FEATURE Being obedient
Reaching new heights The theme for Candidates Sunday on 12 May is Be Obedient. As we approach that date, three people – a retired officer, an active officer and a cadet – explain what being obedient to God has meant for them; this week, Major Jane Cowell
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OR someone who is only four feet ten and a half, the plea, ‘Lord, make me taller’, is an everyday reality when even the middle shelf in the supermarket is beyond reach. And, like many of you reading this, the truth is I have often set limits on what God might do in my life. I want to determine the parameters; how far I am prepared to go – and I am not talking about geography – and what I feel confident to do. I try to second-guess God, just so that I have a suitable excuse up my sleeve in case he asks me to do something that I feel I can’t do. All I ever wanted to be when I was growing up was a police officer. I would hang by my arms from the banister rails every day in a misguided attempt to stretch myself so I could achieve the necessary height requirement. Of course, it didn’t ever happen but, looking back, I wonder whether in fact it was my expectations that were stunted, not my vertically challenged stature! You see, it turns out that my childhood prayer that God would help me to grow did not fall on deaf ears after all. In the 30 years since saying ‘yes’ to God and inviting him into my life, I have been stretched beyond measure. Like the time when I found myself backstage at the Royal Albert Hall one commissioning day, having responded to what I believed to be a call to officership. The newly commissioned lieutenant who had come to offer me some counsel, said: ‘Jane, is your salvation dependent on it?’ I thought it was a strange question at the time, but some days later I read again the words of our ninth 10
Salvationist 4 May 2019
doctrine: ‘We believe that continuance in a state of salvation depends upon continued obedient faith in Christ.’ I realised then that when God called me to follow him, he was not going to leave me where I was when he found me. He called me to keep following him and, whereas my salvation required faith, this faith was strengthened each time I responded in obedience. However, it was never straightforward. I thought I would be a corps officer but instead my ministry was defined in a hostel for women experiencing homelessness. The last thing I wanted was to work with children, yet my first appointment was in a children’s home. In time I had to find love for heroinaddicted parents compromising the health of their newborn babies. I sat in a police cell with a young woman accused of murder. I listened to stories of abuse
going back years. I held the hand of a man whose wife of 70 years had just passed away. I worked in covert operations with men and women who had been freed from slavery. I stood alongside police officers after terrorist attacks. I briefed a European ambassador in Lithuania and politicians in Downing Street. I travelled to Hong Kong, Brazil and most of Europe,
working with Salvation Army colleagues, and I was a non-executive director of the Salvation Army Housing Association. Only then did God consider me tall enough for corps officership! It took me almost 30 years to realise the truth. Continued obedient faith was simply doing the next thing and daring to see God in it. It was learning to listen to his heartbeat and to take risks when I felt him prompting me. If I could see someone through his eyes, then it changed the way I related to them. If I could believe that God could do the impossible, then, with his help, so could I. Recently, after challenging my congregation to make a bold prayer, I did the same. Referencing the story of Peter stepping out onto the water to Jesus (see Matthew 14:22–33), I said to God, ‘Lord, call me to something bigger than myself!’ It was the most frightening but also the most liberating prayer that I have ever prayed. This was a prayer that would take me out of my depth, spiritually, and stretch me beyond my own limitations. This was no longer me being dragged, kicking and screaming, into the next experience, whatever that was, but willingly seeking vulnerability. I still don’t know what that means for me. But, whatever it is, for the first time it will not be my experience that qualifies me but my obedience!
MAJOR COWELL IS CORPS OFFICER, DONCASTER
