Trusting the Spirit to speak, I explored the testimony of the entire New Testament. Scripture after Scripture showed a picture of the Body of Christ in which women participate fully and freely in every aspect of the kingdom, and men and women stand shoulder to shoulder, serving the Lord. I also learned why many people who love the Word do not know that – why I did not see it for so long.
What do you do when the Lord answers what you had not asked? This is where it began, my journey with God into his view of women and the church.
Two weeks after I asked readers to pray with me for wisdom and strength for a final push, my updated e-book is live! It tells my story of all the ways God answered, from the moment I finally asked him: “What about women, Lord? What do you say about how women in your kingdom relate to other people and to you?”
When the "threat alarm" goes off in an abusive church system, the response is orchestrated and brutal. But it's church: Appearances must be kept up. People loyal to the system confuse while pretending to clarify, cover-up while pretending to address, attack while seeming to answer, put-down while pretending to help.
Behind the scenes at Living Proof Live, I'd found a celebrity culture - not the "one anothering" of the church of the living God. So with all my heart, I cried out for change.
This is what happened when I served as onsite leader for a Beth Moore Living Proof Live event. It’s a peek into celebrity culture, the exploitation and manipulation of women and abuse in the Southern Baptist Convention.
Abuse had begun to open my eyes to evils in my church culture. Then, God took me on a pilgrimage into the past, to show me what is happening now.
It's crucial that we humbly receive what the Lord Jesus wants to pour into our lives through others who love him but look and think differently from us.
To help us grasp the stark contrast between God's view of submission and the way some religious people view it, let's consider the contrast between God's view of Sabbath and the way some religious people have viewed it.
