My Soul Looks Back and Wonders: the Call of God on a Woman's Life

By Elaine Rose Penn

There are thousands of great women of God who were pioneers of the faith and the gospel. Though many of their names are lost to us forever, the record of their exploits for the sake of the Kingdom are engraved in the eternal and living chronicles of heaven. They represent the hues and colors of God´s rainbow and are present in the history of every denomination, faith and religion. Women have dug out churches, cleaned them, closed them and built them. They were visionaries, ground-breakers, pathfinders, the bridges that brought us over, trend-setters, armor-bearers, leaders, agents for change and disciples. They cooked, cried, sang, marched, testified, organized, did the holy dance, counseled, and prayed while everybody else slept. They carried the "work" on their bare knuckles, tear drops, hips, lips and hearts. In the pages of this delightful book filled with powerful scriptural revelation, candor, insight and instruction,Elaine Rose Penn delivers a challenge to women called to the gospel ministry to be true to their femininity, and adhere to a high standard of excellence and accountability in the conduct of their service to Christ.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Dec 20, 2019
• ISBN: 9781796067095

Elaine Rose Penn

Elaine Rose Penn has ministered the gospel for more than two decades nationally and is a licensed member of clergy. In addition, she has ministered internationally including West Africa, East Africa, Germany, Japan, and the Caribbean. She has several years of doctoral work in Biblical Studies from Trinity University, and is currently pursuing a doctorate in Education with a focus in Instructional Design from Northcentral University. She is a prolific author with several other self-published works, and makes her home in Phoenix, Arizona.

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My Soul Looks Back and Wonders: The Call of God on a Woman’s Life

Elaine Rose Penn

Copyright © 2019 by Elaine Rose Penn.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Scripture quotations marked KJV are from the Holy Bible, King James Version (Authorized Version). First published in 1611. Quoted from the KJV Classic Reference Bible, Copyright © 1983 by The Zondervan Corporation.

Scripture quotations marked NKJV are taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked AMP are from The Amplified Bible, Old Testament copyright © 1965, 1987 by the Zondervan Corporation. The Amplified Bible, New Testament copyright © 1954, 1958, 1987 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 12/20/2019

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Contents

Dedication

Preface

Chapter 1 My Soul Looks Back And Wonders How I Made It Over

Chapter 2 The Power Of A Woman

Chapter 3 Let’s Throw Jezebel Off The Roof Again

Chapter 4 Mirror, Mirror On The Wall

Chapter 5 The Potter’s Wheel

Chapter 6 The Reason I Live This Life

Chapter 7 Leading From Down Under

Chapter 8 Titles, Rank, Position, And Seating Arrangements

Chapter 9 Ride Sally Ride

Chapter 10 Some Things Just Have To Run Their Course

Chapter 11 Poogie Bear And A Doll Named Annie

Chapter 12 My Husband, My Pastor, My Lover

Chapter 13 Preacher’s Daughters Are Breach Babies

Dedication

This book is fondly dedicated to my Mother, Lula M. Penn, and the daughters of preachers all over the world,

especially my own daughters,

LaToya, Colette, and Cetra

Preface

The call to ministry on a woman’s life is beset by many trials particular to just being female. Yet, God has uniquely set us in the Body to minister in a way that only a woman with ample fortitude could handle. An eye can’t do what an ear can do, and a hand can’t do what a leg can do. That’s why I’m a female – there is no man in existence who can do what I was called to do. When I’m at my best, in terms of my call in the Kingdom, I’m doing what only a female dressed in these robes of honor, servitude, and boldness would have the gall to do. A man would absolutely refuse – in a heartbeat – he would refuse. From my mother’s womb, the Creator of all that exists, identified me, a woman – as the only one fit to carry out my assignment. I could have said No; but no other being could do what I do and in the way that I do it - even had God commissioned someone else. Time, place, and assignment mean more than we think.

Then too, God had our femininity in mind when He called us. Something to think about, isn’t it? He knew what our challenges would be as the female of the species, and He knew what our victories would be when He called us out and deputized us. He knew that some of us would be called upon to bear the crosses of rejection, aloneness, subjugation and even mockery by other women so that others of us could conquer new ground and vanquish stubbornly held generational strongholds.

Only the strong survive – and we, who are considered least by earthly standards; one day by heaven’s standards, will be the first in line to receive our crowns and rewards. Until that day, we anxiously await His glorious appearing when the dead in Christ shall rise first, and those of us who are yet alive, will meet Him in the middle of the air.

Elder Elaine Rose Penn,

Author

Chapter 1

MY SOUL LOOKS BACK AND WONDERS HOW I MADE IT OVER

If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do? Psalms 11:3 (KJV)

I believe the most fitting way to introduce this book is to acknowledge the thousands of great women of God who were pioneers of the faith and the gospel. Though many of their names are lost to us forever, the record of their exploits for the sake of the Kingdom are engraved in the eternal and living chronicles of heaven. They represent the hues and colors of God’s rainbow and are present in the history of ever y denomination and faith. They were somebody’s mommas, daughters, wives, sisters, big mommas and nannas; and although most held no title, they were preachers, teachers, pastors and pioneers.

The most notable women in scripture washed the feet of our Lord, anointed His Body for the burial, were witness to His servanthood and suffering, sat at His feet to be taught, served Him with their labor, love and tears, and were loyal and fearless disciples who followed Him even to Golgotha’s hill.

Historically, women have dug out churches, cleaned them, closed them and built them. They were visionaries, groundbreakers, path- finders, the bridges that brought us over, trend-setters, armor-bearers, leaders, agents of change and disciples. They cooked, cried, sang, marched, testified, organized, did the holy dance, counseled, and prayed while everybody else slept. They carried the work on their bare knuckles, tear drops, hips, lips and hearts.

When they set their jaw to finish a work, you were ‘liable to get run over if you didn’t move fast enough. With a tilt of the head and arms crossed over their bosoms, they knew when they’d said enough and to just pray. Lord help, if both hands happened to settle on their hips and they demanded that you repeat what you just said. There was no such thing as ‘one had, but the other didn’t’ in their world. Whatever was hers was mine as well as yours. If you ever got a piece of their mind, it was worse than getting cussed out—so you were glad the saints didn’t believe in swearing. The same hands that clapped thunder from heaven in the devotional service, could swing a hoe or caress a baby’s soft behind. They wailed when they were in unspeakable grief, and made the devils tremble with their well-planned shouts of Amen!

With their hands, they made quilts from last year’s britches,

canned preserves in wide-mouthed mason jars, dug ditches, and wore-out many a wayward behind. They could slap you with the back of their hand and not miss a beat with the choir, but they could also hug you so tight that you were afraid you were going to stop breathing if they didn’t let you go. If they caught you thinking about acting up, they could cut an eye at you that was worse than a whippin’. They fried ‘hoe cakes and chicken, scaled fish, snapped beans, kneaded the dough for biscuits, butchered hogs for smoked ham, and with the same hands could chop kindlin’ good as any man. They didn’t understand the word try or maybe and seemed to think that the word no meant not ‘fo daybreak. But oh my Lord … when the morning did come!

Before there was air conditioning, Miss Clairol, or extensions, they could wear a head rag or hat like nobody’s business. The lingering after-scent of lye soap in their homespun dresses lulled many a baby to sleep on their bosoms. Their heavy, ill-fitting shoes worn with dark thick stockings hid the scars of varicose veins and calloused knees from scrubbing floors and kneeling on hard-wood floors.

My own great-grandmother, Pastor Mattie Reynolds, pastored at the turn of the century in the state of Maryland, and co-pastored a church with a male co-pastor well into her late 70’s. Her daughter, Pastor Rosie B. Penn, who was my paternal grandmother, was a prophetess and pastor in the state of Virginia in the mid-1930’s and ’40’s. Although my momma, Evangelist Lula M. Penn, is a preacher in her own right, the Levitical line is clearly female and dominant on my daddy’s side. There are others who are mothers and co-laborers of mine in the gospel ministry and who have gone on to take their eternal rest—I wish I could name the name of every single one of them in these pages. Here are but a few, lest we forget:

Kathryn Kuhlman, Phoebe Palmer, Aimee Semple McPherson, Maria Beulah Woodworth-Etter, Minnie Kennedy, Amanda Berry Smith, Corrie Ten Boom, Lilian Barbara Yeomans, Lucy Farrow, Mother Lizzie Woods-Roberson, Neely Terry, Alma White, Emma Cotton, Freda Lindsay, Ivey Campbell, Madelyn Wens, Lottie Moon, and so, so very many others.

How I made it over

Oh, how did I make it over

You know my soul looks back and wonders how did I make it over

I had a mighty hard time coming over

And You know my soul looks back and wonders how did I make it over

I’ve been falling and rising all these years

Oh my Lord, my soul looks back and wonders how did I make it over

Lyrics from an old Negro spiritual

Chapter 2

THE POWER OF A WOMAN

Nevertheless, neither is the man without the woman, neither the woman without the man, in the Lord. For as the woman is of the man, even so is the man also by the woman; but all things of God. 1 Corinthians 11:11,12 (KJV)

The first thing you should know is that it was the Holy Spirit who insisted that I title this chapter, the Power of a Woman. As He led me deeper and deeper into the Genesis accounting of the creation of the woman, I grew more confused about His choice of title and what it was He wanted to prove to me. As He led me back and forth between the Old and New Testaments, I couldn’t see any power in the fact that woman was created for the man. I could also not see any power in the fact that Eden had many trees with fruit that was pleasant to the touch and sight and of all these fruit of varying colors, smells, and delightful tastes, which tree did the first woman allow a fast-talking snake to trick her with? The one with the long name (Genesis 2:17). Did the first woman have that much time on her hands?

I grew increasingly disenchanted with the Holy Spirit as He laid bare one truth upon another. Kicking and screaming one night—because I felt that I had had enough—I stopped Him and shared with Him about how we as women of God have been bombarded by one teaching after another about how inferior we are. I reminded the Holy One of how we are constantly reminded that it was Eve that led her man into sin with that stupid bite of the forbidden fruit, how we need to submit to our husbands in everything—ad nauseam, and how the Apostle Paul said we should be seen and not heard, and to learn at home. Over the course of weeks, He was to confront my thinking and inbred sense of insecurity as a woman with one powerful and liberating truth after another. But I had to hear Him out. And that is what I am asking you to do. Hear the whole matter, and then decide based on the full weight of scripture and the cleansing that truth always brings.

My struggle to understand my power as a woman, years ago led me to a gut-wrenching cry to God to explain to me why He had called me to the gospel ministry as a woman when there was so much rejection of my gender in the ministry of the gospel. (I was led through denominational and doctrinal error to believe that anything I had to offer as a woman was strictly subservient.) His simple response spoken in rebuke and correction stilled my heart and helped me turn a corner. I had need to make you a woman. Don’t bring this issue before me again.

God Didn’t Go Back to the Ground to Create the Woman

When God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils, making him a living soul, He also fashioned the man in His image and according to His own divine likeness (Genesis 2:7). He made the man a tripartite being, with a body, a soul, and a spirit. In setting the man in the Garden of Eden to tend it and to protect it, He draped a mantle of authority upon him which gave him preeminence over all of the other beasts of the field and fowls of the air. One day God took notice of the fact that of everything that He had created and found to be good, there was one thing that was not good. It was not good for the man to be alone.

When we talk about being alone, we define that as the state of being by oneself. Adam was not by himself in the garden before the creation of Eve. There were millions of other species with the power of speech, reason, and intellect. Clearly, the aloneness that God saw in the man did not have to do solely with the issue of companionship.

In Genesis, the second chapter, God made the beasts of the earth, cattle after their own kind, all creeping things, and the fowls of the air—from the ground. Then He brought them to the man to see what he would name them. Something interesting occurs here that we have missed. The Holy Spirit had to put me in a headlock to get me to see it. You will notice that in terms of the sequence of events, God first declared the man to be alone and in need of a helpmeet. Second, He creates the beasts of the field and fowls and creeping things from the same ground from which He had taken the man (Genesis 2:19). Third, He brings them to the man to see what he would name them. Fourth, as Adam names each creature, God then declares that there was no help meet for the man found among the creatures. What was it that God wanted Adam to see for himself about the beasts of the field as distinct from the creature that would soon be taken out of his body?

You will notice that the authority to name something means having the authority to define its purpose, dictate its course, determine its destiny, and identify its function. This was a most powerful privilege that God gave the man that even until this day has not been revoked. It required the exercise of an immense depth and level of intelligence and discernment. God knew that the man needed to know that he had this power. He stepped back and allowed the man to name every beast and every creeping thing for the express purpose of allowing the man to exercise this authority.

Later in the Old Testament, we discover that fathers not only defined the destiny of a child by naming it, but they also spoke a birthright blessing over their sons in particular. And what they said, stood. When God presented the woman to the man, Adam spoke forth two things that would stand forever. First, the man spoke the covenant of marriage that God cut (karat) in his flesh when He put him to sleep, she is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. Second, the man declared the female’s destiny or function as being Woman—she was taken out of the man. Later, he called his wife’s name Eve (Genesis 3:20), or Chavva, which means lifegiver in the Hebrew.

I once heard A. R. Bernard do a training seminar where he explained that after the fall of man, Adam saw that his means of redemption, the Savior, was in his wife and this is why he named her Eve, the mother of all living. Bernard went on to explain that if a man ever gets this understanding deep within his heart and thinking, he’ll never abuse a woman as long as he lives. God divinely fixed it so that whenever the man looked at the one he was joined with (his wife), by his own verbal proclamation, he would know that he was looking at the key to his redemption.

God always decides the end from the beginning. In God’s mind, He wanted a man and a woman perfectly joined in the flesh, both of whom would simultaneously share in the likeness and image of the Godhead, and yet distinct in terms of their individual power to reason, will, and act. Who but God could have even conceived of such an enormous, outrageous possibility! Only a God who calls Himself, I AM could have thought it possible to make two autonomous beings, one flesh. How did He achieve this incredible feat?

The man He had created was so perfect in and of himself, that He couldn’t address the man’s aloneness by making something else just like him. He knew that by going back to the ground, and making another man, He would have two of the same thing. This second being would have the same problem as the first one. They would both need help, and the one wouldn’t be able to give the kind of help that the other needed. No, He didn’t want that. You will also notice that each time God went back to the ground, a different species was formed. He didn’t want a different species, He wanted the same species, but He wanted two out of one! God didn’t want to start all over again when He made the woman. He wanted to create a new model out of something He had already decided was good.

You will notice that as you read through the creation account, that some of what God had created were beasts, and some were fowls, and they all had helpers. Of all of the helpers created, not one of them could be considered a helper who was meet (suitable or appropriate) for Adam. In other words, the male genotype of every species had a female progenitor of the species. For the man, however, there was no female progenitor of his species. He was alone. To create a helper for the man, and instead of going back to the ground to try to make two of one, God cut the man open, took some of his bone, flesh and blood, made Himself a woman from it, and made two from one (Genesis 2:21, 22). Are you beginning to get the revelation in your spirit? Now watch this. God knew that once He took the woman out of the man, the only way He could make them one again, was to rejoin them. He accomplished this rejoining of their flesh and bones through the institution of marriage and particularly through sexual intimacy.

The Holy Ghost asked me a question that plagued me for days and days. He wanted me to tell Him why a man needs a woman. No matter what answer I gave Him, it wasn’t the right