Divine Diamonds in the Dirt | Lisa Harper

[Music] today we are so so blessed uh to be able to have with us really one of the greatest communicators on the globe she could be anywhere in the world but lisa harper came and did such a fantastic job friday night with the design sisterhood night and then this morning in the first service she tore it up and so we are so blessed to have lisa harper would you join me let's give her a james river welcome now sit down sit down sit down sit down that that is like an e-harmony profile he just made most of that up he used filters i was thinking because i will tell you every time i've had the under undeserved privilege to be at james river i feel like a mouse and a cheese factory and i'm just like i can't believe i get to be here i can't believe i get to be here but i was praying this morning i got up real early i told pastor john i have a a message that i've never never taught before and so i wasn't sure if it was sugar because i had a purple haze last night from black sheep so i wasn't sure sugar or the holy spirit so i thought i better get up really early to really pray through this and i just this morning thought of this story i got to take my little girl missy um i became a mom through the miracle of adoption seven and a half years ago and just through a series of really really blessed circumstances i got to take her to paris the la not last thanksgiving but thanksgiving just proceeding covet and it was awesome um she was nine years old at the time and you know we went up in the eiffel tower and we took a boat on the river saying and and we stayed on the champs-elysees and we ate 45 chocolate crepes bigger than our heads and i've been in stretchy pants ever since but it was awesome and the highlight of our time in paris was we went to the to the louvre and that amazing museum and when we walked into the museum you they have all these hostesses there because there's so many thousands of tourists that they're trying to kind of get you all spread out so it won't clump up and and our little hostess that greeted us tried to encourage us to go to one of the wings where they had um paintings of modern abstract new triangles i'm just they don't do it for me my apologies if that's hanging over your fireplace but they wanted us to go look at the triangles and do you all know where i wanted to go young talk back i'm not the pastor of this house i wanted to go see the mona lisa i mean i've never been to the louvre before i mean we're in paris we're at the louvre i want to go see a mona lisa um i am a triangle this morning and my gut says 99.9 of y'all really would love to hear pastor john and instead you've got a triangle i told him it should be the sizzling summer secondary series the fact that he's here and i get have the microphone and talk about jesus is it just really illustrates the fact that god uses donkeys and rocks um it does not matter it really at some level doesn't matter who has the privilege of the microphone it's all about jesus he uses the least of these and i am so so incredibly grateful to get to be with you all this morning i love this house if i lived within driving distance i'd be here every time the door's rope and i love pastor john debbie has become a sister to me i always want to be with her more because i'm sweeter every time i've gotten to be in debbie's presence she's just so kind so respect pastor brandon and david and savannah i just i really really love y'all i don't know whether y'all will allow me to but i've just claimed y'all as cousins whether you like it or not but can i get us in light of the fact that our god does use donkeys and rocks and his word will not return void would you just reach your hand toward that saint next to you if you know them well touch them if you're just meeting them this morning don't touch them let's be appropriate with all the you know what you can just like put your hands up in a real friendly manner if you know them real well don't grope them we're in church um but would you pray for that saint on your right and on your left and just pray that god would use continues this time we're gathered together in corporate worship to give them a bigger picture of who god is to give them a deeper understanding of how much he loves them pray that the holy spirit would plow up any any uh places in their hearts that are hard pray the holy spirit would breathe hope on the places that they're discouraged pray that just like in ezekiel where we see dry bones rise up and dance at those places in their heart and mind right now that feel dry maybe because the last year and a half of coven has been really hard on them personally they may have lost their livelihood they may have lost someone they love they may just be so stinking tired of all the bad news that this morning they feel dry would you pray that holy spirit would breathe on their heart and mind and where they have been in mourning they would begin to dance where there has have been ashes he would redeem beauty even this morning to his glory for our good and his glory jesus thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you first of all that we can come together on a sunday morning in a house like this and we don't have to worry about being arrested lord what a gift it is that we actually live in a country that is still free that we can gather together in corporate worship and focus our attention on our affection on you and you have protected this place thank you jesus thank you jesus that we have bibles that it's not illegal for us to have this love story called the bible thank you jesus thank you jesus that we had enough breath in our bodies to walk from the parking lot into this sanctuary that we had enough breath for those listening online to get up and sit on the couch and open our ipad jesus jesus jesus you are good you are always good take the scales off our eyes and our ears and our hearts so that we could recognize that you are infinitely good absolutely merciful so incredibly compassionate that even the things right now that look like difficulty hardship in our lives because you are a good redemptive god even this you will redeem for our good and your glory so give us more faith jesus more hope more joy i pray that we would actually look different when we leave this sanctuary this morning that there will be something on our countenance that when we go to billy bob's or we go get a purple haze or we go get pizza that somebody will go where have you been where you're on the lake having fun because your face just radiates joy oh jesus thank you remind us of how amazing your grace is this morning and all of god's gorgeous people said amen and amen um i brought missy home seven and a half years ago most of you know my story because i'm a wind bag and i tell it over and over and over again when i get to be here but um i'm i am single i've never been married i tease and say my husband won't stop and ask for directions but um truth of the matter is don't be wooing that unless you have an older brother who's not married baby then i will give you my number if he's employed and loves jesus um but but i i was just really broken in my 20s and 30s really drawn to abusive men and so god protected me from the men i was most attracted to and the few good guys godly guys i dated y'all married them or they protected god protected them from me because i was hot mass express and so i really didn't think i was going to get to have children because i'd really miss the biological window of having children and the fact that he redeemed those mistakes in my life to allow me to become a mom through the miracle of adoption it truly never ceases to amaze me just never ceases to amaze me and i remember i remember the the very first moment i met missy i'd lost two adoptions and a friend had called me just a few weeks after i had lost an adoption four days before i was supposed to bring the baby home after i'd been in a story for seven months i was just gutted i felt like my heart was just out in the middle of the highway being run over by trucks i wasn't sure i'd ever be able to peel myself up off the pavement again but this girl called two weeks later and she said lis i know you are devastated after the loss of anna price but i just got home from haiti last night and while i was in haiti i one of the young moms in the village i was visiting died of aids and she left behind a baby girl who has cholera and hiv and who is severely malnourished and the doctors have told us that this baby will die in the next two months if somebody really anybody doesn't step in to her story and she said it's going to be difficult because she's not yet in a crush what we would call an orphanage and so it's going to be a mess we aren't even sure you'll be able to get her out of haiti but when i was sitting there listening to the doctor she said um i just sensed holy spirit say to me as clear as about lisa harper's supposed to be this little girl's mom and she said so i called to see if you'd even be willing to pray about it and i said nope i said i'm not i said i've been praying about this for 30 years sign me up and then as soon as i hung up the phone and pastor john knows i'm going to say this so he's going to clean up my hair see in just a few minutes um i said a word that's not in the bible it rhymes with whit because i was so overwhelmed i thought how am i going to navigate this you know i'm old i'm in stretchy pants i'm single i mean goodness gracious i don't know how to do this i don't know how to adopt a child in haiti who's really sick and and two months later i was on a plane flew into port-au-prince it was so hot how many of y'all have been to haiti in the summertime before i mean didn't you feel like you were just gonna slide right out of the chair and melt into a puddle of goo i was like jesus if you'll just give me some ice i'll be a missionary in africa please this is so hot um but i stepped off this diesel spewing bus into this little rural impoverished haitian village and the minute i stepped off that bus i was nauseous it was just crazy getting to her village the minute i stepped off the bus missy's great aunt fifi just shoved her in my arms and i was kind of hesitating i wanted to give her time to get used to me found out later fifi was really afraid that i would not follow through with the adoption once i found out how sick missy was so she was just she was just like please take her and the minute she put missy in my arm she was sicker than i expected she was two years old 18 almost 19 pounds really really sick as soon as they put her in my arms i was like oh my goodness stick a fork in me i am done now missy didn't reciprocate missy looked up at me and she was like i'm all stick a fork and you cause you know i was just this big pale stranger she didn't like me at all very much um i i kept going back and forth during our two-year adoption process so eventually she got used to me i became kind of santa with bigger hips she called me mama blanc which means white mama and so she grew to eventually like me but it was a whole different story when i brought her home from haiti in april of 2014 because everything changed you know she came to america she'd never seen running water like that before she'd never seen elevators escalators we got to the miami airport she was just everything was new and strange and different and all she has is me the big pale chick and um i can still remember driving up into our driveway that very first night i had her home and i was trying to get her out of the car seat you know and you know have ladies you know how they're like you've got to be a nasa scientist to do car seats i broke like three of my fingernails trying to get her out of the car seat and right as i'm pulling her out of the car seat to carry her inside for the very first time she just lets out this blood curdling scream and i think i've probably stabbed her you know i've been a mom for six hours and i've eviscerated my child um and it took me a couple of seconds to realize she wasn't screaming over one of my fingernails she was screaming over our dogs um i had two dogs at the time still have two dogs just different ones i love dogs it's part of being single you get a lot of pets and i have these dogs cookie and dottie and during the adoption process i would take little things missy had worn like an old pair of dirty socks i'd bring him home so the dogs would get used to her smell because i wanted him to love missy and for her to to be accepted by them the minute i brought her home and they were on the other side of the fence but they were both you know how happy dogs are that's why i'm a dog person not a cat person cats are like you're lucky to have me in your home and dogs are like i'm just so happy i'm so happy i'm so happy you're home and so i want to date a dog guy more than a cat guy i want him to go i don't care you're in spetchy pants you're so amazing um and so the dogs were doing that on the other side of the fence they're like yeah she's home we're little girls home and they were jumping up and down and barking just gleefully well i didn't know then that the nannies at the orphanage had told missy that that dogs would eat her because the dogs in the area where her orphanage is in rural haiti most of them are wild rabid dogs and they are dangerous and so in an effort to make sure the kids never got close to one of these rabid dogs the nannies said they will eat you don't get near a dog so missy just panicked took months of integrative therapy for her to actually get comfortable with dogs but that wasn't the most heartbreaking habit that i had to deal with those first few weeks missy was home the most heartbreaking habit that had to be broken was any time i raised my hand to fix her hair or to put in a bow or to put my hands on her cheek any time i raised a hand missy would flinch because she had been hit quite a bit at the orphanage she was the first and the last child at this particular orphanage to be accepted with hiv and the nannies didn't have the privilege of an education and they were overworked and underpaid as it is and they thought if they touched a kid with hiv that they would get hiv and it would transmit to aids and they would die and who would take care of their children so they didn't hug missy but they hit her and so i i will never forget y'all the first i think it was the second night she was home the first time she flinched i raised my hand just real slow because i was going to put my hand on her cheek and i was going to tell her in creel i used to say utrebel you're very beautiful utrebrov you're very brave utre intelligent and then i would say that i loved her and i would say jessie jesus renmann who more jesus loves you more i love you so much jesus loves you more i want to raise my hand to cup her cheek cheek and say that when i did she she flinched and after i calmed her down and picked her up i said over and over and over again baby i'll never hit you i will never hit you i'm never going to hurt you i'm mama white mama that's what she called me i'm not going to hit you i'm not going to hurt you you're my daughter i love you i'll do everything i can to protect you honey i'm not gonna hit you i'm never gonna hit you once i got her to sleep that night and pull the covers up over i walked outside of her little bedroom and i leaned against the wall in the hallway and i cried like a baby i cried because i was so grieving that she'd been abused as a baby that she had been so mistreated and so marginalized and then i think i was also crying a little bit because she didn't know me even after two years she didn't know that i would never ever intentionally hurt her y'all i think so many of us are like my daughter when she was four when it comes to our creator redeemer i think so many of us mistakenly believe that he might hurt us that he's not completely for us and we figuratively flinch thinking that god is a punitive librarian instead of a loving parent turn to exodus 20 if you brought your bible in this morning if you didn't whip out your phone go to blue letter bible or bible gateway or you can follow along i think we have this passage on the screen exodus 20 even if this is your first time at james river i bet you nicole you actually know most of what's in exodus 20 because that's where you find the ten commandments and most americans may not be able to name all ten but most americans in some way shape or form have heard the ten commandments you're at least familiar with don't steal don't murder don't smoke pot unless it's medicinal i'm teasing that's not in there um but there are these parameters that god gives us for our good i was trying to explain the biblical imperatives that means the you shall do this is in the bible i was trying to explain those recently to missy and i said baby they're kind of like the bumpers when we go bowling i said you know how they put up those bumpers when you bowl and it makes your ball go all the way to where the pins are that you can't ever bowl a gutter ball and she's like yes ma'am and i said well when you come to something in the bible where god says i want you to do this it's like one of those bumpers i said if you think of the gutter as being filled with hearts other people's hearts and your own heart the the imperatives like these commandments are bumpers so that the ball won't crush those hearts it's actually for our good it's actually so that we will be um experience lives that are blessed he's not trying to suck the joy out of our life it's not punitive it's for our good but god's people didn't get that when he first gave them these biblical bumpers exodus 20 is where he gives them the ten commandments and right after god gives them the ten commandments here's here's the response exodus 20 verse 18. now when all the people saw the thunder and the flashes of lightning and the sound of the trumpet and the mountain smoking i said in first service is kind of like dfl isn't it fun to have like whoa and really it just helps you look up from your phone and pay attention to what god is doing so god had a little bit of production after he's given him the bumpers it's kind of exciting but then the people were afraid we're told the people were afraid and they stood at a distance and they trembled and they said to moe you speak to us and we'll listen but but we don't want to get too close to god lest we die we're afraid he's going to fry us in the green spots of oblivion moses said to the people don't don't be afraid of god for he's come to test you that the respect you have for him may be before you and you'll follow the rules you'll follow this path he has to bless you all of this has been to bless you bet you nickel some of y'all are going uh-uh i don't think it's all to bless me because if you any of you like me were raised in conservative christian culture some of these parameters that are for our good were applied to me when i was a kid in a way that didn't feel good the commandment to honor the sabbath do y'all remember that one head backwards a page to verse 8 in exodus 20. it says remember the sabbath day to keep it holy six days you shall labor and do all your work but the seventh day is the sabbath day to the lord your god on it you shall not do any work you or your son or your daughter your male servant your female servant or your livestock or the sojourner the guest in your home for in six days the lord made heaven and earth to see and all that is in it and then rested on the seventh day therefore the lord blessed the sabbath and made it holy my mama is an amazing godly incredible petite southern belle of a woman and she's baptist to the bone and so my mom was straight up serious about the ten commandments so from my earliest memories i couldn't wear a bikini on sunday now we grew up in central florida everybody had a pool not because we had money just because it was so hot and so all of us had cement ponds and we had a fence around ours so nobody could see us but even when i was five years old mom said you can't wear a bikini because it's the sabbath day and we're to keep it holy and i thought i guess god doesn't like belly buttons you know i didn't i didn't know i thought this is kind of a serious thing this sabbath thing my dad my stepfather wasn't even a christian and mom was like don't you dare mow our lawn on a sunday it's the sabbath john because she is afraid somebody from church might drive by see my dad who's not a believer mowing the lawn and go paddy has not kept the sabbath and we were straight up serious in our house about the sabbath do you know my 30s i still wouldn't mow the lawn on a sunday i might have gone to church on wednesday and friday and saturday night and i went little on on sunday so afraid somebody would go you're breaking this sabbath and then i was afraid god might hit me over the head with a 50-pound bible do y'all remember the context of sabbath do you remember when he gave them these parameters these bumpers for their blessing do you remember his people have just come out of captivity in egypt do you remember that that god's original covenant people they were our great great great great grandmamas and grandpapas god said i'm going to set my favor on you this israelite people i'm going to make you a theocracy just like you at james river you're going to be called by my name i'm going to set favor on you and then they were total stinkers like us and he said now i'm going to give you a little time out where you can think about your rebellion remember he sent him to egypt do you remember in egypt they were slaves you remember what they did y'all can talk back i'm a sizzling summer guest they made bricks they made bricks 18 to 20 hours a day according to historians 365 days a year they busted their behinds and they didn't get a paycheck at the end of the week they were slaves they didn't get to work remotely they didn't get vacations they didn't get time off for good behavior they didn't get maternity leave they worked seven days a week 52 weeks a year every year until they died and the average age for death in that ancient era was 32. so they worked until they died they've just been rescued from captivity from 400 years of captivity they've just been rescued you remember who led them out of egypt toward the promised land charlton heston those of you over 50 remember that movie moses slash charlton hessen he leads them from captivity toward the promise their first break is sitting in the sand around the base of mount sinai that's when god gives them these bumpers they still have the mind and the understanding of slavery and he says y'all i want to reframe your understanding of identity the egyptians told you that god's name was raw and he was a sun god and he rose in the morning and then he beat down merciless mercilessly on you all day as you made bricks and then when ra went down to the underworld to deal with all this stuff down there loki and all kinds of stuff when he went down there to the underworld at sunset then a new night god came up and he's a giant serpent and if you aren't super super careful at night he's going to devour you that's what they'd been taught that was the belief system in ancient egypt you've got these people i mean they're just fresh out of egypt they still smell like egypt they still have the mind of egypt and he said i wanna i wanna reframe your understanding first of all let me make it really really clear that i'm the one who set the moon and the stars and the sun into place and i did it for your good to warm your body and so that your crops would grow so that you can eat so i'm actually creator god and there's no giant snake who comes out at night and is going to eat you so you don't have to be afraid to go outside of your home at night so let me reframe your identity and then because you matter so much to me because you are not slaves because i don't want you to be in captivity i want you to get rid of those chains not just around your feet and your wrists but around your mind i'm going to give you a sabbath because i don't want you to work yourselves to death you matter so much to me i don't want you to grind yourself into the ground i want you to have a day where you can realign your mind and your heart with me when you can remember how much you matter to me i want you to have a day of restoration it's not about belly buttons y'all it's not about a punitive god who's murdered us and wants us to follow the rules it's about a god who loves us from the very beginning he's loved us our culture tends to think of god as kind of a an angry unibrow god in the old testament i was listening to a podcast recently i told the girls this on friday night and i heard a woman who i know this woman pretty well she has gone through a period of of she's kind of dismantled everything she used to believe and she no longer believes the bible is authoritative or that jesus is the only way to be reconciled to god and she said you know she said if you're gonna listen or read the bible listen to or read the bible at all just focus on the red letters in the new testament because that's all that jesus said and i thought oh you pumpkin pumpkin sweet because we read at the very beginning in genesis that our god is a trinitarian god god the father god the son god the holy spirit he's always been there the holy spirit didn't just debut in acts 2 when everybody had fun that's not his w type party it says he was hovering over the earth before god spoken into existence we have a trinitarian god he's not mean in the old testament and nice with with hair extensions jesus in the new testament he has always been a good god who loves us even what we think of his rules are for our good they're for our redemption he says i'm giving you these bumpers because i want you to have a blessed life i want you to experience the the wholeness of the peace that i brought you i want you to have joy i want you to have nights that you don't have to take ambien because you have so many thoughts in your head i want you to be able to lie down and rest and know that i'm holding you the people are afraid just like missy they wince they think that god is going to smack them around and sow god because he's always been good because he has always been in the process of redeeming our inherent dignity as his image bears because he's always been in the process of mitigating evil of getting rid of the things that wound us his beloved he's always been in the process of pointing us toward jesus that god that kind god recognizes my people are wincing over these parameters that i gave to bless them so i'm going to write a compassionate ps i'm going to give them some clarification and we hardly ever get to this ps this paul harvey part of the ten commandments it begins in verse 22 and the lord said to moses is right after he gives him the ten commandments thus you shall say to the people of israel you've seen for yourselves that i've talked with you from heaven you shall not make gods of silver to be with me nor shall she shall you make for yourselves gods of gold an altar of earth i want you to highlight or circle earth if you've got a brick and mortar bible um rabbit trail those of you under 40 i've noticed we hardly ever bring brick and mortar bibles to church and that's totally cool because our phones are so much lighter i get that but if you don't have a brick-and-mortar mortar bible a leather-bound bible a cloth-bound bible in your home or your apartment or your condo or your parent's basement if you don't have access to it to a brick and mortar bible y'all that's like a an old man in short shorts that's just sad because there will be seasons in your life that are difficult i'm not trying to say it's hard it actually just gets better and better with jesus but but we live in a broken planet marred by sin there will be seasons when you feel discouragement and i'm telling you i do not get encouraged laying in bed with an ipad on my chest but when i've got a brick-and-mortar bible that i've put dates in and i've written in that i remember oh pastor john said this oh this is when debbie told me she was praying about me and here's the prayer that's come to pass i love that pastor brandon said we love that prayer cards become praise cards we write those things in our bibles if you can't afford a brick and mortar bible please see one of the greeters here at james river and again please hear me i don't mean any condemnation in that i don't bring my brick and mortar bible to a lot of places because it's heavy and it breaks my purse but make sure you have one in your home that you can write in that you can underline god says that an altar of earth in some of your translations that will say dirt an altar of dirt you shall make for me and sacrifice on it your burnt offerings and your peace offerings your sheep i want you to underline or highlight your your sheep and your oxen and every place where i cause my name to be remembered i will come to you and i will bless you if you make me an altar of stone you shall not build it with hewn stones underscore circle hewn we'll come back to that in just a second for if you wield your tool on it you profane it and you shall not go up by steps to my altar that your nakedness be not exposed on it underscore or highlight nakedness there's four points he makes in this compassionate ps that boy they are so pertinent to us today the first thing he says to these people who think it's all about the rules it's all about the rules he's going to hit me over the head with a 50 pound bible he goes no no no it's not about you actually anywhere there's a pile of dirt you can worship not about being fancy it's not about what you bring to the table if there's dirt you can come before me and focus your attention and your affection on me and you can worship it's not about the color of the carpeting it's not about whether you have a drum kit or a pipe organ it's not about whether you wear torn jeans i had a woman call me a jezebel not too many years ago based on what i was wearing and she said god will never bless you as long as you're dressed like that i was actually wearing a long skirt because i used to work for focus on the family and i love folks and family but when i was on staff at focus we were not allowed to wear pants and we were not allowed to wear open-toed shoes because somebody had told dr dobson that the line between a woman's big toe and her second toe was reminiscent of cleavage and could cause men to stumble gentlemen if my feet are stumbling blocked to you you got bigger issues than my shoes but anyway i know that some people get all fired up about how we dress as long as you're dressed modestly as long as you're coming together as hebrews says don't forsake the assembling doesn't matter where you do it what you're dressed like do you know the word jesus uses for worship in john chapter 4 because we all think worship is about the style of music so you've either got bethel going on or you've got you know a hymnal yeah the word he uses for worship is prosecuto in the greek it means to move towards so as to kiss it's not about the style of our music it's about the posture of our hearts are you coming toward jesus so as to kiss and be kissed are you not distracted by the the things that we call doctrinal most of them are just preferential you can come together in a pile of dirt and focus your attention on jesus and god said that's worship and then he says i want you to bring to me your sheep and your oxen in other words you don't get to go to the woods behind your house and trap a raccoon you can't grab a deer on the side of the road that's already been hit you can't you can't drag in a possum that your kids have been playing with after they shot it with a bb gun because i know how y'all are in missouri he says no no you can't bring wild animals to me i want you to bring a sheep from your backyard when this sheep's mama was killed by a coyote you bottle-fed this little lamb your kids have played with this lamb you have named this slam i want you to bring something that's personal to you i want you to bring all of you to all of me you bring intimate things to me you bring personal things to me then he says when you make an altar a place to worship me don't use hewn stones any of you gentlemen and who are in construction can you tell us what a human stone is exactly it's a stone it's a rock that's been carved somebody who's worked with stone do you know how we always call jesus a carpenter do you know it's a terrible translation the word we get carpenter from is techton because you know about stone masonry you'll appreciate this in the greek it means stone mason there's no trees to work with in israel if you've ever been there dr john can tell you that olive trees are the main tree in israel you don't cut them down for the wood because the olives are much more valuable for oil you don't cut down an olive tree you get the fruit from the olive tree remember how we're told when solomon built the temple he had to float in cedars from lebanon you remember that so jesus probably didn't work with wood there's a huge city that was being built by one of herod's sons remember herod the guber who tried to kill baby jesus and then he had a bunch of sons named herod it's like george foreman named all of his boys george and did the george foreman girl it's kind of like that so herod was having this huge city named sephora built as a testament to him he was a narcissist three miles from nazareth do you remember how many people lived in nazareth jesus hometown i mean it makes ozark look like new york city y'all nazareth was two or three hundred people jesus didn't work with a bandsaw in nazareth he and joe packed their lunches and their yetis and they walked to the forest and they worked with stone it was a stone mason sorry i don't want to get us off track anyway he says don't bring hewn stones do you know why god says don't bring stones that you have chiseled because our tendency as humans is if we have helped shape something we think we get to share in the glory i made that stone look that's done i carved my initials in that stone look at that and god says no no it's my glory it's never been about you it has always been about me i was at a women's conference not too long ago and god was just showing off and i said to the girl next to me who's on the leadership team for this particular conference i said wow this is amazing and she said oh no it's not about me it's all about god and i was like well i wasn't even thinking about you until you brought you up of course it's all about god if any great thing happens of course it's about god he said do not do not be distracted by what you bring to the table it's not about you i love you it's about me it's always been about me john calvin in the 1500s said that we are little idol factories we tend to be focused on ourselves instead of focused on god he said y'all don't get don't get stressed out about the rules and don't get distracted by what you bring to the table i just want you to focus your attention and your affection on me and then the very last part of this biblical ps is my favorite verse because unlike your pastor i'm a little naughty verse 26 of exodus 20 and you shall not go up by steps to my altar that your nakedness be not exposed on it the niv says so that your private parts won't be able to be seen i told you i used to be on staff i focus on the family and when i was on staff at focus i loved it it was a great ministry but i decided to leave focus because i wanted to go back to seminary and i wanted to work on a church staff so that i'd be less of a heretic and so i wanted to say goodbye to as many people in colorado as i could find about 1200 people on staff at that time so i walked all over the ministry the last week i was there just hugging as many people as i could saying goodbye to as many people as i could there was one gentleman i wasn't sure that i was going to get to say goodbye to face to face because he traveled a lot on behalf of focus his name is stan and so i was really tickled i think it was the second of the last day i was on staff i stepped out of the restroom into the hallway and there stood stand and i went stand and i said i'm so excited to see you i didn't think i'd get to say bye to you face to face and i said i'm going to nashville tennessee and he said yeah i heard i heard you're going back to seminary and i said yes sir and he said well let me speak a blessing over you and i said oh that'd be wonderful and he began to speak just this amazing blessing over me just about how my steps would be ordered and how god would bring me peace and how my boundary lines would fall in pleasant places this beautiful kind of hebraic blessing the only weird thing about it was he would not look me in the eyes as he was speaking this blessing over me he's a brilliant guy so i thought he's just pondering something in hebrew so i kept trying to scooch so i could get into his line of vision so he'd look at me as he's saying these promises and he wasn't having it he just kept looking away from me well when he said goodbye and turned to walk toward his office i turned to walk toward mine and i felt this little draft and i looked down and was horrified to see that evidently i'd been a little too quick in the restroom and i had tucked my skirt into my underwear so my skirt was all bunched up in my underwear and we had to wear hose pantyhose when i was on staff at focus which i think is from the devil and so i always cheated and wore thigh highs so there i am gentlemen you don't need to google it because you won't be able to unsee it but i'm standing there in these half hoes that make everything else flop out which is it's quite unattractive standing there in thigh highs and my skirt tucked up in my underwear as poor stan is trying to focus on a biblical blessing and when i looked and i mean i just started laughing i was just like i am such a goober i mean i am like a living blooper reel y'all that's what he's saying after the ten commandments he's saying y'all y'all are all prone to let your stuff hang out and you don't have the grace to cover your own junk and i love you so much you matter so much to me that i will cover you i'll cover you y'all from beginning to end not just in the gospels from beginning to end this is not a rule book it's a love story from beginning to end beginning to end he had you on his mind from beginning to end he said he's he's precious to me i love that man i will set favor on that man that's my son he's precious to me that's my girl isn't she beautiful that's my daughter i will erect a fence around her to protect her and to guard her heart because she's precious to me he's had us on his mind the whole time and he has loved us the whole time he's not mad at you he is madly in love with you always has been always will be today i really want to encourage you right now to order new normal on amazon or wherever books are sold you can pick up one for yourself a friend or a family member because god wants you to live in a land that's full of his promise and possibility and we believe this book will help you on your journey to a new normal we also have an amazing study guide available on amazon so you can go through the book with a small group your spouse or even friends at a coffee shop so you can get the most out of this amazing resource as you go throughout your day this is our prayer for you may the lord bless you and protect you may he smile on you and be gracious to you may he show you his favor and give you his peace god bless

Channel: James River Church

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Keywords: james river church, james river church sermons, church, church online, online church, best sermons, best sermon, sermons, preaching, best preachers, best preacher, church live, live church, bible, god, jesus, christianity, biblical, holy spirit, best sermon 2021, 2021 sermons, christian, church live stream, best sermons of all time, diamonds in the dirt, lisa harper, lisa, harper, lisa harper sermons, lisa harper bible study, lisa harper testimony, lisa harper 2020, lisa harper 2021

Id: UCs4QIAxrkQ

Length: 45min 48sec (2748 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 19 2021