Author Lisa Bevere Seeks to Reclaim a Woman's True Identity in 'The Fight for Female'
Acclaimed author and Bible teacher Lisa Bevere is highly concerned that the very idea of womanhood is under assault. With each passing day, more and more women are being sexualized by culture, redefined by language, but perhaps the most terrifying, they are being silenced by the Church.
Sparked by a dream she had nearly a decade ago, Bevere points to a passage from Revelation 12 that illustrates the lengths to which the enemy will go to minimize and diminish woman-kind. She believes women are under attack and in a battle for their marriages, children, churches, and community.
In her latest book, The Fight for Female, the Messenger International co-founder shows readers what is really going on in this cultural movement and provides guidance on what can be done to restore our culture through God-inspired answers.
I recently sat down with Bevere to discuss what fueled her desire to write this book, why women are being sexualized and repressed in today’s culture, and a few practical tips on how to identify the true enemy behind the attack on femininity.
For every author there always seems to be a trigger, a tipping point, a moment where you say to yourself, “I have to write this book!” For this book, what was that moment?
When I started to see what was happening to children. That was my tipping point. I'd had a dream back in 2016, and in that dream, I saw women carrying different rainbow colored dragons dressed in children's clothing, which at the time made absolutely no sense. I've seen people dress up their dogs. I've never seen anybody dress up as a dragon. And in 2016, I wrote it all down. It spoke nothing to me at that moment. And then I was getting ready to write this book, and I was alarmed that I was seeing what it meant to be a woman being sexualized by the culture and being silenced by the Church. I thought this was a terrible barrier on both sides. Being a woman is so much more than sexualization, and God has given women a voice because He expects them to speak to certain things. So I was like, I don't like this. And then I remembered the dream. And when I began to actually unpack the dream and go into the Book of Revelation, I said, oh my gosh, this is a moment and I have to speak into it. I even remember my publisher saying, “Let's not talk about this.” And I was like, well, if we don't speak about it, who is going to speak about it?
Why are women being sexualized by culture, being repressed and silenced by the Church, and minimized and redefined by language?
I think it's because they're a threat. I don't know if you know that, but if I get attacked, I take it as a compliment. What is so threatening about me that the enemy has launched a full scale onslaught? So, I have a different mindset. When there is an attack, then it is because somebody is a threat. I'm not talking about people just being stupid, but when you have this kind of broad scale, anti-woman vibe, it's not just coming from culture. It's coming from feminists as far as I am concerned. The feminists are like, yes, men can be women. No. I keep hearing where are the feminist voices in all of this mess that's going on right now? Well, interestingly enough, when I did a deep dive into some of the last wave of feminism, it's very much about the breakdown of family.
Right now, the enemy hates females. He's undermining females because Jesus is coming back for a bride. He is isolating male and female from one another because he knows that we are better together than we are separate. He's having the women use their voice against the men. The men use their voice to silence the women. And he loves all the strife and the division. Everything in our world right now is binary. It's black and white. It is Republican and Democrat. Whatever it is, everything is divisive. And we're going to have to say, no. We're going to stand in the middle. We're going to declare the truth that we need both male and female in the body of Christ. And there are battles for the men to address. And there's battles for the women to address. And the women need to repent of being complicit with some of the enemy's lies. Because even though I don't like that men are presenting themselves as women right now, I'm not surprised because women have been acting like men for about 30 or 40 years.
What are some practical ways we can identify the true enemy behind the attack on femininity?
First and foremost, I think that anytime we go into a battle zone, the first step is humility. I think practically we need to say, hey God, where have I been in agreement? Where have I been in partnership? Where have I said, oh, somebody owes me something. The whole idea of James is that we submit ourselves to God, we humble ourselves, and then we resist the devil. Where am I inviting the devil? I think a lot of people need to take a pause on social media. I think when you have constant information coming in and you do not pause in the presence of God with the Scriptures, then you are going to have something else controlling your mind. We need to renew our mind to the Scripture. You can't just say, well, I'll just go to the conservative thing.
The conservative will tell you what's wrong, but it will not renew your mind to love your enemies or love people that you disagree with. First and foremost, break those agreements. Submit ourselves to God, renew our mind, and then start having conversations. I interviewed a guy that was an expert in totalitarianism, and he said the worst thing you could do is embrace violence because violence always justifies totalitarianism. I said, okay, great. What do we do? Same as you asked me. He said. “Have consistent, courageous conversations with your neighbors, with your family, with your husband, and with your children. And then get involved.” Get involved. Don't stand on the sidelines. Don't hide in your basement with guns. Get involved. Get involved in the school board. Get involved in your church. Get involved in your community. We're supposed to be salt and light, not hiding.
The younger generation seems to be fighting a battle within themselves that culture is telling them must be fixed from the outside via transgenderism. As Christians, how can we effectively address these issues with love yet with boldness?
First and foremost, I think Christians have done a good job of saying, “God loves you and you're not a mistake.” But they haven't taken the third step, which is to connect a generation with a high priest that understands. And if there was ever anybody that was uncomfortable in their body, it was the son of God, who became the son of Man, who stripped himself of all His divine privileges and divine form to become us so that we could become him. And so, I think what we've done is say, “Well, that over there is so bad. Jesus would never be able to touch or minister to that.” But see, the enemy is so, so crafty. He understands if a generation cannot trust God with their formation, they'll never trust him with transformation. And so he's trying to undermine that. So, we need to actually say the enemy is terrified of you.
This is why he doesn't want you to reproduce. This is why he wants you living in divided households. He wants you to think that your body is a mistake and that your soul is something that it isn't. You are actually destined to be a child of the most high God. And God understands that your life right now is just a seed of your eternal life. We need to preach that this life is a vapor. It's just a vapor. We've acted like this. Life is everything and pleasure in this life is everything. We need to tell them that the longing that they have will not be satisfied by cutting things off or by crossing hormones. But the longing that they have is a God ordained longing for something more than they've ever seen or been. And God creates that gap. So, we've got to give them the gap. We've got to tell them God loves them. We've got to tell them they're not a mistake, but we also have to tell them that there is one who understands their crisis.
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