Welcome to the Collide Podcast. We're a growing community of everyday chicks colliding with Jesus in our mess, our pain, our joy, and our stories. We value showing up as we truly are, so that's what you'll find here. Walls and masks being torn down so that we can allow Jesus to meet us where we truly are and hear about other women doing the same. We can't wait to collide with you. God's grace for us is 360 degree grace, so of course salvation is the most important step.
But then intimacy with God. Goodness gracious, the things he's revealed to me even in this past year make the things I learned at 55 pale. Welcome to Collide Podcast. I'm Willow Weston, the founder and director of Collide and I am so excited today to have Lisa Harper on the podcast. Lisa is a storyteller, theological scholar, and a Guacamole fanatic, which I can completely resonate with. She's the author of 13 books and has written and filmed five best selling Bible study video curriculums.
Lisa's vocational resume includes 30 plus years of ministry leadership, including six years as the director of Focus on the Family's National Women's Ministry where Lisa created the popular Renewing the Heart conferences that have been attended by almost 200,000 women. Lisa has been featured on numerous TV and radio programs, has spoken at hundreds of national and international women's events as well as churches around the world. She's currently working on her doctorate at Denver Seminary.
But most of all, she's loving being a mama to Missy, who she adopted in 2014. Best selling author and pastor Max Licado calls Lisa one of the best Bible tour guides around. And Priscilla Shire says about Lisa, when she speaks up, ears perk up. So friends who are listening to the podcast today, get ready for your ears to perk up.
Welcome to the Collide Podcast, Lisa. You know Willow, I paid Max and Priscilla to say that I just made fresh guacamole and sent them baked goods until they said really wildly kind things about me. It's not all true. I have to confess, Guacamole will go. A very long way as far as compliments. Oh listen, if you paid me in guacamole, I would pretty much go anywhere and do anything. I love me some guacamole.
Well hey, we had to cancel your coming to our Collide Conference this last spring, but we've rescheduled it for spring of 2021 and people are so excited about you coming and we'll make sure that you're room is full of amazing guacamole. Listen, I would walk to Seattle from Nashville if you promised me a lot of guacamole. Okay, I'm promising. Hey Lisa, you live a bold life of preaching, writing and encouraging people all over the world to collide with Jesus. You have an amazing ministry.
And I'm just wondering if you can invite us back to how God got all this started in your life. Well, I grew up in a. Well in a home that looked Christian. My mom was a believer. My dad was an amazing man later in his life, but early in his life really struggled with some, some issues. He left us when I was a little girl and I came to know Jesus when I was teeny willow. I was five years old.
Our dad had just left us and the pastor was preaching on how God our Father doesn't walk away from his children. And so I remember sitting in the church. You're way too young to remember this, but we used to have these long wooden benches called pews.
And I was sitting in a pew hanging onto the back of the pew in front of me and just hearing him talk about how God won't leave his children, just, you know, really as a five year old, that was what I wanted more than anything else was a dad who stayed.
And so I walked the aisle and gave my heart to Jesus and you know, as best I could understood as a little kid, I understood that my heart was, was sinful and I needed Jesus to come in and clean my heart and reconcile me into a right relationship with God the Father. But you can imagine how, you know, how elementary my understanding was and what I, even though I heard people talk about grace and we sing about grace, I really, for decades emotionally was an agnostic.
I thought there was really no way a perfect God could actually delight in a girl. Like I thought he saved me because he felt sorry for me and even went to my first go round of seminary in my early 30s. And so, you know, again I could execute grace. I knew a little bit of Greek, a little bit of Hebrew, but somewhere in this corner of my heart I just never felt like I was good enough for God. But you know, he promises to finish what he started.
And he has been extraordinarily kind in my life and just continues to unravel the mysteries of his grace, his compassion. And I took a, just a huge trajectory shift in my late 30s of all things. I was studying the Song of Songs, the Song of Solomon, which is, you know, like Danielle Steele in the Old Testament, it's Racy I didn't think I could go there because I was a single girl and I knew it was like, you know, kind of wild.
But I spent some time by myself on a little tiny long weekend sabbatical in Florida. And it rained the whole time so I couldn't go to the beach. And the only thing I had to read were a couple of commentaries. I'd brought on the Song of Songs in my Bible. And as I began to read that there's a place and you know, it's a. It's Hebrew poetry, but it's a love story. It's this amazing love story in the Old Testament and it's historical as well as christological.
So there really was a bridegroom named Solomon and a bride named Shulamite. But the overarching symbolism is the kind of intimacy we can enjoy with Jesus. And there's this scene in the love story where the bridegroom says to the bride on their wedding, Song of Solomon, chapter 4, verse 9. He says, with one glance of your eyes, you captured my heart. And I remember as like a 38 year old reading that and just almost having the wind knocked out of me.
I thought, oh, oh my goodness, I have captured God's heart. And my life really began to shift in my late 30s. Even though I was in vocational ministry for years prior to that. I began to really believe that God delights in me, that his love is not based on my deservedness or lack thereof, it's based on his compassion, his character.
And so, you know, have been a Christian for a long, long time, have been a Christian who actually believes that a God like that delights in a girl like me for probably just the last 15, 20 years of my life. What do you think happens in us when we move from that place of, you know, you kind of described it as you thought God felt sorry for you, but to move to a place where you knew without a shadow, that God delights in you. What do you think changes in a woman when she begins to believe that?
Yeah, I think everything changes. I really believe there's such a dramatic internal shift that you can see it on the outside of us. You know, I say we go from being kind of head down. I'm not saying every human being is shrouded in shame, but I do think some measure of shame is part and parcel of the human condition. I think since we were created in God's image for God's pleasure, when we are not actually walking and believing God's pleasure, I think there is. Our lives are muted if you will.
And we're always kind of searching for love in all the wrong places, even as believers. You know, one of my favorite books, when I was getting my master's in seminary, it was called. Well, it's a great old book. It's called Addictions A Banquet in the Grave by Dr. Ed T. Welch. And in that book, he equates addiction. And at the time, I was working a lot with women in addiction recovery, so I was really interested in that. But he equates addiction to spiritual poverty.
And he says that addiction is ultimately a disorder of worship. So even though, like some of my dear friends, I have not struggled with narcotics or alcohol addiction, I, as I got older, really did consider myself a recovering addict because I had run to all the wrong places and all the wrong people looking to have, you know, that cavern in my heart filled. And so I was always running scared because people cannot perfectly love you the way we were wired to be loved.
You know, I was very attracted to abusive men in my 20s and 30s. I tease and say that my husband is lost and won't stop to ask for directions because I'm 56 and single. But truth of the matter is, I was just really scared. I was scared of intimacy. And so I sabotaged any healthy relationship I had and actually felt more comfortable in the toxic, abusive relationships. And I think it's because I didn't feel worthy.
And when you begin to recognize again, it's not about our worthiness, it's about God's compassion, then it just takes that cover of fear off. I became much more willing to risk loving laterally when I began to really marinate in the love God had for me. That's. I don't believe I ever would have stepped into the risk of adopting my little girl had I not began to step into, really lean into the embrace of God. So I think it changes everything.
I think it shifts our human relationships into a much healthier place. I think we begin to recognize, goodness gracious, you know, Jesus Christ is the only place I'll get the kind of emotional empathy and fulfillment and peace and hope and joy. And so we kind of quit being life sucks on other people or allowing other people to suck the life out of us. So if you're not plugged in first and foremost to God being the lover of your soul, I think every other relationship suffers.
I just love your story when I picture you walking past the pews down the aisle because you wanted your father to stay with you. And now your life is being used to minister to other Women who have those little girls inside of them that still long to be wanted by a father that encourage you that this complete turnaround happened in your life where not only did the father meet you, but now he's using you to meet other girls like you.
Yeah, it's been, it has been the coolest thing, Willow, because I, and I think we tend to think of our journey with God as, you know, it's like you have this turning point when you get saved and then, you know, as Paul says, we're new, create creations. You know, the old has passed away, the new has come. But I think sometimes we miss out on the journey itself because it's not just about salvation. God's grace for us is 360 degree grace. So of course, salvation is the most important step.
But then intimacy with God, goodness gracious, the things he's revealed to me even in this past year make the things I learned at 55 pale. So when I meet followers of Christ who have gotten to a jaded place or a place where they feel like their prayers are hitting the ceiling, I always want to encourage them and say, remember, remember, remember our latter days. God promises are going to be better than the former. There's no such thing as coasting when it comes to a relationship with God.
It just gets better. And I can tell you as a, as a 56 year old follower of Christ, when I look back, I started vocational ministry when I was 22, right out of undergrad, started working for a youth ministry in Nashville. I grew up in Orlando, Florida, so the idea that I would move to Nashville, I remember just having fear deep in my bones. I thought, oh, goodness gracious, it's going to be all Cracker Barrel and country music.
And moved up here and fell in love with the culture and the people in Nashville. I get to travel all over the world now, but man, I am a Tennessee girl now, through and through. But you know, I thought that was it. You know, I finished college, finished undergrad, I get to talk to kids about Jesus. This is it. And when I look back at my life 30 years ago, I'm like, boy, you talk about seeing through the glass dimly. I didn't have a clue as to big and kind and glorious our redeemer is.
And so I'm just, I love encouraging people from this vantage point. You just keep taking the next right step toward Jesus because it really does get better. It gets more passionate, it gets more exciting. I mean, I just love it. My little girl is 10 years old and we were praying last night when I was putting her to bed, and I was read this book with her every night called the Jesus Storybook Bible. And so we were.
I was telling her the story about John the Baptist last night, and she got really stuck on the fact that he ate bugs. And you. I just got so tickled because I thought, yeah, I remember, you know, as a kid getting stuck on that too, because, you know, it takes a little while to get, oh, my goodness, he was a messenger for Jesus. Oh, my goodness, the passion. John the Baptist. She's just getting in part now, and she'll get even more next year and even more the next year.
But to know that our trajectory with Jesus gets better, I mean, goodness gracious, that's what gets me up in the morning. I love running this race called faith. If I did the math right, you have about 40 years of ministry and leadership under your belt. And I'm just curious, as younger leader and woman in ministry, I mean, I'm dying to know, what would you say has been the greatest joy, but also. The greatest challenge, you know, the greatest joy?
I think in my heart of hearts, I'm a Bible teacher and an evangelist. And so anytime I get to see the lights go on and somebody go, God loves me, that. I mean, that just lays me. And so my greatest joy is seeing people come face to face with Jesus, seeing people fall in love with Jesus, seeing people recognize, oh, my goodness, a God like that really does love a girl like me. And that's both people, you know, beginning their relationship with Jesus and then on through.
I was right before COVID I was at a conference where there were a couple of older women in attendance. And I was talking about shame. And I was talking about how, you know, when Paul says in Romans that there is now therefore no shame or condemnation for those of us who are in Christ Jesus, I said he wasn't being hyperbolic. I mean, that is absolutely true. We can exchange our shame for peace and contentment as we walk with Jesus. And I told part of my own story.
There's some sexual abuse in my story and a rape and some stuff that just really had me feeling dirty and not good enough again for decades. You know, I could go to seminary and memorize a lot of theology, but my own understanding, you know, theology has to be lived, not just memorized. And so it's hard for me to apply it to myself. Well, so as I started sharing my own story, I just noticed this kind of older one in the back seemed. She seemed really affected.
And, you know, I'm always like, oh, Goodness, did I say something that offended them? Because I'm not your stereotypical Bible teacher. You know, I ride a motorcycle and wear leather pants. And, you know, theologically I'm real conservative, but sociologically, I'm a little left to center. And I thought, oh, man. I probably used some phrase or some modern terminology that upset this woman because she seemed agitated. And afterwards she came walking up to me.
I found out later this woman was 82 years old, and she was like, lisa, I just have to talk to you about some of the stuff you said about shame. And I was kind of bracing myself for her to say, you spoke too intimately about God. Or maybe you weren't quite as formal as you needed to be in your delivery. And instead she said, I came to know Jesus when I was a little girl. But she, too, had experienced abuse when she was younger.
And because we tend to take our human experience and overlay that on who God is, she had spent her entire life feeling like God was ashamed of her and that God wasn't completely safe because when she was a young woman, the men in her life weren't completely safe. And she said, I feel like for the first time time in my life, I'm 82 years old. I feel like I'm getting that he actually loves me. And I'm telling you, Will, that kind of stuff. And of course, we can't conjure that up.
Only the Holy Spirit can give people that kind of cognizance and can soften their hearts where they can receive the truth of his gospel. But when you get to be a steward of the gospel and see how much the love of God transforms people and rescues people and restores and heals, I mean, again, that's why I get up in the morning. I believe the gospel is true. I believe God, because of his mercy, is a knowable God, at least partly knowable.
You know, we can't fully understand him with human minds, but he makes himself accessible to us. And so that is. That's the story of my life. It keeps getting better. Just like I said, intimacy with Jesus does. I'm 56. Started vocational ministry at 22. So what is that? What is that, 34 years? I can't do the math that great. That's what happens when you are 56. And I wouldn't trade a season. And that isn't to say all the seasons have been, you know, perky seasons. It's not that at all.
There have been some. There's been some great grief in my life, some great loss, but I really Wouldn't trade it because of the way God revealed himself to me during those seasons. And then it just keeps getting better. You know, I became a mom at 50, so I went through menopause and motherhood at the same time. And just can't even tell you what a kick that was, but how glorious it's been because I thought I had, you know, I thought I had sabotaged that part of my life because I was.
Was into so many toxic relationships. And, you know, by the time I got healthier, my ovaries were raisin. So I thought, well, motherhood is. And the cards for me. And then just through a series of miracles and the miracle of adoption, got to bring this pumpkin home from Haiti named Missy. Her first mama died, and my little girl didn't. She was an orphan. She was an orphan, literally. I had spent so many years as an emotional orphan.
The fact that I got to be her second mama and God had been redeeming me from that orphan spirit. I mean, it's just been. I couldn't write a story better than this. Wow. Take us back to when you first considered adopting and how you came to meet Missy. Well, I'll tell you the hard part of it, because I bet you more of your listeners would resonate with the hard part than the, you know, the happy ending part.
I was, again, I assumed that I had just sabotaged my shot at kind of a happily ever after because I was so broken and so scared relationally in my 20s and 30s. And so I don't for a moment believe our God is capricious, but I do think there's consequences to sin. And I had some relational sin in my life, some real toxicity. So I thought, you know, that's just the thing. I miss the window to be a mom.
Well, when I was 40 years old, I went to a women's conference and heard a speaker talking about adoption. And I had my best friend and I, when we had a Bible study in high school, both of us had committed to adopt when we were 17 years old. But of course, you know, we were just passionate, wet behind the ears Christians. We didn't really know what we were committing to.
She went on to get married right out of college and adopt, but I'd almost forgotten, you know, making that promise when I was 17 year old, because again, I assumed adoption went along with, you know, the white dress and the ring on my finger and everything else. And so at about 40, I heard this woman talking about. She was talking about adoption, she was talking about orphans. And she said, there were 147 million orphans in the world as we know it today.
And then she quoted that super familiar verse from James where it says, as Christ followers, we're supposed to take care of the poor and the marginalized. What is an orphans? And then the speaker was Teeny Willow. She was like, I don't know, 110 pounds, blonde, obviously gluten free. But she got really bossy after she said that. She said, you know, after she said, what are you, you know, taking care of what is an orphan? She just kind of paused and looked out at all of us.
And then she said, what are you doing about it? And I thought, what am I doing about it? I'm 40 years old, I'm not married, I'm in ministry. I mean, I'm basically a nun. What in the world can I bring to the table of orphan care? But you know, sometimes the Lord will just hook in your heart and you just can't quite let go of that conviction.
And so after praying about it for a week, I thought, you know, maybe I should do a short term mission trip or take a sabbatical and spend three years in orphan care, maybe in a third world country or give more of my offering to orphan care. You know, I wasn't sure what I was supposed to do, but I just couldn't quite shake the feeling that God was prompting me to do something with regards to orphan care.
She talked about the fact that millions and millions of orphans will die before they even get through infancy because of really simple things like having access to clean water. And so, you know, my heart was really stirred over the crisis of orphan. And so after about a week I thought, you know, I'm just going to tell the girls in my small group because I've never been the sharpest tool in the shed. I'm not sure that I can really hear exactly where God is steering me.
So I'm just going to tell these four girls I'm close to to pray with me and for me, so I'll be alert to what God wants me to do. And three of them basically said, we've got your back, we'll pray with you. And one of them said, you know, if you have time later on this week, I'd love to talk to you about this further. And so I met with this individual girl from church who I knew pretty well, or thought I did over coffee. I was 4 years old.
And after a little bit of small talk, she basically said, lisa, I think you have ruined your shot at motherhood. She said, you have shared with our small group that you were molested when you were younger. And I know you've been to a lot of counseling and stuff, but just in case you weren't fixed, you might unwittingly transfer the trauma you experienced as a child onto a child of your own. So she said, I don't think you should pursue motherhood through adoption.
Just in case you were thinking about that, I think if you want to nurture something, you should go to the Nashville Humane Society and adopt a dog because you're really good with pets. And will, I wish I could tell you that, you know, that I recognize this woman's just a crooked little tree somewhere in her backstory. She experienced something, a storm or a drought, that it bent her trunk because she's not bearing good fruit.
What's falling out of her mouth is not congruent with God's word because Jesus doesn't use shame as a motivational tool. But what she said connected with my deepest fear. And that was that the abuse and the mistakes from my past had somehow put a lid on my future. And so as a 40 year old woman, I had already been through seminary, you know, how to masters of theology. I worked for a church. I'd been in vocational ministry. But shame still had a corner of my heart.
And so after I met with that woman, I put the adoption application I'd printed out secretly and was praying over. I put it in the very back of my file drawer. And the next day when I got off work, I drove to the Nashville Humane Society and I adopted a dog named Sally, a lab with bladder control problems. And you know, I just, I just. Is this a background that was funny? Yeah, yeah, she was. She's the greatest dog. She's really dribbly, but she was a good dog.
I spent seven more years really wrestling with whether or not kind of I was good enough to be a mom. And of course I was. I wasn't sure about the theology. Is it even okay for a single woman to adopt? And I finally got the point. You know, I'm slow to learn, but I finally got the point of realizing we live in a fallen world.
I believe every kid deserves a mom and a dad, but there's millions and millions of children who die every year, not to mention age out of foster care without ever having the blessing of a family. And so I met with an adoption agent and I said, I don't. I don't want a child. I don't want an infant, a healthy infant, because usually they have a great shot at A mom and a dad.
But I said, if there's a kid out there somewhere who, you know, a fluffy single woman in Tennessee would be the better option because they're facing death or dire circumstances, I'd love to be considered there. And I was 47 years old. I lost my first two adoption attempts. One of them was just devastating because it was at the 11th hour, four days before I was supposed to bring a baby home. Her biological mama was a hardcore meth addict.
And it's a long story, and I'm not legally able to tell all the details, but, I mean, I was devastated. I wasn't sure I could peel myself back up off the pavement, you know. And two weeks later, a girl I hadn't seen in years, I had actually led a Bible study through a youth ministry I did when she was in college. But she called and said, you know, I don't know if you remember me. And I was like, of course I remember you.
And she said, well, I heard through the adoption grapevine that you lost a baby at the 11th hour. And she said, lisa, I'm calling because I just got home from Haiti last night. And she said, while I was in Haiti, one of the young moms died of aids, and she left behind a two and a half year old named Missy who has HIV and tuberculosis and cholera.
She said the doctors in Port au Prince have said she probably only has about two months to live if somebody, really, anybody from a first world country doesn't step in the gap for her because she desperately needs ongoing medical attention. There's nobody to care for her. And she said they're not sure she will even make it. And she's not yet in an orphanage, so it's going to be a really long, probably drawn out process.
And she said, while I was sitting there in the emergency room, you know, holding this little girl in Port au Prince, she said, God whispered to me. And God said, lisa Harper is supposed to be this little girl's mom. And she said, so I know you're still really grieving the loss of Anna Price. That was the baby I was supposed to bring home.
And she said, I don't know if you have the emotional bandwidth to even make this decision, but would you pray about the possibility of stepping into Missy story and trying to adopt her? And I said no. Told her I'd been praying about it for 30 years to sign me up. And then, Willow, I got off the phone and said a word that's not in the Bible, because I thought, oh, goodness gracious, you know what Am I thinking this is way outside of my wheelhouse?
I don't know how to adopt a child in Haiti who has serious medical problems. And I think that's another just precious thing about our Creator Redeemer. He doesn't expect us to know how to do it. All he wants is for us to take the next step in faith. And so I was overwhelmed, but I said yes. Six weeks later, I stepped into Missy's village in rural Haiti and they put her in my arms. She didn't like me at all at first because, you know, I was just big and pale and scared looking.
But after a little while, first thing she said to me was she reached up and grabbed my pinky finger and she said, hello, Mama Blanc, which means, hello, White Mama. And I was like, stick a fork in me, I'm done. And so that was April of 2012. And I brought her home to Tennessee in April of 2014. And by the grace of God and great medicine, she's healthy as a horse. I was just swimming with her this morning with our. We have a dog. I got her a new dog for Christmas that I think swallowed a demon.
This dog is wild as a buck. So we're trying to swim the dog so that she'll take naps. But it's just. It really has been extraordinary. Life is not always easy, but goodness gracious, it is so joyful and peaceful. If you're walking it with Jesus, you know, our grief. I was thinking about this last night and then I read something today by Ann Voskamp that was so, so good.
Everything Ann writes is profound, but it was talking about the fact that we can grieve and have joy at the same time, that that's part and par of being a Christ follower. We grieve that we're in the already, but the not yet. You know, we have already seen the first coming of Christ. We've already seen the fullness of God in Christ. He's not yet come a second time. So in this already, but not yet that we're in, there's really awful stuff.
Some of the stuff that's being protested is heart wrenching. Needs to change. Covid, you know, cut a devastating swath. People lost their lives, they lost their livelihoods. A very, very dear person to me committed suicide. So there is goodness gracious, ongoing pain and suffering and things that so desperately need redemption in the world as we know it. But if you're hanging on to Jesus, there's also joy in the midst of sorrow. And that's really been the story of my life.
Lisa, I absolutely love and resonate so much with so much of the way that God has met you in your pain and is now using it to bring beauty into other people's lives. And that's so much the collide story. I, I'm wondering if we can, and I have many questions I want to ask you, but if we can go backwards even to the conversation with that woman that really triggered the shame that you were already feeling.
And then you talk about like this seven year window that you had to work through and wrestle through that shame with God, get to a place where you were willing to believe that you could be a good mom. Yeah, I think about so many people listening right now who are in that seven year window. You know, it might not be seven years, it might be 20, it might be one. I don't know what it is.
But where they're trying to fight to come out winning the victory over the shame that holds their life back from the thing that they feel like God is calling them to do. What is some of your advice on being in that place to come out winning the fight against shame? Yeah, you know, it's very simple. But the, probably the deepest advice I would give them is to take the next step. I think so many of us become paralyzed because we can't see around the corner of our circumstances.
And so the thought, oh, goodness gracious, how could I be a parent? How could I get married? How could I have a marriage that's healthy? How could I be in vocational ministry? How can I share Christ with my co worker? How can I forgive my abuser? We all have something that seems almost impossible. And I think we get paralyzed when we look at the big picture, at the impossibility of it.
And that's one of the things that held me back for years is going, goodness, there's no way I could get to there. And I was standing at A, looking at Z instead of going, okay, with the help of God, by the grace of God, I can get to B, let me take the next right step. And so that would be my encouragement sometimes doing the next right thing in faith, trusting God. It may be a wobbly step, it may be just a few inches of a crawl.
But movement is the miracle to move from the place you're stuck and to say, God, I believe, Help me in my unbelief. Just like that Daddy with a sick child. In Mark's gospel, you just get up off the curb you've been stuck on and go, I'm going to take one Step, don't think, how am I going to run a marathon? Just get up off the couch. And when you take that one step, he so graciously illuminates the next and the next, and he gives us manna and grace for today, not tomorrow.
So I would really strongly encourage the people who feel stuck. Don't look so far ahead. Don't try to figure out how you're gonna. How you're gonna experience the miracle today, just today, move one step forward in the arms of God. By the grace of God, just do the next right thing. If you're not sure what the next right thing is, then your next right step is to go before God and say, help me. Show me.
He promises in Isaiah that he will be so clear in his directions that we will actually know whether to turn right or to turn left. And so if you feel so stuck that you aren't even sure what the next right step is, your next right step is to be alone with God in his word through prayer, and just say, lord, you promised that if I seek you with all my heart, you will be found by me. So I'm seeking you. I'm asking for directions.
And then just do the smallest redemptive movements, and he'll string those together for a miracle. Cool. I read some of your work, and I have heard you talk about how much being a mom has enriched your life. And I know even you sharing with us today that your childhood brought about quite a bit of pain. I'm just wondering, how are you seeing God bringing redemption to your life, using Missy to do that? Oh, gosh, Willow, do we have 45 hours for this podcast?
I mean, in millions of myriads of ways. I'll tell you what the biggest is, and this is pretty narcissistic, but the biggest miracle for me is at my. When and when I became Missy's mom. I can't explain it. I don't have even the theology to try to explain it. You know, I'm studying for my doctorate, and so I've got lots of $50 words memorized, but I can't begin to wrap theology or physiology around this. But I'm telling you, the shape of my heart changed.
I feel like my heart grew and the topography of my heart changed when I became a mom. And the love I have for this little girl, it does not make sense. You know, I didn't carry her in my womb. I didn't get to bring her home until she was four. The first time I met her, she was two and a half. And she didn't like me. And I mean, it's like every cell in my body changed shape. Missy is not my hope. Jesus is my hope. But Missy is the greatest human gift God has given me.
And when I think of how I've changed, even with regards to my capacity to love everybody else, not just Missy, my heart has more capacity. I think, oh, my goodness. My love for my kid is a drop in the ocean compared to God's love for us. You know, in Latin, in there's a phrase that's a fiori torre logic, and it's how much more. And Jesus used that logic when he would tell a story about how a human dad was a good dad.
And then he would say, how much more does your Father in heaven love you and long to give you good gifts? And that has probably been the greatest epiphany for me, is to go, my goodness gracious. I didn't know I could love like this until through his mercy, he allowed me to become Missy's second mom. The fact that his love for me is infinitely greater than that, I mean, it's just given me this new appreciation, new gratitude. I'm so grateful that he allowed me to become a mom.
I didn't deserve to be this kids mom. That is God's kindness. And that gratitude is a drop in the bucket for the gratitude. I feel that good night. He loves me infinitely more than I love my daughter. So I feel like it has just given me a clear picture of how big the compassion is of God for us. And I think as much as I've wanted to believe he's a loving God, it helps me too, that even when I discipline Missy, I don't discipline Missy because I'm mad at her.
I discipline Missy almost 99 times out of 100. It's to protect her. You know, I discipline her when she was doing something that she didn't realize because she's a little girl, could have hurt her. Whether it was, you know, starting to run out in front of traffic or, you know, touching the stove when it was hot. My discipline me holding her back is because I love her and I want the best for her. So even in that, you begin to go, oh, my goodness.
Things that God, barriers, boundaries, God has put in my life are for my good and my protection. He's not a unibrowed librarian who's waiting to smack me over the head with a Bible if I step out of line. He's a perfectly loving parent who's doing everything for my good to redeem my mind and my heart to restore me. And so that, you know, I'm beginning to see and believe bigger the fact that God is, for me, he's such a good God. I love, I love your story.
And I. I think about Deuteronomy 33 that says, God, your God, will restore everything you lost. He'll have compassion on you. He'll come back and pick up the pieces, all the places, places where you were scattered. And it sounds like God is using Missy to do that in your life and using you to do that in her life. And it's such a. Such an amazing story.
You know, I have to ask you, in this crazy time, there's just so much going on right now in response to the death of George Floyd and the long list of all those who've been oppressed, wronged and mistreated before him. And people are starting to be educated about racism and beginning to awaken to systematic racism. And thousands upon thousands have been protesting and fighting for Black Lives Matter in the last two weeks.
And I'm just wondering if you can let us in a bit on your heart as a white mom raising a black daughter and what you're learning about the obstacles in the way of giving her the privileges, rights and opportunities and the great life she deserves, like any other white child. Yeah, it's a great question. It's a huge question. I think it's the question that God has set before us for such a time as this.
One of my favorite quotes long before this happened is, I don't know if you've read Eli Weasel's book Night regarding the Holocaust, but profound book. And in it he says, the opposite of love is not hate. The opposite of love is indifference. And I think there has been gross indifference to injustice in our culture and specifically in our country, racial injustice. And there were so many things I didn't realize I was indifferent to until I brought my daughter home from Haiti.
And we live in the south, southeastern U.S. where they're, you know, they're tended. There tends to be some. Some things that maybe we call tradition. And underneath it is latent racism. And so Missy and I have had a lot of. A lot of heartbreaking encounters with people who don't think a mom with pale skin should have a child with beautiful brown skin. I always tell Missy the color of her skin is because the color of my skin is because of the fall because I don't have a enough melanin.
That's why I freckle. And her skin is redeemed because she doesn't Freckle. She has the correct amount of melanin. But anyway, I think the best thing we can do, all of us, but certainly people who have not been oppressed because of their ethnicity, is to humbly listen and learn and do just what David did before the Lord, to open our eyes and our hearts and our hands and say, lord, see if there is any offensive way in me and lead me in the way everlasting.
We need the lens of the Holy Spirit to see, even in our own hearts, the places where we have been latent racist or have not recognized the oppression around us. And so I have a. A lot of friends of different ethnicities. I heard somebody the other day and I so appreciated this saying, to say you don't see color is ridiculous.
Good friend who's a pastor out of Dallas, his name is Earl McClellan, he said, because when you say you don't see color, what you're effectively saying is, you don't see me. He's a black gentleman, amazing pastor. He and his wife, Earl and Onika McClellan at Shoreline Church in Dallas. But I thought, you know, I'm so glad to hear Earl say that, because I didn't know if I was being correct or not when I said it.
But from the very beginning, when people, when I brought Missy home from Haiti or started the adoption process, well meaning white people would say to me, well, you know, I've never seen color. Almost as if they were saying, I won't see Missy as being less than or different because she's black. And it would always rub me the wrong way because I thought, goodness, you're so missing out.
If you don't see color, look at the beauty of the color around us, whether it's God's beauty in creation with the blue of the sky, or the white of the snow or the red of the gladiolas in my garden, how could you not see the beauty these made in the diversity of skin color? In imago dei? All of us are his image bearers. Genesis 1, 26 and 27. So to say you don't see color is almost to say I'd prefer that God didn't use any color on the canvas of life.
So I think, Willow, the most important thing for us is to know that Scripture says we're called to be agents of reconciliation. And so anywhere we see that there is any type of oppression, racism right now it is obvious that there has been racial disparity and oppression in our country, that there's massive heinous errors in the past of our country that have been glossed over. And so we have to do the work long after this stops trending, long after people quit talking about on social media.
We have got to do the work for equality because people matter to God and people have to matter to us. And so as his beloved, we should be the ones that are the most passionate about equality for all people. I read a book last night that said, let us do our part then with vigor, creativity, perseverance, hope and humility before the sovereignty agenda of God. And that phrase just wrecked me.
The sovereign agenda of God, obviously, God's sovereign agenda is the redemption of all mankind, is the redemption of value and integrity for all mankind. That's every every nation, every tongue, every creed, every man, every woman, every child. And we should lead in that. And so, you know, I'm having lots of conversations with dear friends of mine who are smarter than me. Missy and I are. Are taking part in some. Some peaceful demonstrations, if you will. Very peaceful. We are.
We're doing what we can to engage the culture around us and speaking out as gently but as firmly as we can when we see injustice, and we'll continue to do that. I don't just believe I'm fighting for my daughter. I believe I'm fighting for the gospel. This is a spiritual issue. This is just about racism. It's about what. How God would have us treat each other. And we, in many instances, have done a very poor job of recognizing Imago DEI around us.
Well, thank you for sharing where you're at with that in the midst of all that's going on. I really appreciate it. And I know that our podcast can't be 45 hours, as we mentioned earlier, but I do have to ask. Ask you. You. You just came out with a book called the Sacrament of Happy, and I'd love to just hear your heart about the word happy and our culture's desire to pursue happiness in ways that maybe leave us really unhappy. Yeah, that title was a bit.
Was supposed to be a bit jarring because, you know, most Christians grow up with the idea, I mean, I heard this preached my whole life that joy is godly. It's based on the acronym Jesus others yourself, while happy is based on happenstance. And so happy is basically the superficial, ungodly cousin to joy. And I believed that my whole life. And it wasn't until somebody accused me being happy that I thought, you know, I've never done a word study in the Hebrew and the Greek on unhappy.
I'm going to see if that's really true. If Happy actually is the, you know, the negative, ungodly, if you will, of the emotions. And so I started to study on happiness and I was stunned. You probably already know this, but I was stunned at how often the literal word happy is in God's word. I mean, it is all throughout God's word. In the Hebrew it's Asher, and in the Greek it's Machairos.
And more often than not, when they translated the original text of Hebrew and Greek into our English Bibles, they translated Asher and machairos to blessed, sometimes to joy. They rarely translated it happy. But happy is absolutely as accurate. As a matter of fact, with the machairos, it's more accurate. And so when you find out Jesus started the Sermon on the Mount with happy, happy are those who are poor in spirit, who recognize how much they need me.
When you figure out that that God was happy when Johnny B. Baptized Jesus, when you see in first Timothy that God describes himself through the mouth of Paul as a happy God, I mean, it's just stunning. When Paul gives Tim his charge, he says, your vocation is to share everywhere the gospel, you know, the good news, the yuan jelly. On the good news of Jesus and the happy, the machairos God, you go, goodness gracious. I think we have shortchanged ourselves to say we can't be happy.
Although biblical happiness is not usually the way the world understands happiness, it's not haha belly laugh and happiness. It's actually better described as Asher and machairos. Biblical happy as the d contentment and fulfillment we have as those who are loved by God. And so our happiness is not at all based on our circumstance. Our happiness is based on the presence and the promise of God. And so that's where you find fulfillment and contentment. And so.
So anyway, I kind of put this word study into a book and had so much fun stepping on people's toes because, you know, especially Christians. Christ are real comfortable. If you talk about joy, you start talking about happiness as a Christian. And cookie, hush, that's my dog barking at a lawnmower. You start talking about happiness as a believer and you know, people get really upset and think that you're basically being heretical.
And so I had a little bit of redemptive fun being a little bit redemptively naughty, saying the sacrament of happy people are like sacrament. Well, sacrament just means an outward expression of an inner grace. And so in that loose definitions, happiness that comes from God is absolutely a sacrament. It's an outward expression of the inward grace that we receive walking Closely with Jesus, knowing that even on our worst day, he calls us beautiful.
I mean, if you're in double Spanx, doesn't matter. You don't have to hold your stomach in from Jesus. He thinks we're the bomb. And that should make us happy. Oh, yes, it should. Well, I know I can't wait to get my hands on a copy of that. And where can people grab that book, Lisa? Really? Anywhere online they sell books. We've got so few brick and mortar bookstores anymore. But my first encouragement is always to go to any Christian bookstores around you to actually support them.
If you've got any family bookstores, any faith bookstores, you know, mom and pop in your community, go there first. But if you don't have access to a Christian bookstore, then go to Christianbook.com. it's on Amazon. It's on pretty much anywhere they sell books online. And I appreciate that. That's very gracious of you to mention that. Pretty much all my books are Bible studies disguised as books. So my hope is that women will gather together in a Starbucks and. And read it and it'll become.
Become a light for them. That's awesome. I have one question in closing, but I just have to ask you. You as a woman have certainly modeled boldly and fiercely pursuing God's call on your life. And for the women listening, we have so many women who desire to do big, bold, amazing things, things for God with their lives, but they're somehow being held back. What's your greatest advice to them? Big picture, I would say study, study, study.
Study the passages that seem problematic with regards to women in leadership, because there are some jewels to mine in those passages. God is not a misogynist. Contrary to popular belief, God is so pro his daughters, his sons and his daughters, and so believe that if God has given you a gift, he absolutely wants that expressed in the body in a way that helps other people see him bigger. And so do that with. With passion and humility.
If you bump up against somebody who doesn't think you have the right to be running hard with your gift, be humble, be kind, be gracious. I think sometimes we get empower and enraged mixed up. And God's empowerment comes with kindness and gentleness. But you run hard toward Jesus and then find a group of men and women, but especially some women and some older women who celebrate you.
Sometimes I think we are so afraid if somebody else gets blessed that there's one little pie, and if their slice is bigger, we get less of it, which is ludicrous. And not at all biblically defensible. So find some women who will cheer for you, who will advocate for you, who will wave their banners as you run hard toward Jesus with the gifts you have and run in your lane. Don't try to be Priscilla Shire. Don't try to be Chris Kane. Don't try to be Beth Moore.
Be who God has created you uniquely to be. He's given you some unique gifts, and those gifts he gave you are to help other people understand how much he loves them. And so use your gifts. Run as fast as you can in your lane. And if you'll do that, you'll actually have leftover energy to cheer for the people running around you in their lanes. So that's. That's my little bit of big sister advice. Willa. I love it so much, and thank you for modeling it for us so that we know it's possible.
It's been so fun to talk to you today, Lisa, and we're so excited to have you up to our Collide conference in spring 2021. In the meantime, how can our listeners connect with you and your important work? Well, if you go to LisaHarper.com. no, no, no. I lied. I lied. LisaHarper.net Sorry, I always get confused. Dot com, I think, wears a lot less clothes than I do. LisaHarper.com is. Is the website. And then I know I was like, whoa, I think I slipped on that one. And then online it is.
What am I online? I don't even know that I should know that. I think online, if you just do. Lisa Harper. I think I'm trying to look at my profile. Willow. That's terrible. I don't even know my own online stuff. So Lisa. Lisa D.Harper is what it is. Lisa D. Middle initial D for Diane. So Lisa D. Harper is my Instagram. And so, yeah, mostly I talk about Jesus, Missy, and riding motorcycles.
So it's, you know, if you grew up a little bit Baptist, you always want an excuse to wear black leather pants so you'll see some motorcycle pics. But I can't wait to be with you next spring. I'm so excited. I can already imagine us just gobbling giant vats of guacamole together and talking about Jesus. We will do it. Thank you so much for being with us today, Lisa. God bless you and all that you do. Oh, thank you for having me, Willow. Yes, it's been awesome.
And for all of you listening, keep colliding with Jesus and he will meet you right where you're at and remind you that you are his beloved daughter and he is a father who chooses you, loves you, destines you, and purposes you. We'll catch you next week. Thanks for tuning in to keep up with us. You can find us on Instagram @WeCollide on Facebook as WeCollideWomen, and you can also visit our website @wecollide.net to find our blog resources, event information, and more.
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