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!
Your recent article on prayer really helped me. I was always taught that prayer was a two-way conversation. For years, I would talk to God and wait for Him to talk back to me, but He never did. I thought it was because there was unknown sin in my life, or that I didn’t have enough faith, or that God just wasn’t interested in me. It’s so freeing to know the truth.
Comments like this from readers are always bittersweet for me. It makes me practically giddy to hear from Christian women who have been set free from false doctrines they’ve been taught, but it also grieves me deeply to reflect on the years they spent thinking they were somehow deficient as Christians or doubting God’s love for them simply because they were taught, and believed, unbiblical notions and ideas.
Let’s see if we can dispel a few of those today:
1. Prayer is this big, complicated, mystical thing. Nope. Prayer is simply talking to God about whatever is on your heart. What’s made prayer complicated is the unbiblical teachings that have grown up around it such as praying in “tongues,” listening prayer, contemplative prayer, sozo prayer, soaking prayer, etc.
2. “Women’s Ministry” equals fluff and silliness. There’s nothing wrong with having a little fun from time to time. Hey, we all need to blow off steam, right? But if cookie exchanges and teas and painting parties and dress up parties and sleepovers and makeup parties and fashion shows and movie nights are all your women’s ministry does, it’s unhealthy. And it’s not really a ministry, either. If something is a “ministry” it should exist to point people to Christ and disciple them once they get to Him. Your women’s ministry should include ministry of the Word, discipleship, evangelism, comfort ministry (to the ill, shut-ins, new moms, new members, etc.), serving the church, encouragement, supporting your pastor and elders, and so on.
3. Women’s Bible study- great balls of fire, don’t get me started. ♦ A Bible verse (or half a Bible verse) plus an inspiring story from the author’s or someone else’s life is not Bible study. Bible study is picking up your Bible and studying it.
♦ If you’re hosting a women’s Bible study, you do not have to use books and DVDs written by someone else. In fact, I would recommend against doing so. Get someone who is able to teach – yes, it could even be a man – and study a book of the Bible from beginning to end.
♦ One reason I recommend against using “canned” women’s Bible studies is that the vast majority of them (95% in my estimation- not an exaggeration) teach false doctrine. When you walk into most Christian bookstores the first thing you’ll see is the best sellers shelf, and the majority of those books are written by false teachers such as Beth Moore, Priscilla Shirer, Christine Caine, Lysa TerKeurst, Sarah Young, and others.
♦ If you do decide to occasionally do a book study, you do not have to use one written by a woman. In fact, if you want a book that’s doctrinally sound, you have a much better chance of finding one written by a man than by a woman, sad to say. Check out some godly men who are pastors, authors, and teachers at…
4. Faithful church attendance isn’t that important. If you think you don’t need church or that you can skip it whenever something more fun comes along, your thinking isn’t biblical. God thinks it’s important enough for His people to gather regularly for worship that He emphasizes it throughout the entirety of Scripture- Old and New Testament. Get your heiney in the pew every week, honey, and find a place to serve.
5. I am woman, hear me roar. ♦ Beth Moore and many other female teachers who rebel against Scripture by preaching to and teaching men in the church say that they are doing so “under their husband’s and/or pastor’s authority”. Neither your husband nor your pastor has the OK from God to allow you, or any other woman, to teach men in the church. God says women aren’t to teach or hold authority over men in the church, and when God says no, no one has the authority to say yes. Furthermore, there isn’t a single passage of Scripture that allows any man to give any woman this type of “under my authority” dispensation to teach men. To say that it’s permissible for a woman to teach men “under her husband’s/pastor’s authority” is just as biblically absurd as saying it’s OK for a woman to lie, commit adultery, gossip, or steal “under her husband’s/pastor’s authority.” Sapphira sinned under her husband’s authority and look what happened to her.
♦ Egalitarians are often so vehement in their insistence that women should teach men and hold authority over men in the church, that they are essentially saying that the only way a woman’s service or leadership in the church can have any value is if it’s exercised over men. I’ve heard many of them turn up their noses at the idea of teaching women and children and other forms of service (that don’t involve teaching or authority over men), in a haughty “we’re better than that” kind of way.
No way.
Have you seen the garbage women and children are being taught in the church under the guise of “Sunday School” or “Bible study”? Women’s and children’s classes at your church are in desperate need of women who are doctrinally sound and able to teach. What about the need to visit church members who are in the hospital or shut-ins? How about record-keeping, working in the sound booth, welcoming visitors, serving on committees, mowing the church’s lawn, participating in outreach activities, fixing a meal, chaperoning youth activities, hosting a visiting pastor or missionary? There’s a ton of important and valuable work for women to do in the church. We don’t have time to worry about teaching and holding authority over men. Let the men worry about that.
6. My feelings and opinions reign supreme. Uh uh. Not if you’re a Christian, they don’t. That’s how lost people operate. If you’re a Christian, you’re not entitled run your life or make decisions by any opinion other than that of your Master. What He says – in His written word – goes. Period. Regardless of how you feel about it or whether or not you agree with it. That means if a “Bible” teacher you really like is teaching things that conflict with Scripture, you dump her. You love Mr. Wonderful and want to marry him, but he’s not saved? Nope. You’re a woman who’s certain God has called her to preach? No way. Your husband has said no about something, but you want to do it anyway? Forget it.
7. If something or someone claims to be a Christian, it is. I suppose at some point in Christian history, there might have been a time when, if someone handed you a “Christian book,” it was a pretty safe bet it was doctrinally sound. Or if someone said she was a Christian, you could be fairly certain she was truly born again.
Not so much these days.
You cannot take at face value that someone who says she’s a Christian is using the Bible’s definition of Christianity and has been genuinely regenerated. You cannot trust that just because something is sold at LifeWay or another Christian retailer that it’s doctrinally sound. You can’t assume that just because someone is a “Christian” celebrity, writes “Bible” studies, speaks at “Christian” conferences, and has a large following, that she’s handling God’s word correctly (or at all) and teaching you biblical truth. There’s just too much false doctrine running rampant in evangelicalism and too many people who believe and teach it.
Don’t be a weak and naïve Christian woman. Jesus Himself said, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord’ will enter the kingdom of Heaven…” There are many people who draw near to God with their lips, but their hearts are far from Him. It is God’s will for you to be a good Berean and to test everything according to Scripture. We will know the truly Christian from the false by their fruits, not their platitudes.
8. Sugar and spice and everything nice- that’s what Christian girls are made of. That’s not a Bible verse, but rather and unspoken rule among most Christian women. Somewhere we’ve gotten the idea that Christian unity or love means “being nice” to people. We’re always smilingly sweet and never say anything that might hurt someone’s feelings or could rock the boat at church.
Are we to be kind? Yes. Are we to do our best not to hurt others? Of course. Should we be making waves over every little thing that rubs us the wrong way? Absolutely not.
But neither is it loving to see a Mack truck bearing down on an oblivious sister in Christ and refrain from yanking her out of harm’s way because it might dislocate her shoulder. It is not unity to see Satan deceiving a friend through sin or false doctrine and not plead with her to turn to Christ and His word because she might think we’re rude. And that’s the situation we often find ourselves in at church or with Christian friends.
Love for the brethren isn’t “being nice.” It’s caring so much about a fellow saint that we want what’s best for her in Christ. Sometimes that requires being firm, confrontational, or demonstrating “tough love.” People’s eternities and spiritual health are at stake. How loving is it to stand aside and let a sister waltz into Hell or struggle for years on end in her walk with the Lord because she’s living in sin or believing false doctrine? “Being nice” isn’t a fruit of the Spirit. It’s time we stop being nice and start being biblical.
Do you believe any of these unbiblical notions? If so, set them aside, repent, and believe and practice what Scripture says. Any time we believe something that’s in conflict with God’s word, it’s a hindrance to the abundant life and growth in Christ that He wants to bless us with.
False doctrine enslaves. It places a yoke of confusion, anxiety, and “try harder” on the shoulders of those who embrace it. Christ did not set us free from sin so that we might turn right around and become captives to a new, pseudo-Christian type of sin: false teaching. It is for freedom and a healthy spiritual life that Christ has set us free.
Christ did not set us free from sin so that we might turn right around and become captives to a new, pseudo-Christian type of sin: false teaching.
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:
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!
Before the hustle and bustle of the holidays, it was my joy to sit down and chat about discernment with Elizabeth and Monika of the This Is the Day Rejoice podcast.
Listen in as these sweet sisters in Christ and I discuss the importance of naming names in discernment ministry, the idea that discernment ministries create disunity, advice for those who are new to discernment, and more!
Articles / resources mentioned or touched on in the episode:
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!
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.
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!
