Mrs. Penn-Lewis: A Memoir: Introduction

This is the Introduction to Mrs. Penn-Lewis: A Memoir by Mary N. Garrard

The Current of the Spirit’s Leading and its Conditions

There is a course prepared for each believer from the moment of his new birth, providing for the fullest maturity of the new life within him and the highest which God can make of his life in the use of every faculty for his service. To discover that course and fulfill it is the one duty of every soul. Others cannot judge what that course is. God alone knows it, and he can make it known, and guide the believer into it, as certainly today as he did Jeremiah and other prophets; Paul and Philip and other apostles.

This principle is clearly seen in the lives of the servants of God recorded in the Scriptures. Take Jeremiah and his call and commission. The Lord said to him, “Thou shalt go to all that I shall send thee, and whatsoever I command thee, thou shalt speak” (Jer. 1:7). “I have this day set thee over the nations … I have made thee a defensed city … they shall fight against thee, but they shall not prevail … for I am with thee …” Jeremiah then spoke as he was given the word of the Lord, and in the midst of personal conflict and suffering and the giving of messages rejected—and in his lifetime, on the whole unfulfilled—he completed his work. He did not plan or choose his service. He was chosen for the service and the service chosen for him. He had to fulfill it whether it was acceptable or not (Jer. 1:17–18), for the messages were filled with the word against, as he declared all that God was against, even to this day.

We find the same principle in the ministry of Ezekiel. He was called, commissioned, and empowered for a definite service (Ezek.1:1, 2:1–10, 3:1–17), and however much he suffered (Ezek. 9:8) his work had to be carried out, and family and home held subservient to the command of God (Ezek. 12:3–6, 14:16–18). His messages too were filled with the perpetual word against, as God placed on record, by his servant, his attitude to the evil of the world.

In the New Testament we find exactly the same personal choice (John 15:16) of God’s servants; the same personal commission, with a personal course of life and work ordained and revealed. First in the life and ministry of the pattern servant of Jehovah, the Lord Christ—God himself in human form. All through the life of the Lord we see that he knows his commission and his course and will not be diverted from it by ties of affection (cf. Luke 2:41–52), the scorn of brethren (John 7:5–9), or the voice of the crowd (John 6:15). He knew when he had finished his work in one district (Mark 1:37–38) and left for another; he did not go beyond the limit of God in the work of healing, which had primarily the purpose of fulfilling prophecy concerning him (Matt. 8:16–17). He worked the works of him that sent him, not his own will or personal desires (cf. John 4:34, 6:5–15).

The same clear fulfilling of a course is seen in the apostle Paul, with the personal guiding and restraining of God. Paul is chosen (Acts 9:15) for specific service, which costs him great suffering; chosen to be the apostle to the Gentiles with a message which even the chief apostles were not given to proclaim. The apostolic council at Jerusalem is in frequent storms and trouble through him, through his “new message” and the fruits thereof. But he knows his commission, even though “they of repute” do not share it, and he must be faithful to his trust. He must fulfill his part in God’s great plan for the church and his dealing with the world. He knows by the Spirit where he is to go and what he is to do; when he is in the stream of the Spirit in staying in a place, by the unction on the message (Acts 14:3); he knows when he is restrained from a certain course (Acts 16:7), and when he is being sent of God on another errand (Acts 16:10); when he must go forward even though it means death (Acts 20:22); when he has finished his work in ministering to believers who loved him (Acts 22:25); knows that the “wolves” will break in among them after his departure (Acts 22:29)—knows it all in his spirit, and by the Holy Spirit—and through all he watches only to “finish his course.” Wolves or no wolves, the testimony at Rome must be given, even though they break in to the flock he leaves behind, whom he calmly commits to God.

This brings me to my own course, which illustrates the principle referred to in the lives of the servants of God as recorded in the Scriptures … For the help of others who would know the conditions upon which such a leading of God becomes possible, I must refer to two outstanding characteristics of this path of service, which bear witness that it was the fulfilling of a course planned and guided by the Spirit of God.

The first is, that from the time when the baptism of the Spirit came and thrust me out into unpremeditated service in 1892, every “open door” in my path was set before me, unsought, unthought of, and unplanned. I then saw that I was in a current of the Spirit which would lead me on into all the plan of God for my life, and that my one business was to make sure of being in the will of God and, being sure, to keep myself free to carry out his will. This brought about deep rest of heart and simplicity of purpose. It eliminated all planning and troubling about the future. “Am I in the will of God now?” was the question, “then he will reveal whence he leads tomorrow.”

But the conditions of knowing the will of God were: no bias to any path, however pleasant or apparently “good for the kingdom”; no double motive, however good, e.g., policy for the “good of the kingdom”; no personal aim, however justifiable, e.g., the electing to take a voyage on the Lord’s service, and—the good of myself as part of the motive!

The voyage might be good for myself and the work’s sake, but that must not deflect the compass needle of the soul seeking to know the will of God.

The second characteristic of the path of service I have outlined was that as God opened the doors, so he provided financially, and otherwise, all that was needed to enter them; and this he did apart from all councils and committees. In apostolic fashion he moved his own hidden saints to “set forward” on her journeys his messenger in a manner “worthy of God.” In land after land, as door after door opened, the supply never failed. Only one condition was necessary on the messenger’s part—to keep free to follow the will of God, and that only.