When critics challenged her decision to lead huge revivals around the country, Anne Graham Lotz–daughter of the world’s most famous evangelist–didn’t let anyone quench her message.
It’s opening night at the Beyond All Limits pastors conference in Orlando, Florida. The sanctuary of First Baptist Church of Orlando is filled with church leaders from around the world waiting expectantly for the 12th and final speaker of the day and the only woman on this evening’s program–Anne Graham Lotz.
Neither the intensity of the day’s full schedule nor the lateness of the hour has wearied the crowd. They sit in rapt attention as Lotz, daughter of world-famous evangelist Billy Graham, begins her message. Poised and impeccably dressed, Lotz delivers in her characteristically warm but emphatic style what they all have waited so patiently to hear from this self-taught Bible scholar–a hard-hitting exposition of the Word.
Lotz doesn’t soft-pedal her message. Using Ezekiel 1 as her text, she challenges leaders to be “messengers God can use”–ones who are focused, “fired up” and faithful.
“You and I are all messengers, aren’t we?” she asks. “It doesn’t matter if you’re a pastor, if you’re a leader in the church, if you’re just a Christian. If you’ve just been born again, you’re a messenger of God. Are you a messenger that God can use?”
Above all, Lotz stresses, a messenger God can use is one who doesn’t miss the message.
“Could it be,” she muses, “that with all of our opportunity, and all of our technology, and all of our prosperity, and all of our conferences, and all of our seminars, and all of our videos, and all of our audios, and all of our musicals, and all of our ministries, and all the stuff–could it be that we’re in danger of missing the message?”
And what is the message? Those who have heard Lotz before are prepared for her answer.
“In one word,” she says, “the message is Jesus.”
It’s a message she’s been sharing here at home and abroad for more than a quarter-century.
Under Divine Orders
Lotz didn’t set out to follow in her father’s footsteps. In fact, when she was young, she had no sense of destiny at all. But today she is under a divine mandate to help people come to know Jesus through God’s Word and to bring revival to the church.
The call is not surprising considering her legacy as the offspring of Graham, now in his 80s and retired from full-time ministry. However, Lotz, 54, says her ministry is two-pronged: Whereas her father focused primarily on evangelizing the lost, God wants her to concentrate on both reaching the unsaved and reviving the saved.
“I think those two are hand in hand,” she says. “The average person who calls himself a Christian goes to church, prays the prayers, knows the songs, can find the books of the Bible, but has no power, and no life, and they’re not sharing the gospel with others. They’re not living a separated, sanctified life.”
These are the ones Lotz is after. According to statistics, many who warm the pews in a church each week and think they’re Christians aren’t born again, she says. “You could tell them they had never been born again, and they’d be offended,” she says. “Then you get them into God’s Word, and God shows them.”
Getting people into God’s Word is Lotz’s passion. “I think it’s probably the greatest need in the Christian church today outside of repentance–to get into God’s Word for yourself, that you might know what God has to say and start living it.”
Lotz has a particular burden for women. Her Just Give Me Jesus revivals, billed as “life-changing events for women,” have been held in arenas throughout the United States for the last two-and-a-half years. Funded by donations and product sales, these two-day events are reaching thousands of lukewarm believers, either igniting or reviving their love for Jesus and teaching them how to pray and study the Bible in a way that will deepen their relationship with Him. It is Lotz’s prayer that as the women are set on fire for God, they will spread revival to their families, churches, cities, nation and the world.
The message isn’t gender-specific, though. And last year, Lotz says, the arena sessions began filling up with men. That was a problem for some pastors who don’t believe it is scriptural for women to teach the opposite sex.
One pastor in particular really challenged her, Lotz says. So although she didn’t believe it was wrong to allow men to come, she felt she needed to hear from God on the matter.
As always, Lotz expected Him to speak to her through His Word. In her study of Ezekiel 44, she found mention of a man who was served his bread at the outer gate of the sanctuary. She believes God was telling her that for the arena events men were to be on the periphery–they could come and receive their bread “at the gate,” but the focus was to be on the women.
“I wrote [the pastor] a letter and told him we would advertise women,” she says, “but that the doors would still be open to whoever wanted to he was OK with that.”
Lotz wanted to respect the pastor’s feelings in spite of the fact that she disagreed with him. But the idea of barring men from the arena events is repulsive to her, she says.
“I’m not going to stand at the door and chase them out,” she adds. “I want the publicity and everything that goes out for them to [show] it’s a women’s event, [but] if a man’s going to brave 25,000 women, more power to him–let him come.”
Going Against the Grain
Strong words for a Southern Baptist. But then, Lotz isn’t a typical Southern Baptist. She’s a woman–and she’s a full-time minister.
For most Southern Baptists, that’s almost an oxymoron. The group’s official position statement regarding women was revised two years ago to state that Scripture prohibits women from “pastoral leadership.” And in some cases in the denomination, prejudice against women in ministry goes even further than that.
But Lotz, an itinerant evangelist and Bible teacher, isn’t constrained by Southern Baptist doctrine–nor does she intentionally buck it. She is simply trying to be obedient to God’s call on her life. The fact that the denomination generally doesn’t sanction women in ministry is a nonissue.
“I don’t know if that makes any difference as far as I’m concerned,” she says. “My aim is to know God. And you can’t know Him when you’re in your comfort zone. You know Him when you step out of the boat in obedience to His call and do what He says.”
Besides, Lotz really doesn’t hang her hat on a Southern Baptist peg. “I was born and raised Presbyterian,” she explains. “In my heart of hearts, I’m still Presbyterian. I go to a Baptist church because my husband is Baptist.”
Her famous father is Baptist, too–and he is fully supportive of her call. Lotz likes to believe his attitude is representative of the majority of Christian men. “I think the church is filled with men who are supportive of women in ministry. I’m married to one. I have a father who is one. I have mentors who are men,” she says.
Lotz’s brother, Franklin, head of Samaritan’s Purse and, since their father’s retirement, the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, also stands behind her. “I am absolutely supportive of Anne’s ministry,” he says. “She is doing the work of the Lord. I praise God for her wisdom, integrity and heart of service.”
Not only do men support Lotz, but most of the opportunities she receives to minister, she says, are offered to her by male leaders. “For 13 years I’ve traveled all over. Most of the platforms I’ve taken have been opened to me by men. So I don’t bump into that prejudice.”
That’s not to say there haven’t been some objectors. Once, when Lotz got up to speak at a pastors convention, some of the pastors turned their chairs around and put their backs to her.
“Once in a while you’ll come across somebody who gets a lot of press, who says a lot of things,” Lotz admits. “But I don’t want to paint them all with the same brush because there have been men in my life who have gone out of their way to affirm me and encourage me and build me up in the ministry and give me platforms that are meaningful.”
Bill Bright, founder of Campus Crusade for Christ and host of the Beyond All Limits pastors conference, is one example. As his guest, Lotz shared the platform with such well-known leaders as her own father (addressing the audience via video), Bill McCartney of Promise Keepers, and Bright himself. She was the only female minister on the program of the three-day conference other than Bright’s wife, Vonette.
Bright is vocal in his praise of Lotz, calling her “one of God’s anointed communicators” and saying “she speaks with knowledge, experience and authority the glorious truths of our Lord.”
Being the only woman speaker at a significant event is not unusual for Lotz, and it says something about her credibility. So does the list of venues she has ministered in, most often at the invitation of men. Since 1983, she has been the featured speaker at conferences, seminaries, churches and universities worldwide. In the last two years alone, she has addressed the largest gathering of evangelists in history at Amsterdam 2000; the General Assembly of the United Nations; and participants at England’s famed Keswick Bible Convention.
Pastors such as those who opposed her by turning their chairs around have been in the minority. But their objections sent Lotz back to the Word to get clarification on God’s attitude toward women in ministry. She told the Lord, “If it’s not right for me to be on a platform when there are men in the audience, I need to know that.”
She says God reminded her she is accountable to Him, not to her audience, and gave her several confirmations from Scripture that she was in His will. The most significant was the example of Mary Magdalene, who was commissioned to go to the disciples and tell them that Jesus was risen and that they were to go to Galilee to see Him.
“The very first person to be commissioned was a woman,” Lotz says. “And she was commissioned to go to men to share her then also to give His word.
“I know there are some people who will draw a line and say I can give a testimony, but I can’t share the Scripture. But Jesus didn’t make that distinction. He gave Mary Magdalene both commissions, to share her testimony and to give out His word.”
The only restriction God gave her, Lotz believes, is based on 1 Timothy 2:12, “I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man” (NKJV). Although many Christians would disagree with her conservative interpretation, she understands that verse to mean she is not to teach men from a position of authority such as one might have in a church–and she’s comfortable with that.
“Wherever I go when I speak, I have no authority over the audience. Even in the arena I have no authority over the audience. The authority I speak with comes from God’s Word and the Holy Spirit, but it’s not from a position that I hold over somebody,” she adds.
Lotz has never allowed opposition to become a stumbling block. She sees it as an opportunity to grow. “Sometimes God uses people who are abrasive,” she says. “So I what they’re saying, and if the criticism has some truth to it, I accept the truth.”
Now a respected leader of international renown, Lotz is at home ministering in a variety of settings. She addresses women and men, spiritual leaders and the lost with equal effectiveness. She has four honorary doctoral degrees and four best-selling books to her credit, three of which have received a Gold Medallion Book Award from the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association: The Vision of His Glory, The Glorious Dawn of God’s Story and Just Give Me Jesus (all W Publishing). The fourth, Heaven: My Father’s House, is nominated for an award this year. A fifth book, My Heart’s Cry, is due out in October.
That’s not all. Lotz is also on the board of directors for the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. And her reputation as an authority on spiritual matters has earned her select spots on national TV programs such as Larry King Live and CBS’ The Early Show–most notably after the bombing of the World Trade Center on September 11, when the country was seeking a spiritual perspective.
But Lotz isn’t out to prove herself. She’s as surprised as the next person at how God has used her–not because she’s a woman but because when God first called her to teach, she didn’t think she had any spiritual gifts.
Humble Beginnings
Raised at a small Presbyterian conference ground in Montreat, North Carolina, Lotz was saved when she was 5 or 6 years old after watching the Cecil B. DeMille movie King of Kings. She genuinely loved Jesus and read through the entire Bible when she was only 9.
It wasn’t until after she was married and had children, however, that she became desperate to study the Scriptures more intensely. She felt she had drifted from God through the busyness of her life and realized that getting to know Him through His Word was the only way to become the kind of wife and mother He wanted her to be.
“I wanted to know God’s Word so that I could be the kind of mother I saw my mother be,” she says. “I felt like that’s where she drew her strength, from being in God’s Word every day and being on her knees in prayer.”
Lotz became aware that other women in her town were struggling, too–and that the churches in the area were not meeting their need. Her desire to help them as well as to begin studying the Word herself motivated her to start a Bible Study Fellowship class in her hometown of Raleigh, North Carolina, in 1976.
“I helped to get it going, thinking somebody else would teach it,” she says. “Nobody else would. I ended up deciding I would teach it because I was so desperate to be in it.”
Technically, Lotz wasn’t qualified to lead the Bible class. Married to Danny Lotz, a dentist, at age 18, she had never been to Bible school, seminary or college. She’d never taught Sunday school. And she received no prepared notes from which to teach–only a schedule of when to cover certain Bible passages.
At the time, Lotz was 26, and her children, Jonathan, Morrow, and Rachel-Ruth, were 5, 3, and 10 months, respectively. A busy homemaker, she somehow carved out the hours she needed to prepare each weekly lesson. In 12 years she never missed a class.
The group quickly grew to 500 women, a testimony to the teaching gift Lotz didn’t know she had–but one her husband nurtured and her father later acknowledged when he called her “the best preacher in the family.” But it was only a portent of what was to come. An associate of Lotz’s father came to the class to hear her teach and recommended her to the head of a school of evangelism.
From the time she spoke at the school in Canada in the late ’70s, she began receiving invitations to minister. Eventually the invitations became so numerous that in 1988, in response to God’s prompting, Lotz turned the Bible Study Fellowship class over to another teacher and founded AnGeL Ministries–spelled to highlight her initials–as an umbrella for her itinerant ministry. This nonprofit organization now handles her live appearances as well as her audio and video tapes, books and devotional study aids.
“I felt God was preparing me for something,” Lotz says. “The class was almost like my schooling.” The 12 years of traveling ministry she had after that were preparation, too–for the Just Give Me Jesus revivals she started in the year 2000.
Until that time, Lotz had always ministered on someone else’s platform–and each one had an agenda. “Sometimes they were wonderful agendas,” she says. “But I hadn’t ever been on a platform where the agenda was just revival, just exalting Christ and drawing people to Him, with no strings attached.”
That’s the only agenda Lotz promotes at Just Give Me Jesus. She says she was warned that she would destroy herself, her credibility and her ministry if she attempted to put on the huge arena events. But when she received a clear word from God to proceed, she did. And she believes He is using the events to revive the church, one person at a time.
“In our arenas we’re seeing individuals experience genuine revival. I haven’t seen it fall on the whole arena or impact a whole city, but we have seen it in [individual] lives,” Lotz says.
Testimonies support her claim. One woman said the revival was “the most life-changing 12 hours” of her life. A man who was at first concerned that the event might be “aimed too much at women” told AnGeL Ministries, “My wife and I found a true sense of have both recommitted ourselves to walking in the Master’s footsteps.”
Lotz believes her success in reviving the hearts of God’s people is proof that God uses messengers who are weak and inadequate. When people try to insist that she is more gifted than she realizes, she claims: “I’m just as inadequate as I know I am. But He is even more adequate than I thought. And after 25 years in know I can’t. But I also know by experience that He can.”
She doesn’t know where God will take her from here. But she intends to stay focused, as her father taught her by example to do, on fulfilling God’s call on her life and doing what she does best: helping people come alive in Christ and grow into maturity through reading the Word. Clearly, Lotz is one messenger who hasn’t missed the message.
The Woman Question
Criticized by some for standing in the pulpit, Anne Graham Lotz is challenging conservative religious views about women, marriage and ministry.
Anne Graham Lotz advertises her Just Give Me Jesus revivals as events for women. But when men come, she doesn’t turn them away. Last year, they came in large numbers, ultimately comprising half her audience.
That caused a problem when the 2002 schedule was being confirmed. Some conservative pastors objected to Lotz’s coming to their city because they say it is unscriptural for a woman to speak from a pulpit if men are in the audience. Lotz disagrees, even though she holds traditional views about women and church authority. Recently she shared with Charisma her views on this and other issues related to women in ministry.
Charisma: Do you believe Scripture prohibits women from teaching men?
Anne Graham Lotz: That’s not even biblical. I feel like it’s a man-made rule that’s sort of cultural.
Charisma: What do you think is the root of this prejudice against women preachers?
Lotz: I feel like the feminist movement has come into the church. And as women have grabbed for positions and power, the church’s leadership has reacted and said: “Whoa, wait a minute! What is this?” And I think in a sense they’ve overreacted.
Charisma: Why are some pastors resistant to your ministry?
Lotz: I think they see 1 Timothy 2:12 differently. I think they think for me to do that [minister to men] is outside of what Scripture says. And I think they’re sincere I can’t see the point at all that a woman should not share the Scripture when men are in the audience. I don’t see any grounds for that conviction based on Scripture.
Charisma: What do you believe about the roles of men and women in the church? Do you think a woman can be anything she wants to be, or do you think there are lines?
Lotz: The lines are drawn by God. You can’t be anything you want to be. You have to be what God wants you to God’s called you to be and what He’s appointed you to be.
Charisma: Three of the most prominent women Bible teachers in the country right now–you, Beth Moore and Kay Arthur–are all Southern Baptists. Does that seem ironic to you, considering that the Southern Baptist Convention doesn’t affirm women in ministry?
Lotz: I think one thing it says is that they are the one denomination that has affirmed God’s Word, and stood up for God’s Word, and fought over God’s Word. I applaud them for maintaining the integrity of faith in God’s Word and keeping that primary. Maybe that’s one reason it’s produced some women Bible teachers, even though some of the leadership would not accept that.
Charisma: Do you think God would call a woman to be a senior pastor?
Lotz: I won’t answer for Him. I have many women friends who are ordained, who are in senior pastorate positions. But for myself I felt like He said [based on 1Tim. 2:12], “You can’t have a position of authority over a man within the church, meaning a senior pastorate, where you can discipline somebody or put them in or out of a fellowship or marry, bury, or baptize.
Charisma: Do you believe women should be ordained?
Lotz: I’m not sure how biblical that is. Because in the Bible, you’re asked, “Are you obedient, are you fruitful, are you Christlike, are you filled, are you saved?” But I don’t see people asking, “Are you ordained?” I don’t think
ordination was a requirement for service.
Charisma: Is that why you have chosen not to be ordained?
Lotz: I never felt God called me to be ordained. Everything I do, I try to do in response to what God God has never, never put that on my heart. I don’t think it would enhance what I do at all. I don’t need to be ordained to do the revivals.
Charisma: The board of directors for your ministry is all women, and you have no male advisers. Do you feel you are out of order because you don’t have a “male covering”?
Lotz: No. I think it is awesome. I love it. Our committees that put on these revivals are all women. They’re housewives putting on arena events with 20,000 people. I love it because it’s a woman’s life surrendered to the Lord–and look what God can do with her if she’ll just step out in faith.
Charisma: Do you think the idea of needing a “covering” is a misinterpretation of the verse in which Paul says that women have to have their heads covered in order to prophesy?
Lotz: Wasn’t that a sign of modesty? It was the prostitutes who had their heads uncovered. I take the principle [to mean] that I would dress modestly. I don’t cover my head because I think today that’s not required for a woman who is modest. But I cover my body. I’m not going to have slits way up where and plunging down there. The principle to me is, if you’re going to share God’s Word, do it in a way that causes people to think about the message.
Charisma: What do you believe about the roles of men and women in the home?
Lotz: I think the Bible is clear on that–the man is the head of the home, just as Christ is head of the church. But the men are also commanded to love their wives like Christ loved the church. And one of the ways that Christ loved the church is to nurture her and create an atmosphere in which she can develop her spiritual gifts.
When it comes to issues, if you’re married and you love each other and you love the Lord and you’re reading the Bible and you’re praying, you have few big knock-down, drag-out disagreements. When you do, then the husband makes the final decision. But usually you can come to an agreement or consensus way before then.
Charisma: How do you interpret what the Bible says about submission in marriage?
Lotz: It’s a mutual give and take. But in the final analysis, if there is a disagreement, then I would submit to my husband.
Like Father, Like Daughter
Though the overall thrust of their ministries is different, Anne Graham Lotz takes after her famous father in many ways.
Anne Graham Lotz uses a medical analogy to describe the contrast between her ministry and that of her father, evangelist Billy Graham. It’s “like the difference between an obstetrician and a pediatrician,” she says. “The obstetrician brings the baby into the world, and the pediatrician looks after them and makes sure they grow to maturity.”
She has a biblical analogy, too, in which she compares what evangelists do to what Moses did in leading God’s people out of Egypt. An evangelist gets people “out of their sin,” she says. “They’re saved from ‘Egypt,’ but many of them wind up going nowhere with God. They’re just wandering in the wilderness.”
She believes God has raised her up to “take them farther, get them out of the wilderness into the promised land, the place of the fullness of His they’re productive and serving Him and bring[ing] glory to Him.”
The difference in ministry focus is where the contrast ends–besides the fact that Graham is a man and Lotz is a woman (a woman described as “the best preacher” in the Graham family). Lotz says she and her father share the same commitment to what they do.
“He and I are a little bit the same,” she told Larry King in an interview a few years ago. “We just feel we’re under compulsion. We have a message that we want to give out, and we believe God’s called us to do it, and we’re trying to be obedient.”
The compulsion to do God’s will has helped them both to keep their focus for many years. Lotz attributes her dedication in part to her father’s example, acknowledging that his commitment to God’s call on his life at any cost has had a huge impact on her.
“One of the things I appreciate about my daddy after over 60 years of ministry is that he has never lost his focus,” she told a group of pastors recently. In spite of the opportunities he had to become distracted–pressures to run for president or to leave his legacy through the field of education, for example–he stayed his course, she says.
“His target audience are the lost, the unsaved,” she says. “And Billy Graham has kept his focus on the gospel and reaching the lost for Christ all of his ministry life.”
Their obedience to God has taken Lotz and Graham all over the world. It has given them platforms at prestigious gatherings of spiritual and political leaders and raised them up as highly regarded spokespersons for Christ. Even more significant, it has brought them unprecedented acceptance across all streams of the body of Christ–evangelical, Pentecostal and charismatic.
Lotz says she doesn’t remember her father’s ever being embroiled in controversies over charismatic beliefs despite his affiliation with a mainline denomination. It “just
wasn’t an issue” when she was growing up, she says, and she has not bumped into it in her own years of ministry, either. Perhaps that’s because she doesn’t try to minimize the role of the Holy Spirit in a believer’s life.
“The Holy Spirit is Jesus in me,” she told Charisma. “He not only guides me and keeps me on track, He gives me the strength and the power to live the Christian life. He’s the one who bears the fruit that would cause other people to see the mark of Christ on you.”
Lotz believes that the Holy Spirit comes into a person when he is converted but that his capacity to be filled increases as he submits to God’s dealings in his life. “Being filled with the Holy Spirit,” she says, “is a moment-by-moment surrender to the control of the Spirit.” Surrender involves both repentance and denying oneself in order to “take up the cross of God’s will and follow Him.”
Rather than taking a cessationist stand regarding the gifts of the Holy Spirit, Lotz defers to God’s sovereignty. “I know God gifted that early church in a unique validate our Lord’s I wouldn’t say that those gifts are not present today,” she says. “I think that’s limiting the Holy in Scripture I don’t see that He limits Himself like that.”
Individual believers do have spiritual gifts, Lotz believes, but she won’t name hers. She’s more interested in bearing fruit than identifying gifts. She adds: “I think the gifts are there equipping us to build up the body of Christ and to be obedient to the Lord, ‘re to inspect each other’s fruit, not so much each other’s gifts.”
–Maureen D. Eha
That Cries for More
Anne Graham Lotz started her revivals with the cry, ‘Just give me Jesus.’ Now she finds she wants even more of Him.
It’s more than the name of an award-winning book and the title of a series of revivals she is holding across the country. It’s the cry of Anne Graham Lotz’s heart: Just give me Jesus.
Lotz has learned from experience that life can sometimes be overwhelming. She tells her readers and live audiences that during a season in the late 1990s, she endured overwhelming pressure due to a series of unexpected personal pressures.
Her husband’s dental office, where he had practiced for 30 years, burned to the ground. All three of her children got married within eight months of each other. Shortly before his wedding, her son was diagnosed with cancer and had to undergo surgery and radiation treatments. Her mother was in and out of the hospital five times in less than a year and required Lotz’s attention. In addition, the home Lotz and her husband, Danny, owned in eastern North Carolina was devastated by snowstorms, hurricanes and floods.
At the same time, Lotz’s ministry obligations expanded. She published two books and an accompanying journal, produced a video series with workbooks and study guides, fulfilled speaking engagements at home and abroad, and took the nonprofit organization she founded, AnGeL Ministries, through a period of growth that saw a sixfold increase in the annual budget. In addition, she gave birth to the Just Give Me Jesus arena events.
Lotz summarizes this season of her life as pressure-packed and trouble-filled. “But,” she writes, “I don’t want a vacation, I don’t want to quit, I don’t want sympathy, I don’t want money, I don’t want recognition, I don’t want to escape, I don’t even want a miracle! Just give me Jesus. Please!”
It was Lotz’s desperation for personal revival that drove her to Jesus. But she believes she shares this heart’s cry with other Christians–believers who, like her, have endured the trials of life and realized that everything else is secondary to their need for Christ.
“God opened my eyes and showed me there are a lot of His people–in here, in the church–like me, Christians born and raised in the church, serving the Lord, but just longing for Jesus,” she said at a recent pastors conference. It is for them that she wrote Just Give Me Jesus and undertook the financial risk of putting on the revival events.
At these special meetings, Lotz leads participants to Jesus, assisted by worship leader Fernando Ortega and prayer leader Jill Briscoe. Then Lotz provides them with tools to develop their prayer lives and study the Word for themselves. She also offers them the opportunity to attend follow-up Bible studies for seven weeks after the event.
The responses she’s gotten to both the book–which has been on the Christian best-seller list regularly since its publication in 2000–and the revivals–which draw capacity crowds of more than 15,000 people–has shown Lotz she did hear God.
Still, as the title of her next book indicates, the cry of her heart has not been fully answered. Based on the gospel of John, My Heart’s Cry: Longing for More of Jesus (W Publishing) describes the “more” that Lotz wants: more of His voice in her ears, His praise on her lips, His hope in her grief, His love in her home, His nearness in her
loneliness, and so on.
Lotz says God has given Jesus to her as she asked.
“But it’s not enough. You want more,” she says. “And I think we’re going to feel that way until we get to heaven. It’s not more feeling, and it’s not more experience; it’s more of the person of Jesus Christ.” *
Maureen D. Eha is associate editor of Charisma and SpiritLed Woman magazines. She interviewed Anne Graham Lotz in Orlando in January.