Testimony of Jenny Marshall

Acts 26:18 – “…to open their eyes, in order to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those who are sanctified by faith in Me.”

The following is the testimony of Jenny Marshall of Yorkshire, England of how Almighty God worked in her life by His grace to bring her ‘from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, that [she]..receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those who are sanctified by faith’ in Lord Yeshua the Messiah, Son of the living God.

Jenny, roughly how long have you been saved?
44 years.

In your own words, what does “saved” mean and where in the Scripture do you derive your understanding?
We – all people – are born into the world in Adam, that is, with an Adamic nature. [Ed. briefly, Jenny is speaking about the events recorded at Genesis 3 -the fact that the first man Adam together with the first woman Eve (Adam’s wife) both fell into sin through disobedience to God, and it was in this fallen sinful state they had children – thus mankind thereafter is born with the same fallen sin nature as Adam. It has been explained like this: if you have one brand-new cake tin to bake cakes in and before you bake any cakes you accidentally drop that cake tin, resulting in it being dented, every cake baked in that tin will have the same dent, in the same place – until you change the cake tin]. This Adamic nature is a sinful nature and because sin separates us from God something has to be done about it if we are to come back into relationship with God. The Lord God therefore sent His Son, Jesus the Christ, to be the means of us being enabled to come back into His presence. The blood of Jesus Christ makes us clean – clean enough to enter God’s presence – without which we cannot enter in. As in the garden of Eden [Ed. see Genesis chapter 3:22-24] there was no way back – the way was barred, until the sacrificial substitutionary atoning death of the sinless Son of God, Jesus the Christ on the Cross. His sinless blood shed on account of our sins is what makes the way and makes us clean enough to enter in. The words recorded at 1 John 1:7 which says, ‘…the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin’ helped bring me to this understanding of what it means to be saved.

Jenny’s background

Can you share with us about your family background?
I was born in England in the United Kingdom to Welsh parents of Welsh heritage. Although perhaps not commonly known in this present generation in the UK, it was once widely known how Almighty God moved powerfully in Wales during the Welsh revivals. I think Wales has been blessed with at least fourteen revivals, where the outpouring of the Holy Spirit led to many falling under conviction of sin, repenting and being saved. Although it was beginning to be watered down by the time my generation appeared, as these things do, in our house was a very godly grandmother who I know prayed for us. I think she was a true believer – and I wish I could talk to her now, as a believer, because when she was yet alive I was a churchgoer, but not a true Spirit-born believer.

Unfortunately, my mother died during childbirth giving birth to me and, as far as I know, according to my research, she was a true believer in Lord Jesus. When the Lord enabled me to find this out it was a comfort because of a particular Scripture, He gave me, Isaiah 66:12 [Ed. explained more fully below], which was a lifeline to me when I became a believer.

My granny came to live with us as soon as my mother died to look after and help my father, but they discovered that they couldn’t cope with three little children – my grandmother was well into her seventies at that time. We – my siblings and I – were sent away and I went to live with an aunt. Three years later my father re-married and I was brought back home, as were my two brothers and we tried to be a family. Sadly, this was not very successful – suffice to say my father’s wife was not our natural mother and we were “an uncomfortable family unit.” My father was in a constant state of depression and was unable to communicate very well with his children.

We tried to be a family and though a bit dysfunctional my siblings and I went to an Anglican church. In those days you didn’t delve into it, you just got on with life. I grew up as “a good Anglican” and although I really enjoyed going to Sunday School as a little child, I grew up not really knowing the Lord Jesus Christ. The Sunday School my dad and step-mum sent us to was a tremendous blessing to me personally. It happened to be an evangelical Sunday School and we had songs like, ‘Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so’ which, at the age of around four used to thrill my heart. It also kept me going through some difficult years as did the presence of my godly granny who gave me emotional stability. This, I believe, was the Lord’s provision.

In time the family moved to a different part of town to a bigger house and then, for some unknown reason, my father turned away from his non-conformist Welsh background to the Anglican Church. I then continued my life in High Anglican church and went to a Church of England school, becoming steeped in religion, rather than what I had heard previously at the evangelical Sunday School about having a relationship with God. By ‘high Anglican church’ I mean the church was more akin to the Roman Catholic Church – there was a lot of rituals, candles and outward things which made you feel religious. They were good people and, in many ways, we learned aspects of truth there, but I don’t think anyone got saved there.

My father died when I was still young; I remember him being quite a depressive and not very communicative. He had suffered two major tragedies: he had lost his own father in a pit explosion in Wales and nine years later, his wife died during childbirth.

Having been raised in Sunday School when young, clearly you knew there was a God. What were your thoughts and feelings as a child when you thought about God, when you thought about Yeshua?
As a little girl attending the evangelical Sunday School, I fell in love with Jesus. I was just very drawn to Him – as children are. I’m sure many children come to faith in Lord Jesus – maybe some don’t but if children were given an opportunity, I think they also would come to Him.

It’s hard to think back now but I knew that Lord Jesus loved me. I can recall a particular incident which is quite personal, but it was this: I guess I must have prayed as a child to Jesus and, as I said, the family were a bit distant, not being close-knit because of the family history. I slept at the top of our house in a very dark attic at the time and I didn’t like it. I was a bit scared up there and often scared at night. The amazing thing however was that I could sense that there was a presence, and that Jesus was watching over me. Don’t ask me how I know but I just knew that there was a divine presence in that room, and this used to calm me down because emotionally, it was traumatic for me as a young child. That’s all I can say – I can’t explain it. I had lost a mother, left one home, left my father to live with an aunt and then was taken away from this other home and put with a stepmother, who – let’s just say, was not a real mother.

I did have a definite consciousness as a child however that there was a God and His Son Jesus loved me and I loved Him. Attending the Sunday school mentioned already, I would have heard the Gospel. We heard about missionaries, how they took the message of Jesus out. I remember telling them at home that I was going to be a missionary one day. Looking back, I think even in my childlike mind, it was a real call of God.

When did you become conscious of the Gospel of Lord Yeshua, that Messiah died for your sins, personally?
This was much later on in life. As a very young child hearing the gospel, it was just a very child-like acceptance of Jesus. I wouldn’t have thought I was saved at that point though.

Jenny’s Journey to Faith

What was your journey to saving faith from then on? How did God work in your life to bring you to the light of the saving knowledge and salvation of Lord Yeshua the Messiah?
During my time in the Anglican church as an older child and as a youngster, I was conscious that I wasn’t where I was supposed to be spiritually and that there was something I didn’t have. I don’t think I had a religious spirit as it were – I didn’t think I was all right. I used to think, ‘well, the Vicar is alright, he must be going to Heaven’ but I wasn’t sure that I was! Although I knew I wasn’t right, I didn’t know how to get where I should be because nobody preached the Gospel in that church. They were all very nice, good people but they were religious people. Without the Gospel of Lord Jesus Christ, you can’t come to faith in Him, can you? You have got to hear the Gospel – of God’s love demonstrated through the saving work of Jesus Christ on the Cross for our sin, His resurrection and coming Kingdom and that to receive this salvation and enter into that kingdom, we must be born-again by the Spirit of God.

I was very devout in the Anglican church and all my teenage years were in a high Anglican church attending with my family. I was confirmed at 15 years old, would go to early morning communion at 7am and do all “the stuff” but still didn’t have an assurance that I was okay with God. You can go through all sorts of rituals, say all manner of things and have the bishop lay hands upon you and yet it not really mean anything. Despite the beautiful Communion Services which was actually full of Scripture, I took Communion knowing it was a very sacred thing but never being consciously aware that it all applied to me personally. I suppose they must have explained it to me during Confirmation classes, but I don’t ever remember hearing about “redemption” or “atonement” – but maybe it was just that I was deaf at the time; I don’t know. I didn’t even read the Bible personally; to me, the Bible was just something you heard on Sunday. So, I attended church week in, week out – and I still wasn’t saved.

Music College, Marriage and Drifting

At 19, I went to a Music College in Manchester, in the north of England. At Freshers Week where all the different groups are out to get people to come to their societies, the Christian Union were also on the look-out for new members. I went along to the Christian Union meeting, and I don’t remember anything the speaker said although it would have been evangelical (as they were evangelicals and out to see people getting saved). In any case I wasn’t ready to hear what they shared, at least not in its fullness at that point. However, there was a book table however which caught my attention, and I bought a book which I took home to read and which I couldn’t put down! It was called ‘Tortured for Christ’ by a Christian brother called Richard Wurmbrand (also known as Nicolai Ionescu) who was a Romanian Evangelical Lutheran pastor. My thoughts after reading this book were that this faith in Lord Jesus – what I had read – is real. The suffering of this man drew me – I could see that he was prepared to lay his life down for this, so “this” – the faith which he professed and was prepared to suffer for – must be real. I thought, ‘I wish I could meet somebody like that!’ This was the reality, but I still didn’t know where to find it! Nevertheless, after this, nothing else really impacted me at that time. I didn’t go back to the Christian Union and apart from going once or twice to a local church service, I drifted through the rest of Music College. I began to drift away from God and in the end didn’t really think too much about it all, becoming busy with my music. Those four years became a bit of a “spiritually foggy” time for me.

Towards the end of Music College, I met the man who would become my husband. He was a professional violinist, playing in an orchestra in Manchester when we met and looking back, although neither one of us were real believers – far from it – I believe it was a divine appointment. Although we didn’t have Lord Jesus, we had an awful lot in common; we were both violinists and both just lived for classical music, my husband probably more than me because he was an extremely gifted musician. I had professional training, but he was truly gifted. We married not long after meeting, the Christmas after the end of my time at Music College. Within two months I was pregnant with our first child – and that was the end of my music career. Neither of us were prepared to be parents – we weren’t stable enough; I had emotional hang-ups because of my background and my husband had a few of his own. We were two somewhat “damaged” individuals who married and fought it out as it were.

When our daughter arrived, in a way I think that was our salvation, not spiritually but rather from the emotional tangle we were in. We now had a focus – an adorable baby. We had her christened and did the things one does as an Anglican in the Anglican way, but I think I had pretty much drifted away from any real sense of God by then. I didn’t not believe – I never stopped having a belief – but I certainly drifted. During this time, I had tried church after church, but I just couldn’t find what I was looking for. I remembered having a very vivid relationship with Jesus when I was a young child, but I could not find this again. I couldn’t explain how I felt inside; I just knew had drifted away from this and I desperately needed it. But I didn’t know where to find it. My husband never came with me to any church I visited because he didn’t believe – full stop! It just was not for him. Time moved on and by 1978 shortly before our family moved to North London, I remember saying to my husband that I couldn’t find Jesus, whoever He is, and that I was not going to church anymore. I gave up the search nevertheless I had a horrible emptiness – a big black hole – within me. Although I became very busy with married life and motherhood with a new baby, I used to dread waking up a night because that sense of deep emptiness would come over me and made me feel that I had nothing! I was still desperate to find what I had had as a child – and yet I had given up looking.

Meanwhile, my husband’s career had been falling apart but God was at work in both of us and it was an incredible time. He had begun to develop an injury in his arm and realised that this was more or less the end of his career. We had moved to North London because a friend of his offered him a job in a London orchestra – a very prestigious job – and so he took knowing that his playing, he said, was deteriorating. He was also being maimed by the injury in his arm and though he felt he wasn’t really up to this job but nevertheless he took it. We were under a lot of pressure – we just didn’t know what he could do if he could no longer play the violin. It was amid all this going on that one day someone mentioned, as a throwaway comment, that there was a good church near me. That comment went in and connected with the deep stirring that was going on in me at that time, a sort of awakening going on within me.

We were in such deep trouble really and I had decided that I didn’t know how to reach God. I just did not know how. The Lord however was at work in me! I followed up that comment and visited the local church and all that I can say is that I walked in that church and thought, ‘I’m home! I’m home!’ Somehow, I knew within that this was the place I would find what I was looking for and so began attending.

The revelation of the Lord: Salvation

One day, I was asked to join a few of the Christians at church who were going to meet together to pray for a sick woman, a young mother who was dying. I told them that I didn’t know about prayer meetings and that I didn’t know how to pray. I had always prayed by my bedside but to go to a prayer meeting was a bit alien but, in the end I felt I should go. Each person prayed in turn for this dying woman and as my turn approached, I thought, ‘what on earth do I pray?’ ‘How do I pray?’ ‘I don’t know what to pray!’ When it came to my turn, I blurted out a Scripture I had heard so many times in the Anglican Communion services years before which was ‘where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst’ [Ed. see Matthew 18:20]. At that moment, the Holy Spirit came upon me, and it was like a light went on! I thought, Jesus is here, in this room, because He says it and it was a point of revelation for me. Knowing His word, quoting His word and believing His word – for the first time believing what I was saying was for me, my moment of illumination where God revealed Himself and His love to me. This was both overwhelming and overpowering! It was from that moment on, from that prayer meeting to the point of conviction of sin which came shortly after, that Lord Jesus kept revealing Himself to me, drawing near and just assuring me of His love.

At first, I tried to work out for myself what was happening, but I didn’t know, and no-one really explained it to me. In those days, I tended to keep myself and my thoughts more or less to myself and I didn’t share very easily with others at church. But looking back, – I don’t know how it is for other people – but I believe you have to know the love of Jesus before you can know a conviction of sin; you couldn’t bear it otherwise. Weeks later I came under an unspeakable conviction of sin which I could not have borne had I not had that previous revelation of the love of the Lord. The only way I can describe what I experienced is that it was a definite knowing of the wrath of God against sin within my soul. I didn’t know that I had been walking under the wrath of God, that I had been outside the grace of God! The sudden realisation that I had been shown grace then came over me – it was very strange and hard to describe but I just knew I had been saved from my sins. I’ve had conviction of sin but never in that way – conviction in that way has never repeated itself to this day!

Under the convicting work of God in me, I just started to cry out to God, for help – because, for the first time I suddenly believed there was a hell. I think there was a revelation in that conviction that I had been on that road, and now I was delivered from it. He came to me as Saviour there rather than that first experience during the prayer meeting. It is as though at that time, Lord Jesus revealed Himself to me as a very loving Shepherd, but under that later conviction of sin He revealed Himself to me as also my Saviour. Some people’s experience may be the other way around but in saving souls, the same things will always be present – there will always be conviction unto repentance and there will always be faith.

If I’m asked when I was saved, I would say I was born again of the Spirit in the middle of that prayer meeting because I suddenly believed what I was praying – and it is by faith isn’t it? I had heard that Scripture so many times, in that meeting I suddenly believed what it was saying, and that Lord Jesus the Christ was present in that room.

When did the assurance of salvation come? When did you know you were saved? Can you describe how that felt?
That’s a difficult question to answer with an explanation of how this happened. I think when the Lord revealed Himself to me in that prayer meeting, I suddenly knew what I had heard all those years in Anglican Communion services was all true, and with that came an assurance. It was a time of revelation but coming from a non-evangelical religious background, I didn’t know what was happening to me. I didn’t have an understanding of what the word ‘salvation’ meant and although it was all just wonderful, I couldn’t really explain to anybody what had happened to me at the time. I knew it involved a revelation of Him as ‘the way, the truth and the life’ [Ed. see John 14:6] and a revelation of the fact that I was born in sin. I knew I had sinned, but I had never realised that I had been born in sin, if that makes any sense. I could recognise individual sins, like the sin of jealousy, envy etc as sin and this as the normal human condition – but it was the revelation that the issue is sin itself. We sin because we are sinners, and it is that normal human condition of a sin-nature that needs dealing with. From the time of the revelation of the truth of this in Lord Jesus Christ, I can honestly say I haven’t lacked assurance that God loved me and accepted me.

In your own words what is repentance and its connection with salvation?
Repentance basically means a turning around; from the direction you are going in and turning in another direction. So, you’ve been going in one direction in living your life and God then turns you around in another direction and brings you – like ‘the prodigal’ [Ed. see Luke 15] – home to Lord Jesus Christ. The gap is bridged between us sinners and a holy God through the Cross of Lord Jesus which is the only way in which you come into the Father’s house. You only get there through repentance and faith in Lord Jesus. Repentance itself is a work of God’s grace in you, – I don’t see it as someone sitting down and just saying to themselves, ‘I think I’ll repent and go another way now.’ That might be part of it – but essentially, it is God who turns you around and shows you to now go this way – His way. Salvation is coming back to the place that we were before we fell in the Garden of Eden [Ed. see Genesis 3], to a relationship that’s restored with God the Father through Jesus Christ and His work on the Cross.

From Then to Now

Since then, can you share a little bit about how the Lord Yeshua has worked in your life?

Immediately after being saved.

The church fellowship was a very lovely church – I couldn’t wait to get there. In those days, the meetings were just full of the Holy Spirit and just so alive. I had never been in anything like that and had not experience the presence of the Lord in that way since as a very young child – I knew He was very present. I recall there were various bible studies on Sunday mornings which you could go to and being drawn to the prophetic Scriptures from the beginning, I joined a study on The Revelation of Jesus Christ. There were also CMJ missionaries in that church and also individuals who seemed to have such a passion for the Jewish people; it was contagious. [Ed. CMJ is the abbreviation of a ministry called Church Ministry among Jewish people (https://www.cmj.org.uk/)]. There was a definite leaning at church towards the outreach of the Gospel to Jews, for Israel and God’s plan for Israel and I became very much drawn to this too. Prior to this, I had not had much interaction with Jewish people except that my children went to school among Jewish children because we lived in a very Jewish area. I began therefore to consider more deeply who Jewish people are, about Israel and the call of God on them as His covenant people, as laid out in Scripture.

The Lord at work in my family

At home however, life became very difficult because my husband was extremely opposed to what was happening in me spiritually. He didn’t like it and was very hostile at that time, nevertheless God was at work in my family. The Lord graciously saved my eldest child at the age of six. A well-known Evangelist to children visited the church and gave a marvellous talk on Lord Jesus, using the Light of the World picture by Holman Hunt. He had a wonderful gift of reaching children and God used him to further His work in my daughter’s heart. She told me that after that message, she went home and asked Jesus to come into her life – which some theologians may say is not theologically sound but that’s what she did and continues to walk in the faith of Lord Jesus Christ to this day. So, praise God, the Lord touched my first-born and saved her [Ed. see The Testimony of Clare on the website]. Although my husband never stopped me or our children attending church, he remained very hostile to the faith and people at church knew this as he made his feelings very clear! Although in other respects a wonderful father to our children and husband to me, there were times of testing around this.

Thankfully, this was quite short-lived as about a year or two later, the Spirit of God came upon my husband and saved him, and his transformation was truly amazing! The children used to invite him to come to church when family services were held and one day he came. Even as he walked into the church that day, he was fighting against the Lord but right at the end of that family service, as we sang a hymn [Ed. It Is a Thing Most Wonderful, William Walshm How, 1823-1897] that was it for my husband. The Lord just came upon him, and it was amazing to watch because it was almost like Saul of Tarsus! Afterwards it was just like living with a totally different man –all the aggression towards God had gone! The whole church knew – many had been praying for him and they just rejoiced in what God had done in my husband. Before he believed upon Lord Jesus, the family became a battleground but after he was saved, my husband and I were equally yoked and so our family became complete in Christ. The Lord graciously saved my other children too.

Other battles continue however particularly with the wider family on my side, so it was not all plain sailing. There was a delegation from my family who with their background as Welsh churchgoers refused to speak to me after I shared about what had happened to me. They came to tolerate me but never really accepted me. My husband family however, who were unchurched with no interest in the Lord all became believers within years of him being saved. Initially, this was a struggle for me to accept, but I did.

In ministry as wife to an Evangelist, Pastor and Preacher

After my husband was saved, initially he continued to work as a professional musician but about five years later he began to feel the call of God on his life as an evangelist. We waited on the Lord and one day he came across a Christian organisation which employed evangelists. They interviewed my husband, recognised the same call on his life and after a further year’s wait, they believed he was ready. We were to leave London to go to Wales where he became an evangelist. It was his heart’s desire and an amazing transformation for and of my husband, before my very eyes! As a professional musician he had a lot of gear for appearing on concert platforms and before we left London the Lord told me to take it all to the charity shop. I struggled with this because although my husband knew where he was going and what he would be doing, I wasn’t sure what my role was to be. I had had this connection with lots of Jewish people in North London by then, having met a sister in the Lord (B.P.) who was a very powerful influence in my early Christian life concerning reaching the Jewish people with the Gospel of their Messiah Jesus and the everlasting love of God for them. I had said to Lord Jesus, ‘Lord, I’m leaving a Jewish area where my heart is’ and I was very cut up about this. I did obey however and on my return home afterwards, I noticed a Scripture verse on our daily Scripture block which said, ‘Remember Lot’s wife’ [Ed. Luke 17:32]. How glad I was that I obeyed!

We did go to Wales on a little holiday before we actually left London and I can remember that I was still struggling with the move. I recall sitting on the beach one day thinking, ‘Lord, I don’t know about this. I don’t where I fit in. I just don’t know. I know that Geoff [Ed. Jenny’s husband] has got a call and I can see it clearly, but Lord I’m leaving all these souls that we’d prayed for and talked to.’ I was just so sad about leaving the Jewish people whom I had loved and yearned for to be saved. Sitting there, I just turned round and behind me was an orthodox Jewish man, an ultra-Orthodox Jewish family in fact, sitting right behind me! On a South-Wales remote beach! I thought, ‘thank You Lord! You have it all in hand and You know what You are doing, and we just have to obey.’ It was a big lesson! When we left our happy London home, the Lord reminded me not to look back.

After our move to South Wales my husband began his ministry, but I still initially struggled to find where I belonged. In my mind, thoughts still rumbled about of having had this lovely ministry in London and all of a sudden it had gone, and I was in this desert place. Nevertheless, I had to just get on with things: I ran the house, looked after the children, cooked the food while my husband was having all these exciting times in ministry. For me it was quite a testing time – a wilderness experience we all have to go through at some point if we are going on with Lord Jesus.

As time moved forward my husband’s ministry became quite varied and then he was called into pastoring a church and we had a happy time serving Lord Jesus there over a period of about five years. We saw a lot of growth; a lot of people were saved, and it was a very happy time serving alongside my husband as a Pastor’s wife. Then the enemy rose up very strongly against us and we really had no experience in dealing with such adversity! Although we were seeing the Lord’s blessing, the leadership of the church turned against my husband, and it became a very heart-breaking time for us. We both went through a very deep experience at this time but by God’s grace, this also enabled our roots to get deeper into Lord Jesus Christ who kept us through this terrible time. The Lord had shown us much fruit during our time there, but things became so bad my husband began feeling as though he could not go on. He was a young man at this time, and he was bitten raw! He probably did make lots of mistakes – we both did – but he was so zealous, so extremely zealous that they almost, I think, couldn’t manage him! They probably had their reasons for doing what they did but, despite the fruit, we knew we had to leave there and had to leave it all to the Lord.

A short time later an amazing thing happened; the head of the Hebrew Scriptures Society visited us and said there was a job for my husband with him. We hadn’t looked for this, but it turned out that we didn’t actually have to look for any other work. It was the Lord’s provision and grace. The work with the Society for Distributing Hebrew Scriptures was taking the Bible to the Jewish people, including a few trips to the land (Israel) and just trying to get the Old and New Testament into the hands of Jewish people in their own language. This became an amazing time for us where we served for 8 years, visiting Israel three or four times and a time of healing for us from an awful gaping wound experienced in pastoring the previous church. After this my husband sensed the Lord calling him back into Pastoring a church again, this time at Blackpool, northwest England, and we remained there serving for about seven or eight years.

Since then, my husband has had an itinerant preaching ministry and now living in North Yorkshire, northern England, we go wherever he is called to preach the word of God. He is an evangelist, so we also continue to reach out with the Gospel of salvation in and through Lord Jesus Christ to everyone. I’m still in contact with Jewish friends in North London to this day and have very good relationships with Jewish people elsewhere. Wherever we have gone in serving Lord Jesus, He has kept His promise of giving me contact with the Jewish people. It has been a wonderful journey so far, our children are still in the faith of the Lord, with children of their own and my husband and I are still looking to what God wants us to know and do in and through Lord Jesus Christ.

What is your heart’s desire for this ministry?
As shared above, to this day my heart’s desire still is to personally reach God’s Covenant people, the Jews, with the Gospel of their Messiah, Yeshua HaMashiach, Lord Jesus Christ.

Within the will of God, do you have any particular hopes for the future that you can share with us?
On a recent visit to London, we visited one of our Jewish friends, a couple in their senior years. In some ways, they are a very strange couple, extremely “left-wing” (politically speaking), very laissez-faire with no absolutes in their lives, everything just floating along. The wife is now faced with very serious illness and in the recent visit she had just been discharge from hospital after suffering from Covid. They thought that she was still Covid positive at the time of our visit, but I just felt the Lord still wanted us to go, and so we went. Their home is a very strange Jewish home in that, as sometimes is the case, the turmoil inside from their horrific history of the Holocaust as a people is reflected in their home. Nothing is in order and although in itself it may have been a beautiful house or flat etc, the pain inside is reflected in the surroundings. During our visit, my husband looked at the wife, straight in her face and said, ‘do you know where you will go when you die?’ Taken aback, she looked at her husband and, clearly stumped for words, said a few strange things. Then my husband said to her, ‘Do you know the story of Moses and how he lifted up the serpent on the pole when you were in the wilderness? Well Moses said, if you look there, you will live. If you just look at that brazen serpent on that pole you will live. In the same way, your Messiah has been lifted up on a cross and you have to look to Him to live. Then you’ll have eternal life.’ [Ed. see Numbers 21:4-9/John 3:1-17]. It was an amazing moment! We know Jewish people have trouble accepting this, but I felt she was accepting, that she was drinking it in. It so thrilled my heart! I would just say that if I’ve had to live this life for that moment and to see that woman come to the Lord, it’s worth it. And her husband too.

Not only for this dear couple but that all the Jewish people we’ve witnessed to down the years – the Lord is always putting this in our path wherever we go – would come to know their own Messiah, Yeshua, Son of the living God. Wider than that, that all who hear the Gospel – the whosoevers – would put their trust in Lord Jesus and be saved. In addition, I still would love to see all the members of my wider family saved too.

Jenny, can you share a little bit about this unique calling, heart and love you have for the Jewish people?
I don’t know that I can explain it, but I know when I received it: One night the Lord had me on my face, weeping and I knew it was His heart. I can’t explain it – all I know is that about a couple of years after I was saved, the children were in bed and my husband was out as usual. As a professional musician he was always out at night. That night I put on this tape of a couple called Merv and Merla Watson who had an anointed music ministry in Israel and listened to it all the way through. It was just beautiful, and it was as they sang the last song, ‘Behold darkness shall cover the Earth, and deep darkness the people, But the Lord shall arise upon you’ the Lord touched my heart concerning His people. It was actually during the chorus that says, ‘Arise, shine, for your light has come…’ that a weeping I had never known before came upon me. I had never cried like it before and didn’t know exactly what I was crying about other than a deep sense – a knowing – that the Lord was sharing with me His sorrow over His people. It was a sense of His pain that they are not walking as He wants them to walk. It was not a merely emotional feeling – I love the land of Israel, the holy land and though people tend to just get fixated upon the land, it’s the people connected to that land. The Lord wants the people – His people – back to Himself. The land is involved as God promised, but it’s all about the coming back to the Lord. I sensed it deeply that night – that’s all. I have been over the top about this at times I must admit – and often that happens among Gentile believers gifted a heart for Jewish people – but over the years the Lord has balanced me out a bit. This has been especially so as I served alongside my husband in evangelism to whosoever, as he pastored churches and other in ministries. Nevertheless, in my heart there is always a seeking out for Jewish people where I am or wherever my husband and I are called, but it is the Lord who leads. We don’t have to organise the Lord or manipulate Him – you just have to let the Lord do His thing in your life, don’t you. That’s a great lesson. Just let Him do it. I’ve learned in hard ways – I’ve been over the top, fanatical at times but I hope I’m more balanced now.

Last words

Can you share one Scripture passage through which the Holy Spirit has really encouraged, strengthened or instructed you in your walk of faith in Lord Yeshua?
One Scripture which has meant a lot to me personally is Isaiah 66:13. I just found it one day in the early days after I was saved, and it blew me away. I knew the Lord was speaking to me through it as it has always remained with me that I never had a mother; I never knew my mother. It’s a very deep wound, the word says this: ‘As a mother comforts her child, so will I comfort you; and you will be comforted over Jerusalem’ (Isaiah 66:13, NIV). That verse just means the world to me. The Lord has comforted me. He makes up for every loss. I can’t really explain it but since being saved my life over the years has been all connected with the Jewish people, Jerusalem, Israel in a deep way and there is something that comforts me in it all.

Finally, how can sisters in the faith of our Lord Yeshua the Messiah pray for you?
I was reading a little commentary last night [Ed. the night before this interview in 2023] about how we are like an epistle of God read before all men [Ed. 2 Corinthians 3:2-3^‘You are our epistle written in our hearts, known and read by all men; clearly you are an epistle of Christ, ministered by us, written not with ink but by the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of flesh, that is, of the heart.’]. For me, this is very sobering! The commentator said that people around you won’t read the Bible, but you are the epistle and that is very solemn and sobering, isn’t it? When you consider this and think of how we ought to be, both within the Church and outside – especially within the Church where you tend to get wounded at times – it can sometimes be very hard. I would like to just quote the commentator’s comments I was reading last night to end. The context was the letters to the churches in Revelation chapters 2 and 3, which he thought Lord Jesus was not happy with, he wrote this:

‘In the addresses to the seven churches in Revelation we are permitted to view the Lord walking in the midst of the churches, taking account of their condition and giving us His judgment as to how far they have answered to or failed in their responsibility. As a result, we learn that the great mass who profess His name have failed to represent His character before the world and have become many so hopelessly corrupt and indifferent. But in the end, they will be spewed out of His mouth, utterly rejected.

If the men of this world are to gain their impression of Christ from the gatherings of His people, what conclusion will they reach as to Christ as they look upon our individual lives and the collective life of God’s people. ‘By this shall all men know that you are My disciples if you have love one to another.’

The commentator goes on in that vein, saying ‘we are the epistle of Christ.’ I’ve been thinking on that and hoping that I’m somewhere near it. Therefore, please pray this for me, that I be like Jesus.