 There is a craziness in our world right now. We live in a time period where evil is called good, good is called evil, light is called dark, dark is called light, everything is flipped on its side. And I am concerned that you and I have been asleep when we need to be wildly awake. Awake to what God is doing. And so I'm going to share a couple things with you because I believe that if I can get male and female together on the same page, then God can do something that will astound us. How many of you know from the beginning of time male and female was never created to be a power struggle? It was created to be a power union. I don't know if you've read in the book of Genesis, but it was God who said, it is not good for man to be alone. He didn't say that men aren't good. He said it's not good for man to be alone. And God said, I'm going to create an answer. And that answer to the not good of man alone was the woman. And the woman coming alongside the man took what was not good and made it so very, very good. But what has happened in our culture is we have allowed the lies of our culture to infect the church. We believe that if we want to be powerful as women, we need to act like men. Oh yeah, that's what the feminist taught us. If you want to be powerful as a woman, you need to act like a man. Well, I don't want to act like a man. I want to act like a woman. I want to know what it means to be a powerful woman. Our culture has said if you want to heal the pain, then you need the women to act like men and the men to act like women and somehow will be mixed in the middle. No, we have to understand that gender captures the image of God. He created them male and female. And so when you mess with male and female, you mess with the image of God. And everything that's going on in our culture right now is attacking the image of a bride, an image of purity, an image of femininity, and women. You need to be upset about this. Oh my goodness, to be a woman, you can't just put it on like a garment. Let's say I'm a woman. The truth is, it's woven in your DNA. And God created men X and Y and He created women XX. And women are to be multipliers of everything that comes in contact with them, but instead we have allowed it to be an instrument of division. And so I'm going to put a little bit of pressure on the women, but I wanna put some imagery on the men. One of my favorite all-time quotes is by a British poet and philosopher. His name is Matthew Arnold. And this is what he said, if ever there comes a time when the women of the world come together purely and simply for the benefit of mankind, they will be a force such as the world has never seen. If ever there comes a time when the women of the world come together for what benefits all. See, the women came together as feminists for what benefited only women, but God does not bless what does not benefit all. It is time for the women to come together for what benefits all. It is time for us to remember that God said that we were good. It's time for us to remember that women are answers to be embraced rather than problems to be controlled. And so we wanna shake ourselves and lean in to what God is doing in this time period. Because I believe that God's dream for you is the enemy's nightmare. I'm gonna take you a little bit back into my life. Back you talk about John Bavir and I, preaching storm, you know, it's hilarious. We are very different people. There's things that we disagree on, but there's things that we love to talk and agree on, but there was a season where John was the only one preaching. I remember I was pregnant with my fourth son. I had three boys and a husband that traveled full time. This is what my days look like. I got my children up and I immediately began planning how soon can I put them back down for a nap? When you have three kids, five and under, I'm like, okay, it's too early, it's too early now. Then I got them up from the app and I thought, how soon can I put them back down to bed? I had created some elaborate scheme with my children. I read to them, I sang with them, we danced, we put on our armor every single night. It was like a two hour ordeal by the time we did drinks and potty breaks and all the other kind of stuff that had to happen. And I remember one night I was walking down the stairs after putting my boys to bed, large pregnant woman, I should say, waddling down the stairs, because I was never cute when I was pregnant. I believed in a minimum of a 50 pound weight gain for a good baby and so I was always a little bit large and I remember I was halfway down the stairs and my second son said, you forgot to pray for me and I stopped my foot and I said, I'm not coming up there again. I pray for all of you. And then I thought, look at you, look at you. Your children are asking you to pray for them and you are yelling at them. You have completely flipped out. Yes, I just needed my children to go to bed because every night from 10 p.m. till 2 a.m. in the morning, I was editing my husband's book, The Bait of Satan and I needed my children just to go to sleep. That's all I needed. That is what my life looked like when God had the audacity to interrupt it with a night vision. I went to sleep and I found myself wildly awake, standing in front of a platform of stone, laying on top of the platform was a lioness. On the front of the platform was the word numbers and then the Roman numerals X, X, three. The longer I looked at this lioness, I realized that she was more alive than me, even though she didn't move. See, I believe the lioness I saw was a revelation of what God wants his bride to look like. People are at ease with their strength and at rest with their power. People who will not strive with one another, but people who know who they are. I remember looking at her and it looked like her fur was combed gold. I don't know if you've ever had a glimpse where God has pulled back the veil and you've just seen a little bit of heaven, but I will tell you when I saw that I realized that we live in a shadow realm and everything there is the prototype. The longer I looked at this vision, the more I felt like something inside of me was expanding. And when I felt like I couldn't take anything else in, I heard with the birth of this son, you will awaken a lioness. I began to shake and I came fully awake, immersed in the presence of God. Now let me just be really clear with you. I don't normally wake fully or immersed in the presence of God. I normally wake wondering, where am I? That's normally, that was my default this morning. I'm like, oh yeah, that's where I'm in Michigan. Okay, that's where I normally default to. I'm gonna tell you just how rough it is for me to wake up. I remember I had done this journey where I was in Sydney, South Africa, Ukraine, and then last stop London. And every single morning I would get up to go across the street to the Starbucks that I think Jesus put there just for me. He was like, she's gonna need to survive. And most mornings I was there at six, 30 in the morning, first person when they opened the door. But one morning someone was in line in front of me and she was one of the mothers of one of the other speakers and she turns around and she looks at me and then she really looks at me. And that's when I remembered I had toothpaste on my face. See, I had read that if you had blemishes on your face that you could put toothpaste on your face and it would dry them out overnight. It works. I had chosen triple fresh aqua fresh. It is a blue, red, and white, swirled toothpaste. I had it in multiple places on my face. I remember the people looking at me weird in the elevator but I thought, well they're just British people and they don't like Yankees. So they of course are looking at me weird. I remember the concierge kind of trying to stop me as I walked through the lobby of an elegant hotel but I would not be detoured because I was headed for caffeine. And now I can tell I've made this woman uncomfortable. And so I look at her and I say, I have toothpaste on my face, don't I? And she said, yes you do. I don't wake fully. That morning though, high alert. I reached out, pulled my Bible into bed with me, opened it up to Numbers 23, Verse 24 reads, 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 be honest with you? I was beyond challenged by these fierce words on fragile Bible pages. When my husband and I watched National Geographic, I'm praying for the zebra. I'm like run zebra run, those lines are horrible. And now all of a sudden I am seeing this. But I did give birth to a son. And I named him Arden Christopher. Arden means fiery and determined. Christopher means anointed one. And with his birth, my world began to change. I actually wrote my very first book while I was breastfeeding him. Because he refused to detach, I had to prop him up with pillows and type over the top of him. Now I'm just gonna tell you, I know that's not an attractive picture for anybody, but I do want you to know that we all have the same 24 hours in a day. It's up to us to choose how we will spend them. When my book came out, I started getting invitations to speak. And I just said, no. My husband said, perhaps you should pray about that. I said, no, if I pray, God might tell me to go. But if I just say no, then I don't know. And I'm okay with ignorance. And John was like, your theology is off. But you know what the Bible says? The Bible says your gift will make room for you. And so it doesn't say I'm the gifted make room for me. It says your gift will make room for you, which means you sow and you give and you serve in secret first. Not post on Instagram. Okay, sorry. But we need to be people who sow. So I was traveling and speaking. And in 2007, I started to think, you know what? I think I might be a Linus. And I think God will let you feel about yourself that way for about 15 minutes. He tapped me on the shoulder. He said, I said with the birth of your son, you would awaken a Linus. He said, I did not say you were a Linus. He said, Jesus is the lion of the tribe of Judah. And it is time that you awaken a Linus. So for the next two years, I did a deep dive on everything about lions. And let me just tell you this, just as there is no creature that makes a man prouder to be male than the lion, there is no creature that makes me prouder to be a female than the lioness. They hunt together. They're strategic. They greet and groom one another. You know, when dogs meet each other, that's an uncomfortable moment for the owners. But when lions meet each other, they do a face to face greeting. And actually when they do a face to face greeting, they have scent glands above their eyebrows and it releases the fragrance of the pride. And they know that we are one another's mirrors. And so if you look bad, is it because I have not taken the time to groom you? See, we live in a culture that says, you looking bad makes me look good. But the truth is, you looking bad makes me negligent. When you look good, I look good. And when I look good, you look good. They understand their strength is for service. They conceive and give birth at the same time because they know that cubs of an equal age have an equal chance of surviving. But they don't stop with just survival. They actually nurse and train one another's young. They live in the light, but they hunt in the dark. Now, this is fascinating to me. How many of you have ever seen a cat at night? The headlights hit their eyes and their eyes glow. The way that eyes of cats are shaped is they actually can actually take the light in from their environment and they are lit from within. And that is how they can see at night. So lions can see as long as there is some source of light. And we need to be a people who live in the light and hunt in the dark. We need to be people who are lit from within that our eyes are not filled with darkness but our eyes are filled with light. So it doesn't matter what the light level is in the culture. It is about the light level that we actually put into ourselves. How many of you know, this is not the time to not read the word of God? How many of you know there's a lot of things that sound right but feel wrong? It is the word of God that will help you rightly divide. Rightly divide. We have to have the word put in to our hearts and mind. We have to read it till it reads us. And lions each hone their skill in the company of one another. And they locate what they are and who they are within the group. And then they hone that skill to perfection. It is something called prowess. When I wrote the book, I actually was on kind of a fast track crazy world for kids, you know, all my stuff going on. And I remember the book was already out in five languages. When one day I was driving my car and I said, Father, I wrote a book called Linus Rising. I possibly forgot to ask you whether I should do that or not. But I just wanted a confirmation from you. I know you're independent of time. So it's okay for me to ask you now because it will all work. Okay, again, this is Lisa theology. And so that night I was in the throes of a school project with my youngest son. Eight o'clock at night, my son turns to me. I just remembered I have a school project due tomorrow. Oh yeah, he had six weeks he knew about it. But no, he just now remembered I went into the basement. I tore apart the older boys school projects. I brought him the poster board. He said, no, this isn't the right format. So I paid my other son's money to cut out magazine pictures. Another one to take dictation. And I braved a blizzard in Colorado to get the right poster board. I'm home. I've got it all spread out on the table when John Bavir does something that he loves to do to me. He calls me and puts me on the phone with complete strangers. I don't know if it's a exit strategy of an uncomfortable conversation. If John just like, hey, you need to talk to my wife. I don't know what he's done, but he has done it to me so many times. And the phone rings, I answer. And I'm like, John Bavir, I am not okay with talking to some random stranger tonight for you. I am not okay with that. He said, listen, I knew you were busy. So I gave him your cell phone. Who does that to their wife? Jane, I don't feel like Lee would do that. I don't, I don't, no, yeah. So anyway, I'm like, really? So about an hour later, this guy calls and I answered the phone. I'm like, hello? And he's like, is this Lisa Bavir? I said, yeah, it is. And he said, well, your husband held up your book tonight, Lion is Rising. And he said that lions are the best killers, but lionesses are the best hunters. And I said, well, of course he would say that. That's all he knows, he's never read the book. And he said, well, I'm calling to tell you that your book is important. I said, okay. He said, do you know we're not winning the war in Afghanistan? I said, I do know that. He said, do you want to know why we're not winning the war? I thought, yes, in the middle of my son's school project, I must know why the United States of America is not winning the war in Afghanistan. He said, well, one of the reasons is we can't speak to the women. And he said, when you can't speak to the women, you can't flip a culture. And when you can't flip a culture, you can't win the war. He said, let me tell you what I do here at Fort Bragg. He said, I am in charge of special ops teams. He said, up until this point, we've only sent in special ops men because of the danger. He said, but now we are sending in special ops women. And they are going to tell the Afghan women they have voice and value. They are going to tell them that democracy will serve their sons and daughters well. They're going to deliver their babies and take care of their minor medical needs. I said, that's amazing. He said, do you want to know the name of this group? I said, sure. He said, it's called team lioness. They're about ready to be deployed. May I have a copy of your book for all of them? So I outfitted all of team lioness that went out of Fort Bragg. Then I outfitted all of team lioness that went out of Camp Lejeune. Why am I telling you this? Because if the US military understands that without the involvement of women, we will fight, but we will not win. That it is time that the church understands that we need men and women if we are going to fight and win. I have a photo that I believe is the enemy's nightmare. If they can put it up, it is two lions face to face strength to strength. The enemy does not want men and women to remember who they are. We are intimate allies. We are the best of one another. My husband and I are better together than either of us are apart. My husband is so good with structure, but I am good with nurture. And if you have nurture without structure or structure without nurture, you're going to have a problem. Proverbs 14, one says a wise woman builds her house. So what do wise men do? They build their women. Because when you build the women, the women will build the house. So I'm going to share some stories with you and I'm going to weave them into some scriptures and I'm hoping this will change the way you look at some stuff. Ralph Waldo Emerson said nature is made to conspire with spirit to emancipate us. Everything that we see in creation declares the existence of the Creator. So I was watching all these stories and not surprisingly, a lot of them came out of South Africa and there was a challenge because the lions were eating all the cattle and the sheep and so they didn't want to kill off all the lions so they created a reserve for the lions and that took a lot of time. So a generation of lions were born in captivity and when it came time to reintroduce them to the wild I watched as there was a little enclosure and they rolled back a fence but the one lion and his two lionesses refused to go out. They were afraid and I watched as the warden said what can we do to get them to go out into what we have prepared for them? They said we're going to stop feeding them but they still didn't move. So then they put a buck downwind and I watched as the alpha lioness began to pace back and forth, back and forth on what had been that former lion of limitation when suddenly her hunger exceeded her hesitation and she jumps over the line, looks back at her sister, her sister jumps over the line. The two lionesses look back at the lion and he's like, I feel like you girls have this. He is not going to move. They go out, they get the buck, they circle around and hungry as they are, they don't eat it. They grab a hold of it and they drag it all the way back to the hesitant lion. What were they doing? They were honoring the lion he one day would be instead of accusing the one he was in that moment and we have to decide, are we going to honor what could be, what should be, what will be? Are we going to prophesy, thy kingdom come, thy will be done? Are we going to speak to the prince and are we going to speak to the king or are we going to speak to the fool? Are we going to nag? Cause I'm going to tell you after 40 years of marriage, I have learned, nagging does not work, but when I speak to the nobility in my husband that awakened something in him and these lioness seem to know something that we have forgotten in our culture and that is that no act of honor is ever lost in translation. Second Corinthians 611 says I can't tell you how much I long for you to enter this wide open spacious life. We didn't fence you in, the smallness you feel comes from within you. Your lives aren't small, but you're living them in a small way. I'm speaking as plainly as I can and with great affection open up your lives, live openly and expansively. See God did not save you to tame you nor does he reveal himself as limitless in the stars and the mountains and the oceans to put a limit on you. The story of these three lions in South Africa continued and because he had such excellent lionesses, he was holding the best land and because he was holding the best land, the other lions were attacking him because it's the lionesses that hold the land and the lions come and go and so they were trying to take him out and lions will attack one another based on the width of their mains. I noticed you guys are working on the widths of beards here, but on the width of their mains and this lion had a collar on so he was getting attacked all the time, but the wardens were like, we like him so we're gonna go in there and we're gonna take off his collar so that they stop attacking him. So all these guys put on their tranquilizer guns, get on one of those vehicles with no roofs, no doors, no windows, why do they have those in Africa? It doesn't make any sense to me and I swear you could smell the testosterone through the television. They were going on a lion hunt. They were so excited and they see him, shoot him with a tranquilizer dart. He just kind of looks at it and just keeps walking and it's like swinging on his hip. They're like, wow, he's like super lion. So they shoot him again. He goes down incapacitated, but not unconscious. They were all getting ready to hop off the vehicle when who should appear, but the lioness and she begins to pace back and forth in front of the fallen lion. And I heard the narrator say to get to him, we will have to tranquilize her. And I thought that is what the enemy has been doing since the beginning of time to get to the men. He tranquilizes the women. I know there's some young mamas here that said, I welcome a tranquilizer dart. I would love to take a nap. I'm not talking about resting. I'm talking about being so absorbed and exhausted that you've lost track of what is really going on. She goes down with one dart. They get off the vehicle. They notice she's pregnant. They're doing kind of an exam with her teeth, which just didn't feel smart to me because she was still awake. And the whole time they're checking in on her, the lion is trying to find his feet. And one of the wardens like, I think we need to get out of here. So they all hop on the vehicle. They're going down the road. And I hear one of the wardens say, I'm so glad we're safe because there is nothing more dangerous than being in the presence of lions when they are fully awake. And I thought, are we dangerous and fully awake? Or is the church tranquilized and talking in her sleep? Oh, we're aware of what's going on. But for some reason, we just can't find our feet. You know, this is not the first time that God has invited us to look at nature and learn. Proverbs six, six, this is God, not me talking. You lazy fool, look at an ant, watch it closely, let it teach you a thing or two. Nobody has to tell it what to do. All summer it stores up food at harvest at stockpiles provisions. So how long are you going to laze around doing nothing? How long before you get out of bed? Could it be that God is inviting us? Look at the lions, timid, frightened sons and daughters. Watch them closely and learn. They know who they are. They know who's they are. They know what is their realm of dominion and they honor their creator by honing their skills. I got to go on a safari when I was writing this book and I'm a little random. Every single day, this one mama lioness and her three cubs were coming up on our vehicle and on the last day, they came up on my side. And because I knew so much about lions at this point in time, I felt like since I knew them, they knew me. And she's on my side of the vehicle and I just felt like she had come to say goodbye to me and so I just very slowly reached out of the vehicle with no door, no window, no roof. And I was just getting ready to pet her when I heard my husband say, absolutely not. And ever since then, I've been wondering about the conversation the lioness and I would have had if John would have not interrupted it. She would have turned around and she would have said, Lisa, and I would have said lioness. And then I'd be so excited that I was talking face to face with a lion that I would say to her, you are stunning. And she would sit down and she would say, I know. She would say, do you wanna see what I can do? I'd say show me. She'd release her claws and she'd say with these claws I can take down an impala and feed the entire pride. Then she'd retract those claws and she'd show me paws of velvet. And she'd say with these same paws, I nurture and train up the young male and females to be mighty. In the African culture, if a man is a mighty warrior or hunter, he is called the son of the lioness because the lion's basically just sleep. Then she'd say, do you wanna see what else I can do? And John would interrupt and say, show me sister. She'd bear her teeth. And she'd say with these teeth, I hunt, I kill and I defend. But with these same teeth, I move the young from one place to another without ever harming them. And then she'd stretch out to take a 20 hour nap. But before she closed her eyes, she would say to me, I am fearfully and wonderfully made. And we have no problem seeing lions as the sum of fear and wonder. But that is not who that scripture is talking about. That scripture is talking about us. Our genesis is fearful, wonder, and yet we are more likely wondering and fearful. And so I want to put a couple things in front of you because I believe that Jesus is awakening our real nature. And so I want to pray for you. And I want to put this out here that you need to shake yourself, that you need to wake up. And I'm gonna ask you, who is at risk if you are tranquilized? Is it your husband? Is it your wife? Is it your children? Is it your community? I need you to be dangerous and fully awake. Can you stand to your feet? Alexander the Great said, I am not afraid of an army of lions led by a sheep. I am afraid of an army of sheep led by a lion. I don't know if you understand that's actually who we are. We follow like sheep, but we don't war like sheep. It is time that the church becomes a collection of contradictions, powerful, focused, nurturing, highly skilled, playful, and when necessary, deadly, but not to one another, but to the principalities and powers and rulers of wickedness and high places that would exalt themselves against the knowing of God. We don't wrestle with who we see. We wrestle with an unseen realm. And perilous times give birth to courageous people. So I want you to lift up your hands and I want you to repeat after me, say, Heavenly Father, we are your children. And we will say that we are who you say we are. I am fearfully and wonderfully made. I am not afraid of the dark. You put me here to light it. I am ready to be dangerous to the enemy, responsive to people and fully awake to what God is doing in Jesus' name. Now turn to your neighbor real quick and say to them, you are stunning. Okay, there's only one answer to that. And that's, I know, that's I know. Okay, what does it mean to be stunning? What do you think? What does it mean to be stunning? You're doing a blank look on me. I have 57 seconds. What do you think? What does it mean to be stunning? To shine your light. What do you think it means to be stunning? To be brave. Okay, I'm obviously a boy mom. When you set the phasers to stun, you don't make somebody beautiful. When you set the phasers to stun, you arrest their movements. I believe that when the church becomes all that she was created to be, she will arrest the enemy. She will stop him in his tracks. You are stunning has absolutely nothing to do with what you look like. It is about what you are created to do in Jesus' name. Amen and amen. Thank you.