How to Go From Sexual Brokenness to Love, Joy & Trust | Sadie Rob Huff & Jackie Hill Perry

what's up whoa that's good fam welcome back to the whoa that's good podcast today is very exciting because y'all i'm actually really excited about this i'm a huge fan actually kind of fangirl whenever i first met you i don't know if you remember but i was like i love you but we have on the podcast jackie hill perry she is a author a poet bible teacher artist i'm pretty sure you're also like a rapper uh you're a mom and a wife you're pregnant you you do a lot of things girl so welcome to the podcast thanks for having me sadie yeah no i really am excited i came over to you um when i met you at jen johnson's well i already met you a passion i guess seeing you from afar but i was like hi um i really want to preach like you you preach with so much truth i'm a big fan and you're like thanks and i remember you told me you're like you do preach the truth and that really meant so much to me and um because you know i think sometimes we see people that are different than us and we're like oh i want to be like you and you just really set me in the way of like hey you're doing you and that's great and um that really meant a lot so so thank you yeah man i've i've watched you from afar and i'm like this girl she she's faithful you know like and it costs a lot to be faithful and so i just always value that when i come across it oh wow thank you hey thank you so much that's true well we're going to talk about a few things holier than dal is your new book have it right here it looks worn in from the way it's designed but it's actually worn in i just finished it and it is so so good we're also going to talk about your other book gay girl good god and your life but first before we get to anything else i have to ask you the question of the well that's good podcast what is the best piece of advice that you've ever been given oh [Laughter] i don't know i guess what what comes to mind is uh my pastor when i lived in chicago he was he always used to counsel me about leadership and he used to say jackie your your job as a leader is to die first and uh that's so uh contrary to what we think leadership is yeah to be the loudest to be the the first in things but he's like no the way jesus led us is by dying so yeah that's been a real strike to my pride a lot of times when i think about it wow that's so good i remember um you know bianca ulta she um she told me one time because she studied under christine kane and one time i was like what's the best advice that you ever learned from christine and she was like well the first day she said to me she was like um my best advice to you is you have to die to yourself and she was like die to yourself die to yourself die to yourself and then she said and if you think you're dead you're probably not because you're aware of the fact that you might be dead which means that you're alive so die and i was like that is so true die again die again yep that is such great advice um well my followers and people um are mostly in college and love a good love story and i think you and preston's story is so amazing about i love how you say like before i met preston i met god before i really married preston i married god so can you kind of tell us your journey of meeting god before you met preston and then falling in love with him yeah i think what makes our story so unique is that both of us come from backgrounds with uh just some a level sexual brokenness um me dealing with uh pornography uh used from the age of what seven to nineteen same with him uh sexual abuse him was just promiscuity as a means of you know attention and identity and uh and then i had uh same-sex attractions and just all the things and then i came to faith when i was 19 because i through the power of the spirit realized that god really was better than everything that i was leaving him for yeah and so when we met i was a christian at that point maybe six months and i was really uninterested in relationships and definitely are interested in relationships with men um so we just kind of had this friendship and it was like a legit friendship where i would give him advice about the relationships he was in or if i saw certain girls that i would like yeah i don't know if she's that holy and i was just that person and but but on our separate sides we just started to get um i guess this attraction to each other that we didn't know what to do with and so i prayed and i said god um if it's your will for us to be friends give me the self-control to treat him like a brother and not a crush but if it's your will for us to be together then put it on his heart to pursue me i didn't know that at the same time preston had been fasting wow for god to show him who his wife was so at the same time that i'm praying he's praying to it so we just we ended up having a conversation and here we are married seven years later with three kids and one on the way come on that is so cool i love it i love that y'all both like intentionally sought out prayer and you know you wrote about that in your book that you know you really ask god like hey if this is not it then take it away and i think that a lot of people are scared to pray prayers like that when it comes to who they're going to be with because they're scared that god will say no and what if they would they want him to say yes but i love how you were at the point in your life where you were like if it's a no like i will obey and it was a yes and so i think that's really cool god's no is a really wise no especially when you're thinking about marrying somebody for the rest of your life yup that's like a legit serious situation yeah so i need to make sure that this is god's will for real that's so good i love that um i was listening so i was going way back like i said before we got on i read both of your books and also listen to so many of your things on youtube and i love your poetry it's so amazing and whenever you and preston did the one on the fall it was so good how did you even get into poetry in the first place yeah it's honestly real random um so when i became a christian i decided to go to this community college and i was just really bored i'm studious but i don't like school hey i get that i'm the same way like i'll study all day long for a podcast but when i was in school i struggled hated it hated it so i'm in seminary now but i realize it's like i'm studying what i want to study yeah i'm not studying what y'all are telling me to study yeah um and so i was in the class i was in this english class and i was just so i was just so bored and i had this this this urge to write something deep and spiritual and literally in my mind i was like okay deep people write poems so let me write a poem so it wasn't a thing so i just i wrote a poem i put it on facebook my pastor saw it then he wanted me to start doing poems at church i had no idea that it would become what it's become become now you know um and then eventually i got connected to a ministry in la that wanted me to write a a a poem about my story and that poem was the poem that started my public ministry wow that's so cool i love when you look back at the timeline of your life and you're like i actually don't know how this happened other than god or even just a thought that was like deep people write poems like and then it led you to what you're doing it sounds stupid and random but it's like no that was providence okay who doesn't love cereal cereal is just so good and just brings you to your childhood however when you get older you kind of start to learn that cereal might not be the best thing for you because it's packed with sugars and carbs and all the things well guess what i have a great solution for you if you're a cereal lover and you're an adult trying to you know live a healthier lifestyle magic spoon magic spoon is amazing let me give you some facts there are zero grams of sugars 13 to 14 grams of protein and only four net grams of carbs in each serving with only 140 calories per 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refund your money back with no questions asked remember subscribe and get your delicious guilt-free cereal on the regular and magicspoon.comwo5 and use my code woefive to save big [Music] well it's really cool because like i read this book and it is it's very deep it's like i mean you quote like all of these greats in the book and it and you're right they're saying yeah dead people but you're alive and you're saying things with that much wisdom and it's like so cool but i think one thing that people think when they read books like this are people they're like oh you must have been a christian your whole life like you know the word so much you must have had parents that poured into you and with the word and like when you read your story you didn't really and so how did you learn the word the way that you do and even learn to teach the word the way that you do discipleship truly um when i was a christian for maybe a year i moved to l.a and i moved in with uh because i moved to la to go to a particular church and the head of the women's ministry is who i moved in with and she discipled me for two years and it's a different kind of discipleship when you live with the person yeah that's you know like she she didn't have cable all the only movies that she had had were like christian movies or apologetic like seminars and then every single day she gave me assignments and when she would come home from work she was a single woman so she had margin for all of that right uh she would come home from work and she would challenge me and one of the first assignments she gave me is she said i want you to go through the book of john and each sentence i want you to write your observations and it took six months right and so i think that's for real from the beginning yeah from the beginning it was like oh the bible really does matter in my spiritual life and so i think having that foundation has just carried me where i i don't see the bible as a as a as a as a box i check off i see it as a means to understand the person of god it's very good that's so good i love that i love you even wrote a part in the book how like it's not just reading the word that makes you holy um and you even talk about how the pharisees like they read the word more than anyone and you would think that that would make them more holy but in fact it didn't like so what is the difference in that like for you like you read the word a lot but you found the beauty of god as opposed to the pharisees who read the word a lot a lot but didn't what do you think like the differences between the two you have to believe it yeah because that was that was the difference is that they consumed the torah it was it was a discipline they knew it back and forth even demons devils they know scripture like uh satan in luke 4 when he was tempting jesus he quoted a psalm the difference isn't their their ability to ingest the passages is that they don't believe what they read yeah and i think that's our tension is that we think quoting it and putting it as an instagram instagram caption is doing the work but the work is saying okay god this is what you said about yourself in your word this is what you said about the world this is what you said about my heart now give me the power to trust that this is true and that's what changes our lives is when what we read becomes what we also believe yeah that's good come on love it um so you actually just touched on social media and i just wrote a book that's not out yet called who are you following and it's a lot about social media but you started talking about social media and this as one of our idols but i love how at the end of it and it was so perfect in the book because it was actually a page turn because i was like yes yes yes then you hit me with like a whoa when you were like it's actually just a cover-up that social medias are idle we are actually our own idol so unpack that a little bit because that was really good yeah so i think in a really philosophical way i think social media has given us a way to experience god-likeness meaning the fact that you have the access into the lives of people that you do not know and that you don't even have to ask for permission gives you a kind of sense of omniscience that i i know more things that i would otherwise know of social media or wouldn't otherwise know social media didn't exist and then you're able to travel yeah you're able to be in in sadie's home you're able to be in africa you're able to be at the mtv awards and so it's an omnipresence kind of feeling and i think that's the attraction and it's not to say that social media is bad social media is very useful for the kingdom but that i think our addictions to it expose that there's some type of pleasure we get out of this especially when it comes to our the amount of likes we get or the follows or the comments there's dopamine yes being shot in our brain where it feels like a high because we're getting approval right and so i think at the end of the day at on the surface it is social media but i think at the root the idol is us is that we like to feel central yeah we like to have power we like to be praised and that's why we want to shut down our social media as soon as we get six criticisms because we can't we can't handle it that's the truth wow that was so good i was like there's so many parts in the book that i literally wrote on caps preach i was like and then there's one part i said sheesh i mean it was getting me i seriously i'm getting saved again it was awesome one thing you do talk a lot about and i think both books and it's really cool because if you read gay girl good god and then you read holier than thou it's really cool because in gay girl good god you talk so much about your story your testimony what you went through and then this is almost like the answers that you found it's like this is why i am the way that i am because i've just behold the beauty of god this is how you become new but you talk a lot in both books about idols um and it's so silly because when you write it it's like well dough why would we choose a golden calf why would we choose something that we know is not right but why do you why do you think that we choose idols instead of god when it seems so obvious whenever you read the words i think many reasons one is i think it's easier to trust in a created thing than it is to trust an invisible god so if we take exodus 32 for example when they create the golden calf what preceded them creating the golden calf is that they said hey we don't know where moses is we don't know what's happened to him so let's create a god that will go before us somehow in them not being able to see moses who was a represent a representative of yahweh for them in many ways it made them feel as if okay god isn't with us anymore we can't see him we don't know where he is so so we need something tangible something we can see that we can put our trust in to lead us and guide us and i think it's the same it's easier to trust a man to make me whole than it is to trust an invisible god to make me comfortable like to give me comfort yeah because it feels weird it's like you're not tangible but then you're telling me this you're the source of all comfort and so i have to trust that somehow through some other means you will comfort me um but i also think another reason is that um our idols are convenient when god often isn't yeah you know um it's it's it's kind of like with witchcraft like witchcraft allows us to experience things that god may have said that he's going to give us but we can get it quicker by evil means and so it's like instead of waiting on god for marriage we rather just be with the boyfriend and have sex i don't that's not convenient for me to to lay my body down as a living sacrifice holy and acceptable unto god and so it all hinges on faith at the end of the day is that it is so much easier to trust in everybody else than it is to trust god so good and that's what that's the that's the root of our idolatry come on that's right i mean you really just nail it it's so good [Music] hey friends i want to talk to you all about liberty university so we and the robertson family are very much go flames people because my brother went to liberty my sister-in-law my brother is at liberty right now my sister's online i took some classes from liberty so we love liberty university um like i said i took some classes at liberty university online and i loved it it was very easy especially for my lifestyle because it's eight week terms and it's like monday to monday so you have plenty of time throughout the week to get your work done so i feel like it gets very great if you're considering an online school i actually have some points here to prove to you how great it is there's over 700 residential and online degrees to choose from which is so fun because you can really find what you want to do i actually took christian leadership and management classes because i love christian leadership but i also knew i needed a little bit more knowledge on the management side and business side of things so you really can find whatever fits you and you can turn your passions into a career they have more than 450 online degrees from associate to doctor level classes start every eight weeks like i said all courses are taught from a biblical perspective which is really cool so if you're looking to really grow your faith while you're in college this is the perfect place for you to go it's ranked in the top 1 out of 2 100 online colleges and universities for academic quality affordability and accessibility bybestcolleges.com and if you're looking to attend in person it's a very beautiful campus i've been several times they have 7 000 plus acres on their campus they have amazing facilities great classrooms really great intramural sports places they even have this like turf snow mountain and it's super super cool that you can ski and tube down so it's just a great place to live and to go for college to start your future now go to liberty.edu sadie and because you're a woe that's good listener you'll also get your application fee waived so friends don't wait go to liberty.edu now and get started on your future today [Music] whenever you're talking about your own struggle with homosexuality and just laying that down and everything i love how you said i actually i listened to gay girl god on audiobooks which i highly recommend because you reading it is so powerful and it's very poetic but whenever you said jesus did not endure because he was strong he endured because he loved god i literally rewinded and made christian come listen i was like this is so good um and i feel like that was almost like a that was like almost a forward to this book it was like that that's what this is all about what did like what was that moment in your life when you realized that like it's not about like not doing this this and this but it's actually about just like when i love god when i know that god is holy that's what changes me i think maybe that's a great question i think maybe the transition happened after i i was in a really um toxic church environment for a couple years when i was a new christian and it was all about works it was just you have to make sure you evangelize every day like every person you meet you have to give them the gospel and if you don't give them the gospel then you're fearful and you're coward that means you're insane and you need to repent and that's kind of hard for somebody like me who's introverted right yeah and so i'm feeling like i'm being a coward when i'm really just being myself yeah like they didn't say oh maybe you're gifted to give the gospel through books yes or through music or through art like it's like i have to be a street preacher or if you didn't read the bible for a certain amount of time or if you were on facebook for too long it was just works works works works works until i stumbled on a verse in jude it's the doxology where jude says now to him who was able to keep you from falling and to present you faultless and blameless before his glorious glorious presence with great joy and that was the first time i saw in the scripture i said wait wait me being kept and me being presented blameless like is on god it's not as if i'm i'm a passive participant right but it's like all of the glory at the end of the day when i stand before god will be on god and i think that set me free wow to be like oh man i could just trust him and be with him and he's gonna finish the work in me that he started and so i don't know i guess that's where it started that's really cool i love that like you were reading jude and i know that you you've written a bible study on that and that's just really cool in and of itself but i think that just speaks to people about if you get in the word of god it's active and alive and when you read the word something so like a verse that may not have spoken to anyone else that day spoke to you it's like god just enlightened your eyes to see it and changed your life it led you to where you are now and so i think that's a really cool uh thing to know that you know it really is active and alive you really can read won't pick up your by one day and it can change your life um so i know that whenever i've written books or whatever done anything like the message really impacts my life like i had to impact my life you know in some way for me to want to write or even have the ability to write so many words and of course it's the holy spirit doing a work in you in this book you really didn't talk a lot about yourself you really just talked about god which i think is really really cool because you're talking about the holiness of god was that an intentional thing to not really put yourself in it and how did it impact you along the way of writing it yeah even in my preaching um i i don't use illustrations about me often or my family and i don't think it's a problem to do it i think it's a way of guarding myself you know from i think when you're in a space a christian celebrity space especially you are so easily praised that part of me part of me has kind of been become more intentional of how can i keep people from putting me on a pedestal that i don't belong to stand on you know like i that i don't deserve that and so part of it is just me guarding myself and guarding my audience uh from being more impressed with me than they are god wow and um yeah and especially a book about holiness it's just like i want this book to last and be impactful when jackie is dead and gone like the likes of c.s lewis or a.w tozer or just all the ancient voices like i don't know they've left us something that's beautiful because they left us more of god than themselves yep that's so good well you did it you did a great job doing that because this book definitely will live on um this is maybe a hard question and i wasn't really even thinking about asking this so yeah okay good because i mean you can always just say i don't want to answer that and i'd be like cool moving on um but i feel like whenever i read gay girl good god it gave me like a lot of i don't know it just made me have more understanding um from the homosexual like lifestyle and where you were coming from and what led you to even be in the relationships that you're in and you also talk about like how christians treated you how they like they saw you as maybe your sin instead of who you really were in that time like and even reflecting back and who you are now like what would you tell the church on how we can do better about that topic and treating people who are in a homosexual lifestyle because i feel like that's a really interesting topic conversation and coming from you who's actually walked through it i'd just love to hear your perspective it's so hard um because the christian church and i would be i want to be specific in saying a lot of people who have been the most outlandish and outrageous and quite frankly sinful towards the lgbtq community i don't even think many of them are actually christian you know i think they they profess it but they don't necessarily have the works that prove it and so yeah we got wheat and tears in the church but i i do think that christians have not led the way in terms of kindness yeah and empathy uh and understanding in this conversation i think the hard part though is is that even our definitions of kindness and compassion are becoming misconstrued where to tell the truth about uh romans 1 or 1st corinthians 6 is not looked at as compassionate anymore so it's becoming hard to discern what kindness actually is yeah but but i think my my counsel will be one we need the holy spirit yeah right because kindness is a fruit of the spirit yeah gentleness is the fruit of the spirit self-control meaning you don't got to say everything that come to your mind it's a fruit of the spirit i think we do it so wrong so many times because we're doing this stuff in the flesh that's right and not in the spirit um i think another thing is information like reading books listening to people asking questions what is even when the trans conversation if someone asks you what does it mean to be a man do you know can you answer that question apart from cultural stereotypes about what manhood is will you say oh well a man is to be uh they ride trucks really that's what manhood is to is that what god was saying when he made adam that you're a man because you drive a truck you can say like i don't think we're educated enough and so we're unable to even engage in these conversations in a way that's informative but also spirit lit and so i don't know i don't even know if that has to do it does it does so i don't know if you've heard of samaritan's purse or not but it is an amazing organization that gives to people all around the world maybe you've heard of them from operation christmas child and that's where you pack the shoe boxes and send them all over the world and we've done that several times as a family at the schools that i've gone to and it really just is an amazing way to make people's day but they don't really do that they do so many different things like specific to us louisiana has been hit by some major hurricanes the past few years and there have been volunteers down here for really the past few years removing mold tearing out drywall and helping people really build their homes to get back on their feet so just all in all they respond to people's needs around the world and is an incredible thing for instance germany was recently hit with the historic flooding the worst in actually 60 years which some of us might not even know about but samaritan's purse has been mutting at homes and providing people with emotional and spiritual support to help cover them um and another example dio it was a three-year-old little boy from uganda who had a life-saving heart surgery here in the united states and the only reason that was made possible is because of samaritan's purse so they are incredible meeting the needs of so many people around the world in so many different scenarios samurais purse is an international relief organization that helps hurting people all over the world and they do it in the name of jesus christ remember 50 years samaritan's purse has been there to help people whether it's poverty war famine or just whatever it is you respond to the needs of people they love jesus they love the gospel and they preach it everywhere they go by their actions here's what i need you to do go to samaritanspurse.org and find out how you can get involved with this ministry trust me these are incredible testimonies and there's so many more what god's doing all around the world through these people so again go to samaritanspurse.org to learn more that's samaritanspurse.org or click the link in my show notes [Music] and one thing that really stuck with me as you said i was taught more about sin than about joy like i was met yes and i was like uh yeah that's a real problem that's true and so i forgot to put that there yeah no you said so i'm telling you i have like this is like the back of this book is notes that i took the my notes on my phone are full i didn't even know what to ask you today because i'm like i just this is just so good and i just feel like you you say so many things that people need to hear with truth and with love and um you actually talk about that a lot in your book about love and i love how you said um one thing that you said is how we make love god and not god love which god is love but we make love our god i mean you just had so much good stuff and one thing that you talked about that i really want you to expand on more is or even tell people about is you talked about how we like to cling to the attribute of god that is love but not the other attributes of god and that was really true and i think that that kind of plays a part in how we do things sometimes is like if it's love then it can't be you know offensive or whatever it is and so what do you think that lesson in and of itself could teach people you are really good at this um super thoughtful questions um yeah i was reading this book i don't even remember the title of it it's cited in holiday now but he was saying that we are prone to like esteem the attributes of god that we most relate to so we don't relate to god's eternality right the fact that he there with him there is no beginning there is no end with us there is a beginning and so we don't relate to that that's why we're not like yeah god is eternal like we just you know we don't even tattoo that on our arms or nothing and so when it comes to love if we do hear that god is love we don't allow god's nature to define love we instead take our experiences of love and then project that onto how god should be and that's a part of the problem is that if god is love that means that god also defines it not even necessarily in terms of what he said but what he's done how do we know what love is the gospel god loved us so much that he sent his son whoever believes in him shall not perish uh what greater love is it that a man laid down his life for his his son right and so love is not this sentimental self-centered arrogant i can do whatever i want kind of ethic love is completely servant-hearted underneath the lordship of christ yeah that's love come on oh my gosh i'm so excited for people to listen to this i really am it's so good what do you hope people take away when they read holier than thou i mean i think that there's so much but if you could put it in a nutshell yeah holiness is intimidating um especially depending on how it's been presented to you if holiness has always been you know god is holy and you ain't so you're going to hell nobody wants to read books that sound like that right no no it's just not i want to read the books about love if that's the case and so one i want to widen our understanding of holiness which is to say man if god is holy that means he is always good yeah if god is holy that means he cannot sin if god cannot sin that means he cannot sin against you if god cannot sin against you then that makes him the most trustworthy being there is and i think when you frame it that way then you see oh holiness is something worth worshiping about yeah because imagine if god wasn't holy what would he be like wow he would be like the devil wow yeah that would be a scary thing to have an eternal sovereign god that is satanic in his ways that would be terrible it would be terrible it would be terrible it would be hell yeah yeah but and at all actuality we have a god that is just good all the time and all the time he's good so that's what i want people to walk away with it's just a bigger understanding of god that affects how they live their life that's so great i love it you know i'll be honest this book actually even intimidated me because holiness is intimidating like just even the word it seems like i think what it seems like is maybe this other attributes of god it seems like it's going to go over your head it's like i don't really understand that completely and when people explain it sometimes it does go over your head but you did it in such a beautiful way that's relatable but also draws you deeper and i think people are going to be super super impacted by that and ultimately i think the biggest thing and what you talk about in so much of both of your books is that if we just knew the character of god if we just actually focus on the beauty of god and the glory of god and the goodness of god and just who god is then our life would really fall more into place and if we if we didn't like we started to focus on that and not focus on what we can do what we can't do what we shouldn't do what we should be what we're not all the different things um and i love that quote it was at the end of yearbook he said we don't need more books that tell us what we shouldn't be doing we need more books on the beauty of god and i was like come on it's so good that's it that's it right there that's it well i mean i really could talk to you all day but i guess we'll stop there because i feel like people are already gonna be getting so much um truth spoken to them and i hope that if anything i mean i could quote your whole book but i hope that i don't do that here and people go actually by holier than thou go read gay girl good god or listen to an audio because that was really awesome and just dive into things that jackie said because your ministry is very impactful and you just like you said you don't point people to you you point booby to god and that is why lives are changed when they listen so thank you for who you are and all that you do and um i can't even believe you're doing all this and you're pregnant so hello that's awesome you you did it i know you're all over here i saw you the other day i said she going to amusement parks and all this stuff with new babies hey that was a real one i'm gonna tell you i needed the spirit on that one that was crazy yeah that's that's that's courageous that was great just for real no but thank you jackie you you're awesome appreciate it thank you it was good to talk to you [Music] you

Channel: Sadie Robertson

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Length: 35min 56sec (2156 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 29 2021