How to Get Through Hard Seasons With Lisa Harper

all right y'all i'm so excited because i get to hang out with one of my favorite people people in the whole entire world lisa harper lisa i love you so much i'm so happy to be here this is so fun because it's one of those things where it's like we have a real friendship you're one of those people that i will text or see you know on random events and get to hang out with and every time i'm around you i feel like i am smarter and a better person just by being yeah and we've been trying to get together forever so i was like here we go i'll just work with you guys i'm gonna hound you until we get to hang out uh we just got to hear from you this morning you spoke for our company devotional it was so good and so beautiful and i think one of the things that i love whenever i get to hear you teach is you have a way of taking really complex ideas and making them really simple you're a bible teacher you're an author but for anybody that's watching that doesn't know a little bit about your story tell us a little bit about what you do and what you love to do um well i'm hot mess on a stick and so um came to know jesus when i was a kid my dad left our family and i was devastated i think like most children i thought it must be at least partly my fault sure you know either i didn't use my inside voice enough or i wasn't pretty enough or something and so i had a lot of shame from early on and right after dad left us um the pastor of this little baptist church i grew up going to this is back in the days of pews you know little churches central isles but he he shared a message i think it was from um goodness psalm 68 58 or 68 it's somewhere in the psalms um god is a father to the fatherless and husband the husband lesson he talked about how father god doesn't abandon his children you won't see his back and i was five six years old hanging onto a pew just going i need a dad who doesn't leave and and so i walked an aisle and told brother jimmy that i wanted to give my heart to jesus because i wanted heavenly father who wouldn't walk away and so i i met jesus at an early age but i spent decades thinking god didn't like me i i got as best you can as a kid i god i needed to be delivered for my sins the idea that the king of the world would delight in me because i felt so damaged that just took forever you know i went through college went through my first go-around in seminary i'm back in seminary as an old much older follower of christ but it took me a really really really long time to begin to believe that god actually delights in me and so that's what i'd say mostly i am is i want a journey of actually believing the gospel yeah it's amazing how i feel like so many um different aspects of your story are ones that everybody connects with so it feels like it feels like oh well that was something unique to my childhood but it's amazing how many women myself included have wounds from their past from whether it's right and as women i think all too often we unwittingly superimpose a wound we have from a man in our childhood or dating or marriage onto god as father husband redeemer and so we we may not know we're doing it consciously but we we carry that wound and superimpose it on god and he is all together different as a father so he's not just a great father he is totally different than the best human father and so i feel like i'm there was a little corner of my heart for years it was an emotional agnostic so i you know i knew just enough greek and hebrew to be dangerous after seminary but i didn't completely believe that god delighted in me nor did i believe god was fully enough for me there's part of me that thought if i don't have somebody with skin on i don't think i can make it and he's been extraordinarily kind that's the thing i'm undone i've been walking with jesus for 50 years what i'm still gobsmacked by is his kindness his holiness he is he is the only true god he's a living god i love the holiness of god but i feel like i'm just getting the the perfect kindness of god and it slays me yeah just slays me yeah i i the the story even as you talk about the um your wounds with your dad i think you know one of the things i've learned lisa is that research actually shows that like psychological research shows that we look at god view god interact with god like we do or did our earthly father and i'll never forget the first time i remember feeling like the lord spoke to me like where words entered my mind that were not my own not your fault not your theories not thoughts i'd ever think right i was walking out to my car and it was in college and um i remember i had done something something stupid a mistake or something let somebody down or lied or something i don't know and i remember thinking as i walked out to my 1996 jeep grand cherokee that was like you know that was a that's a cool bringing it back to life every time it started um i remember thinking god i don't know why you put up with me and he corrected me and he said i don't put up with you i adore you and it's this continual reminder i am not who you think i am i am not who he was or that was i want to show you again and again and i will never get tired of showing you who i am and it's just so uh it's it's one of those things that's like you never get tired of hearing it and you never fully get it to where you're like okay i'm done i can check that box and i feel like i've got i got a handle on it and at least one of the things i wanted to ask you about specifically because i've been i've been walking women through understanding who god is understanding who they are according to what he says about them not the world not what they think now it changes everything right not what the your wounds tell you from your past the shame all that kind of stuff that we all carry but the the next stage i kind of walking through of understanding where we are now let me unpack this for you kind of what i've been living in my own life and i've seen a lot of women living in this uh and then i want to ask you about it from a biblical standpoint because you're so good at unpacking this i've noticed in my life that when i am in a season whatever the season is it doesn't have to be a bad season it doesn't have to be a wilderness season any season it feels like that season defines me that i am the season okay so let me give you a practical example i use this all the time because this is very real for me right now i have little kids they make a mess you have three little kids three little kids under age six little image bears crazy little children they make a mess right that's what children do they throw food there's goldfish everywhere toys right my house is a mess right i look at my house and i think i am a mess i am a mess my house is a mess there we dr and and this is not unique to me lisa because as i've been talking about this so many women are going oh my gosh i do this i set my dream aside because i'm taking care of a parent that is sick i am a failure i am lazy i am not ambitious when we're in seasons that requires something of us that is different unique difficult right we look at that season we draw statements about our identity and the thing that i feel like the lord has been impressing on my heart and helping me help others with is you are not the season you are in right you are so much more than that right and so i may have little kids my little kids might make a mess i am not a mess right i might be in a season of uh setting the stream aside or or changing my priorities but it doesn't mean i'm you know whatever the person that is listening is going through so i want to ask you about this idea of seasons um there it talks about it in ecclesiastes but it's also a different theme right throughout scripture of seasons and i want you to help us understand like what is what does god's word say about seasons and then let's kind of go from there and see what does that mean for us yeah when we're in a season good or bad right that even if you're in a season of achievement i am right you know winning awards it doesn't mean that you are right that's a your identity doesn't come from that and i think it it's hard to do so and the bible does talk about seasons a ton in all different contexts it talks about agricultural seasons it was a very agricultural culture jewish culture um talks about uh you know the genesis seasons god created the sun and the moon to mark the days so that we would know the seasons there's eschatological not to be confused with scatological eschatological is about the end times and so you've got seasons and that we talk about we're in the already jesus has come the first time the not yet so there's all kinds of different contextual elements of seasons in scripture so to not confuse it sometimes i like to think of the seasons the way you're talking about it as chapters okay in a story seasons is great but i think usually people are like was it harvest time is it i love the idea of season slash chapters because if you if you really dive into this living book um it's a love story the genre is love story from beginning to end it's about this god who loves us but there are chapters that feel different so i'm like we've got to get the metanarrative that we are absolutely loved by god that we're delighted in every moment of every day we're made in his image then you start going okay the seasons the chapters in my life i might change my clothes because it's a warm or hot season it might change the calendar for me you've got three little ones you've got a full-time job you're running and gunning this season and so you'll have people go you really need to practice shabbat and you need board you want to go do you know my life because you're going to have seasons that you're running a little faster you have seasons you're not running as fast um but for us to recognize the meta narrative the overarching is we are in a love story so this chapter doesn't change my identity may change my choice of clothing i have to prepare for what i'm doing it may change my calendar but my identity is rock solid i am a daughter of the most high king he is very fond of me he is singing songs of delight over me so your identity doesn't change at all you were never a mess even though i claimed to be a hot mess i claim to be a hot mess on a stick actually so it's even a couple of sex steps worse than your than your mess and and truly what we are is delighted in you know truly what we are is daughters truly what we are is we have everything we need for life and godliness we are image bearers and most high kings so i think if you go back to i don't think you're going to have peace in any season apart from the promises in god's word so i think for the women listening and you know you have a ton of testosterone representatives to cheat and watch the christie wright show show as well but for those who are listening and watching for them to understand i won't be able to navigate any season even if it's what i would classify as a good season a good chapter a happy part of the story without first going to my identity which is i'm loved by god today in this moment i've loved by god i something shifted for me a couple of years ago because i realized the image i carried in my head was of a frowning god and again anytime we subscribe human characteristics to who god is the fancy word for that is anthropomorphic so we have to be careful he is completely god um but he reveals himself through his word sometimes with human metaphor so we can help understand yeah right so he gives us pictures i think it's kind of like hand holds if you're rock climbing to hang on to to trees that we need to hang on to but when i began to go actually god is not a unibrow librarian he's not disappointed in me when i when i walk into his presence he's not frowning and i begin to go i want to see god as there you are that when i'm in his presence and some would argue we're never absent of his presence we're just absent of being cognizant of his presence i want to imagine my god just the way i see my little girl you know who i didn't think i'd get to be a mom got to become a mom through the miracles adoption when i was 50 years old and because i i don't deserve motherhood and it was just god's kindness christy i don't usually experience what my other mom friends do and they'll be like oh i cannot wait till school starts back in the summer and i'm like i'm just so stinking undone i get to be a mom it's not that i'm a better mom it's that i almost missed it right so gratitude is really what marks me as a mother but i mean missy is not an interruption to me i can be in the middle of a deadline this happens all the time missy walks in the room and i mean everything else fades because apart from jesus she's the second greatest thing god has ever done for me i love when she walks into my space and for me to begin to go gosh how much more is the theme of the new testament you know you fathers love your kids how much more does our heavenly father love us as i begin to imagine him looking at me with a smile what a smiling god brings to a wounded heart is transformative and that has begun to change even the way i walk through seasons because this past season has been hard i make a living on the road right i can't travel all of a sudden it was like goodness gracious for the first time in 35 years i'm not preaching the gospel i'm not on the road i'm on this five-acre farm at we don't know if we're gonna get missy's meds my little girl has hiv some of her entire i mean it was it was really rough going the first six weeks um and i had to go yeah my circumstances have changed dramatically my identity is rock solid he loves me simple truth but man it's like wet soap it's hard to hang on to sometimes yeah and changes everything when you do have those moments of feeling it believing it living in it yeah um but like you said what i love that wet soap that's a good it's a good yeah good good example um lisa you use this you know this spring as an example but what are some of the maybe different types of seasons i've heard heard you talk about before you adopted missy and after adopting missy and conversations that even around that but it doesn't have to be necessarily around messy but just different seasons you've gone through in your life and how do you feel like we can find strength to get through those seasons especially when they're hard ones like for you in the spring you don't know how long it's going to last a lot of people have experienced 2020 as a really hard season for different ways how do we find strength to get through it when it's tactically it's very difficult but also grace for ourselves right to give ourselves permission to take i feel like so many women i you know myself included we're so hard on ourselves we're so just we're beating ourselves up in our mind we're always focusing on where we're falling short how can we find both strength to get through it and the grace to get through it when we're in a season like that yeah i think we um in my opinion so much of it has to do with perspective and again recognizing that we're god's delighted in but also recognizing that no good thing does he withhold from him whose walk is upright or her who often stumbles i had a little bit of heresy that's how i understand it so god's god's will for us is always good and pain is not punitive and the economy of god if it's not a consequence of sin pain is usually a promotion you look at the book of job and he says his shoulders are wide enough to handle this he's gonna walk this out in a way that brings me honor and ultimately it'll be for his good so i think we have such a stinking human's perspective when we look at this is such a hard season and i'm like instead of recognizing the big picture that our god is good and his plans for us are good then i go well it kind of doesn't matter what i see what matters is i know god is sovereign i know god is good i know he always has been and he always will be actively working for my redemption and the redemption of his people so even if it feels like a wilderness and it may circumstantially be a wilderness my god is present in that and for me those seasons or chapters that have been especially difficult i mean when you're 50 and you've lost your estrogen and it's valentine's day and you're eating a linguisine and you've got no husband and no kid sometimes you can go i'm elijah i'm completely alone well that's normal he made me a human and i have those emotions but when i back up and look at the big picture and i go oh he's a husband to the husbandless my god is actually the lover of my soul he promises that ultimately everything will work out for my good and his glory then i go oh okay let me not focus so much on today let me focus more on the love story that he's written me into because this is after all just a day and so let me back up and look at the bigger story one of my favorite stories for seasons and for context is moses did it ever bug you he didn't make it into the promised land i mean we never talked about it yeah apart from the murder rap he was a really good guy and so when he gets to the the end of the wilderness wanderings and he's led them for 40 years and you're like oh you're kidding me he gets buried on mount nebo right there at the cusp of cayman canaan because he whacked a rock you know i would have been like in fisticuffs with those whiny ingrates i mean i would have done a lot worse than hit a rock with a stick and it seems from our human perspective unfair and then you go to mark 9 and the mount of transfiguration and there's moses in the middle of the promised land standing next to a glorified jesus and you go oh my goodness if we had a little christy wright moment with moses today and you said moses would you rather have gone into the promised land with three three million sweaty end grapes in your jar clay body or door number two would you rather trust god with your story because as his image bears we really aren't bound by time and space our minds are but our souls aren't would you rather trust the goodness of god that the first time you get set foot in the promised land you're going to be standing next to jesus he'd go oh i didn't dream big enough right god's plans for me were so much better but i think sometimes we get so preoccupied with what we can see and what we can experience in our charclay bodies we almost forget to back up and look up and go he's got this he's got me so let me just kind of back up and go be honest yeah today's a cruddy day jesus is always compelling people to go i'm struggling and i can't heal myself so be honest don't pretend don't be a poser but recognize even in this difficulty even in this loss even in this grief god is absolutely kind and merciful and he will use this and or redeem this for my good and for his glory you make such an interesting point because even when we started talking i was thinking a lot of times we look at the season we're in and we draw assessments of ourselves i'm a mess i'm a failure i mean you know all these things but even what you're talking about we also do that about god we draw assessments about him he is mean he is bad he is not all-powerful he is not for me whatever and so mad at me can't see me right even as you talk about that that one statement is so powerful i mean lisa we could talk about that forever the pain is not punitive it's often a promotion an example of joe just that right there gives women something to go okay maybe he's not mad at me like the the idea maybe he actually sees you bigger than you see yourself yeah yeah you know we um when mary grace was born last september we did newborn photos you know got professional photos and um i don't know if i've shared this story before but um cameron jones was our photographer and she's a friend of mine she's just this sweet soul and conley was um being conley and being very very challenging as a nice way to say it because he's going to be a great leader sure the leader that's what they say about those um but he's just being crazy difficult and i'm sweating and trying and he's screaming and all the things whatever and in this in this chaos that is a magnified snapshot of what really life is like sure she looked at me and she didn't even realize what she was saying but she said god chose you to be his mom because he knew you had the energy for it and lisa she had no idea what she was saying at that moment and i told her recently when we just did fall photos but i have repeated those words to myself every day i feel like i'm not enough every day i'm like god you must have you must have gotten mixed up here because he needs someone else that has more i have a lot of energy but i'm telling you i don't have enough for this and i just i love i love visuals christy mcclellan talked about this you you even the visual broad shoulders of going oh job can handle this christy can handle this yeah lisa can i live for this yes and like and and we so often look at our limitations our inadequacies our flaws our exhaustion our season and say god i'm not enough and you're not enough and i love this reminder of god saying oh no it's not punitive it's a promotion it's not uh defining you or defining god it's actually just possibly a chapter on the path of what he's doing and it's and it's always in the economy of god a promotion it is always for our good we just so rarely see it except in retrospect that oh my i'm at the age now at 57 that i can look back over my life and go i have never seen his back i've never experienced his absence i have experienced my own disappointment and depression and grief but i've never experienced god's absence and it starts to shift everything that you go no matter what comes i'm i'm with jesus i have this incredible thing we're talking about um god choosing you to be conley's mama as well as the other two i was in haiti recently and all i knew about missy's birth mom marie her first mama she died of aids didn't know she had aids missy was a baby um the the biological father was never a father they had dated he left her he died of aids before missy was even three months old in the womb anyway long story short i've been begging people there's no pictures taken they were very impoverished rural village i just want to know everything i can about marie because i want missy to know her first mama who loved her didn't want to leave her and so i've been for years trying to gather anything i can there's very little information so the last time i was there i got an interpreter and i just said i want to meet marie's friends because i feel like i've gotten kind of the sanitized version of who missy's first mama was and they're like yeah they don't kind of really appreciate you coming in the village is this big pale american kind of asking too many questions and there's there's a lot of stigma about hiv and aids a lot of voodoo stigma but i was like can i just can i just please meet them and finally i met some women who were her close close friends missy's first mom marie and i'm telling through the interpreter they're like he's like well they want to know why you want to know about her and i was like because she's my child's mother and i know she loved her and all i know is that she was really petite and she liked to sing well this one woman who's been kind of the gruffus she's drinking a haitian beer and you know speaking in creole my creole is really bad when i say she was really petite and and loved to sing she kind of spit out her beer and in perfect english she had understood me the whole time she just pretended like she didn't understand me she goes she was not petite she had a big butt and i was just like oh well then she goes on to say that she has decided now that she likes me by looking at missy and seeing how healthy and how happy missy is and she said i can see why god would choose you even though you're belong even though you're white why god would choose you because you are so much like marie you could hear marie laughing everywhere she went you could be and i i sat there and thought oh my goodness i'm basically the pale carbon copy of her biological mama how kind of god that he would let me know i picked you because of who you are so on those days i think godly jeebers i wish we had a baby daddy i wish we had all these things i feel like god is going no i actually birthed her to a loud laughing single mama and look what i did here and so i i just think we miss the mercy so often we get so so preoccupied with what we can see instead of being preoccupied with his kindness and his affection for us and that makes every season and i know i sound a little pollyanna here and i don't mean it because i have certainly been in some valleys but looking back christy is an older as kind of a mother in the house of faith every season has been beneficial every season even the super dark ones he kind of made pulled back the curtains and i got to see him a little more clearly so at this age and stage of life i'm just kind of like honey it's all good yeah ultimately it will all be good and honestly it just gets better every season every chapter i i now remember the chapters that i thought goodness gracious how much longer do i stick in this lord i look back now and i go wow his presence was so thick in that place it just gets better if you're walking with jesus it gets better yeah i want to ask you one more question before we wrap up and kind of in light of what you were just saying because i think i'm just thinking of people watching or listening right now that might be thinking this what about the person that um doesn't have a track record to look back on god's goodness and they've maybe never you know they've heard about god they've been to church on easter um they listen to my show because it gives them some you know some goals something to work on that pump them up and get them excited because you know i'm excited um but they listen to your words and they go i want that but i don't i don't have that track record i can't look back and say he's been good here here here and here so he's going to be good here all i have is here and here it feels really hard and feels overwhelming what is it and it can be super practical what is a something they can do right now today to to to get to know this guy you talk about to to to learn who he is maybe for the first time maybe the first time in a long time but maybe for the first time yeah for the first time i would say um i love the the literal love stories in the bible because i think especially for women it gives you context that he's not a punitive god that he's such a loving he's holy but he's so accessible and there's this story it's one of my favorites in the old testament that's kind of the first half of the bible it's called the song of solomon and it's like a body romance novel like you can almost imagine yeah it's like a pirate ripping a bodice on the cover i mean it's wild but if you look at the context of the story you've got jesus who we talk about as our savior as the divine bridegroom and there's this girl who you find out the first chapter is super regular like he's a king solomon is is the real guy but also the metaphor for our divine bible solomon's a king i mean he's like got a really thick little black book he contained anybody he wants sheila my she's just this regular chick like she basically says i don't get many pedis like i i i'm really probably there's no way a guy like you would be into a girl like me and he says to her in the story it's so beautiful and this changed the way i begin to interact with god he says with one glance of your eyes after she said i don't think a guy like you would be into a girl like me because you can have prettier girls better girls girls with a spiritual past he says with one glance of your eyes you captured my heart so i would say start with that start with going god if you're real help me to understand that a perfect god like you could actually look at me today with all of what i'm sure some of them think is baggage or mistakes and go today you capture the heart of god by just looking in his direction that's how kind he is he's the one who moves toward us we we don't even have to move toward that god to me it's just you look and go could you possibly be real and in his kindness he will reveal himself to you in a way that's unmistakable thank you lisa thanks for being here you're just you're such a light and a gift and um the truths that you share are um they're not just they're not just eye-opening to the depth of scripture they're also really practical they're things that that you can take and hold on to i'm gonna walk away with that visual of the shoulders like you they're things that you can sink your teeth into and um and change you so thank you i know people want to know where they can find you and connect with you and see pictures of missy being missy missy's the real deal yeah it's um lisaharper.net don't go to dot com she's a porn star evidently much better body than me so go to now so great that there is a cross over there just some redirect you know um i probably need to put my head on her body i'd be much more attractive but um lisa harbor.net or instagram is at lisa d harper so middle initially you got it you're awesome thank you for being i love being with you

Channel: The Christy Wright Show

Views: 42,678

Rating: 4.9538107 out of 5

Keywords: christy wright, life, encouragement, business, leadership, the christy wright show, women, How to Get Through Hard Seasons With Lisa Harper

Id: lb4SEtbsKwA

Length: 30min 7sec (1807 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 12 2020