Christian – Page 3 – Michelle Lesley

Want to share your testimony?
Scroll down to the end of this article to find out how!

Note from Michelle: Cathy shared her testimony, addressed to me, in a comment on my article It’s OK to Be Ordinary.

Cathy’s Story:

I read this post today, January 15, 2025, and was again so thankful to the Lord for His faithfulness to me.

My first introduction to your blog was reading an article where you laid out the problems with Beth Moore.

At the time, I had been hearing and reading rumblings about how she wasn’t sound and had been wondering the same myself. I had been a follower of hers for years.
I wondered if the comments were fair or not. Similarly, after Ravi Zacharias passed away and articles about his credibility came out, at first I didn’t read or believe them.

Your article was a wake-up call to me. Thank you!

My husband and I were in a charismatic church for 42 years. (Feel free to question our discernment!) Many of those years, my husband disagreed with and questioned practices, and would not participate in most. Tongues, deliverance, and prophecy to name a few.

Most of this time was pre-internet. There just wasn’t a lot of information about this movement or the people leaving it and why.

Then our oldest son introduced us to Reformed theology. John MacArthur, R.C. Sproul, the Puritans, and many others were our food as we realized more and more that we weren’t getting our food from the sermons at church.

Fast forward to today and we have been in a solid church for three and a half years and continue to be thankful for God’s mercy to us. Your ministry, Chris Rosebrough, Steven Kozar, Costi Hinn, Dawn Hill, Doreen Virtue, along with many others helped us immensely to understand what we came out of.

As I read your post on X this morning about it being okay to be ordinary, I wanted to write and thank you for what you do. It made a difference in my life and helped me make the final break from Beth Moore.

We have nine children who grew up in the charismatic church that we left after so long, three of whom are not walking with the Lord. As so many like ourselves understand, bad theology affects lives! We continue to pray for all of our children and grandchildren.

Just our story here. I know there are so many others.

I’m so thankful for the discernment ministries and the internet that has enabled these platforms. It would have made a huge difference in the early eighties!!

Again, thank you. I am so thankful to be ordinary and to be content in the good works that He prepared in advance for my life.

Ladies, God is still at work in the hearts and lives of His people, including yours! Would you like to share (anonymously, if you like) a testimony of how God saved you, how He has blessed you, convicted you, taught you something from His Word, brought you out from under false doctrine, placed you in a good church or done something otherwise awesome in your life? Drop me an email, and I’ll send you the particulars for sharing your story. Let’s encourage one another with God’s work in our lives!

Podcast Appearances

Podcast Guest Appearance – Contending for the Word

January 29, 2025January 27, 2025 Michelle Lesley

Over the holidays, I had the pleasure of chatting with my friend Dave Jenkins on his podcast Contending for the Word, in an episode titled Exposing the Dangers of Passion 2025.

If you’ve followed the Passion Conference over the years, you know it’s problematic. Listen in as Dave and I discuss Christine Caine, Jackie Hill-Perry, and other false teachers who are platformed, women taking the stage and preaching to the co-ed audience, the ostensibly doctrinally sound teachers, like John Piper, who join them, and more!

Be sure to check out Dave’s website, Servants of Grace, where you’ll find an abundance of great teaching, podcasts, and materials, as well as his social media links- and give Dave a follow!

Articles / resources mentioned or touched on in the episode:

Jackie Hill Perry

A Review of Jackie Hill-Perry’s “Jude: Contending for the Faith in Today’s Culture”

Christine Caine

John Piper

Why Your Church Should Stop Playing Bethel, Hillsong, Elevation, and Jesus Culture

Got a podcast of your own or have a podcasting friend who needs a guest? Need a speaker for a women’s conference or church event? Click the “Speaking Engagements” tab in the blue menu bar at the top of this page, drop me an e-mail, and let’s chat!

Faith

It’s OK to Be Ordinary

January 15, 2025January 14, 2025 Michelle Lesley

Originally published January 16, 2013

Older women likewise are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They are to teach what is good, and so train the young women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled, pure, working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be reviled.
Titus 2:3-5

Love our husbands and children.

Be self-controlled, pure, and kind.

Work at home.

Be submissive to our own husbands.

In other words: ordinary.

I didn’t see anything in there about changing the world or living out great big enormous dreams, did you? I think, often, as 21st century Christian women, the evangelical culture can make us feel like we are failures if we don’t have some sort of huge ministry or preach the gospel on the street corner every day. In Titus’ day that sort of thing would have been unbecoming for women. In our culture, women have more opportunities to be involved in various ministries than back then, but we have to remember that God calls us to faithfully serve Him in whatever life circumstances He has put us in. And He has not called the vast majority of us to be ministry superstars or Christian celebrities.

He has called most of us to be ordinary.

Staying home and pouring the gospel into our families or being a gospel influence to others at work or teaching Sunday school or sharing the gospel through volunteer work, and so on, though it may not amount to much in the world’s eyes, is success and faithfulness in God’s eyes. And that’s all that matters.

You’re not failing God if you’re ordinary.

Faith

Throwback Thursday ~ God’s Cartography

January 9, 2025January 8, 2025 Michelle Lesley

Originally published January 19, 2013

Are you “directionally challenged”?

I am.

I mean, I can read and follow a map, but if I make some wrong turns or get distracted, I tend to get disoriented. And don’t even try to tell me to “go north” or “turn south” when you’re giving me directions. I just don’t have that internal compass some people have. Heck, our church has had an “east campus” and a “west campus” for over a year, and I still can’t figure out which one is which. Thank goodness for map apps. Without those step by step directions, I’d probably still be wandering around out there somewhere.

But, you know what? I did really well in geography when I was in school.

When I can see the big picture, the whole map at once, the beginning, middle, and end of the journey, it’s a piece of cake. I never get confused about which direction is southeast or northwest. I don’t get distracted by twists or turns in the road. If I could just have this perspective when I’m trying to get somewhere, I’d never get lost again.

But life isn’t like that.

We live inside the road trip where it’s easy to get confused and go the wrong way. Where we can get distracted by the twists and turns of circumstances. Where we sometimes deliberately choose to turn off the right road and take a side trip that takes us farther than we wanted to go.

We can’t step “outside the map” and see the big picture of our life’s journey from beginning to end.

But God can. That’s where He lives.

…in your book were written, every one of them,
the days that were formed for me,
when as yet there was none of them.
Psalm 139:19

And since He alone can see the big picture, He’s the only One who’s really qualified to give us direction. And that perfect direction can only be found in His Word.

Just like my map app, He tells us our starting point:

And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. Ephesians 2:1-3

He tells us the detour we need to take:

…repent and believe in the gospel. Mark 1:15b

He shows us the right direction to go:

…what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness…
2 Peter 3:11

And he reveals our ultimate destination:

Then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we shall always be with the Lord. 1 Thessalonians 4:17

Not using “God’s Positioning System”?

Recalculate.

(Don’t groan and roll your eyes. You should have seen that one coming :0)

Podcast Appearances

Guest Appearance – The Plumb Line Radio Show

October 9, 2024October 8, 2024 Michelle Lesley

This summer, I had the pleasure of appearing as a guest on The Plumb Line Radio Show with Jay Rudolph to chat about the New Apostolic Reformation. How can you recognize NAR tendencies in the church and help your friends and loved ones who have fallen prey to this heresy? Listen in to these two brief interviews and find out!

The Plumb Line, episode 444- NAR- Michelle Lesley, part 1

The Plumb Line, episode 445- NAR- Michelle Lesley, part 2

If you’re in the vicinity of Des Moines, Omaha/Lincoln, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, San Diego, New York City, Jacksonville, Chicago, or Kansas City, you can listen to The Plumb Line on your local Christian radio station. Click here to find out which radio stations carry The Plumb Line and when. If you don’t live near one of those markets, you can always follow and listen on Spotify.

Additional Resources:

The Mailbag: What is the New Apostolic Reformation?

God’s Not Like “Whatever, Dude,” About The Way He’s Approached in Worship

The Mailbag: Should Christians listen to “Reckless Love”?