Author Jo Saxton says she was inspired to write her book, Ready to Rise, when she saw women crying in the bathroom at the end of conferences where she spoke. They felt they had a calling to preach, but they were confused when people told them it wasn’t biblical to be a female pastor.
“I kept on meeting women in bathrooms weeping at the end of conferences,” Saxton says. “I speak at women’s conferences, I speak at leadership conferences where men and women are present, and they would tell us many stories of women of different generations, across ethnicities, the same story of a sense of, they put their calling on hold because they weren’t sure they were right and it was OK. And it had gone to, ‘Is there something wrong with me?’
“And they were like, ‘I just don’t even know what to do next. What do I do with it? Because I want to be faithful to my core. I feel God has given me these gifts. I want to serve Him with all I have.’ And some of them were in positions where it’s like, ‘I don’t think my church agrees with this.'”
However, God gave the gift of teaching to both men and women, Saxton says on the Charisma News podcast on the Charisma Podcast Network. Women especially have to own that gift and let go of the fear that culture can cause in them.
To listen to the entire episode, click here.
Janet Perez Eckles 
Shawn Akers 
Abby Trivett 
