Bible study author, speaker and blogger Michelle Lesley is a Berean. “Now these Jews were more noble than those in Thessalonica; they received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so.” Acts 17:11 Michelle does not take pleasure in exposing teachers who are not doctrinally sound. You need only to visit her blog to know that. In this blog post she takes a popular teacher and author to task for not rightly handling the Word of God (2 Tim 2:15) thus misleading women — and some men. No doubt she will receive a lot of flack for exposing a beloved Christian celeb, so pray for her.
Here’s Michelle’s piece:
According to her web site, “Lysa TerKeurst is president of Proverbs 31 Ministries and the New York Times best-selling author of The Best Yes, Unglued, Made to Crave, and 16 other books.” She also blogs prolifically and speaks at numerous Christian women’s conferences.
Lysa is charming, friendly, and down to earth- the type of person I would probably want to be friends with if I knew her personally. We have several things in common: a big family (she has 5 kids, I have 6), women’s ministry, we’re even just a couple of months apart in age (which shocked me, since she looks so much younger!).
I first became familiar with Lysa a year or so ago when her name, articles, and memes of her quotes (and those of Proverbs 31 Ministries) began appearing in my news feed on Facebook. What I was seeing sounded good, and I hoped against hope that she was a doctrinally sound teacher of God’s word that I could recommend to my friends and readers. In fact, I resisted vetting her for a while because I was afraid of being disappointed by another popular Christian women’s author and teacher who seemed biblical on the surface but turned out not to be.
Sadly (and I genuinely mean that- I was sad), that is exactly what I found when I began to research Lysa TerKeurst at the request of several of my friends and readers. It’s my prayer that Lysa will repent of the areas in which she is acting against Scripture, learn biblical hermeneutics so she can rightly handle God’s word, and have a tremendous doctrinally sound – impact on the thousands of women who love her so much. I would love nothing more than to give her a virtual “high five” and highly recommend her to others if she would do so.
Until such time, I regret that I must recommend that women not follow Lysa TerKeurst or Proverbs 31 Ministries (including the other women who write for and are leaders in this ministry) for the following reasons: Continue reading:
Related:
Does the Bible really say we’re not to judge? By Marsha West
We are truly living in spiritually treacherous times. We are in a “christian” culture where we can choose any teaching that suits are wants, desires and man made beliefs. It has been deemed by man that we can have disagreement on major theological issues but we are all brothers and sisters in Christ. We are in a time when we need to sit down with God and beg Him that He will make us understand His word ( proverbs 4:13 ). We need to beg Him that we will not deceive or be deceived. We are in a time where if one in is following a teacher, one may have to listen to many, many, many, many hours of perceived truth before the false doctrine comes out. If we are not alert and being bereans, we will be deceived and start to deceive others. We are in a time when one may see a person who appears to have dedicated their life to God and is being deceived. We are part of this “christian” culture. When we see the truth from God’s word, we do not believe it! We say, “Show us fables, this is what we want!” We can be shown how we are being deceived even from a fleshly pagan standpoint by some of these false teachers and prophets. We have collected our teachers, we will not listen, show us fables! We can be shown how we are to LISTEN TO HIM over and over and over, but we will not! We say “we are going to heaven, show us fables”, we are exempt from this. We say listening to Him is a work and we are not saved by works, show us fables! We will often agree to the truth of God’s word, but then we have no application from it to build on. We say that in order to go to heaven, we have to accept Him as our Lord and Savior. Oh how lofty we are that we need to bring Christ up to our level and accept Him! God have mercy on us!!!!
Imagine if one was saved by God through begging God for forgiveness and after begging Him to have another chance! Imagine then that you do not know what has happened to you and that God assures you that you are His! But you still do not know what has happened to you and God guides you to seek the truth and eventually guides you to His word. You are glued to His words, His gospels and His prophetic word. You are now excited to go and share with Christians what God has been teaching you. You step into the christian culture all excited to do what God has gifted you to do and start to proclaim His word to christians! This is when you start to see reality. The christian culture(a pastor) tells you: “I hope you are not one of those people who believe everything they read in the Bible. But you shrug this off and move on and continue your studies unabated by this. The culture(another pastor) then says “John was a madman when he wrote Revelation”. Again you shrug this off and move on. You then seek out friends that have dedicated their lives to Jesus. You proclaim His word and discuss theological issues with them and they tell you “you are going to hell unless you repeat this prayer.” You continue to proclaim His word and show them through His word that we constantly need His mercy and need to be in repentance. They gather together and approach you(6 against 1) and tell you “you only need to repent once”. You continue to proclaim His word knowing that they will understand as they are Christians. You then are in a Bible study on His prophetic word. This is where God has you, this is your gift,they will certainly listen to what He says about this. The study gets into Revelation chapter 17. You read them the warning in Revelation 22:18,19 and proclaim that a city is a city, Revelation 17:18 , and tell them the fellow teaching on the dvd is not teaching correctly. You show them other verses that confirm a city is a city and they reply, “that is something to think about”. But you are just a buzzing fly in their room, an annoyance. You continue however, because they are dedicating their lives to Jesus and they will understand eventually. You show them through many places where a kingdom is a kingdom and a “kingdom is not kingdoms”.You also show that a king is a king and that a king is not kingdoms. They do not listen, they have collected their teachers. You eventually show them where the teacher on the dvd actually edited or used an obviously edited video clip to say something that the original did not say to prove a point that is part of his deception. You know that this will move them as most pagans would have the discernment to recognize this. They still do not consider this and defend their teacher. Finally your patience wears thin and you tell them that they are being deceived by this teacher. They say we need to discuss this and that you are not thinking straight but you have already been doing this and have been proclaiming His word to them for the last few YEARS with no application.
On top of this, you have recently left the first church you have attended with your family for the last year or so(You and your wife were baptized there) because of false doctrine being taught. Sort of a hidden watered down word of faith and replacement theology mix. You have seen hints but finally have had enough and leave. You hear and see things such as Romans 9, 10 and 11 are avoided for teaching from the book of Romans as they are controversial and they are not sure what Paul is trying to say there. You have heard Zechariah 13:7-9 applied to the church. You have heard that Christ rules the earth through the church and this is His power in the world which is currently ruled by Him. He will return to a victorious effective church which has “christianized” almost the entire world. His ruling with a rod of iron is historical at this point as this was done through His church spreading the gospel. You will hear verses such as Psalm 110:3 from the ESV to support this claim. A not so in depth reading of Psalm 110 will prove otherwise! These things are just a few examples of what you have experience in your christian walk which is only a few years old. You start to think you have been deceived after all this, but God draws you back in as you have believed Him and His Word! Isn’t this a wonderful testimony!?!?
We must pray that God will raise up prophets! Not some loons that are singing and flopping their arms around stating some future event, but ones that speak for God Himself as His Word given to us is not being proclaimed! We are in a time when the Bible itself is not being proclaimed. yes we actually need prophets to proclaim what has already been given. Sure the Bible is being held up and is being called the infallible word of God, but it is being treated as the inflatable word of God so it suits our wants. We do not need 200 page novels of fiction claiming to be God’s teaching on the Bible. We need to let His Word be proclaimed and speak for itself and believe it! We need to clear our tables of the false teaching that fills them them and throw out the teachers that we are heaping up in piles. We must clear our tables and listen to Him and only Him. Don’t believe this mess written here, believe Him! Start with the basics, work our way up with His help. Beg Him for this!
We definitely need to be careful whose teachings we are following/adopting. Something that I thought was interesting as I read through the reasons listed as to why we shouldn’t follow Lysa is that her teaching on listening to God is unbiblical. I haven’t decided one way or the other, but I came across in the book of Hebrews, specifically verses 7 and 15. What is the passage speaking to if not the audible or inaudible “voice” of God? Another thing I noticed in those two passages is that the translation I use says, “if ye will hear” (future tense), instead of “if you hear” (possibility). Perhaps a different perspective and a chance to dig a little deeper.
I received an email from a christian site and it had her name and picture and story about leaving her husband. She looked so much like a transgender that I wondered if she was one and even though God does not want us to be mean to anyone, I really believe it is a mental disorder and that they should get counseling because God made us all and he don’t make mistakes in our gender. I pray for all out there that is going through the same thing but I cannot accept any of her teachings or will not purchase any books.
What a horrible thing to say about someone. I pray for you to gain some tact, discernment and heart before commenting in such a way about someone you do not know…
You don’t KNOW me either. Do your research. I didn’t make up anything. If you are a christian are you saying God does make mistakes? I believe he does not. Move on.
Hi Delores, On a Facebook Live on P31 OBS Lysa’s Ministry today 3/29/21 one of her teachers Melissa Taylor advocates transgender lifestyle because her son is transgender. She would not answer my questions when I questioned her about the Bible verses saying it is a sin. She stated, that “We as Christians are not to judge but to love everybody and to be a light.” I called her out on it because it can cause a new believer to stumble and led others astray. I questioned her about what God says in the Bible and they disregard the verses of the Bible. They did not answer my questions and she said, “That she will not debt on what sin is” she said, “we are to be a light and not judge.” I unfollowed it all.
From the original article……
1. Lysa unrepentantly preaches to and instructs men in violation of 1 Timothy 2:12-14 (as well as the many other passages of Scripture that do not allow this). Without exception, every female Bible teacher I know of who unrepentantly instructs men also teaches other doctrinal error (usually Word of Faith or seeker driven false doctrine).
2. Lysa is a member of Steven Furtick’s Elevation Church (where she has preached the Sunday morning service on multiple occasions), and has written articles and made videos supporting his false and eisegetical teaching. She has also preached the Sunday morning service at Perry Noble’s New Spring Church.
If you are not familiar with either of these men, you should know that they both egregiously and narcissistically mishandle God’s word (click links above). Both of them support and agree with prosperity preachers such as T.D. Jakes, Joyce Meyer, Christine Caine, etc., and many of these have preached at their churches. Perry Noble is perhaps most famous for having AC/DC’s “Highway to Hell” played during his Easter Sunday service a few years ago.
3. Lysa partners with and calls Christine Caine a “dear friend”. Christine Caine also unrepentantly preaches to men and is a proponent of the false Word of Faith (prosperity gospel) doctrine, as a leader at Word of Faith “church,” Hillsong. Because this is “another gospel,” (Galatians 1:6-9), partnering with Caine is a violation of 2 Corinthians 6:14-18.
As many other popular Christian teachers do these days, Lysa promotes the unbiblical practice of “listening prayer,” which is a form of contemplative prayer. Not only is this practice itself not mentioned or taught anywhere in Scripture, the mere suggestion that we need to be hearing – audibly or inaudibly – the voice of God during prayer flies in the face of clear biblical pronouncements that God’s word, and God’s word alone, is all we need and all we are to look to for the doctrine and practice of the Christian faith.
It is more horrifying that one cannot see the errors of this woman. Maria, if anyone needs discernment, it’s you.
Thank you very much. I looked her up and she’s a transgender. I don’t believe that God makes mistakes and that you need to change your gender. I agree with you from what i had been reading and it has to be taught as the Word of God not what a person thinks. I am thankful you are realizing that and are letting people know. Some may not appreciate it but lots of christians will. God bless you and keep you strong in his love and guidance.
I think I erred Maria, I thought you were addressing the article. It seems you may be addressing another commenter?