Sid: Now my guest is Lisa Bevere many of you are familiar with her because she’s teaching on television all over the place. And you’re also familiar with her husband John Bevere he’s a world class teacher. Now I don’t know Lisa I kind a protest why would God put 2 world class teachers together, only 1 of you should have been? (Laughing)
Lisa: You know I really think God is trying to model what He began with. But He had one man, one woman with one heart who raised one voice in their unique strength so that they could speak to what God wants to do in this generation.
Sid: I want people to get to know you; I want to get to know you a little bit better I have some notes here, but I found something about you that I wasn’t even aware of. You had an eating disorder even before you became a believer for something like 6 years. Was it irritable bowel syndrome was that what you were dealing with?
Lisa: You know I had a number of things. I had an eating disorder, I had anorexia bulimia, and then I had lactose intolerance, and I had irritable bowel syndrome. I had all of those mixed together.
Sid: And I know people though with just the irritable bowel syndrome and that’s such a devastating thing I mean it wrecks their whole life.
Lisa: Hmm hm. I had been hospitalized because of having extreme stomach problems for 3 days. Actually just a few weeks before I met John; now I was complete heathen I was just doing that whole passionate fallen world things drinking, being wild. And it came into me actually when I was in the hospital I said “There has got to be something more, there has got to be something more to this life.” I thought this was going to be fun and it actually now feel empty. Sid I don’t know if you know this but John actually led me to the Lord. He shared about Jesus with me on our very first date and he joined hands with me and he prayed for me and he said “Now you’re saved.” And I said “What does that mean?”
Sid: (Laughing)
Lisa: “It means to be whole again spirit, soul and body.” And when he said that having absolutely no idea that he was talking to a broken girl; a girl that just compromised every area of her life and had an incredible battle with eating disorders and stomach pains and lactose intolerance I just looked at him and said “Ah so I can have cheese now!” And he was like “What?” And I said “You just said that God was going to heal me and I cannot have cheese I have lactose intolerance I’m so excited.” He was so panicked Sid he was like “Oh my gosh.” So he took my hands we were 21 and 22 years of age and he said “Alright Jesus if You can save her You can heal her.” And he had me repeat you know “God I just thank You for healing me of….” And I said “Lactose intolerance, stomach problems in Jesus name .” And I felt the warmth of God come into my stomach and untie knots that had been in my stomach since I was 15 years of age.
Sid: Had you ever felt that presence of God in your entire life previously?
Lisa: You know I had felt it one time when I was about 5 years old, but no not other than that no.
Sid: What happened when you were 5?
Lisa: Well I lost an eye to cancer when I was 5 and it was interesting that right before they discovered that I had cancer in my retinal-blestoma I actually had a night vision. And I had been praying as a little girl I had such a desire to honor God with my life but had absolutely no idea what that would look like. And I had been praying in my bedroom when a presence of light came into my room it was life a shaft of light made out of stone. I know that doesn’t necessarily make sense and it had Hebrew writing on it. And the peace of God and the presence of God came into my room. And I have to tell you as a little girl for some reason that presence of light and God saying there was in my little girl mind something already written about me gave me the assurance that I would live and not die. And so when they gave my parents 6 months for me to live and I’m now 54 so I obvious did not die I had such an awareness that God has already visited me and his hand was on my life for something but I had absolutely no idea what that would look like.
Sid: Now when you were young and this happened when you had cancer in your eye. I’m told that the light was so bright people could see it outside your door but there was no light on.
Lisa: Right my babysitter came running in and she was yelling as she came down the hall I told you to turn off your light and she opened up the door and it was complete darkness and it absolutely freaked her out. And she absolutely would never ever babysit for me again. So it’s…
Sid: (Laughing).
Lisa: So a very very strong presence of God this was back in 1965 so I don’t know if she was part of the drug culture or not but I know that it freaked her out. But yeah no it was a very very poignant very pointed it’s something I can go back in my life and mark. I do believe that God wants to speak to His people in dreams and in visions.
Sid: Okay John prays for you and leads you to the Lord you say “I got all of these conditions,” it’s a wonder he didn’t walk out right there. But just a simple childlike prayer that same presence you felt as a young girl came upon you again. How long did it take with all of these conditions I mean I understand you were addicted to diuretics and laxatives and stomach disorder and irritable bowel syndrome, you were running a fever, you had rashes you had constant discomfort, I mean it was a horrible way to live how long did it take God to heal you?
Lisa: He immediately healed my body but you know what it took time for me to change my practices to understand that I could actually entrust Him with my weight. You know Sid it’s interesting people do not realize that anything and everything that is important to us is important to God. And so I kind of thought “Okay I’m a Christian so my weight that’s not important to God I just need to navigate that needs to be something I navigate on my own.” And I think I had been saved for about a year and a half and you know what’s interesting is when you have an addictive personality which is definitely what I had and I still have and I’m addicted to Jesus and that’s just what I’m going to have to be addicted to for the rest of my life. But when I had substituted drinking you know okay I need to stop getting drunk I switched my addicted behavior to overeating. So I was underweight when I got saved and then I became overweight when I became a Christian because Christian oh my goodness but they eat excessively. And so I switched my drinking excessively to eating excessively. Then I remember God saying “Listen if you will stop weighing yourself, if you will stop dieting and if you will give this to me I’m going to perfect those things that concern you; you can trust Me with this.” I had gained so much weight that I couldn’t get into my wedding gown. I was in… supposed to get married in about 4 weeks later and I could not get into my wedding gown. And He said “Lisa a diet changes the way you look but a fast changes the way you see.” And He said “I need you to see everything differently, I need you to see yourself differently, I need you to see Me differently, I need you to see everything about food differently.” And He said “A diet He said is about denying yourself but a fast is about indulging Me.” And He said “I need you to give me room in your life; I need you to let Me be your banquet.” And so Sid I went from eating until I was uncomfortable to eating until I was satisfied. And I actually had to have the Holy Spirit teach me that and I offered up my food with prayer and thanksgiving and said “You know what You show me.” Because I had lost all sense of sensitivity to what it meant to be satisfied I only knew what it meant to be in pain. And so God actually gave me a weight and I know a lot of people out there you’re thinking “What God wants to be…” Absolutely He wants to be involved in this area of life; He wants to be intimately involved in your most intimate areas of your life. But God actually gave me a number Sid and I remember I wrote it down on a piece of paper and I shoved it in my Bible and He said “I’m the one who made you, not shape, not Glamour, not Vogue, not Women’s Health, not Men’s Fitness I’m the One that made you and I’m the One who knows what you should weigh” and He gave me this number. And I remember I stuck it in my Bible and I stopped dieting and I just began to walk with God I began to worship, I began to build back strength and not look at myself the way I’d seen myself before. And you know on my wedding day I weighed that exact number and I have pretty much stayed that exact weight for 32 years.
Sid: Explain to me what God meant when He said to you “Your weight has become an idol.”
Lisa: Oh, okay I loved that… most people don’t think about idols as something that we would have today but they really are truly everywhere we go. I mean an idol is something we give our strength to and draw our strength from. So for me my example would be if I felt thin than I felt worthy, I felt confident, I felt I could witness to people, I felt like I deserved love. So my weight was something I bowed down to because it controlled my life, it controlled the way that I thought about myself, it controlled the way I approached scriptures, it controlled how I approached other people. And see God doesn’t want us to raise up any image or any idol about what He wants to have in our life. And the truth is when we begin to see ourselves the way God sees us then we begin to live the way we are made. I love how Isaiah says “He will teach us to live how we were made.” We are people that were made for God and so when we go to idols they don’t teach us to live the way that we were made. And you know everything with woman right now you know is on a magazine cover and it says “If you want to be loved you have to be bikini ready by May.” You know it’s got all of this stuff out there. It’s also telling woman that if they want to have some kind of worth they have to be sexually desirable, and there is a huge idol and this situation of our self image, of our body images and the truth is we can actually trust God with that. And He will change things and I believe the way we eat is also driven the way that we look at ourselves. So if I’m thinking “That food is our source, food is my comfort” it’s an idol, but if I understand that food is something good that God gave me I’m going to eat with a different attitude.
Sid: Lisa that made a major change in your life, but there was something else that caused a major change in your life. In 1994 you’re pregnant and you have without a doubt the most vivid unusual dream of your life and then in fact it might have been even more than a dream you actually felt you were there what happened?
Lisa: You know I had a night vision. I went to sleep exhausted and I found myself standing in front of a magnificent lioness. She was laying on her side on top of a platform of stone; on the front of the platform Sid was the word Numbers and then Roman numerals XXIII, which would mean 23. I remember I looked at this lioness and even though she never moved I felt like she was more alive than me. You know people that have had a little glimpse of heaven realize that everything there is the prototype, and everything here is but shadow. It was like there was no air or space between herself it was so incredibly concentrated. The longer I looked at this lioness the longer I felt like something inside of me was awakening expanding and getting ready to explode. And when I felt like I couldn’t take any more in Sid I heard a voice behind me say “With the birth of this son you will awaken a lioness.” I began to shake and I became fully awake immersed in the presence of God and I had such an awareness that there was something a little bit more than a dream that just happened. But a mandate and something had been imprinted on my life. And when I felt like I could reach my hand out of my bed and open up my NIV Bible to Numbers 23 verse 24 this was what I found:
The people rise like a lioness; they rouse themselves like a lion that does not rest till it devours its prey and drinks the blood of its victims.
Can I just be honest with you, I’m almost a vegetarian I was beyond challenged by these fierce words on fragile Bible pages. But I did give birth to a son and I named him Arden Christopher. And with Arden’s birth I basically saw my world expand I wrote my very first book while I was breast feeding him because he refused to detach. I wrote “Out of Control and Loving It” and it opened up my world and it awoke me to be able to understand that there was something inside of me that fear was holding back. I really believe that the lioness that I saw was not just a statue but she’s a revelation of what the church is supposed to be. People are at ease with their strength and at rest with their power.
Sid: You began an intensive search of what is a lioness; spiritually speaking who is the lioness?
Lisa: I believe it is the church. You know Jesus is the lion of the Tribe of Judah and we know that He is coming back not as a lamb but He’s coming back as a Lion. And I believe that there’s a fierce awakening that He is speaking into His church that we would begin to remember who we are; remember who we are; remember what we were created to do; remember that there is a new season a new dispensation. You see that the book of Revelations and it’s like this all out war to end all wars. And so I love Alexander the Great’s quote where he’s said “I am not afraid of an army of lions led by a sheep I’m afraid of an army of sheep led by a Lion.” And I believe he was prophesying that is the church that we follow like sheep but we do not fight like sheep we fight like a Lion.
Sid: Lisa you produced an entire curriculum called “Lioness Arising.” It’s your book by that title you’re workbook then the 3 DVD’s that have 8 sessions, and the 4 DVD’s that have the same 8 sessions. And why did you put this curriculum together what is not your objective but what is God’s objective? What does God want to accomplish with people that take this curriculum?
Lisa: You know Sid we find out who we are in the company of others. I really believe that you can read a book and yes it’ll do a work in you but when you gather with others, when you bring other people and sit down together you find out what your weakness is and your strengths. You find your questions and you find your answers and they’re not only did we create a curriculum that just taught but we actually did a curriculum that actually help them know who they are. You know in the workbook Sid it actually has a test to find out what kind of a lion you are. Because if you are a protector and you think you are a hunter then people are going to be at risk. So I really believe that God is raising up people to find out who they are in the company of one another and what those strengths are that they need to holm. And so we actually took it as a safari journal because everybody goes out and sees something different because we’re made different, but the truth is we need to learn our strengths and then we need to give those strengths to build up all.
Sid: Well it’s time to awaken the lioness in you; it’s time to arise I want you to dare to walk into your destiny. I want you to have the greatness that God has inside of you to awake. By the time you’ve finished this curriculum whether you take it just by yourself or with a group by the time you finish this curriculum you are going to find something fierce, something beautiful and wild that’s going to awaken within you. Lisa you talk about this but it’s obvious to me, most people that go to church that love the Lord are spectators they’re almost beaten down from fulfilling their destiny by something called religion that has evolved rather than fulfilling their God called destiny. I don’t know how it happened but it happened, will this get them out of that?
Lisa: You know what it will not only get them out of it it will empower them to see things differently. I really believe this is a prophetic curriculum and I believe it speaks to a different place in everyone. Sid it’s been out for a couple of years and you know what I’ve gotten to do? I’ve gotten to travel and see what happens 2 years later when people have gotten a hold of this curriculum and what they have done in their communities, what they have done in the church what they have done to reach out to the poor; what they have done in every realm from law to beauty I mean it’s been crazy. I’m actually beginning to do things where I’m actually doing follow-up when lioness’s awake. And I’ve seen people lobbying for what happened to autistic children to beauticians’ saying we’re going to sell beauty products and it’s going to rescue children that have been orphaned. It’s been crazy to see they find their strengths and then they give their strengths and they’ve never been so fulfilled. Because you and I have not been called to attend church, we we’re called to attend to the church which is His bride. And we’re not supposed to sit we’re actually supposed to adorn her with strength and beauty and purpose. And I really think that there is a shift happening because the subtitle of “Lioness Arising” is “Wakeup and Change Your World.”
Sid: Okay consider yourself challenged I want you to know that when you end up fulfilling your destiny… When you do that any profits that we make from this is poured into Jewish ministry. I got this this morning I want to read it to you from my cell phone.
We are excited about the response from your program Sid [This is the Russian Language broadcast we’re on all over the world.] Thousands of people are sending testimonies and prayer requests and encouragements after watching your programs to our call centers. We would like to share with you how our channels and media group are developing. We are continually growing in the Western and Eastern European cable networks. Last month we added over 10 million households to our cable systems. We are now in the process of finalizing agreements with the largest network [I can’t mention the name of it but if I could this is so mind blowing our show is getting on one of the largest networks in the world.] The governments in the Baltic and Scandinavian countries are aiming to make our channel the main Russian channel in the regions. They don’t want propaganda of other Russian channels and are choosing clean positive content of our channel. By the time the crisis in Ukraine we were over to stream your program dubbed into Ukrainian on a secular network there. We’re also excited about the development of our new channel in Romania…
I’m not going to take the time to keep reading this but guess what Jesus is returning soon you must fulfill your destiny. Our destiny is to reach Jewish people to get modern day Paul the apostles raised up to go to the 4 corners of the earth and do what the Jew was created to do is to be a light to the Gentiles and evangelize the whole world. So when you get this course any profits are being poured into reaching the Jewish people with the gospel. When we come back Lisa I want you to tell me about the dream you got from God about putting this together and why He wanted it.
Tags: its supernatural, Sid Roth