Rub My Feet Mama | Lisa Harper

um yeah please sit down uh those of y'all who are tuning in online i know you're deeply disappointed and i would be too if i tuned in for levi and i got some loud woman from the south i would be just so tempted to get in pants without zippers and just go straight for coffee and turn off my ipad but you know god promises that he uses donkeys and rocks he uses the weak and the foolish to eliminate his power and his glory so even though i feel like a donkey at the kentucky derby i i just believe we're going to get something today that we all need and the good things he does will be unmistakably holy spirit because i do not deserve to be in this house i i always am tickled when i hear from levi i think he got my number confused with lisa turkish or lisa bevere got the wrong lisa um i love both of them but lisa beer preaches in leather pants and if i had walked up in here with leather pants this morning and sound like ducks were being killed so that would not be good so i'm i'm the third lisa and so excited to get to be back at fresh life i told levi and jenny i told him i i feel like it's the first day after 40 days of keto so i feel like i'm at krispy kreme and i'm like yes just so fired up to be here before we dive into the text we're going to be looking in luke's gospel this morning in luke chapter 13. before we go there i want to tell you a little story to set it up for those of you enneagram ones who want a title the the fancy title would be the odyssey back to theodicy and i'll explain that in a minute i just said that so y'all know i actually went to seminary and have remembered two or three of the greek and hebrew words i studied but but kind of the emotional title would be rub my feet mama and then by the end of it it'll be rubbed my feet papa and by way of explanation i am a mama by the pure grace of god i was thick as a brick and not in the commodores kind of cool way but in just a real broken way in my 20s and 30s i was really drawn to abusive men i won't even ask if i can get an amen because i bet you nickel some of you all can identify but i was real drawn to abusive men when i was in my 20s and 30s god protected me from them and then the few good godly guys i dated y'all married them um or god just protected them for me because i was hot mess express and so by the time i got to my 40s and god had pulled kind of the deepest roots of toxicity out of my heart i thought well crud i'm not going to get to be a mom because sorry gentlemen but by then my ovaries were raisins and i thought i'm just i'm not gonna get to have a kid and the fact that our god is such a redeemer he's so kind that he restored unto me all those years i wasted because i was bound by fear and shame and he allowed me to become a mom through the miracle of adoption i'm still undone i brought my baby girl home from haiti the year i turned 50. she was four and a half i was 50 so i started motherhood and went through menopause at the exact same time which was a kind of a cool double whammy that's like double spanx it was interesting but just amazing but initially it was pretty hard some of y'all are familiar with adoption and you know even though it's a miracle there's some there's some hard chapters along the way missy's first mama marie died of undiagnosed aids and uh missy unwittingly transferred hiv to missy so missy was really really sick she also had tuberculosis and cholera and then she was transferred to an orphanage in haiti where at this particular orphanage the nannies didn't have the luxury of an education and so they were afraid if they touched missy they would get hiv that would transmit to aids and they'd not be able to take care of their children so they wouldn't touch missy a few of them hit missy and so by the time i got to bring her home when she was four and a half i've been in process for two years so she knew me she called me mama blah white mama she liked me i was kind of santa with bigger hips because i went back and forth all the time but still that first transition bringing her to nashville you know it was tough for this little pumpkin every thing was new everything was a transition and so one of the counselors i went to as we were making this transition she said lisa it's going to be really hard for her to actually be open to safe affection to healthy affection so one of the things you need to do practically is you need to do meaningful touch with missy because she hasn't been held she hasn't been loved on except for when you would go visit you need to basically teach her to respond to meaningful healthy touch so she said here's what i do at night when you're putting her to sleep i'd sing to her and make sure you've kind of bribed her with carbs and she said then get some really good lotion that is a smell that she likes and just start with her feet just start singing over and talking to her and just start rubbing her feet and so the very first night i had her home from haiti i did that i i got her on my bed i was singing some lullabies and creole you know she liked me but again i'm a pretty big pale stranger so there was a little bit of weariness and i just start singing i start rubbing her feet with lotion she hardly ever wore shoes and hades who her feet were just like tough as an elephant side and i just started rubbing her feet and she would kind of pull it from me a little bit and i was like it's okay baby it's okay just kept saying mama rin manu i love you i told her i loved her trey trey trey trey much and jesus loved her more and she'd kind of cautiously let me you know rub her feet by the third and fourth night she wasn't quite as hesitant i knew we were in the money when after about two weeks the sun went down and missy ran back to my bedroom threw herself on the bed and went what me mama i was like score here we go ladies and gentlemen she had kind of uncrossed the arms of her heart she was open to me loving on her and y'all i think so many of us after the last year and a half it has been a tough one hasn't it don't you remember like i don't know march a year and a half ago i was like man this is going to be like the super bowl for believers we're going to catapult toilet paper into our neighbor's backyards we're gonna like share the church is gonna be a city on a hill and by june i was like this is just for the birds like i'm gonna wear sweats for the rest of my life this is such a long hard season i think some of us unwittingly have crossed the arms of our heart and we're almost hesitant to hope anymore when levi told me that next week he starts his sermon on hope i thought you know what what my role is as a guest as kind of an auntie in the house this weekend is just to help all of us uncross our arms i think some of us aren't even aware of the fact that the disappointment and the difficulty of the last year and a half it has effectively just kind of pulled us away from the shore of hope and scripture says hope deferred makes a heart sick i think some of us are at the point of going you know what i'd rather not hope than be hurt again i can't turn on the news one more time i'll sing the songs i'll raise one hand but i'm gonna have to step back a little bit because i am just too thinking disappointed the word theodicy it's a 50 seminary word and it basically means to have a firm belief in the goodness of god even when life is anything but it's having a firm belief that our god is good that he does good that ultimately ultimately regardless what we can currently see everything will be for our good and for his glory ultimately that's theodicy and theodicy is hard to hang on to when life seems like it's nothing but a bad news story and so we're going to talk about the odyssey back to theodicy better still rub my feet mama as i hope today the holy spirit allows some of us to uncross our arms and to begin to believe again that it's okay to hope y'all if we lose hope in the goodness the ultimate goodness of our god i'm telling you we won't be able to make it not only will we no longer be a city on a hill that cannot be hidden we will be so emotionally anemic that it'll be hard to just put one foot in front of our of our the next foot it's going to be hard to walk out the life in front of us so i believe not only is it for the world that's more desperate for hope than i've ever seen in my 58 years it's for us i think we've gotten to a point where many of us have become deluded in thinking information about god is the same as intimacy with god and it's such a poor substitute it's time for us to uncross our arms and reach out again and go i'm scared slammed to death you've got to help me and my unbelief i ache but jesus i still believe you're the answer to every prayer i have i still believe you're good i still believe that you will reframe you'll reframe my heart and mind and you'll help me believe again and so none of y'all are coughing all of y'all are safe reach out gingerly and touch that saint next to you those of you in portland just kind of put your hands up don't totally touch them don't grope anybody don't interlock fingers this is going to be a kind of safe kind of prayer but would you pray for that image bear on either side of you and just right now those of y'all that are in the room those of you out there in fresh life houses i want to encourage you to pray out loud don't scare all the guests right now pentecostals don't pray so loud that you scare everybody else but just pray right now for that saint on either side and just say lord right now i pray in the power of your name king jesus i pray in the power of your name and because of the blood you shed on our behalf on calvary because you said we were worth it lord jesus i pray that any kind of veil that's on their eyes and their ears and their heart that's keeping them from uncrossing their arms and hoping again that right now through the power and authority of your holy spirit and this love story called the bible you would just quicken us jesus you'd help us hope again you'd remind us that you are not as levi just said an angry kid just waiting to smack us if we step out of line but instead you are a perfectly good father you have always been in the process of redeeming our inherent dignity as your image bears you've always been in the process of mitigating evil you have always been in the process of scooching us closer to jesus so lord remind us of that in such a tangible way today that we will be a little bit undone a little bit wide-eyed at how much you love us it wouldn't just be uh it wouldn't just be a pithy thing we can throw on social media it would be deep in the marrow of our bones we'd be reminded again he loves me he loves me he's got me he's got this everything ultimately will be for god's glory and so i'm just going to take the next step with my arms open amen and amen if you brought your bibles turn to luke chapter 13 if you brought your bible on your iphone on your or your ipad that is so cool i'm really grateful that theology includes the word of god but i'm going to bring y'all an auntie word right now especially for those of you with tight skin and high metabolisms because you live in a culture that says you don't need a brick and mortar bible levi i hope it's okay to preach but you've been taught it you don't have to have a brick-and-mortar bible anymore you can just have it on your ipad or iphone no shame or condemnation here none whatsoever because it's heavy and sometimes i get tired of carrying heavy in my person i'll have it on my ipad or iphone so that's cool in settings like this however if your only bible your only bible includes an on off switch y'all that's like a old man in short shorts that's just sad there will be seasons even for those of you who are going hey covet hadn't been that bad for me because i drive for ubereats some of y'all in the last year and a half hasn't been as hard but there will be seasons ahead of jesus terry's that will be difficult difficult in your marriage difficulty in your relationships difficult at work there will be seasons because we are so stinking human when you go i believe theologically but emotionally emotionally i feel like my prayers are hitting the ceiling i mean is all of this just some existential thing we've created to make us feel better in a world that's hard you'll go through those seasons in those seasons to lie down at night with an ipad on your chest it's just not very comforting but when you have this love story this is not a rule book y'all it's not a collection of benign morality tales this is life and it's a love story and every single page every single page we don't always get the context i love that you shared what you shared during your prayer levi because i think our culture is prone to think old testament is angry angry god kind of unibrow god and the new testament is jesus with hair extensions and it's kind of sweet god y'all that's not biblically defensible first of all our god is not segregate he's not a binary god he's god the father god the son god the holy spirit from the very beginning he's been a trinitarian creator redeemer from the very beginning he's been good he wasn't angry and then had a personality change and the holy spirit didn't just come on the scene with the deputy party in acts 2 regardless what you've been taught he has always been a perfect community unto himself always been augustine says only the christian god is a perfect community and perfect relationship with himself we were created in his image so we were wired for relationship we were wired for intimacy we were wired for hope and if you're not in this book i'm telling you it's so easy to get unmoored from those truths ah love god's word if you can't afford a bible talk to somebody at fresh life today we would love to hook you up with a brick and mortar bible luke chapter 13 and we're going to go to verse 10 before we go there i've got to tell you i've got a crush on luke luke is like a platonic crush like a levitical crush luke is my favorite of the new testament authors he's the only non-jew author of a book in our protestant bible 66 books there's a few of them that are formerly classified as anonymous but luke is the only known non-gentile the only i mean non-greek non-jew the only known gentile that means he was an outsider in this culture and so his gospel the word gospel comes from the greek word euan jeliana means the good news means we can uncross our arms and believe again that there's divine hope luke is the the only author and the only the only gospel writer who's not jewish and so his gospel account it's so inclusive he reaches out to people who think i just don't think i fit in the god squad i don't think i'm good enough i don't think i'm pretty enough i wear stretchy pants instead of jeans with zippers i'm just not sure i belong in that place luke says we belong it's not about our character it's about his compassion it's not about our capacity it's about his mercy he's he's an amazing writer he has more stories about outsiders than the other authors he has more stories about women because remember the gospels were written during the the first century during the first century in their culture it was taught that women were not just second-class citizens that spiritually women were less than one of the most common rabbinic prayers was better that the torah that would be basically the jewish bible the pentateuch first five books of the old testament better that torah be burned than read by a woman rabbis would would pray thank you o jehovah for not making me a woman women's names in this culture were considered profane because women were named after things of the earth men were named after things of torah that's why you hardly ever see any female names especially in the old testament and luke says let me tell you a story about a woman i just i love that and i'm not a feminist don't worry i don't want to burn my bra and y'all do not want me to but i love that our god paints himself as a creator redeemer who loves all of his children he loves his sons he loves his daughters some of the division you see now in culture it's not biblically defensible he never ever advocated for the kind of division you see now a whole nother sermon but man the holiest thing some of us could do is turn off our phones for a minute luke chapter 13 verse 10. now he and dr luke he was a physician as well he's talking about jesus here now jesus was teaching in one of the synagogues on the sabbath or if you come from a jewish background shabbat and there was a woman sounds like a country song doesn't it there was a woman who had had a disabling spirit for 18 years almost two decades she was bent over and could not fully straighten herself when jesus saw her he called her over and said to a woman you are freed from your disability and he laid his hands on her and immediately mark uses that term all the time in his gospel account do you remember mark was the literate one with the gospel of mark do you remember who the narrative voice was of mark's gospel it was peter you stop and think about peter i think he had a.d.d or was hyper-caffeinated because he's just always amped and so that's why you hear immediately constantly in mark's gospel account luke doesn't use that word as often so he's making a point here he's saying the moment this bent over woman encountered the christ the moment she did she unfolded everything in her uncrossed immediately she was made straight and she glorified god but the ruler of the synagogue basically an an old-fashioned deacon indignant because jesus had healed on the sabbath so jesus didn't follow the rules said to the people there are six days in which work ought to be done come on those days and be healed but not on the sabbath day then the lord anytime you see capital l lord in the new testament means adonai the christ the anointed one so the son of god said you hypocrites jesus is the only one who ever uses the word hypocrite and holy writ it basically means somebody with a 1 900 number back then actors were called hypocrites and jesus only used that term in connection with religious leaders interesting how sometimes we can get religion so confused with looking spiritual instead of loving god and loving other people he said you've missed the main point y'all are just consumed with your your reputations instead of how you can love other people and love me does not each of you on the sabbath untie his ox or his donkey from the manger and leaded a way to water it and ought not this woman a daughter of abraham who satan loosed from this bond on the sabbath day shouldn't she be loosed it says as he said these things all of his adversaries were put to shame and all the people rejoiced at what jesus was preaching it's an incredible story it's even better if you read between the socio-historic lines because not only was jesus preaching in the synagogue this is the very last time jesus preached in a jewish synagogue prior to the crucifixion so this is his last hurrah this is the last time he preaches publicly in this kind of setting i don't know how many of you are country music fans i'm from nashville um this is like the last song in the last set of the george strait farewell tour i mean it's a big stinking deal and all these men have gathered in the synagogue to listen to jesus not not trusting him as messiah just going this kid's a pretty good rabbi i mean when he preaches i'm not tempted to play angry birds i mean he's very very compelling i mean this guy's this guy is good he prays as if he actually knows jehovah i just want to go and maybe insta story this because he's he's pretty interesting he's pretty compelling so they've gathered more out of curiosity than they've gathered out of worship but there's a whole bunch of men in synagogue listening to this very last public sermon that jesus gives and then it says a woman appears at the back of the synagogue and it's really significant the greek here because what it denotes is she wasn't there at the beginning she wasn't there when jesus first started preaching she actually interrupted the messiah in the middle of his very last message huge deal moreover she's not supposed to be in that part of synagogue because that's testosterone only the women were over here doing pinterest and crocheting the men are over here listening to torah she's not allowed to be in that part of synagogue also because she has an ongoing medical condition according to mosaic law according to what they believed she's unworthy unfit to be in a spiritual setting do you remember in john's gospel when the disciples themselves encountered a blind man and they asked jesus who sent the blind dude or his parents it was assumed if there was an ongoing illness that that person had unconfessed sin so this woman is a pariah in every sense of of that culture and yet she has the audacity to interrupt jesus in the middle of his last message why do you think she did that and yong talked back i'm not leaving i talked back why do you think why do you think that she had the the audacity the temerity to actually interrupt to enter a place she was not invited i mean i'm sure some of those guys are like whipping out their phones going i am so insta-story in this i mean nobody's believed this happened in church today this is unreal i'm taking the tiniest bit of liberty with the greek and hebrew but contextually it was shocking why do you think she was willing to do what was unacceptable in culture absolutely desperation she was bent over one of the gospel authors says she has been over double new testament scholars think she probably had a very serious very painful case of spinal stenosis been over double for almost 20 years she hasn't been able to stand up straight she hasn't been able to watch the sunrise or the sunset hasn't been able to hug her kids hasn't been able to lie down comfortably hasn't been able to do any of that in almost 20 years she's so sick and tired of being sick and tired that she thinks my only chance is to get close to jesus if i get close to jesus maybe just maybe i can unbend stop and think about the context she's not supposed to be there she is ostracized culturally according to religion she's ostracized not supposed to be in that setting she interrupts jesus he's maybe on his second point you know he's in the middle of basically a messianic dissertation he's explaining to the people that whole point about y'all have confused information about god with intimacy with god if you study luke's gospel that's kind of the main point at this point in the text it's incredible he she interrupts jesus in the middle of not just his last message an amazing message what's so amazing is his response to her because you'd think logically that he'd go ma'am ma'am i'm actually in the middle of my purpose here and so if you'll just go out to the foyer there's a table with wwjd bracelets and someone will take your email address and get back with you with some materials i mean that would make sense because what she's done is really out of order and that's not how he responds he stops his sermon for a woman nobody else would give the time of day to and you know what he says to her come closer come closer to me come closer he calls her woman it can sound almost like a uh almost like a an aloof term until you find out in the original language that's the exact same term of endearment he called his mama at the wedding in cana it's a it's like honey he stops everything honey come closer to me you can just picture him stepping off the platform i've seen levi do it to love on people and gathering that bent over woman and the moment the moment she gets close to jesus boom she unbends she doesn't just uncross her arms her body is straight and it's more than a physical healing it's an emotional healing and i love this story because i lived that story for decades i knew jesus is my savior i came to christ when i was five years old my dad had left our family i thought it must be my fault if only i had been prettier or sweeter or used my inside voice more maybe dad wouldn't have walked away right after my dad left us my mom took us to a new church because i know y'all don't do this at fresh life but the church i grew up in people were really gifted at disguising gossip as prayer request and so my mom was really ashamed after the divorce even though it wasn't remotely her fault and we left that church went to another church i can remember it like it was yesterday 50 years ago i remember standing in the back of this little baptist church a center aisle the pastor had just preached a message on how our heavenly father is a dad who doesn't walk away from his kids he said you will never see your heavenly father's back and i remember standing there holding on to a pew how many of y'all are under 40. pews are long wooden benches we used to sit on no cushions no cupholders i mean i just wanted you to be miserable if you sat through the sermon so i'm sitting you know on this pew then they had to stand up to sing just as i am it's an old hymn levi jenny you all know it remember at the end of church they'd sing it 45 times if no one responded finally somebody would be like we have got to go to lunch i'll just rededicate my life and they'd come forward well they're singing just as i am and i remember holding onto the back of the pew in front of me just white-knuckled grip because i couldn't quite reach out for hope i thought my daddy left it was my fault i had already by the age of five tasted abuse i thought there's just no way a god like that would love a damaged girl like me and then i just couldn't not and i know that's a double negative i just couldn't not respond i walked the aisle i told brother jimmy i wanted to give my heart to jesus and so somehow in a very elementary way i understood i needed god i didn't think he liked me very much i thought there's just no way a perfect god like that could delight in a girl like me i was praying all through that season that i would get a new daddy a daddy who wouldn't leave my mom started dating a man named john i just thought he was the best big guy played college football he used to come over to pick my mom up for dates and she was never ready on time he would give me a bag full of bazooka bubble gum semi all over 50 remember that gum wrapped and in a comic strip yeah cartoons and uh and we were really poor after the divorce so i just thought that was amazing it wasn't just one piece it was a whole stinking bag of gum and then he'd tell me to make my elbows real stiff and then he would put his hands under my elbows and he was such a strong guy he was able to lift me all the way up in the air if i kept my elbows stiff i need to put that on my e-harmony profile i will only date a guy who can lift me off my feet but i just love that john was strong he was big i was delighted when they told me that he was going to be my new dad that he was marrying mom they went away for their honeymoon in august when i was eight years old and they came home from their honeymoon in the night before i started the second grade and i remember it being just such a red letter day i was starting the second grade had the best teacher at southside elementary school miss wilkins she was so nice i had her i had this new dad his last name was angel so i thought i mean what a score um and mom had made bacon that morning and i'm a huge fan of pork products and so i was like this is just like this is it the ship is turning baby everything's going to be good and mom prayed dad was not a believer and she prayed we held hands and then when she said amen i reached across the table for a piece of bacon because we didn't have it that often because we just didn't have a lot of money and when i reached for that piece of bacon my brand new daddy took his butter knife and whacked me across the knuckles with his knife and he said lisa girls don't eat bacon because bacon will make you fat and men don't like fat women i was eight years old and i remember thinking the man who dated my mama is very different than the man who just moved in to our home who i now call dad and i don't have the time to go into everything suffice it to say for a little girl who desperately wanted to be loved by a dad i was disappointed time and time and time and time again and it's hard when you have those kind of experiences in the natural to not at least unwittingly superimpose that experience onto our heavenly father and to assume he probably is at least at some level like that so i learned to just keep my head down as a christ follower and just try to be a good girl to keep the rules to teach about the grace of god but never really believe it for myself i lived a very anemic life spiritually for a long time god is so kind god healed me but boy i spent years walking wounded spent years not reveling in the kindness of god just hoping against hope that he wouldn't kick me out of the god squad because i knew i didn't fit i knew i was interruption i knew i was too dirty to be delighted in when i was 45 i got a phone call i was teaching at a women's conference called women of faith i was in denver colorado and i got a phone call and one of my aunts said hey lis i'm so sorry to tell you this but you need to come home as quickly as possible because john just had a stroke and it doesn't look like he's going to make it and so i got a plane i left denver my i grew up in orlando so i hustled to where my parents live as quickly as i could got to the airport the minute we landed called the house and my aunt answered again and she said it's a miracle elise she said john has recovered all of his speech most of his movement the doctors are saying they've never seen anything like this in light of the strokes he suffered and she said it looks like they're going to release them from the hospital in two days sure enough two days later they released my dad angel from the hospital and he came home we were sitting across from each other at that old kitchen table and he said now where did you come from to come home and i said i was in denver that and then he was a little discombobulated from the meds i said i was in denver and he said what were you doing in denver and i said well i was at a conference called women of faith dad and he said what's that and i said well it's an event where a bunch of women come together and we talk about how good god is and how god loves us you know this is the same dad that when i told him i wasn't going to go to med school i felt i had to go to seminary because i wanted to talk to people about jesus he told me that mine was the biggest waste of a mind he had ever seen and he took my bible in the rain and he just chucked it out the front door and said i don't want this bs only he said both words in my home anymore this is that same father father i was so desperate for him to love me but that just wasn't the case and so when i told him i bet when my faith my dad said oh that's good i thought this is not my dad i mean you could have knocked me over with a feather and then i realized my mom was standing behind my dad going like this and so i excused myself from my dad and i walked over to my mom and she said i've got to take you down to the basement to john's office and show you what's on his desk she took me down to the basement and showed me his desk and it was covered with bibles my dad was an academic usually was covered with physics books books on engineering it was covered with bibles he had pilfered a bunch of her bibles from upstairs he had two of her favorite devotionals streams in the desert by watchman knee and the up nose for his highest boswell chambers she said honey this is all your dad has been reading for the past few months and then she leaned a little closer to me and she said lisa i think your dad has become a christian and i thought oh my sweet mama it's been such a stressful season taking care of him he's such a stinker i thought she's probably taken some of his meds on the sly because there's no way my dad would become a christ follower he's just too um he just would never come to the point of saying he couldn't make it by himself and i thought not my dad and she said why don't you go back upstairs and ask him if he'll read the bible for you because i think if you ask him he'll read it and the only reason i went upstairs and asked him was because i so respect my mama i didn't want to disappoint her and so i went upstairs and i said hey dad will you read the bible to me and he said why and i thought now there's the dad i know and i said because it's my favorite book and yours is my favorite voice and i was shocked again when he said yes my mom brought him a bible he sat in his lazy boy open the bible before he could find a place i just real quickly flipped to john 14 because i thought if this is the only time i hear my ba my daddy speak god's word is going to be the words of jesus i am the way the truth and the life no one comes to the father but by me not that i'm controlling or anything and so my dad started reading it john 14 and he read all the way through to john 21 to the end of john's gospel i've got the whole thing backed up on two hard drives he didn't know what an iphone was i was recording him the whole time and the only time he stopped in that reading was when i interrupted him when he got to the part later in john's gospel the last part of john's gospel when jesus has walked up a hill for us stretched out his arms been crucified and then he's resurrected we celebrate the first easter then you remember he didn't shazam immediately just sit at the right hand of god the father he spent a month in his resurrected body engaging with people like us people who had lost their hope because we didn't understand the gospel even his own followers and he said no i'm right here i'm right here i did that for you and you remember tom doubting thomas and tom said how can i know it you was so disappointed he had stopped hoping and jesus said tom touch the nail prints in my hands and you'll believe again when my dad read that part i i said hey dad i interrupted him and he said yeah and i said do you believe in jesus and he said what do you mean and i said well daddy you're so much like thomas you're brilliant you're analytical thomas had to engage with an incarnate christ with a with a flesh and blood jesus before he believed and i said daddy you've never had that privilege you've never met an incarnate messiah and it would take a lot of faith for you to believe i said do you believe in jesus and he probably only hesitated for two or three seconds it felt like two or three minutes and he just stopped and then he looked me right in the eyes my dad had these beautiful blue eyes and he said yes i do and i was like i'm just like this is unbelievable and to be frank with y'all i didn't totally believe it had i not spent the next week with my dad and saw the change in who my dad was he wasn't abusing my mama anymore he was a different man i thought he he really does believe in jesus eight weeks later i got another phone call i was in sacramento it was my aunt and she said lise i'm so sorry but john has suffered another series of strokes and these are worse than the first ones and the doctors are saying there's going to be no miracle this time so you need to get home as fast as you can and took me almost 24 hours i had like three flights canceled from california to florida finally got there called the house dad didn't want to die in a hospital he didn't trust hospitals and so the hospice nurse got on the phone and she said honey i am so sorry but you're not going to get to talk to your daddy she said he slipped into a coma several hours ago and he's fading fast so she said you need to get here as quickly as you can the airport was an hour from my parents house she said you need to get here as quickly as you can to say goodbye because we're we're losing him and so when my aunt pulled up in my parents driveway i jumped out of the car before she parked it i ran up the steps and i ran to the back of the house the nurses had told my mom that hearing is the last thing to go so even though daddy was in a coma when my mama heard me running through the house she said john lisa's here at that point my dad had moved in almost 20 hours hadn't opened his eyes hadn't spoken and against all medical odds he opened his eyes and then he rolled over and he went just like this and i crossed the floor and i knelt down in front of my daddy and the very last thing my father ever spoke was this clear isabel he said i love you lisa and i thought how kind of our king the fact that in all of his mercy he had saved my father was enough it was more than enough but our god is so kind yeah he's such a personal god he's not a far away corporate god he's an up close personal savior and my god knew that this broken woman desperately needed closure with my dad i desperately needed to hear my daddy say i love you i got to preach my father's funeral he didn't like any preachers and he told my mom at least i could say a few words and i stood there over his grave and all i could think was it that my daddy's gone it was this daddy loves me so much more than i even have the faith to pray for his love is so tangible it's so kind he's so personal some of us have forgotten that some of us have been so disappointed and so wounded by the last year year and a half that we think let me just kind of put my head out head down and grind it out and i think what god is going to do in this house in the next few weeks i think it has the potential to truly change the trajectory of your life i think there's going to be a quickie i think there's going to be a revival i think fresh life is going to get even fresher in light of what levi is going to preach in the next couple of weeks and all i want to do is encourage y'all uncross your arms be willing to reach for hope again be willing to do exactly what this woman did everybody else thinks i'm crazy to walk forward but if i can just get close enough to jesus if i can just get close enough to jesus i can be healed i can hope again i know i've taken a lot of liberties to be a guest in your house if i could be bossy for just a few more moments may i encourage y'all to bow your heads and close your eyes not to be hyper spiritual just so that you know you're in a safe place nobody's looking around nobody's going to judge you we're not going to ask you to come forward nobody's going to come to your house and ask you for money but i believe some of you right now in this moment need to have the living hope of the living god prayed breathed spoken over you so i'm going to ask your pastor your shepherd pastor levi to come up and i'm going to ask him to pray for those of you who just would honestly say i'm struggling today i feel bent over today i don't feel like i belong today i feel like an interruption today i need encouragement if that's your story wherever you are even online unless you're driving even if you're sitting in your bedroom watching this on an ipad if you're at one of the other campuses watching it on youtube if you're in a safe place please just get in that posture of of honesty and humility and receptivity and if you need your hope restored would you just raise your hands would you be willing to just reach for hope just raise your hands and i'm going to ask levi to pray over y'all and i believe that even in the next few moments he's going to uncross the bars over your heart not just your hands and your arms but he's gonna remove chains he's gonna take fear and shame and even despair off your heart and your mind and you're gonna begin to hope again because he is a god of hope and his love for us it never fades and it never fails father hear the cry of our hearts we're not holding back our pain our shame our guilt our fear we're uncrossing the arms of our heart and saying to you rub our feet papa we're saying here we are it's so easy to feel like peter saying when you try to wash our feet to touch our sandals to take them off to say not my feet god we want to appear like we have it all together we want to appear like we know all the right verses we check all the right boxes this is the tax bracket we're in this is the size of our boat this is the the success of our spiritual endeavors but you said if i can't touch your feet if i can't wash your feet if i can't rub your feet you have no pardon me meaning we can't see if we don't admit we're blind so here in this moment we as your people we're saying we're blind we're saying our feet are stinky and dirty we're saying we are in many ways marked by what we've been through this hard and we've allowed those words spoken over us to become a prison we've become contained in but here is your kind voice saying to us extend your problems to me extend your pain to me extend your fear to me and you can dream again you can dance again you can live again and we receive your spirit blowing into our lungs giving us fresh air giving us hope so that is what we pray we will continue to believe this is just the start as we dance and live in this beautiful joyous community that you live in all the time so now bless your people as they've extended their arms to you may we not go back may we stay open and may we have the mentality of being your ambassadors to go get others so they can be invited to the party and if you're here today and you've never given your heart to jesus we want to give you a moment in time to do that if you've never trusted him for salvation i want to say a prayer the bible says if you call on the name of the lord you'll be saved you don't have to do it right this isn't an incantation or a magic spell but if you're watching this on facebook or youtube at one of our churches or a watch party and you want to give your heart to jesus say this mean it in your heart and god will hear you he's waiting to hear from you dear god i know i'm a sinner i can't do anything to change that thank you for loving me thank you that your son jesus died for me thank you that he rose from the dead on the third day i turn for my sin i turn to you as lord thank you for saving me thank you for new life i give you mine in jesus name

Channel: Fresh Life Church

Views: 16,708

Rating: 4.9525423 out of 5

Keywords: fresh life, lisa harper, rub my feet mama, the odyssey back to theodicy, levi lusko, theodicy, hope, guilt, shame, redemption, love, fresh life church, fresh life sermons, fresh life messages, 2021 sermons, levi lusko sermons, church online, online church, levi lusko messages, pastor levi lusko, sermons about redemption, sermons about hope, lisa harper messages, lisa harper sermons, lisa harper fresh life, lisa harper 2021, when you're hesistant to hope again

Id: v0FZebqFoiM

Length: 47min 33sec (2853 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 05 2021