The debate over what women are allowed to do in church is centuries old. It’s been hashed out a hundred ways to Sunday. And it’s a question I had to grapple with myself. But ladies—you can stop being unsure of God’s divine destiny for you, whether you have to stay in a controlling marriage, or if God wants you to run a Fortune 500 company or plant 500 churches. I’ve put every argument to the test. I’ve studied it from every angle. I’ve got you. And I promise to teach you things you’ve NEVER heard before!
Are you sick of debating whether a woman can be a senior pastor, teach a man in church, or has to give her husband authority over her? I am too. But it’s trending so we gotta talk about it. Maybe I can set the record straight once and for all.
Here’s what I know: the organized church, denominations, and Christian leaders are under attack. But this particular attack is not by Satan. It’s by Believers who are finally waking up and testing everything they’ve been taught. Institutions are falling because they are being put to the test by the people they are supposed to serve.
After the pandemic, George Floyd’s death, riots in the street, and election fraud Believers want to know why the church didn’t stand up for them. They want to know what made their churches so afraid to take a collective stance. And as a result, they have lost faith in leadership and are beginning to question everything.
And the inevitable will happen—pastors will refuse to answer for their missteps in order to save their reputations, finances, and egos, especially in the area of women’s roles in the church.
The debate over what women are allowed to do in church is centuries old. It’s been hashed out a hundred ways to Sunday. And it’s a question I had to grapple with myself. I felt the call to preach when I was sixteen years old. But for years I hid behind operational roles in the church. And because we are drawn to only what we are willing to perceive, I was drawn to churches that didn’t open the path to preaching for me or recognize the potential gift in me. They gave me the perfect place to hide the calling I was so afraid of.
Because I was hiding from my calling I didn’t bother looking intently into whether or not I even believed a woman could preach in a senior role or teach men at all. Once God got a hold of me and started steering me into accepting who He made me to be I had to answer these questions for myself. In fact, I had to answer a lot of questions for myself. It was time to stop believing whatever I heard from the pulpit and put it to the test. We test what we hear by taking the whole council of scripture and by testing scripture against scripture.
I had no idea how quickly my foundational beliefs would totally unravel.
Ninety percent of what you hear in a sermon is commentary.
Yep. Many pastors that serve have never had theological training or, perhaps, more importantly, they’ve had zero training in the original language of scripture and Semitic culture. And on top of that, you never see them do the things Jesus did that He said we would do like heal the sick or raise the dead. A disciple cannot live on what the preacher says alone. A disciple proves in scripture what he/she hears and then puts it into practice to bear good fruit.
A disciple is a doer, not only a hearer. And as the world continues to spiral out of control it will be harder and harder to find disciples who know how to use their faith to move mountains, make the blind see, the lame walk, or survive any famine or evil regime.
I don’t say this to cause fear but to encourage you that a new day in the walk of a Believer has dawned! Resources are more available now than ever before. You don’t have to accept traditions handed down by those who refuse to challenge (and often practice) what they preach.
And ladies… you can stop being unsure of God’s divine destiny for you, whether or not you have to stay in a controlling marriage, or if God wants you to run a Fortune 500 company or plant 500 churches. I’ve put every argument to the test. I’ve studied it from every angle.
I’ve got you.
Check out the podcast this week for part one of a two-part message on women’s role in marriage and the church. You are going to learn WHY God made us and I am confident it’s not the reason you think it is!!!
And don’t forget to subscribe, give a thumbs up and/or a 5-star rating, and SHARE, SHARE, SHARE! We need to get this message to as many women as possible so they can be set free to fulfill their hopes and dreams!
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To say we can’t manifest anything because God is the ultimate decision maker is to have a very fatalistic view of God and to ignore every scripture that says He gave man authority, dominion, autonomy, and freewill.
A friend told me yesterday her (now ex) pastor said, “You can’t manifest anything.”
Wow.
Maybe he was trying to speak into the “manifesting” fad that is trending on social media and use a shock statement to get attention. Or maybe he wanted people to fear God as the ultimate authority and make man out to be a puppet on His strings. Regardless of the motivation, he was wrong.
Here’s how I know: what one might call manifesting the Bible calls sowing and reaping. To say we can’t manifest anything because God is the ultimate decision maker is to have a very fatalistic view of God and to ignore every scripture that says He gave man authority, dominion, autonomy, and freewill.
Several years ago, when the book The Secret came out, Christians lost their minds. And recently a movie and documentary have come out, with Christians losing their minds all over again.
Meanwhile, non-Christians all over the world are successfully using the law of sowing and reaping that God wrote into the universe and not even knowing they’re doing it. And yet both the Bible and science (particularly quantum physics) back it up. We may not all use the same terminology, and The Secret may get some details wrong here and there, but manifesting is the Bible, whether we want it to be or not.
The truth is, made in the image of God, we are creators (Gen. 1:27, Psalm 82:6). We create futures. Our lives are the sum total of our past and present belief systems. We are daily reaping what we have sown (2 Cor. 9:6, Matt. 18:18). If we sow in fear we will reap more fear. If we sow lack, we will keep coming up short and even what we do have will disappear (Matt. 25:29).
In the same way, if we believe we have everything we need in the present, even when it doesn’t look like it (Luke 9:16, 2 Peter 1:3. Matt. 25:29), even more will come to us.
Some call it the Law of Attraction, others call it the Law of Belief. I personally lean toward the latter. When we believe there is a way out, we will find one (Matt. 7:8). When we believe we have everything we need to solve any problem (2 Peter 1:3) the solution will come, followed by the steps to get there. When we start with the basic belief that God is for us and not against us (Romans 8:31) and that He always provides a way out when we’re under duress (1 Cor. 10:13) we are sowing a seed. We are sowing a seed that begins with the truth and it will reap a harvest.
But as a seed, it only, ever, bears after its own kind (Gen. 1:11). It won’t bear anything else.
God has given you the ability to choose what you will sow and thereby choose what you will reap. All throughout scripture, He puts the responsibility back on man to decide what the outcome of any given situation will be.
Unfortunately, we miss endless possibilities of a great outcome because we think God is in control.
Nope.
He used His authority to give us authority. And He doesn’t lie or change His mind.
God is only in control to the degree that man gives Him control. And history proves time and time again (as does the present and as will the future) that man does a very poor job at giving God control.
BUT this is all incredible news for you today and every day after if you’ll let this sink in and put it to the test!
Here is my personal process of choosing my own outcome:
Look at the finished work of Jesus and decide what He died to give me:
Abundant life (John 10:10)
A healed heart and every wound relieved (Psalm 147:3 and Strong’s 2280, Isaiah 61:1)
Salvation from affliction (Isaiah 61:1 and Strong’s 1319)
Set free by any stronghold (limiting or lying pattern of thought/belief) holding me captive (Isaiah 61:1, 2 Cor. 10:3-5, Jonah 2:8)
An opening when I am trapped, bound, backed into a corner, or surrounded (Isaiah 61:1)
Healing from sickness and disease (Isaiah 53:4, Matt. 8:17)
A way out when I am tempted to fear or cave, have a fatalistic mindset about my situation, or tempted to sin in any way (1 Cor. 10:13)
“Yes” to all the promises above (2 Cor. 1:20)
Recognize God won’t violate my freewill (Jonah 2:7-8)
Confess (say the same thing) God has already said about my situation (review step #1) until I see His preferred outcome (for His preferred outcome see step #1) materialize in the natural.
There’s your manifesting folks. And it works if we decide to work with God to see it through to fulfillment, no matter how long it takes and no matter how bad things appear in the natural.
So happy manifesting friends!
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Here’s what I’ve found to be key to moving through powerful negative emotions: taking off the pressure of having to do all the things to please God
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