By Clare BruceWednesday 24 May 2017Inspirational StoriesReading Time: 3 minutes
She’s the author of books with titles like, Girls with Swords, Fight Like a Girl, and Lioness Arising. So it’s surprising and kind of funny to learn that Lisa Bevere, international women’s preacher and writer, didn’t want daughters as a young woman.
In fact, she was so adamant about not raising girls, that she asked God to only give her sons. While it seems an unusual attitude for a female preacher, it came from her tendency at the time to feel more comfortable around men than women.
“I actually always wanted to have all boys,” Lisa said, in a chat with Hope Media’s Laura Bennett and Duncan Robinson. “I prayed ‘I want all boys, I don’t really like women’. And my husband was like, ‘Do you know that’s weird? You do understand you are a woman?’
“I would say, ‘I’m a woman but I’m not like ‘those’ women. I’m like a man’s brain in a woman’s body!’ And he’d say, ‘I’m actually not comfortable with that’.”
Becoming the Woman She Wished She’d Known
Above: Authors and preachers, Lisa and John Bevere
While Lisa did get the sons she wanted in abundance (she had four), she also asked God to show her what was behind her dislike for females.
“I prayed, ‘God, what is it about me that I don’t like women?’ And God said, ‘What you don’t like about women is what I actually never fashioned women to be.’”
It was a challenging thought that sent Lisa on a journey to become the kind of woman she felt the world needed. And in fact one who would preach and teach and encourage other women the world over. But it took some time and work to get there.
“He called me to minister to women, this mother of four boys, and I feel like that’s a joke,” Lisa laughed. “I’d say [to God] ‘You put me in a man’s world, and you’re asking me to minister to women? I don’t know how.’ God would say ‘Actually you do’, and I would say ‘No I don’t!’”
Through prayer, Lisa discovered that God was right. She really did know, deep down, what women needed in a role model.
“He said, ‘Lisa, begin to write down what you wish another woman would have been to you, as you were growing up, as you were first married, as you were trying to navigate motherhood, and as you were trying to navigate being a woman in a church that sometimes makes you feel like it would be better if you were a man.
“You be that woman that you wish you’d had.’”
Putting pen to paper, Lisa explains how she set about writing down all the qualities of the ideal woman: “what she would look like, how she would talk, what she would say to me”.
Passionate preacher: Lisa Bevere speaking at a conference.
And then she set her heart towards being that woman herself.
“And that’s always been my goal,” Lisa said. “To be this woman that God created me to be, even if I’ve never seen it. And getting what I need from Him.”
Thankfully, Lisa does quite like women these days, travelling the world to speak at large women’s conferences, and writing books with messages to empower and encourage women.
This article was originally published on Hope1032.com.au