestinian Arab, and one English.10 Derek had become a Christian
several years before in the early days of World War II. After the war he took
his discharge in Jerusalem, entered full-time Christian ministry, and married
Lydia. They remained in Jerusalem until 1948, witnessing the rebirth of the
nation of Israel and enduring the new nation’s war for independence.11
After leaving Israel, Lydia and Derek labored faithfully together
through thirty years of marriage. Together, their Christian service ranged
from pastoring churches in England, to running a school in Kenya, to
heading up a large and expanding international Christian teaching ministry
based in the United States. Their adopted daughters grew up and made their
own lives.
Lydia died suddenly of heart failure in 1975 when she was in her
mideighties. She left behind a legacy of countless lives changed by the
power of God and the living Christ. This is particularly true for those
children who lived with her during her years in Jerusalem. Another, perhaps
even more important legacy is her heart for Jerusalem and its people and
her insight into God’s plan for Israel, gained through many years of faithful
prayer and loving service. This insight is best understood in Lydia’s own
words from a letter she wrote to her mother:
You ask what you can do to help.…We Christians have a debt that has gone
unpaid for many centuries—to Israel and to Jerusalem. It is to them that we
owe the Bible, the prophets, the apostles, the Savior Himself. For far too
long we have forgotten this debt, but now the time has come for us to begin
repaying it—and there are two ways that we can do this. First, we need to
repent of our sins against Israel: at best, our lack of gratitude and concern;
at worst, our open contempt and persecution. Then, out of true love and
concern, we must pray as the psalmist tells us, “for the peace of Jerusalem,”
remembering that peace can only come to Jerusalem as Israel turns back to
God.12
Lydia Christenson Prince is not the only woman who has been called to
be a burden bearer for Jesus, taking up her cross in a foreign land. She is
also not the only one called to be an intercessor for Israel. Learning about
her obedience and courage in the face of deprivation and unknown perils
can infuse new strength to anyone who may be considering (or already
following) the summons of Jesus.
Jesus, I am convinced that you are truly the Good Shepherd, and that you
do not take your eye off even one of your sheep, but that you send trusted
undershepherds to help protect them and care for them. I want to be sturdy
and strong enough in my faith to qualify for your service. I want to be ready
when you beckon to me to turn to the right or the left, to pick up or to lay
down the burdens you give to me. Here I am; use me! Amen.
 Chapter 9

Bertha Smith
WALKING IN THE SPIRIT

For two years Bertha Smith had endured the buzzing in her ears. Although
it was not constant, it was always irritating. Usually it would start in one ear
and then move to the other. A specialist had diagnosed her condition as a
degenerative “growing in” of her eardrums, a condition for which there was
no cure. He told her that she would eventually go deaf. During the two
years after the diagnosis, Bertha prayed daily for God to heal her ears, but
nothing had happened. At that time she was the only Baptist missionary in
the town of Tsining in the Shantung province of China. The church there
had no pastor, so Bertha, although she did not believe in women preachers,
had taken up that responsibility out of necessity.
A Chinese pastor from a large church in another Chinese city was
invited to preach for a week in Bertha’s church in Tsining. Pastor Fan Wei
Ming had a reputation for praying for the sick, so on his first day in Tsining,
Bertha asked him to pray for healing for her ears. He put her off until later
in the week. The preaching theme for the week was personal holiness for
Christians. Pastor Fan preached about the Feast of Unleavened Bread,
urging all who heard to search their hearts for any leaven (sin) that was
there.
During this week Bertha became increasingly convinced by the Holy
Spirit that she was going to be healed. The Spirit also led her into a deep
awareness of the leaven in her own heart, particularly how she had used her
ears to sin, always craving the compliments of others and the praise of men.
Her conviction was so strong that for a time she could not eat or sleep. She
confessed her sin to the Lord and committed her ears to Him for cleansing,
also surrendering her whole being to Him.
On the last Sunday of the meetings, several people gathered in Bertha’s
living room for prayer. Pastor Fan asked Bertha if she still wanted prayer
for her ears. When she said that she did, he read from the book of Exodus:
“And the Lord said unto him, Who hath made man’s mouth? or who maketh
the dumb, or deaf, or the seeing, or the blind? have not I the Lord?” (Ex.
4:11, KJV). As they read, Bertha felt a physical sensation on each side of her
face, as if a tight tendon was being loosed. Pastor Fan read from chapter 5
of James and then prayed.
Although Bertha knew in her spirit that she would be healed, healing
did not come immediately. The buzzing continued, this time with a painful
aching that became almost unbearable.1
After a month of this aching, Bertha prayed, “Lord, you know that these
ears are not mine! They were definitely given over to you, and since they
are yours, they cannot hurt unless you let them hurt. Now if you do, it will
be for some purpose and you will enable me to stand it, I know.”2
Within two weeks the pain and buzzing were completely gone. Two
years later, when Bertha was in the United States on furlough, a physical
examination confirmed that her eardrums were in perfect condition with no
evidence that there had ever been a problem.3

Called to China
Bertha’s healing occurred in 1935 and is just one of many remarkable
events in the life of a remarkable woman who lived in revival for seventy
years. For nearly forty-two years she gave herself to China as a missionary,
witnessing and participating in one of the greatest revivals in history as it
swept across China in the 1920s and 1930s. Retiring in 1958 at the age of
70, Bertha returned to the United States, where she undertook another
ministry of almost thirty years, awakening American Christians to their
need for revival and inspiring them to pray for it.4
Olive Bertha Smith was appointed as a missionary to China by the
Foreign Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention on July 3,
1917.5 She was twenty-eight years old. Her life since her conversion to
Christ in 1905 had been marked by several deepening experiences in her
walk with the Lord. The first came in 1907 when, during a revival service
in her hometown of Cowpens, South Carolina, Bertha surrendered herself
completely to the lordship of Jesus Christ for anything that He might
choose for her. She determined that nothing would be too much for Him to
ask of her.6
At this time she received her first “in-filling” of the Holy Spirit. As
Bertha understood it, both then and to a greater degree later, being filled
with the Holy Spirit was meant to be a continual and repeated experience
for the Christian. It was dependent upon a believer’s cleansed life, free of
all unconfessed and unrenounced sin, and upon a constant yielding of
oneself to the Spirit’s leadership. It was the practical working out of Paul’s
instruction to the Galatians: “If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the
Spirit” (Gal. 5:25, KJV).
Another deepening experience for Bertha came in 1910, when she
answered God’s call on her life for mission service. A college student at the
time, she struggled with the issue for several weeks, considering what
sacrifices such a commitment would require. It would mean leaving home
for many years, perhaps for life. Would her family approve? What settled it
for her was the realization that Jesus Christ had given up the glories of
heaven, lived on the earth, and died a shameful death for her, all because it
was the Father’s will. How could she do any less than obey His will?
When she yielded to God’s call, a joy filled her heart that never left her.7

Prelude to Revival
When Bertha first arrived in China, she quickly became concerned about
the low level of spirituality and commitment among Chinese believers. This
was a burden shared by all the other missionaries as well.8 They believed
that a genuine revival was the only answer. Their conviction about this was
strengthened as many of the missionaries experienced personal revivals in
their own lives.
God was moving in the Shantung province of China, preparing the land
for a great outpouring of the Holy Spirit. He began by working in the hearts
and lives of the missionaries. During the summer months the missionaries
had opportunities to attend annual conferences on various themes related to
the spiritual life. These conferences were characterized by dynamic
speakers and teachers and a powerful moving of the Holy Spirit to such a
degree that many of the missionaries received deep refreshing and
significant spiritual renewal. Bertha was one of these.
The most significant change for her was learning the secret to consistent
victory in her Christian life—victory over her “old self.” The key was in not
trying to overcome the flesh—an impossible task—but in regarding it as
dead, crucified with Christ. She realized that she had been wrongly
struggling to crucify herself, rather than considering it already dead in
Christ.9
It was the truth that Paul taught the Romans when he wrote, “Likewise
reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God
through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Rom. 6:11, KJV). Bertha explained the truth
this way: “You cannot consecrate the old sinful self to God; you assign it to
death.”10
Bertha and the other missionaries felt an increasing burden from the
Lord to pray for revival in China. This became so intense that they set aside
the first day of each month for that specific purpose. They maintained this
practice faithfully for several years before revival came. This committed,
consistent discipline of prayer was one of the catalysts for the great revival
that swept across the Shantung province, and indeed all of China, in 1927.
Another catalyst in the revival was an Evangelical Lutheran missionary
from Norway named Marie Monsen. God used this deeply spiritual woman
to spark revival fires wherever she went. In March 1927, she fled to the
Chinese port city of Chefoo to escape political unrest farther inland. Many
other missionaries had taken temporary refuge in Chefoo also. Among them
were Bertha and the other Southern Baptist missionaries with whom she
worked. They invited Marie to share her testimony with them, and she told
of her experiences in Bible teaching and evangelism in the field, and also of
the many instances she had seen of sick people being healed by the grace of
God. The testimony of divine healing was a new and unusual concept for
the Baptist missionaries, yet they were profoundly moved and touched by
Marie Monsen’s words.11
Marie believed that a great revival was coming to China and that it
would come through the Baptists. When Dr. Charles L. Culpepper, one of
the Baptist missionaries and the president of the small Baptist seminary in
Shantung, asked her why it would be the Baptists, she answered, “Because
you, more than any others, have fulfilled the promise of 2 Chronicles
7:14.”12 This verse reads:
If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and
pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear
from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land. (KJV)

The Shantung Revival

If any single event can be said to be the “beginning” of the Shantung
revival, it was the powerful prayer meeting in March 1927 that involved
Marie Monsen and the Baptist missionaries. The Holy Spirit inspired
brokenness and deep confession of personal sin on the part of the
missionaries. They resolved differences between one another, and the result
was a great cleansing of their lives and hearts.
The primary purpose of the prayer meeting was to pray for the physical
healing of Mrs. Ola Culpepper, Dr. Culpepper’s wife, who had suffered for
many years from optic neuritis—the decay of the optic nerve. It was a
painful and degenerative condition. Although she was slowly going blind,
Mrs. Culpepper could still see relatively well with glasses. After the time of
confession and cleansing, the missionaries laid hands on Mrs. Culpepper
and prayed for her. The Spirit was so strong that when two Chinese cooks
who worked at the mission, and who had great animosity toward each other,
walked into the room, they were immediately brought under deep
conviction. They confessed their sins to each other and accepted Christ as
their Savior on the spot.
After this Mrs. Culpepper testified that her pain was completely gone. It
never returned. Although the vision in her most severely damaged eye was
not completely restored, her vision in both eyes improved significantly and
permanently.13
 Although everyone in the group rejoiced at the goodness and grace of
God, Bertha suddenly felt convicted by their behavior. She told the others
how inconsistent it seemed to spend so much time in confession, soul-
searching, and prayer for each other when they had never done so in order
to pray for the spiritual awakening of the Chinese people. Bertha’s words
hit the group like a thunderclap. As Bertha described it:
Our mountaintop of ecstasy suddenly became a valley of humiliation. We
all went to our knees in contrite confession for having been so careless as to
have gone along supposing that we were right with the Lord, while holding
all kinds of attitudes which could have kept the Lord’s living water from
flowing through us to the Chinese.14
From this beginning, the revival began to spread as the missionaries
returned to their various mission stations. It next affected the Chinese
pastors and Bible-teaching women in the mission schools, and from there it
spread into the general Chinese population. Confession of sin, restitution,
and a strong emphasis on verifying one’s genuine conversion to Christ by
being “born of the Spirit” were hallmarks of this tremendous awakening.
The progress of the revival demonstrated the spiritual principle that
“cleansing precedes fullness, and the in-filling of the Holy Spirit precedes
joy and effective service.”15
The Holy Spirit moved mightily until every church in the Shantung
province had been affected. Many nominal church members who had never
truly trusted Christ for salvation were genuinely converted. Many other
believers in the churches experienced significant deepening in their
relationships with Christ. There was a renewed burden for evangelism and a
greatly increased hunger for God and for His Word. Thousands of believers
experienced the joy of the Lord as never before and were filled with the
Spirit, discovering for the first time the power of God for evangelism,
discipleship, and service. As believers got their lives right with God and
with each other, relationships were healed and true Christian fellowship
became possible.
People outside the churches saw the change that occurred in the lives of
the revived believers. As a result, countless numbers of Chinese were
brought to Christ.16
 The Shantung revival made a significant impact on the Chinese
churches throughout the land. The direct and immediate effects of the
revival continued into the 1930s and beyond. In many ways, the effects are
still being felt. Nothing that God does occurs without a purpose. The
awakening of the Christian church in China came at just the right time to
strengthen it and prepare it for the dark years ahead—years of danger and
oppression first by the Japanese occupiers before and during World War II
and then by the Communists. Without the awakening, the Christian Church
in China probably would not have survived.

Days of Occupation
Bertha’s experiences in China both before and during the Shantung revival
set the tone and pattern for the rest of her life. Once she understood the
principles of dying to self and how to be filled with the Spirit on a
continuing basis, her life was never again the same. The secret was to keep
her “sins confessed up to date.” It was important to keep a short sin account
before God—to confess and renounce sin as soon as the Holy Spirit
revealed it to her. This is the same principle that she taught countless
believers through the remaining years of her life.
When the Japanese invaded China in the spring of 1937, Bertha faced a
dilemma. The two primary missionaries, a married couple with whom she
worked with in Tsining, were in the United States on furlough; she was the
only missionary in the town. The American government had urged all
Americans to leave the country and declared that it would not be
responsible for the safety or welfare of any who decided to stay. Bertha
debated what to do. Through prayer she became convinced that she should
stay. It was God who had placed her in China, not the American
government. She could not bear to leave the Chinese people, particularly
the Chinese Christians who would be undergoing such hardship.17
While war raged in the countryside in every direction from Tsining,
Bertha labored faithfully and courageously. She opened the church for daily
services, focusing on sharing the gospel to win people to Christ. She opened
her home for any who wanted personal help in making decisions to receive
Christ. Bertha knew that many of these Chinese would soon be fleeing from
the Japanese; she knew that many of them would die. She was deeply
concerned that they come to Christ and be firmly established in the faith
while there was time. She regularly visited the local hospital to talk with the
wounded soldiers and tell them about Jesus.18
Bertha made a practice of seeking God’s specific, direct guidance for
every move she made. There were so many needs, that effective ministry
was possible no other way. She could not address everyone, so she
depended on God to show her where to go, what to do, and whom to talk to.
In this way, walking with God, she was led to the people in whom He was
already working.
After Tsining fell to the Japanese, the mission compound where Bertha
lived and worked housed many refugees, most of them women. Japanese
soldiers were constantly looking for girls and young women for illicit
purposes, and more than once Bertha squared off face-to-face with the
soldiers, protecting those whom God had placed under her care. She had a
holy boldness born from many years of prayer and fellowship with Christ.
Bertha was totally surrendered to God and trusted Him absolutely, and He
protected, provided, and guided her steps.
After the United States entered the war, Bertha and other American
missionaries were interned for a time in the mission compound. Eventually,
Bertha was given an opportunity to return to the United States. This time
she took it and did not return to China until after the war.

Bertha’s Legacy
After the Communist takeover of China, all Christian missionaries were
forced to leave the country. This is when the Lord opened a door for Bertha,
now sixty years old, to become the first Southern Baptist missionary on the
island of Formosa (Taiwan). There she labored faithfully for another ten
years, planting churches, teaching seminary classes, and helping to firmly
establish the mission work on the island.
In December 1958, she retired from active missionary service and
returned to her hometown of Cowpens, South Carolina. God was not yet
through with Bertha Smith, however. For almost thirty years, until her death
in 1988 (just five months short of her one-hundredth birthday), Bertha was
in demand to speak at churches and conferences all over America.
She felt that God had told her to “go home and tell” Christians in
America about revival and being filled with the Spirit, and to encourage
them to seek and pray for spiritual awakening in America such as had
occurred in China during the Shantung revival. During her travels and
constant speaking engagements, she touched thousands of lives. She was
totally surrendered to Jesus Christ to the very end. A month before her
death, she led a Chinese businessman to Christ in Spartanburg, South
Carolina.19
In addition to a legacy of changed lives in China, America, and other
parts of the world, Bertha Smith left a legacy in the form of the Peniel
Prayer Center, a retreat center for spiritual life conferences that was created
near her childhood home in Cowpens. Until 2004, the Center provided
opportunities for believers to learn the principles of revival, the Spirit-filled
life, and spiritual victory that Bertha Smith so exemplified throughout her
life.
The secret of Bertha’s courage and effectiveness throughout a century-
long life is that she learned how to die to self—to regard herself as being
dead to sin but alive to God through Jesus Christ (see Rom. 6:11). That is
the key to spiritual victory, to personal revival, and to effectiveness in
ministry. Bertha Smith lived her life with spiritual courage and holy
boldness because, like the apostle Paul, she knew that “to live is Christ, and
to die is gain” (Phil. 1:21 KJV).
Saving Lord, along with Paul, I declare that I have been “crucified with
Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the
body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for
me” (Gal. 2:20). Search my heart and show me what doesn’t belong there.
Give me the courage to confess my specific sins to You, asking for
forgiveness and cleansing that will result in a new infilling of your Holy
Spirit. Keep me by Your side, Lord, in holy love. Amen.
 Chapter 10

Corrie ten Boom

NO PIT SO DEEP

As arrests of Jews in the streets became more frequent, I had begun picking
up and delivering work for our Jewish customers myself so that they would
not have to venture into the center of town. And so one evening in the early
spring of 1942 I was in the home of a doctor and his wife.…The Heemstras
and I were talking about the things that were discussed whenever a group of
people got together in those days, rationing and the news from England,
when down the stairs piped a childish voice. “Daddy! You didn’t tuck us
in!” Dr. Heemstra was on his feet in an instant. With an apology to his wife
and me he hurried upstairs and in a minute we heard a game of hide-and-
seek going and the shrill laughter of two children. That was all. Nothing had
changed. Mrs. Heemstra continued with her recipe for stretching the tea
ration with rose leaves. And yet everything was changed. For in that instant,
reality broke through the numbness that had grown in me since the
invasion. At any minute there might be a rap on this door. These children,
this mother and father, might be ordered to the back of a truck. Dr.
Heemstra came back to the living room and the conversation rambled on.
But under the words a prayer was forming in my heart. “Lord Jesus, I offer
myself for Your people. In any way. Any place. Any time.” And then an
extraordinary thing happened. Even as I prayed, that waking dream passed
again before my eyes. I saw again those four black horses and the Grote
Markt. As I had on the night of the invasion I scanned the passengers drawn
so unwillingly behind them. Father, Betsie, Willem, myself—leaving
Haarlem, leaving all that was sure and safe—going where?1
This is how Corrie ten Boom, a fifty-year-old unmarried Dutch
watchmaker, described the turning point in her life. Shortly after this Corrie
and other members of her family put their lives on the line to harbor and
assist frightened people who had become enemies of the state for no other
reason than that they were Jews. In defiance of the repressive Nazi
government that occupied their beloved Holland, the Ten Boom family hid
fugitive Jews in their home and helped them escape to freedom. By the time
it was all over, Corrie’s father, oldest sister, and a nephew had died in
concentration camps. Other family members spent time in jail, and Corrie
herself survived ten months of imprisonment, first in a Dutch prison, then in
a concentration camp in Holland, and finally in the infamous Ravensbruck
camp in Germany, where 96,000 women died.

A Pattern of Preparation
From all external appearances, there was little about Corrie ten Boom’s first
fifty years of life that would lead anyone to expect that she would ever
become involved in such dangerous activities. She lived all those years in
the same house where she was born: an ancient structure known as the Beje,
which housed her father’s watch and clock shop on the first floor and the
family’s living quarters on the floors above. With her oldest sister, Betsie,
Corrie helped her father in the watch shop. She took such an interest in the
work that she eventually became the first licensed woman watchmaker in
Holland.
Corrie and her family were active members of the Dutch Reformed
Church. These early years were characterized by a regular, comfortable
routine to everyday life. Yet within this familiar sameness of day-to-day
life, God was preparing Corrie and her family for the great acts of courage
and devotion that they would be called upon to perform during the years of
Nazi oppression.
Corrie was only five years old when she accepted Jesus Christ as her
Savior and Lord. When the great crisis came in her life, she had already
spent forty-five years walking with Him. For more than twenty of those
years, Corrie had planned and led weekly worship services for the retarded
children of the city. The daily routine of life in the Beje included family
Bible reading and prayer at breakfast in the morning and before retiring for
the night. Despite the family’s modest means, the Ten Booms opened their
home to people in need. Consequently, the presence of guests and strangers
around the Ten Boom dining table was a familiar sight to Corrie.
The Ten Boom family believed that the Christian faith was to be lived
out, not just believed and talked about. Day by day their lives were focused
on relating to people through the ordinary circumstances of life, just as
Jesus did. Such Christlike living became almost as natural to them as
breathing. When the Nazi occupation of Holland forced extraordinary
circumstances upon them and brought scores of desperate people their way,
the Ten Booms responded according to the pattern established over a
lifetime of faithfulness to God. Corrie came to understand later how God
prepares us for what lies ahead. She said, “I know that the experiences of
our lives, when we let God use them, become the mysterious and perfect
preparation for the work He will give us to do.”2

Working for the Underground

After the Germans began occupying Holland in the spring of 1940,
conditions of life for the Dutch people gradually deteriorated and grew
more and more repressive. Every person was required to carry identification
at all times, and it had to be presented at the demand of any member of the
occupying forces. Food and other goods were severely rationed. Young men
between the ages of sixteen and thirty were subject at any time to be hauled
off to work as virtual slave laborers in German factories. Even minor
offenses could mean imprisonment without trial for indefinite periods.
The most oppressive of all was the increasing persecution of Jews. All
Jews were required to wear a Star of David made of bright yellow cloth that
was prominently displayed on their outer clothing. Verbal abuse and
ridicule on the streets led to the routine vandalism of Jewish businesses.
Before long, Jews were being rounded up on the streets without warning.
Jewish homes were raided in the middle of the night and families carried
away in the darkness.
The Ten Boom family became directly involved for the first time in
November 1941, when Mr. Weil, the Jewish furrier across the street, was
ejected from his shop by four German soldiers who smashed his display
cases, threw his clothing and personal belongings into the street, and carried
off his furs. During all this activity, Corrie and her sister Betsie quickly
ushered the man to shelter in the Beje. That same evening, with the
assistance of their brother Willem and his son Kik, Mr. Weil was taken to
safety.3
By the summer of 1942, the Beje had become the center of an
underground operation that focused on harboring Jews who were hiding
from the Nazis and helping them escape to safety. All of the Ten Booms
were involved: Corrie, Betsie, and their father, all of whom lived in the
Beje, as well as Corrie’s brother Willem and his family and her older sister
Nollie and her family, who lived in homes of their own. Corrie was
regarded as the “leader” of the operation in the Beje. It began on a small
scale, harboring two or three fugitives for a day or two until arrangements
could be made to lead them to safety.
Within a short time the operation grew to a more sophisticated level: an
illegal radio carefully hidden beneath the stairs; extra ration cards to
provide escapees a means of getting food; an electrical buzzer system to
warn of approaching trouble; a visual warning system to let outsiders know
whether or not the coast was clear; and their personal telephone secretly
reconnected even though it was illegal for private families to have phones.
Eventually, the Beje became the permanent home for seven Jews who
could not be placed elsewhere. They took their meals regularly at the Ten
Booms’ table. A false wall was constructed in Corrie’s bedroom on the top
floor of the house, concealing behind it a crawl space only eighteen inches
wide yet large enough for all seven “houseguests” to hide for several days if
necessary. Practice drills were held until all seven could be concealed
without a trace in just over one minute. Such care was crucial to their
survival in the event of a raid.
One of the things that sustained the Ten Booms’ underground operation
was their sensitivity to God’s leadership. Corrie learned to trust the direct
leadership of God for specific decisions, particularly with regard to people.
In a social and political environment in which the wisest human course was
to trust no one, it nevertheless was necessary on occasion for Corrie to seek
help from someone who could supply a particular need. The risk was in not
knowing whether the person approached would be sympathetic or would
betray the operation to the Nazi authorities.
Time after time Corrie received what she called the “gift of knowledge”
when these decisions were needed.4 Her brother Willem had told Corrie to
develop her own sources. When reflecting on this, Corrie realized another
value of having lived quietly in the same place for years: they knew
someone in every business and service in the city!5 As Corrie remembered:
We didn’t know, of course, the political views of all these people. But—and
here I felt a strange leaping of my heart—God did! My job was simply to
follow His leading one step at a time, holding every decision up to Him in
prayer. I knew I was not clever or subtle or sophisticated; if the Beje was
becoming a meeting place for need and supply, it was through some
strategy far higher than mine.6
On February 28, 1944, after about eighteen months of underground
activity, the inevitable happened: the Beje was raided. The Ten Booms had
been betrayed by a Dutch man working for the Nazis who had posed as a
Jew needing help. During the raid, Corrie, Betsie, and their father were
arrested, along with numerous others who appeared at the Beje, unaware
that anything was wrong. The seven Jews sheltered there were not
discovered, however; all had made it into the secret room in Corrie’s
bedroom. After several days in hiding, they were able to escape to safety.
The Ten Booms and the other prisoners were taken to the local police
station for processing, where they spent the night under guard in a
gymnasium. The next day they were taken to the town square and put on a
bus for prison. In all, several dozen people in the underground were taken,
including Corrie’s brother Willem and sister Nollie. The scene at the square
seemed strangely familiar to Corrie. Then she realized that she had seen it
twice before in a vision: once on the night Germany invaded Holland and
once on the night of her “turning point,” during her visit to the Heemstras.7
Neither Corrie nor any of the others knew what was in store as they
were driven away from their homes by their captors. They knew only that
their lives were in God’s hands. In reality, the next very difficult phase of
God’s plan for them—the plan for which He had been preparing them all
through the years—was about to unfold.

If I Make My Bed in Hell…

Ten years after the family’s arrest, a Dutch policeman still remembered the
Ten Booms’ first night when they were held in the police station
gymnasium. He told Corrie:
I shall never forget that night. There was an atmosphere as if there were a
feast, even though most of you were on your way to die in prison. I
remember that just before your father tried to sleep, he said, “Children, let
us pray together.” Tired from the ordeal, but with a radiance on his face, he
offered comfort from God’s Word, Psalms 91:1 [KJV]: He that dwelleth in
the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the
Almighty.8
It was the family’s faith and confidence in God’s protection that would
sustain them through the horrors that lay ahead. The next day the prisoners
were transported to a Dutch prison in the coastal town of Scheveningen.
There Corrie and Betsie were held for several months. While in prison they
received word that Willem, Nollie, and all the others taken in the raid at the
Beje had been released after a few weeks. They eventually learned that their
father, who was well into his eighties, had died after only ten days in prison.
In the late spring of 1944, Betsie and Corrie were transferred to Vught, a
concentration camp on Dutch soil. There, using a small Bible they had
received from Nollie while they were in prison, Corrie and Betsie held
secret prayer meetings in the barracks at night, sharing the light and hope of
Jesus Christ with the other women. It was during this time also that Corrie
found in Christ the power to forgive the man who had betrayed them to the
Gestapo. In fact, the final letter Corrie wrote from prison before being sent
to Ravensbruck was to this man. Her letter declared her forgiveness and
pointed him to Jesus Christ as the source of eternal salvation.9
As the Allied forces advanced after the invasion of Europe in June
1944, the camp at Vught was evacuated. Corrie and Betsie and hundreds of
others were transported by freight train to Ravensbruck, a larger and much
more brutal camp in Germany. If any place could have earned the
designation of “hell on earth,” it would have been Ravensbruck. Yet it was
here, in the midst of the darkness of human sin and brutality, that the light
of Christ shone brightly in the lives and witness of the Ten Boom sisters.
God encouraged them by confirming His continuing presence with them
through several miraculous events. First, He made it possible for them to
smuggle their Bible, a bottle of vitamins, and a sweater past the careful eyes
and searching hands of the guards.10 Betsie’s health, never very good, was
deteriorating, and she needed the sweater for warmth and the vitamins for
strength. The Bible they needed for their own faith and as a means to share
the love of God in a place where love appeared to be dead.
Second, the tiny bottle of liquid vitamins served not only Betsie’s needs,
but also the needs of other sick women in the barracks. Day after day, week
after week, dose after dose, the vitamins kept coming long after the contents
should have been exhausted. It was a miracle that paralleled the biblical
story of the poor widow of Zarephath, who gave the prophet Elijah a room
in her home. She gave Elijah food when she had none to spare for herself
and her son. By the providence of God, her small supply of meal and oil did
not run out until the drought ended in Israel (see 1 Kings 17:9–16). In
Ravensbruck, the very day a prisoner who worked in the camp hospital
smuggled a supply of vitamins to the Ten Booms’ barracks, not another
drop appeared from their bottle.11
Third, the barracks were heavily infested with fleas. Corrie could not
understand why Betsie insisted on thanking God for the fleas, but they did
anyway in accordance with Paul’s admonition, “In every thing give thanks:
for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you” (1 Thess. 5:18,
KJV).12 They soon discovered that the camp guards rarely came into the
barracks because of the fleas. Corrie and Betsie were free almost without
hindrance to pray, witness, and read the Bible to the ever-increasing circle
of women who gathered to hear the words of hope and life.13
As Corrie and Betsie walked with God in Ravensbruck, He used them to
bless hundreds of other prisoners. He also spoke to them, especially Betsie,
regarding the future. They had a vision of a beautiful home in spacious
surroundings; a home where concentration camp survivors could come for
spiritual, emotional, and psychological healing; a home where they could
live until they were ready to return to the normal world.14 Another vision
was of a German concentration camp, transformed after the war into a home
where people warped by the philosophy of hate, force, and violence taught
by the Nazis, could learn of love, peace, and the forgiveness of Christ. 15
Betsie’s health continued to decline until she was released from outside
work and eventually was put in the camp hospital in December 1944. While
in the hospital, Betsie shared with Corrie a final dream:
We must tell people what we have learned here. We must tell them that
there is no pit so deep that He is not deeper still. They will listen to us,
Corrie, because we have been here.…By the first of the year, Corrie, we
will be out of prison!16
Betsie’s words came true. The very next day she died in the hospital.
When Corrie came to see Betsie’s body, she witnessed another miracle. The
day before, Betsie’s face had been hollow from hunger and disease and
deeply lined from care and grief. Now, in death,
her face was full and young again. All signs of disease and pain were gone.
As Corrie described her: “In front of me was the Betsie of Haarlem, happy
and at peace. Stronger! Freer! This was the Betsie of heaven, bursting with
joy and health.”17
Three days later, Corrie received her notice of discharge. Her release
was delayed for several days while she was treated for swelling in her legs.
Finally, on January 1, 1945, she walked out of Ravensbruck a free woman.
Both she and Betsie had been released, Betsie to heaven and Corrie to the
outside world.
Now it was time for her to tell the world what she and Betsie had
learned.

Corrie’s Legacy
As soon as she was free and had returned home, Corrie began to speak
wherever she had opportunity. God immediately opened the door for the
home for concentration camp survivors to become a reality. A wealthy
Dutch widow donated her elegant suburban estate, and the home received
its first residents in June 1945. It remains in operation today under the
auspices of the Dutch Reformed Church.18
 In 1946, Betsie’s second vision, the home for rehabilitation and renewal
for Germans, was fulfilled with the reopening of Darmstadt, a former
concentration camp in Germany. Under the direction of the German
Lutheran Church, it remained in operation until 1960.19
Corrie embarked on another journey of nearly forty years, traveling the
world as a self-described “tramp for the Lord,” visiting sixty-one countries
on both sides of the Iron Curtain with her gospel message. Wherever she
went, to whomever she spoke, she shared the truth that she and Betsie had
learned in Ravensbruck: that Jesus can turn loss into glory.20
During the remainder of her life, she influenced countless thousands,
perhaps even millions, by the testimony of her life and her witness to God’s
faithfulness. As a “tramp for the Lord,” Corrie sought God’s direct guidance
concerning where to go and how long to stay, trusting Him to provide for
her every need. She never appealed for money or other kinds of financial
support. This was part of her absolute trust in the God who had sustained
her so absolutely throughout her life and particularly in Ravensbruck.
Corrie ten Boom’s courage came from a source beyond herself. It lay in
the One for whom she had lived exclusively since the age of five; the One
whom she had met daily in the pages of the Bible; the One to whom she
prayed regularly. In all her years she never found Him to fail. Corrie ten
Boom found courage because she knew that God is good and that God is
faithful. He never puts on us more than we can bear. Whatever He requires
of us, He equips us to do. Corrie walked with God and in His strength bore
the unbearable and prevailed to victory.
Let’s ask for the grace to walk the crucified life that this woman on the
front lines lived for the glory of her Master.
Father God, You know the present challenges that I am facing, and You are
the only one who knows what my future holds. I trust you implicitly for
every detail, believing that whenever You chose to allow a seeming tragedy
to penetrate Your protection over me, you will supply the grace and faith to
carry on without wavering. Your ways are above our ways, but You are
utterly faithful to Your children. Once again, I entrust my whole life into
Your more-than-capable hands. Amen.
 Chapter 11

Jackie Pullinger
LIGHTING THE DARKNESS

I loved the dark city. I loved wandering down the narrow lanes which were
like some exaggerated stageset. It upset me to see twelve- or thirteen-year-
old prostitutes and to learn that these girls were not free, having been sold
by parents or boyfriends. It troubled me to meet their minders—the aged
mama-sans who sat on the orange boxes in the streets luring the Walled
City voyeurs with promises of “she’s very good, very young, very cheap.” I
noticed their hands, which were scarred on the back with needle marks from
the heroin injections which made the job bearable. Or maybe the job was to
pay for the heroin. There were bodies at that time lying in the streets near
the drug dens: they could have been alive or dead after “chasing the
dragon” (a popular way of inhaling heroin through a tube held over heated
tinfoil). There were the “weather men” who guarded the alley exits and the
entrances to the heroin huts where up to a hundred people “chased” in
lonely chorus. I saw thousands of poor people living in one-room
dwellings: many were so crammed that they had to sleep in shifts because
they could not all lie down at the same time. I saw some who still lived with
pigs, neither able to see the light of day….I loved this dark place. I hated
what was happening in it but I wanted to be nowhere else. I dreamed of
walking into heroin dens, laying hands on men and seeing them set free. I
dreamed of praying with the blind in the dark lanes, touching them, and
watching their eyes open. It was almost as if I could already see another city
in its place and that city was ablaze with light. It was my dream. There were
no more crying, no more death or pain. The sick were healed, addicts set
free, the hungry filled. There were families for orphans, homes for the
homeless, and new dignity for those who had lived in shame. I had no idea
how to bring this about but with “visionary zeal” imagined introducing the
Walled City people to the one who could change it all: Jesus.1
Jackie Pullinger had talked about being a missionary since she was five
years old, even though for many years she had no real idea what a
missionary was. She had a conventional English upbringing—attending a
boarding school and being confirmed in the Church of England. Higher
education followed at the Royal College of Music, where Jackie studied
piano and oboe.2
Upon completing her degree she began a career teaching music.
However, she could not escape the feeling that she needed to give her life to
something. Although she had been confirmed in the Church of England, the
Christian faith did not become real to Jackie until she was in college. She
encountered a group of friends who obviously enjoyed their relationship
with Jesus and could discuss their experience and feelings about it with ease
and joy. This concept intrigued Jackie. She states,
This was the first time that I had met Christians who did not look unhappy,
guilty or grim, and my music college Christian Union…had only served to
confirm my worst fears and impressions of earnest organists trying to get to
heaven. I preferred brass players. I avoided the Christians while unable to
avoid the unhappy conviction that at some time God himself would nail me
for my shortcomings and I would have to account for my life.3

From Music Teacher to Missionary

Through her new Christian friends, Jackie was confronted with the reality
of Jesus Christ, His sacrifice on the cross, and the good news of God’s love
and forgiveness that was available through Jesus. It changed her life
dramatically. After accepting Jesus as her Lord and Savior, she found
herself filled with a great joy, and rather than becoming more limited and
grim, her life became more fun than ever before. Sharing this good news
with others became a spontaneous outpouring of her newfound joy and
peace. She developed a great burden for those who did not know this joy
and personal relationship with Jesus and who were lost and bound for hell.
God reawakened within Jackie her childhood dream of becoming a
missionary, but she was a single woman and too young and unqualified to
be accepted by any of the conventional missionary societies. Every door
seemed shut, and she wondered if she had heard God correctly. Desperate
for answers and direction, Jackie attended a special prayer meeting with
friends, and there God spoke to her. He said, Go. Trust Me, and I will lead
you. I will instruct you and lead you in the way in which you shall go; I will
guide you with My eye. At that, Jackie knew that she must take action and
obey.
After much prayer and godly counsel, Jackie decided that God had
doors to open for her that she had not yet seen. She decided to allow God to
lead her directly and go on a daring adventure. She bought the cheapest
boat ticket that stopped at the greatest number of countries and prayed for
God’s direction to know where to get off and how He wanted her to proceed
from there. So with this great act of faith, Jackie found herself stepping off
a boat in Hong Kong in 1966, after traveling halfway around the globe.
She had no missionary agency or organized support back in Great
Britain, no job, and no contacts. She had very little money and no clear
direction of what God had in store for her, but she had the assurance that
God had called her and would continue to direct her.

The Walled City

Soon after her arrival in Hong Kong, Jackie was hired to teach music three
afternoons a week in a primary school operated by a Mrs. Donnithorne. The
school was located within a six-acre enclave of Hong Kong known as the
Walled City. One of its Chinese names is “Hak Nam,” which means
“darkness.” Cramped, secluded, and filthy, the Walled City was home to
anywhere from 30,000 to 60,000 people—no one knew for sure how many
—and it was a haven of opium dens, heroin huts, brothels, pornography
theaters, illegal gambling, smuggling, and all other kinds of vice.
Virtually ignored by the rest of Hong Kong, the Walled City was
accessible only through dark, narrow alleys between shops located on its
outer edges. There were no sanitary facilities—refuse and excrement were
simply dumped out in the streets and alleys—and electricity was illegally
tapped from supplies outside the City.4
Daily life in the Walled City was defined by a number Triad gangs who
controlled all aspects of vice, extortion, and crime. The boundaries of each
gang’s territory were clearly defined, and violence between rival gangs was
frequent. Gang membership provided a sense of family and acceptance that
young Chinese men rarely found elsewhere in “Hak Nam.” The city called
“darkness” was in great need of the light of Jesus, and Jackie’s teaching
work gave her access to the Walled City, where she began trying to relate to
the people she met there, seeking to share the light of Christ as she had
opportunity. Externally, the Walled City was one of the most revolting
places on earth, yet every time she entered it, Jackie felt a profound sense of
joy. This confirmed for her that she was where God had called her.5
At first Jackie met with little success. She had a lot of zeal, but could
show few obvious results. This was made apparent one day as she tried to
share Jesus with a young corner prostitute who looked old before her time.
She squatted all day long over a sewer, attracting no customers:
She had no radio; she could not read. She looked dead before her life had
even started. I tried the “Jesus loves you” routine on her and touched her to
show her I meant it. She looked terrified. “You’ve made a mistake. You
don’t know who I am. You’re not supposed to touch people like me.”
Looking back now I can see how ridiculous it was to be walking down
alleyways talking intensely of Jesus. Of course, no one could respond to
words about Christ. They had never met him and had no evidence of his
love. When I checked, I found he had never done it that way either; instead
of declaring “I love you,” Jesus had shown his love through action. He
opened the eyes of the blind man, caused the lame to leap for joy and fed
five thousand hungry people full to bursting.6

She Showed Them Jesus

This thought planted a dream deep within this radical disciple. She wanted
these desperately needy people to know Jesus, but in order for them to meet
Him, she realized that she must first show Him to them. Jackie began a
youth club to reach out to the young people of the Walled City. This club
enabled her to befriend young people who were members of the feared
Triad organizations. God touched her in a new way, and she began to pray
intensely for the people within the dark Walled City. Suddenly light began
to break through the darkness around her and lives began to be changed one
by one.
Jackie took seriously her call to help the people at their point of need.
She went to bat for the poor and helped them obtain assistance and housing
from government agencies. She planned activities to give the young people
alternatives to the vices around them. She looked for ways to help and
minister to the most “poor in spirit and body” of those around her, which
ultimately led her to preaching Jesus and ministering to the needs of the
drug addicts. Jackie discovered that a sincere heart, prayer, and praise could
often help an addict go through withdrawal in a short and relatively painless
way.7
It was not long after this that Jackie found herself sitting across a tea
table from one of the most powerful Triad bosses in the Walled City. He had
become frustrated with the problem of addiction among his own followers.
Although the Triads regularly dealt in drug trafficking, actual addiction
often made their members useless to their gang. He made the amazing
proposal to give Jackie the addicts of his group so she could get them off
drugs.
Jackie, however, refused. She wouldn’t help the young men break free
of their heroin addiction only to return to their lives of violence and crime.
The leader then made her an offer never heard before; he told her that he
would release from the Triad any of its members who wanted to follow
Jesus. (Triad membership was always considered a lifetime commitment,
and persons attempting to leave it often would be severely punished.) What
an offer! What an opportunity for her Lord!

St. Stephen’s Society

This arrangement gave Jackie an even greater “green light” for ministry to
the drug addicts of the Walled City. She found that many of the people she
helped among the addicted, poor, crippled, and homeless literally had
nowhere to go and no way to start a new life. Eventually this led to the
development of special homes for them and to the founding of what became
the St. Stephen’s Society, a ministry actively involved in all aspects of help
and rehabilitation to the people of Hong Kong who were in need.
Jackie’s one-woman crusade within the Walled City not only led to the
development of a very successful drug rehabilitation program but also gave
birth to an active, vibrant, Spirit-empowered church within the confines of
the Walled City. Special group homes and ministries were formed, and after
a while the government gave them facilities in which to continue their work
and house the needy on a greater scale. These facilities became known as
Hang Fook Camp, and they served as base of operations for Jackie and the
St. Stephen’s Society for several years. But her emphasis stayed the same:
the preaching of the cross, holy abandonment, and the power of prayer.

The Power of Prayer

Jackie’s modern-day exploits with God rival the stories in the book of Acts.
Her keys are the cross of Christ and a revelation of our dependency on God
through prayer.
This power of prayer is well demonstrated in her story about a young
man named Alie:
Alie…was studying to be a Buddhist monk. Alie was also facing court
charges as an alleged accomplice with seven other men in the murder of a
rival drug lord. Jackie began to visit this particular Hong Kong jail every
week to minister and to testify to these men, and specifically to Alie. Four
of the men came to the Lord almost immediately. But though Jackie visited
the jail every day for nine months testifying to Alie about Jesus through a
thick glass partition, he was unmoved. Alie wouldn’t admit it, but he was
very afraid of dying for a crime that he did not do. Week after week,
Jackie…continued to minister to him. “I know that you are afraid, Alie. I
know that you are terrified of death, but I want to tell you that there is a
loving God. There is a God of justice who knows all things and He is a
Father of mercy. And I have enlisted Christians from all across the world to
pray and fast on every Wednesday for you, Alie.”
 Although Alie heard and understood the things Jackie was saying, he
still refused to come to the Lord because his heart was hard. One day the
governor of the jail and a jail attendant passed by Alie’s cell and remarked
to one another that they smelled something. They did not know what the
strange fragrance was, but they thought it was some kind of delicate
perfume with a fragrant odor. They began asking Alie questions about the
fragrance, but Alie said, “What smell?” Perplexed, the two men asked other
inmates about the smell, as the entire jail cell took on the fragrant odor of
this strange perfume. Finally, the governor of the jail sent authorities into
Alie’s cell. They searched his body and found nothing. When they sniffed
the air around him, they nodded and said, “Yes, the smell is here.” Yet Alie
still smelled nothing.
When the guards left, Alie began to ask himself, What is that smell?
Then a little word trickled down inside him. It was this simple message:
“Oh, it is Wednesday!” Suddenly, he remembered Jackie’s words. He was
smelling prayer! He realized his entire jail cell was filled with the fragrant
aroma of the prayers of the saints.8
As a result, Alie eventually accepted Jesus as his Savior. Such stories
are common in Jackie’s ministry, due to the prayers of faithful saints.

Transitions with Hong Kong and with Jackie

The Walled City itself was torn down in 1992, and the Kowloon Walled
City Park was opened in 1995. In 1996, Jackie and her organization were
requested to leave Hang Fook Camp. Because no alternative
accommodations became available, the St. Stephen’s Society had to
disperse and decentralize its activities. At last report, this seeming
“dispersion” has actually sparked greater life and activity among the people
and churches of Hong Kong, and many individuals have risen up to
continue the society’s ministry on a one-to-one and house-to-house basis. It
has become a wonderful expression of the body of Christ in action.
As Jackie has stated, “All of this is what I’ve been sharing and teaching
on for years, and with the loss of a big centre it’s meant that people have
taken more responsibility for their own groups and lives….we are [also]
continuing on a regular basis to do outreaches, feeding the poor, the old
people, street sleepers, etc.”9
 In 1997, Hong Kong was turned over to the Chinese government. Yet
lives continue to be changed as a result of the work Jackie began in the late
1960s. The St. Stephen’s Society also has broadened its vision to include
missions and ministry throughout Asia. Jackie travels periodically to Britain
and the United States to speak and to teach. She actively exhorts believers
that “every Christian must be directly involved with reaching out to the
poor—meaning: people with needs which they are unable to help
themselves, such as addictions, abject poverty, victims of child abuse or
spouse abuse,”10 and as a result, even more lives continue to be
transformed.
Eventually, after years of serving her Lord as a single white “proper”
British woman in an Asian crime-ridden society, Jackie’s life took another
radical shift in 1992. She married a tall Chinese convert to the faith, John
To. Sadly, after only seven years of marriage, John died of cancer. Jackie’s
ministry, however, continues to this day.

Jackie’s Legacy
Through Jackie’s ministry in the Walled City over the years, hundreds of
Chinese came to Christ: drug dealers, drug addicts, prostitutes, gang
members, and gang bosses. God was able to do a mighty work among the
lost and outcast people of the Walled City in Hong Kong because a young
English woman had the faith to believe that He would lead her and the
courage to act on that faith. Jackie Pullinger entered Hong Kong with no
human resources to fall back on. She followed the Spirit’s leading to Hong
Kong and knew that she was totally dependent upon God for her protection,
resources, and success. Her life is a testimony to the truth that there is no
limit to what one person can accomplish when he or she commits him or
herself completely into the hands of the Lord.

Taking the Baton

Jackie Pullinger, and these other valiant women warriors—these healers,
brave souls, and pioneers whose lives we have just read about—are only a
few of the many whom God has used through the years. Regardless of their
differences in calling and life work, all have them have carried the same
banner—passion for Jesus and compassion for people.
But simply reading about them is not enough. I hope that these chapters
don’t just inspire you; I hope they unsettle you. It’s time now to get up from
your chair and “seize the day.”
Jesus, You are the Savior of the world, and in order to reach the lost ones in
this vast world, You need the hands and feet and voices—and hearts—of
many, many passionate people. I volunteer mine to You, for Your purposes.
Whether You keep me right in my neighborhood or send me far away, I
want to follow where You lead. Show me what to do, when to do it, and
how to do it. Surround me with like-minded others who can pray and help.
Above all, help me to stir up the heart of compassion that comes from Your
Spirit, so that everything I do will express Your love to each individual I
meet. Unquestionably, I need You. Unquestioningly, I follow You. Amen
and amen!
 PART THREE
Seize the Day
 Chapter 12

YOU ARE CHOSEN

Consider for a moment the nine women whose lives we have profiled in
this book. They are so different from each other in race, nationality, culture,
background, and time in history. What is the common bond between them?
What connects Joan of Arc, Vibia Perpetua, Sojourner Truth, Harriet
Tubman, Aimee Semple McPherson, Lydia Christensen Prince, Bertha
Smith, Corrie ten Boom, and Jackie Pullinger? Very simply, they are all
ordinary women who knew an extraordinary God. When they gave to Him
their very ordinariness, when they came to Him in their human weakness,
He showed Himself strong on their behalf and used them in extraordinary
ways.
You may feel that you are the least qualified for God to use and the most
unlikely candidate for His Spirit to fall upon. But you know what? You are
just the kind of person He chooses! God makes a point of choosing the
weak things of the world to shame the mighty and the foolish things of the
world to shame the wise (see 1 Cor. 1:27). God is revealed and glorified in
your weakness. The apostle Paul himself knew this. He wrote to the
Corinthians:
He has said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you [My lovingkindness and
My mercy are more than enough—always available—regardless of the
situation]; for [My] power is being perfected [and is completed and shows
itself most effectively] in [your] weakness.” Therefore, I will all the more
gladly boast in my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ [may completely
enfold me and] may dwell in me. (2 Cor. 12:9, AMP)
Do you fall into the category of the weak, the ordinary, the least likely?
If you do, take heart! You are a prime target for the Lord to come and wrap
Himself around you. Isn’t that great news?

Chosen Ones
Years ago I had a dream in which I was entering a large coliseum. It was in
a foreign country, and the king’s court was about to convene. Every woman
who entered the building was given a number. Mine was number 29. The
king had not yet come out, so I sat down to watch the proceedings.
I ended up sitting next to a woman who simply despised me, no matter
how hard I tried to be nice. For some reason I just irritated the daylights out
of her. Anything nice I tried to do or say was like rubbing salt into a wound.
She became extremely hostile to me and was constantly reviling me—
putting cigarette ashes on my head and that kind of thing.
In this dream, during the preliminary proceedings prior to the king’s
appearance, someone was calling out the different numbers assigned to the
women in the room. Whoever’s number was called had to go spend the
night with a man, whether or not she wanted to.
The hateful woman next to me called out my number. I was so sickened
at the thought of what I was supposed to do that I simply got up and ran out
of the auditorium as fast as I could. Unknown to me at the time, the king’s
son had come out and was going to choose his bride that day. He had heard
my number—number 29—called and had seen me run away. He put his
fingers to his lips and said, “I like that. She ran away from evil. I choose
her!” Everyone began looking around, saying, “Where is she? Where did
she go?”
Suddenly, I came back in, dressed in regal robes. My face looked totally
different. I knew it was me, but I didn’t recognize myself. I approached the
court and stood in front of the king’s son. He kissed me and gave me a
scepter. There were two thrones and we both turned around and sat down in
them. That’s how the dream ended.
I have come to understand since then that this dream wasn’t just for me,
but for all of us—the Bride of Christ. It is a dream of where the Lord wants
to take us. We are His chosen ones, set apart before we were ever born. Paul
told the Ephesians:
For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and
blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us for adoption to sonship
through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will—to the
praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he
loves. (Eph. 1:4–6)
For years I asked the Lord, God, what’s the deal about number 29?
What does it mean? He answered my question by showing me Scriptures
such as “‘For I know the plans I have for you,’” declares the Lord, “‘plans
to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future’”
(Jer. 29:11); “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a consecrated
nation, a [special] people for God’s own possession, so that you may
proclaim the excellencies [the wonderful deeds and virtues and perfections]
of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light” (1 Pet.
2:9, AMP); Esther 2:9 (which tells how Esther is given the choice place in
the king’s harem); and Psalm 29 (which describes the voice of the Lord
thundering, causing the deer to calf, stripping bare the forests, echoing
across the waters, and breaking open the way).
Then there is Acts 29. Now, I know there is no chapter 29 in the book of
Acts, because it ends with chapter 28. But we’re writing it. That’s what
we’re called to come into. We have been chosen. That’s what the number 29
means—chosen.

Being a Chosen One Carries Responsibilities

When you accept yourself as among those whom God has chosen, you must
understand that your position carries great responsibilities as well as
privileges. I am so thankful that the Lord is bringing a release for women in
ministry today. He is setting us free and unshackling our voices, our arms,
our legs, and our hearts. In the midst of it all, though, we must be careful to
keep our focus pure. In the days ahead we will have opportunities for far
more battles than we can possibly endure. Therefore, we must choose
wisely and carefully discern the battles that the Lord has given us to fight.
You see, the issue isn’t the Lord’s releasing women. The issue is the
lordship of Jesus Christ. We’re not here to promote our own camp. Constant
harping on “equality for women” comes from the wrong spirit. We want to
build the body of Christ, and that means focusing on unity. It means
repairing the breach between men and women. We have to be very careful
when we as women stand before anyone that we are not guilty of self-
exaltation.
Jesus told us in Luke 14:10 to take the lowest seat and to let the host
invite us to a higher place. We should not assume that higher place
ourselves. I know that in many cases women have taken leadership or
responsibility because men have failed to do so. Women have seen the need
and jumped in. Unfortunately, many times they have done so out of a wrong
spirit and have taken an inheritance that was not meant for them.
God doesn’t intend for it to be an “either–or” setup but a “both–and”
arrangement. We are to be laborers together with God, as Paul says in 1
Corinthians 3:9. Whether we are men or women, we are to take our stations
on the wall and do our jobs, thankfully receiving the inheritance that God
has given us and running with it, all the while helping those next to us to do
the same. It’s called servant leadership, and it requires a humble heart. You
must be willing to take the low place and let God be the one who raises you
up.
If you want to be able to walk in the authority God wants to release to
you, then you must learn how to walk under the authority that is over you—
the Lord’s authority. If you want to see release in your own life, then you
must be in right relationship with the Lord and with those whom He has
placed in authority over you. When you are in your proper place, doing
God’s will and exercising the gifts and function that He has given you in the
body of Christ, then you experience victory and effectiveness and can
impart to others their sense of destiny and calling.
You must find the place that God has for you and work there in
partnership with others, both men and women. You must also be humble
and discerning in your spirit lest you usurp an inheritance meant for others.
Each of us has a great responsibility to the generation that will follow us—
our children. If they are to fully realize their place in God’s plan, then we
must give them a pure stream from which to drink—a stream unpolluted by
bitterness, contention, division, unbelief, and fear; a stream where the way
ahead has been cleared by pioneers and heroes who have gone before.

A Time for Heroes

The book of Nehemiah describes how the exiled Jews who returned to
Jerusalem rebuilt the walls of the city and repaired many of the buildings.
In the third chapter we find an interesting reference: “Beyond him,
Nehemiah son of Azbuk, ruler of a half-district of Beth Zur, made repairs
up to a point opposite the tombs of David, as far as the artificial pool and
the House of the Heroes” (Neh. 3:16).
What was the “House of the Heroes”? According to historians, it was
probably a barracks that had a special section set aside to honor the
memories and exploits of the great heroes of the faith and of the Israelite
nation. It probably contained artifacts or other memorabilia such as scrolls,
carvings, shields, swords, and the like. The House of the Heroes was where
the memory of the great ones was not only recalled, but also perpetuated
and imparted to succeeding generations. An integral part of the restoration
of Jerusalem and the returning of the people of God was the restoration of
the House of the Heroes. These people recognized the importance of
keeping alive the memories of the heroes of God.
Today there is a heroic anointing that God wants to place on His people.
We have not been set free simply to celebrate our freedom; we have been
set free for a purpose. God is restoring in this generation the heroic
anointing of His male and female leaders to shape a generation that will
walk in power. A hero is someone who breaks through a barrier in one
generation so that other people, another generation, can go even farther. A
hero is someone who lifts a canopy of oppression in one generation so that
others can stand up under it.
For example, for centuries no man or woman on earth had ever broken
the four-minute mile. In 1954 a British medical student by the name of
Roger Bannister developed some new ways of training and broke the four-
minute mile for the first time in history. You might think that a record that
took so long to achieve would stand for a long time. However, less than two
months later, someone else broke the four-minute mile. By the end of the
year, thirteen people had done it. Once someone proves that something can
be done, it creates an environment of the possible, an impartation of hope
and possibility that enables others to do it. It is a natural principle. The
person who first breaks through the barrier makes it possible mentally and
physically for others to break through. That’s what being a hero means.
We have had many singular pioneers in past generations. What is
different about today is that God has issued a call and is raising up
thousands upon thousands of people like you and me to be the heroes and
the pioneers for the generations that will follow us. It’s great to be free in
Christ, but if we celebrate that freedom for its own sake and hoard it for our
own private benefit, then we will miss the ultimate calling that we have as
heroes in our generation.
We are guardians of a deposit that God is pouring out on this generation.
It’s like the Niagara Falls—a great, thunderous flow of power and anointing
that begins with us is meant to flow on to the next generation. How we walk
today in our power and anointing will determine whether our children will
inherit a pure or a polluted stream. If we do not cleanse our stream now, our
impurities will be perpetuated and magnified in the next generation. We live
in an age that is sorely lacking in heroes. Think about it. Who can we look
at today and regard as a hero? Certainly there are some, but they sure are
hard to find.
Isaiah the prophet said that when a people comes under judgment, God
takes away wise leadership from the land—the hero, warrior, judge,
prophet, elder, and others (see Isa. 3:1–4). During a time of restoration, the
Lord restores these to the land. We are now entering such a time of
restoration, and the Lord is calling us to be heroes. He is preparing us for a
time soon to come when the world will cry out for leaders who are in touch
with the heart and mind of God.
If you are going to accept your calling as a hero, you must be prepared
to live vicariously. That is, you must be ready to live your life for the sake
of others. That is just what Jesus did. His death on the cross for all our sins
was a vicarious atonement—a substitutionary death on our behalf. True
heroes don’t perform for themselves or for personal gain, but for the good
of others. They give themselves for the sake of others. That’s what Joan of
Arc did. That’s what every truly great person does.
Vicarious living is a truth that every true leader understands. God wants
us to understand that we are to live today for the sake of our children and
for a generation yet unborn. He has called us and anointed us to live
heroically beyond the immediate and beyond the personal.

Keeping the Stream Pure

How can you be sure to maintain an unpolluted stream to pass on to those
who follow? It requires hard work, a lot of prayer, and constant vigilance.
There are seven general principles that we all need to take to heart that will
help us keep our stream pure.
1. Develop a passion for God’s Word. First Peter 3:15 says, “But in your
hearts set Christ apart [as holy—acknowledging Him, giving Him first
place in your lives] as Lord. Always be ready to give a [logical] defense to
anyone who asks you to account for the hope and confident assurance
[elicited by faith] that is within you…” (AMP). Paul wrote to Timothy, “Do
your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a workman who does
not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth” (2
Tim. 2:15).
Being prepared to give an answer to those who ask about the hope we
have requires more than just the testimony of our walk with God. It also
requires knowledge of God’s Word. Solid grounding in the Scriptures is
needed if we hope to correctly handle the Word of truth.
How important is the Bible in your daily Christian life? Do you read it
devotionally and let it go at that? Do you study it vigorously, trying to
understand everything you can? Have you been hurt by the way others have
used the Bible in the past to tie you down or hold you back and keep you
from realizing God’s call on your life? Because of this, have you distanced
yourself from the Bible, telling yourself that you want to focus on being
“spiritual” rather than biblical?
If you are interested in accepting the anointing of a hero and living
vicariously for another generation, understand that God is calling you to be
exactly what Scripture teaches. None of us can afford to distance ourselves
from Scripture, to settle for anything less than learning and understanding
everything we can. For the sake of future generations, we have to hammer
into the Scriptures and ask God for the understanding. If you’ve left being
biblical for the sake of being spiritual and pursuing your calling, come
home. You don’t have to neglect the Word to pursue your calling from God
as a woman.
 The Word and the Spirit always agree. If the Holy Spirit is the One who
both empowers you and releases you, then His Word is consistent with that.
When you welcome a heroic anointing, when you welcome the call of God
to be the heroic woman that you’re called to be, then you welcome the
responsibility to launch the rising generation out on the firmest biblical
foundation possible.
2. Expect to be wounded. David the psalmist said to God, “For they
persecute those you wound and talk about the pain of those you hurt” (Ps.
69:26). Have you ever been hurt because you were trying to stand up for
Jesus? Do you carry deep pain over something that another person, even
another Christian, said or did to you?
Wounds are an occupational hazard for heroes. Whenever you accept
the calling of God, whenever you stand up against the norm, you will be
wounded. Wounds hurt. Sometimes they hurt very badly. Our theology of
victory does not exempt us from bruises and wounds. God uses them to
make us into the heroes that He has called us to be. Even if the wound
comes from someone who is not in the Lord, the wound itself is something
that God wants us to embrace redemptively.
Anything of value costs something. King David said that he would not
offer to the Lord that which cost him nothing (see 2 Sam. 24:24).
Everything we do as Christians takes on more meaning when we have paid
a price for it. It’s one thing to worship God on the good days when
everything is going great. It’s quite another thing to do so when we’re under
attack and hurting deep inside. Carrying the heroic anointing will cost us a
price in hurt and pain. Many of you are already paying that price where you
are. Take courage! The pain is worth the price if it means you can pass on
an untainted stream to those who come after you. Embracing the pain for
the sake of others is part of being a hero.
3. God wounds you to develop your character. To many people today,
character means not doing certain things. That’s not what it means in the
Bible, however. In the Scriptures, the word “character” means to bear up
under suffering and difficulty. In Ruth 3:11, Ruth is called a woman of
noble character because she bore up under difficulty. God will use the hard
things in your life to prepare you for the anointing that He wants to place
upon you. The writer of Hebrews said of Jesus, “Son though he was, he
learned obedience from what He suffered” (Heb. 5:8).
 Think of what Jesus suffered: rejection by His family, the death of His
earthly father, ridicule, crucifixion, and death. Through all this He learned
obedience and thus became a source of new life for His generation. In the
same way, the Lord uses the hardships of your life to build in you pillars of
character that can sustain the anointing that will rest on them. God’s
anointing must work on you before it can work through you.
4. Don’t give place to bitterness. Hebrews 12:15 says, “See to it that no
one misses the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause
trouble and defile many.” The Greek word for “defile” carries the idea of a
dye for coloring clothes. If you allow roots of bitterness to spring up in your
life, they will dye or taint everything you do. Have you ever heard someone
speak where the words were great and the message solid, but there was
something about his or her spirit that just didn’t sit right with you? There
may have been a root of bitterness or some other negative force that tainted
the flow of that person’s lives.
As believers, each of us ministers out of the flow of our spirit and out of
the Holy Spirit in us. If we allow bitterness to dwell in our lives, we pollute
that flow and produce weakened, diseased fruit. Anytime we take offense at
a wrong or a hurt, we open ourselves up to be trapped by the enemy. The
Greek word in the New Testament for “offense” is skandalon, from which
we get the word “scandal.” It literally refers to a trap-stick or snare—that
part of an animal trap that sets off the trap when the animal steps into it.
Our bitterness, our offense, can become the trigger that snares us in the
enemy’s trap.
What do you do about bitterness in your life? When the Israelites in the
wilderness complained to Moses because the water was too bitter to drink,
Moses threw a piece of wood into the water and the water became sweet
(see Ex. 15:23–25). When you throw the wood (that is, the cross of Jesus!)
onto your waters of bitterness, they will become sweet.
5. Submit to one another. A lot of us get uncomfortable with the words
“submit” and “submission,” and with good reason. There is no doubt that
men have treated women wrongly throughout history. There’s also no
question that men often have acted as though they could go it alone without
the gifts that women could bring. The great danger that lies in the current
release of women into ministry is that it will degrade into a feministic Holy
Spirit women’s movement that is at odds with the men. All of us, men and
women, need to reexamine the Scriptures to understand the model that God
intends.
The apostle Paul summed up that model very well for the Ephesians:
“Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ” (Eph. 5:21). What God
wants now is not an independent women’s movement and an independent
men’s movement, but a team movement that unfortunately most men and
women in the church don’t yet understand. Submitting to one another out of
reverence for Christ is the context for everything that follows.
It’s bad theology that has held women in bondage, not good theology.
There is a place in certain contexts and situations for men to submit to
women. There’s a mutual deferring to gifts. There’s a way women are
created to carry certain things, and to do certain things, and a way men are
created for certain things. If a man will love and protect his wife, if he will
encourage her, she can be a tremendous fount of wisdom, revelation, and
insight for him.
The quickest way to pollute the stream for the next generation is to
make it an independent movement filled with harshness and unsubmissive
spirits. God didn’t intend for women to go it alone any more than He
intended for men to do so. He intended for us to participate in a godly
merging. We can’t afford to pass on to the next generation an ungodly spirit
of independence.
6. Don’t compromise your call. There is a tendency among Christian
women today, when the traditional and normal corridors of power and
ministry are closed to them, to seek alternative routes, especially the ones
men aren’t interested in. Let’s take intercession, for example.
Frankly, most men aren’t interested in intercession. There are many
more women than men in the intercession ministry. Now, if that’s your
calling, get after it. Don’t hesitate. But don’t choose that route simply
because it’s a well-worn path for women—especially if your calling is
somewhere else. You may be called to pastoral ministry or to evangelism.
Don’t let yourself be diverted. Don’t compromise your call. The path of
least resistance may not be the right path! If you settle for what’s easy or
open to you right now, you may miss out on God’s higher calling on your
life.
However, this doesn’t mean engaging in guerrilla warfare either,
blowing down doors and toppling walls in order to take your “rightful
place.” We as women need to let the Lord be our defense and open those
doors to us in His time and in His way. As we walk in the character we’re
called to walk in and as His anointing rests upon us, He will break those
yokes. Don’t compromise the high call in your heart. The Lord will prepare
the way.
7. Drive a stake into the heart of the fear of man. Quite often the fear of
man stems from the fact that we have too lofty a picture of humanity and
too limited a picture of God. Man and his institutions seem so big and
substantial while our concept of God is restrained by sin and unbelief. But
as you grow in your walk with the Lord, as you learn to worship Him and
behold His presence, and as you cry out to Him, He will give you such a
high view and a holy transforming vision of who Jesus is, and a high and
transformed view of who you are and what you are called to be, that the
opinions of men fade in comparison. Chapter 40 of Isaiah has some
powerful descriptions that compare mankind with God:
“All people are like grass, and all their faithfulness is like the flowers of the
field. The grass withers and the flowers fall, because the breath of the Lord
blows on them. Surely the people are grass. The grass withers and the
flowers fall, but the word of our God endures forever.”…Surely the nations
are like a drop in a bucket; they are regarded as dust on the scales; he
weighs the islands as though they were fine dust.…Before him all the
nations are as nothing; they are regarded by him as worthless and less than
nothing.…He sits enthroned above the circle of the earth, and its people are
like grasshoppers. He stretches out the heavens like a canopy, and spreads
them out like a tent to live in. He brings princes to naught and reduces the
rulers of this world to nothing. No sooner are they planted, no sooner are
they sown, no sooner do they take root in the ground, than he blows on
them and they wither, and a whirlwind sweeps them away like chaff.…Do
you not know? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the
Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and His
understanding no one can fathom. (Isa. 40:6b–28)
How do you deal with the fear of man? Realize that the God who
created the universe is the same God who has commissioned you. You are
small, but He is BIG! He will strengthen and empower you in your
adventure of faith. Yes, exchange your fears. Cast off your fear of man and
receive in its place the reverential fear of the Lord. Look at the Lord and see
how awesome and omnipotent He is. Then look at yourself—you’ll be
overwhelmed by your smallness in contrast. But then take a look again—
this BIG God is personally cheering you on. This everlasting God is on
your side. As you understand this, the snare of the fear of man fades into the
background, and courage will rise up within you. With another piece then
put into place, we are ready to seize the day!

Carpe Diem—Seize the Day

Take courage! You are chosen. The King of heaven and earth has selected
you to be His very own. He has called you to courage and to be a hero in
this generation, living for the sake of the next. You are in good company.
The Spirit of the Lord is with you, the same Spirit who led, inspired, and
gave courage to Joan of Arc, Perpetua, Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman,
Aimee Semple McPherson, Lydia Christensen Prince, Bertha Smith, Corrie
ten Boom, Jackie Pullinger, and countless other women throughout the ages
—women who heard God’s call and seized the opportunity in their day.
May we in this generation rise up and join this exalted company of the
called, the chosen…His beloved!
Let us enter the House of the Heroes. Let us look on the scrolls,
carvings, shields, and swords. Let our eyes look into the faces and the
hearts of heroes past. Let us lean forward, quiet in our souls, and listen for
what advice and counsel they would give us. These stories of Joan of Arc,
Perpetua, Harriet Tubman, and all the others are not just good “stories” or
“legends.” Their memorabilia is not just rotting cloth and rusting iron.
Listen close and look deeply for what you can glean from them. They
would say to you, Serve the Lord with all your strength. Love Him with all
your being. Do not miss the day of your visitation. While it is yet your day,
seize it. Seize your destiny, your calling, your opportunity. Seize the day!
Yes, there is a call to courage being pronounced in our day. Warriors are
being searched for, and are desperately needed. Do you hear the call? If so,
sign up right now!
Father, I surrender my life to the call to courage. Here I am. Change me.
Use me. Drive fear out of me. I volunteer freely to be on the front lines in
Jesus’ name. Be glorified through my life. Amen.
 ABOUT THE AUTHORS

DR. JAMES W. GOLL is the founder of Encounters Network, Prayer

Storm, and the God Encounters Training eSchool. James in an international
bestselling author, a certified Life Language Trainer, and has taught in more
than fifty nations. James was married to Michal Ann for thirty-two years
before her graduation to heaven in the fall of 2008. James has four adult
children who are married and a growing number of grandchildren. James
makes his home in Franklin, Tennessee.

MICHAL ANN GOLL was a lover of Jesus all her life, the devoted
wife of James Goll for thirty-two years, and mother of four beloved
children. She was the founder of Compassion Acts, a member of the Debra
Company Founder’s Group, and honored to be listed in the Cambridge
Who’s Who. She traveled the globe demonstrating that love takes action.
She authored eight books and co-established the Women on the Frontlines
conferences. She graduated to her heavenly reward in the fall of 2008 and is
greatly missed to this day by thousands of people around the world.

EncountersNetwork.com
PO Box 1653, Franklin, TN 37065
[email protected]
615-599-5552 | 877-200-1604
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

First we want to thank our family, for without their love and support we
could never have attempted these projects. Thank you, dear children: Justin,
GraceAnn, Tyler, and Rachel, for all that you have sacrificed for our sakes
and for the sake of so many others. Hugs!
Thanks also go to the original publishing company, Destiny Image, for
their vision to see women released into the fullness of their destinies and
callings in God. And thank you to the new team at BroadStreet, who saw
the diamonds resting in these manuscripts and had the vision to help polish
them off to be jewels in the Master’s hand for a new generation.
Thanks always go to our faithful staff and intercessors over the years at
Encounters Network, a Ministry to the Nations. You have always been the
most wonderful, dedicated team there could possibly be. We count
ourselves most fortunate to work together with these dear friends. Thank
you all for your watchful prayers on our behalf, as well as for your practical
assistance. Your sacrifices on our behalf are seen in heaven.
I (James) also want to express my thanks to some special spiritual
leaders who have invested in our lives over the years. First, I give honor to
my adopted Papa in the faith, Don Finto, of the Caleb Company in
Nashville, Tennessee. What an honor to know and walk with you. Second, I
want to honor some of our dearest friends and mentors, Mahesh and Bonnie
Chavda. Where would we be without you? Third, I want to express
gratitude for the years of investment that the late prophetic seer Bob Jones
poured into our lives. Last, I want to thank the Lord for the years of
relationship with Che and Sue Ahn, for their care, love, and making room
for us among the HIM apostolic team. You and others have provided a place
of shelter for us—to be pioneers for Christ’s kingdom’s sake.
Most important, I want to thank our Lord and King, Jesus Christ, who
has opened the door of freedom for us and who cares more about our
destiny and future than we could ever possibly imagine.
We worked on this series of books for You, Jesus. And we pray that
they will be used to release Your kingdom life into the lives of many, many
men and women across the globe for generations yet to come.
 NOTES

Chapter 3: Joan of Arc

1. “Joan of Arc: Biography,” Bio., (www.biography.com/people/joan-of-arc-9354756).
2. C. M. Stevens, The Wonderful Story of Joan of Arc and the Meaning of Her Life for Americans
(New York: Cupples and Leon Company, 1918), 28.
3. Stevens, 29.
4. “Joan of Arc: Biography.”
5. Herbert Thurston, “St. Joan of Arc,” The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 8 (New York: Robert
Appleton Company, 1910), http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08409c.htm.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid.
9. Francis W. Leary, The Golden Longing (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1959), 31.
10. Thurston.
11. Leary, 42.
12. Thurston.
13. Leary, 44.
14. Thurston.
15. Ibid.
16. Ibid.
17. Ibid.
18. Ibid.
19. “Joan of Arc Trial Transcripts,” Gavel2Gavel, http://www.re-quest.net/g2g/historical/trials/joan-
of-arc/. Stevens, 300.
21. Stevens, 302.
22. “Joan of Arc: Biography.”

Chapter 4: Vibia Perpetua

1. Alban Butler, “Saints Perpetua, Felicitas, and Companions—Martyrs,” The Lives of Saints (New
York: John J. Crawley & Company, 1954), provided courtesy of EWTN library
(http://www.ewtn.com/library/mary/perpetua.htm).
2. “Sts. Perpetua and Felicity,” Catholic Online, http://www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?
saint_id=48.
3. Peter Dronke, trans., “Perpetua,” Women Writers of the Middle Ages (New York: Cambridge
Univ. Press, 1984).
4. Butler.
5. W.H. Shewring, trans., The Passion of Perpetua and Felicity (London: Sheed and Ward, 1931).
Internet Medieval Sourcebook (http://legacy.fordham.edu/halsall/source/perpetua.asp).
6. Butler.

Chapter 5: Sojourner Truth

1. W. Terry Whalin, Sojourner Truth: American Abolitionist (Uhrichsville, OH: Barbour, 1997),
195.
2. Arthur Huff Fauset, Sojourner Truth, God’s Faithful Pilgrim (New York: Russell & Russell,
1971), 57–63.
3. Harriet Beecher Stowe, “Sojourner Truth, The Libyan Sibyl,” Atlantic Monthly 11(April 1863),
473–481 (http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1863/04/sojourner-truth-the-libyan-
sibyl/308775/).
4. Whalin, 55–56.
5. Victoria Ortiz, Sojourner Truth, A Self-Made Woman (Philadelphia, PA: J.B. Lippincott, 1974),
44.
6. Whalin, 87.
7. Stowe.
8. Whalin, 94.
9. Ibid., 101.
10. Ibid., 152.
11. Ortiz, 62.
12. Whalin, 118.
13. Frances D. Gage as quoted in Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn
Gage, eds., History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 1 (Reprinted, New York: Arno Press and the New
York Times, 1969), 2.
14. Patricia McKissack, Sojourner Truth: Ain’t I a Woman? (New York: Scholastic, 1994), 112–114.
15. Stanton, et al., 2.
16. Ibid.

Chapter 6: Harriet Tubman

1. Ann Petry, Harriet Tubman: Conductor on the Underground Railroad (New York: Thomas Y.
Crowell, 1955), 214–217.
2. Judy Carlson, Harriet Tubman: Call to Freedom (New York: Fawcett Columbine, 1989), 79–81.
3. Ibid., 29.
4. Ibid., 4.
5. Sarah Bradford, Harriet: The Moses of Her People (New York: George R. Lockwood & Son,
1886), 30 (http://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/harriet/harriet.html).
6. Ibid., 61
7. Ibid., 49–51.
8. Ibid., 83–84.

Chapter 7: Aimee Semple McPherson

1. Edith L. Blumhofer, Aimee Semple McPherson: Everybody’s Sister (Grand Rapids, MI: William
B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1993), 108–109.
2. Don Taylor, “Aimee: A Short Biography,” Liberty Harbor Foursquare Church, 1998, 1
(http://www.libertyharbor.org/aimee.htm).
3. Daniel Mark Epstein, Sister Aimee (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1993), 47–50.
4. Blumhofer, 102–103.
5. Taylor, 4.
6. Ibid.
7. Blumhofer, 107.
8. Lately Thomas, Storming Heaven (New York: William Morrow and Co., 1970), 20.
9. Blumhofer, 160.
10. Ibid., 159–160.
11. Ibid., 161.
12. The Foursquare Church, “Our Story: The History and Future of the Foursquare Church,”
http://www.foursquare.org/about/history.
13. Epstein, 206–207.
14. Blumhofer, 277.
15. Ibid., 359.

Chapter 8: Lydia Christensen Prince

1. Lydia and Derek Prince, Appointment in Jerusalem (Grand Rapids, MI: Chosen Books, 1975),
21. Used by permission. Derek Prince Ministries-International, P.O. Box 19501, Charlotte, NC
28219-5901.
2. Ibid., 30.
3. Ibid., 31–33.
4. Ibid., 33.
5. Ibid., 45–46.
6. Ibid., 71.
7. Ibid., 102, 107.
8. Ibid., 119.
9. Ibid., 123–125.
10. Derek and Ruth Prince, God Is a Matchmaker: Seven Biblical Principles for Finding Your Mate
(Grand Rapids, MI: Chosen, 2011), 25–33.
11. Ibid., 33.
13. Prince, Appointment in Jerusalem, 174.

Chapter 9: Bertha Smith

1. Lewis Drummond, Miss Bertha: Woman of Revival (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman
Publishers, 1996), 100–102.
2. Bertha Smith, Go Home and Tell (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman, 1995), 90.
3. Drummond, 102.
4. Ibid., 5–6.
5. Bertha Smith, How the Spirit Filled My Life (Nashville, TN: Broadman Press, 1973), 22.
6. Drummond, 17.
7. Ibid., 24.
8. Ibid., 46.
9. Smith, How the Spirit Filled My Life, 29.
10. Drummond, 40.
11. Ibid., 48–49.
12. Ibid., 49.
13. C. L. Culpepper, The Shantung Revival (Dallas, TX: Crescendo Publications, 1971), 13–14.
14. Smith, Go Home and Tell, 40.
15. Drummond, 54.
16. Culpepper, 72–73.
17. Smith, Go Home and Tell, 96–98.
18. Drummond, 121–123.
19. Ibid., 285.

Chapter 10: Corrie ten Boom

1. Corrie ten Boom, The Hiding Place with John and Elizabeth Sherrill (Grand Rapids, MI: Chosen
Books, 1984), 69–70.
2. Ibid., 29.
3. David Wallington, “The Secret Room: The Story of Corrie ten Boom,” Soon Online Magazine,
Soon Ministries, United Kingdom (http://www.soon.org.uk/en/stories/series-9/the-secret-
room.html).
4. Ten Boom, 85.
5. Ibid., 77.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid., 114.
8. Joan Winmill Brown, Corrie: The Lives She’s Touched (Old Tappan, NJ: Fleming H. Revell
Company, 1979), 49.
9. Ten Boom, 158ff.
10. Ibid., 153–154.
11. Ibid., 160–161.
12. Ibid., 157–158.
13. Ibid., 165.
14. Brown, 63.
15. Carole C. Carlson, Corrie ten Boom: Her Life, Her Faith (Old Tappan, NJ: Fleming H. Revell
Company, 1983), 117.
16. Ten Boom, 171.
17. Ibid., 172.
18. Elizabeth Sherrill, “Since Then,” from Guideposts Magazine, 1983, in Ten Boom, The Hiding
Place, 226–228.
19. Ibid.
20. Ibid.

Chapter Eleven: Jackie Pullinger

1. Jackie Pullinger, Crack in the Wall (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1997), 7–8.
2. Jackie Pullinger, Chasing the Dragon (Ann Arbor, MI: Servant, 1982), 137.
3. Pullinger, Crack in the Wall, 8.
4. Pullinger, Chasing the Dragon, 34–36.
5. Ibid., 39.
6. Pullinger, Crack in the Wall, 18–19.
7. Ibid., 26–32.
8. Jim Goll, The Lost Art of Intercession (Shippensburg, PA: Revival Press, 1997), 36–37.
9. Jackie Pullinger, “Where We Are Now,” Worldscope Communigram,
http://www.churchlink.com.au/churchlink/worldscope/communigram/jackie.html.
10. Jackie Pullinger: “Caring for Kowloon,” “Report on the Meetings with Jackie Pullinger-To,”
Street Level Consulting and Counseling,
http://streetlevelconsulting.ca/compassion/biographies/jackie-pullinger-caring-for-kowloon/.

Chapter Twelve: You Are Chosen

1. The former senior pastor of Belmont Church, Stephen Mansfield, is a man who firmly believes in
women in ministry. This material is adapted from the message he gave at a 1998 “Women of
Valor” conference. I am deeply grateful for his allowing me to include it in this book.