When Peggy was three months old, her care fell to her strict Baptist grandmother. As she grew into a toddler, the awareness of her surroundings included the consciousness of God’s presence. Deeply devoted to God, her grandmother had one radio in her home reserved for Sunday use when she listened to gospel music while she dressed for church.
Every summer, her grandmother’s church held a revival for teenagers. During the revival, the teenagers were not allowed to do anything but pray and attend church. The summer Peggy turned sixteen, she had an unusual experience. As she walked home from the youth revival, she encountered a light more beautiful than anything she had ever seen. A man and woman standing in the light spoke to her. Peggy told the elders of the church about the vision. They saw a difference in her countenance and discerned Peggy’s experience was genuine.
“Even though I’ve always loved God and the church,” said Peggy, “my salvation experience began at sixteen when I was baptized in water.
As teenagers are wont to do, Peggy drifted from her childhood zeal. Peer pressure became a stumbling block that prevented Peggy from fully devoting her life to God. Most of the girls in her graduating class already had babies. Desiring to be accepted, Peggy claimed she had a baby. Fantasy became reality when she became pregnant.
“My life was all out of whack,” said Peggy. “I never stopped going to church, but my heart did. I think I changed with my church, which had switched from holiness to pursuing prosperity and healing. There was still a part of me yearning for God, but I was comfortable with the lack of conviction. It’s easy to conform when attending church becomes routine, but I knew I wasn’t living a Christian life.”
By the time she was twenty-seven, Peggy was in the middle of a divorce and worked as a hair stylist. One Saturday morning, a young girl in a long jean skirt and bobby socks walked into her salon. Eunice had just come from a church service held in a garage. She had insight into Peggy’s life and told her things no one else knew. Eunice became a friend, willing to speak the truth in love.
“Peggy,” said Eunice, “you are perishing. If you don’t change the way you’re living. You will go to Hell.”
“I’m not going to Hell. I attend church every Sunday, and I’m in ministry. I’m on the prayer team, and work with the youth,” retorted a perturbed Peggy.
“You have to do more than attend church. Without holiness, no man will see God.”
“If God thought we would never sin again once we got saved, there was no need for Jesus to die. He died because he knew that once we got saved, we would not live right but sin again,” said Peggy.
She knew Eunice was right. All the excuses she could think of could not quench the conviction that seized her heart. She thought about her grandmother’s dream. In the dream, she saw Peggy dressed in white and told her, “You were beautifully dressed, beautifully adorned.”
“I’m going to fast and pray for you, and believe God for your salvation,” said Eunice.
Moved by the love and power in her words, Peggy accepted an invitation to attend Eunice’s church.
Peggy found a seat among the small congregation. The sermon about the sins of the parents falling on the children down to the fourth and fifth generation made her reflect on her own life. “I was a thirty-year-old divorcee with two children. For the first time, I understood that my lifestyle would affect my children. In that moment my heart changed.
“I wanted to live right,” said Peggy, “because I loved my kids more than life. If anyone tried to harm my children, I would kill for them, yet I was the one causing the greatest damage to their lives. That day, I asked God to help me.” Peggy’s renewed commitment to God started a journey that led her to become a pastor. First, she learned important lessons about holiness and submission.
The small church had little to offer children who did not like attending church. She returned to her traditional church that had a children’s ministry, but her life was never the same. The prosperity gospel her church had embraced did not satisfy. For five years, she yearned to return to the little church in the garage.
When her children were old enough to make their own choices, Peggy returned to the holiness church. They welcomed her with love, but Peggy did not fit in. The women could not wear pants. They also frowned on make-up and a woman cutting her hair. Peggy stayed long enough to learn that the “letter of the law kills, but the spirit gives life.” The word of truth she had heard there took root and slowly shaped who she became, but the abundance of rules made it difficult for her to grow. She stayed for a short time and then returned to her traditional church for a lesson in submission.
After Peggy remarried, a friend and mentor started an independent church. She asked her husband if he wanted to follow her friend into the new work. Her husband concurred. Peggy found a place of ministry, but her husband’s spiritual growth stalled.
When her husband stopped attending church, their relationship became strained. Peggy found herself in an odd predicament. As she worked to build the house of God, her own house slowly fell apart. She knew the situation was serious when her husband left and didn’t return.
As Peggy prayed and searched for a solution to her marital problems, she heard God say, “Read all the scriptures that apply to a wife.” Her study led her to Ephesians 5:24 “Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.” Having lived as a single mother and business woman for many years before she remarried, she wasn’t accustomed to submitting. She realized she had taken that attitude into her marriage and usurped her husband’s God given place in their union.
“I promised God I would submit to my husband if he would bring him home again. Three months later, my husband walked through the door. Before he could say anything, I apologized and asked him for a second chance.”
Her resolve was tested the first time she wanted to visit a girlfriend who lived an hour away. She called her husband to inquire if he was agreeable. He hesitated. Peggy wondered if he would deny her request and tears filled her eyes. Did God really expect her to act like a child who needed permission?
“How long will you be gone?”
“I don’t know; an hour or two,” said Peggy.
“OK, I just don’t want you on the road at night by yourself.”
The brief conversation broke the barrier Peggy had against submission. She realized the intent of submission is not to control but to protect. Peggy now felt safe relinquishing control to her husband’s leadership. She also knew her husband was not flourishing in ministry as she was and asked him where he wanted to attend church. He said, “The Church of God in Christ.”
Peggy smiled. “The Church of God in Christ allows women to be missionaries, but it’s on a different order than what I was accustomed. At that point, it wasn’t about me in ministry. It was about obedience. If I never preached again, I was OK with that even though it would be sad.”
The first church they visited left Peggy in tears. They shunned her because of her red hair and makeup. After the service, she said to her husband, “I told God I would follow you, but if you take me here, I will die.”
“We don’t have to go here,” replied her husband.
Then Peggy remembered Eunice attended a Church of God in Christ. She also knew God would be wherever Eunice was. “Can we attend Eunice’s church?”
The following Sunday, Peggy and her husband sat next to Eunice and listened to her pastor deliver a message filled with the love of God. They stayed, and her husband studied to become a minister. On Thursday nights, congregation members were allowed to share a message, so Peggy submitted her name as a speaker. She was thrilled and called all her friends when she received permission to speak.
Peggy’s face glowed as she recalled the experience to me. “The Lord showed up in such a profound way. My message “Let’s Go Higher” followed Moses from the back side of the desert where he was hiding his face from God to the declaration, ‘I want to see you face.’ I challenged the congregation to move from being afraid of God to an intimate relationship with God. The message ended with an explosion in the spirit of tongues going forth and people crying as God released them from bondage.”
The evidence of God’s call on Peggy’s life prompted the Church of God in Christ to ordain her as a missionary and as the district evangelist, a title usually carried by men. A year later, Peggy received a prophecy that it was time for her to build a house for God. Peggy and her husband left the Church of God in Christ and started a Bible Study in their home. Under Peggy’s leadership, the study grew into a small church.
© Teena Myers 2023
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