The Anatomy of Awe | Lisa Harper

[Music] sit down sit down listen i would have been disappointed too those of y'all that thought it was gonna be pastor john i would be disappointed too i love to listen to him preach but scripture makes it clear that god uses donkeys and rocks so we're gonna trust that he will do that this morning the first time debbie generously invited me to be a part of dfl i think it was ten years ago deb um i thought she had gotten confused on my last name because i'd already seen the fruit of dfl all over the world i'd heard about james river for years and i thought she thought i was lisa bevere not lisa harper lisa bevere is an amazing has she been to dfo deb oh she can preach the cover off the bible she's just extraordinary she and her husband but lisa often preaches in leather pants and i thought goodness gracious if debbie has gotten me confused and i have to wear leather pants it's going to sound like ducks are being killed up in the house and i thought it's not going to bless anybody and so the fact that i got to come once much less that that i have gotten to come several times and just see the goodness of the lord in the land of the living here in missouri just um it's an undeserved privilege if missouri was a little closer to tennessee where i live i would be here every week i love this house really really love this house pastor john has taught me so much i've made mistakes in this house and i found mercy in this house it is just a gift to be here so before i get too emotional gentlemen i'm so sorry this is going to be estrogen festival this morning but um would y'all just reach out and touch that saint next to you and i want you to pray something really really specific would you pray that right now the holy spirit would give them the grace to uncross the arms that they've had crossed over their heart i pray god would give them the grace to uncross the arms they have emotionally and mentally had over their heart to be open to be awed jesus i confess that i am the chief of sinners you know my heart you know how often my faith is frail and even in discipline you have been merciful to me thank you that when we deserve your wrath you choose to give us mercy thank you that your word says you are slow to anger and rich in compassion you were so supernaturally compassionate this weekend at dfl we all just stood amazed at the women you saved and the women you healed who'd been languishing for decades in brokenness and oppression and you brought them from the dark into the light and we we got to see your mercy personified thank you thank you thank you king jesus we pray this morning that you would open our eyes wider to the miracle of your mercy thank you jesus that you are not a far away god but you're an up close personal redeemer help us to remember this morning i pray for those who don't yet know you as their savior who may be even thinking there's no way a perfect god like that could love a broken man or a damaged woman like me but i pray even now that the holy spirit would continue to tender those jaded hard places in their heart that their arms really really would uncross and they'd be open to be awed by your unconditional love this morning amen and amen for those of you enneagram ones and enneagram eights who take notes the the title of today's message is the anatomy of awe but i hardly ever stick with my titles because i'm a little add squirrel and so really probably a more appropriate title would be confessions of a yeah because that would be me um i think i've made every mistake known to mankind i have stumbled in my walk toward the lord i've been walking with jesus for over 50 years now i'm in the latter part of a doctorate so i can throw just enough greek and hebrew around things to sound smart but reality is most days um i'm in remedial class because sometimes i feel like my heart and my mind are colanders and the stuff god has poured into me sometimes it just leaks out because i am so stinking human and i was at the doctors not too many years ago i had to have surgery on my back my back was broken when i was a kid in a car accident and i finally had to go in for i've had a fusion in my lower back and i've got a titanium plate in my neck and and i really wanted the doctor to like me as much therapy as i've had i spend most my shoe money there i still just wanted my surgeon to like me i wanted to be a good patient i can preach grace but i still want to earn it any anybody in the house kind of understand that i can i can talk about the unmerited favor of god but there's something broken in me that still just wants to be a good girl and somehow earn it and i wanted to earn my neurosurgeon's favor and so i thought i'm going to do everything he tells me to do i'm going to be a really really good patient and i even right before the surgery i knew they were going to expose my parts of me that should not be exposed and so i got a temporary tattoo and it was bugs bunny that i put on my on my my lower part and it said what's up doc because i thought that'll be fun you know i thought he'll be tickled when he has to see that part of me that there's a greeting and um and and i'm i mean y'all i grew up half baptist so i'm super modest i'm a one bathing suit you know single bathing suit kind of girl plus i love chips and queso so that behooves me to stay covered um but i thought when i'm uncovered for the surgery i just want to you know i want him to like me so i was like what's up doc well after the surgery when i had my follow-up visit he said lisa i have a bone to pick with you and i was like you do and he said i'm i'm actually disappointed in you and i thought goodness gracious i mean i've done so well and i did the whole tattoo and everything um because it stayed on for a while but bugs bunny's head got ripped off by the alcohol so it's just a headless bug's money um and i'm not married so nobody saw it but me but anyway um um he said yeah i'm disappointed and i said well why doc and he said because when i opened you up it was much worse than i expected he said you told me your pain level was a two on a scale of one to ten and i said well i you know i didn't want to be a baby and he said your l4 through l5 were completely shredded he said you were bone on bone between l4 and l5 and he said your pain level had to be at a 10. he said but you told me a two and do you know what that means to me and i was like no sir i thought i was being a good girl to not complain and he said what that communicates to me is you don't trust my capacity as a surgeon very much if you weren't honest about your level of pain and when he said that i thought oh how often i've done that to the lord how often i have unwittingly told god i don't trust that you can perform a miracle in my life i i'm going to pretend like it doesn't hurt that bad you may bring miracles for everybody else who came forward but i don't think you either care enough or are powerful enough to relieve the pain that has been crippling me i think one of the consequences of the last year and a half that we've experienced the crisis after crisis after crisis bad news after bad news after bad news if it's not here it's in the middle east if covett is relieved it comes back with a vengeance if it looks like economically we're going to be able to breathe all of a sudden there's news of yet another economic crash and it's like goodness gracious i don't want to turn on the tv i don't want to turn on my phone again i'm just going to keep my head down and i hope that i don't have to hear any more bad news a very very very dear friend of ours committed suicide after the first round of covid because of the economic devastation and at that point i was like you know jesus i i'm just worn slap out i'm just warned slap out and i'm kind of afraid to hope again scripture tells us that hope deferred makes the heart sick and so i thought if i just don't hope for a miracle maybe i won't have to walk through the bad news and the disappointment anymore and i realized what was going on in my heart i realized part of my heart was getting hardened i was experiencing aw deprivation i said i'm not i'm not going to hope for a miracle anymore i'll pray for y'all when y'all come up front but i'm not so sure i want to even hope to be healed anymore and so i went before the lord and i just confessed it i said lord i am i am kind of scared in my heart i just feel like i've been disappointed so many times i'm just kind of scared to hold my hand up for a miracle and through his spirit i've never heard an audible voice of the lord but john's gospel tells us he speaks clearly if you've given your heart to jesus he will speak very clear to you you'll understand his voice isaiah says he's so kind that he even gives us specific directions he'll tell us when to turn left he'll tell us when to turn right and so i said lord i just i need something fresh because i'm losing hope i don't even feel like i i have the recipe for a miracle anymore i feel like i just have empty hands and i came before him and he said i want you to go to luke 1 and i went oh i wasn't very clear i don't need christmas this was april and i thought i've already heard mariah singing in the mall like i've already already done that i don't need christmas lord i kind of need easter i need a resurrection because i feel like my hope is dead or at least dying i need easter and he said no i want you to go back to luke 1. y'all have heard this story before luke chapter 1 when the in the sixth month the angel gabriel was sent from god to a city of galilee named nazareth to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was joe of the house of david and the virgin's name was mary and she was about 12 according to new testament scholars and a giant nine-foot glowing angel came to her and said greetings oh favorite don't you just know angels talk like james earl jones i mean there's no way you've got a nine-foot glowing supernatural being and they're a tenor there's just no way so i just think gabriel had like this or like the guy on the all-state commercial she's just a deep resident voice and she's 12. she's in the seventh grade and the angel said to her don't be afraid mary for you found favor with god and mary goes okay and her friends are you know they're doing live facebook because they're like nobody's gonna believe this like this huge guy just zoomed down from heaven and he's talking to our seventh grade friend telling her she's gonna be the mother of emmanuel and mary goes how will this be i haven't gone to prom yet i mean i've never even held hands with a boy gabe how will this be one of my favorite theologians this one's living i have platonic crushes on all the dead guys um but sinclair ferguson is a scottish theologian and he says this being amazed by god's grace is a sign of spiritual vitality it is a litmus test of how firm and real is our grasp of the christian gospel and how close our walk with jesus is how amazed are you this season maybe more aptly how open to being amazed are you mary was like there's no stinking way i mean goodness gracious god i'm in the seventh grade i'm 12 years old how in the world could i be the mother of the messiah god is an interested mary in your fertility he's interested in your faith you can come before him with empty hands you can come before him with a heart that goes i don't know how in the world this is going to happen and that epic my miracle didn't just take place at christmas we see that exact same term again at pentecost flip over about a half an inch to the book of acts dr luke wrote the gospel according to luke and i'm sure as pastor john has told you he also wrote the acts of the apostles luke is the only non-gentile author of holy writ there are a couple of books in the 66 books of our protestant bibles that are formally classified as anonymous we don't know definitively who the author was but the only known non-jewish author of holy writ is dr luke and he wrote the gospel according to luke to yuan jellion that's the word gospel means the good news he wrote the gospel according to luke and then in the same document he wrote the acts of the apostles when they canonized scripture that's just a fancy word that means when they collated all 66 books they inserted the gospel according to john after the gospel according to luke but i would encourage those of you saints who read through the bible in a year chronologically skip over john when you get to the end of luke's gospel come back for john later but go straight from the end of luke to the beginning of acts because it's this incredible seamless story of redemption so luke tells us about mary and then he tells us the incarnate earthly life of jesus christ the miracles and he goes and let me tell you what happened next and he describes how after jesus laid down his life for us and was resurrected because he loves us so much and he knows most of us are yahoos instead of shazaming immediately to the right hand of god the father he spent over a month in his resurrected body right here on this broken planet called earth and he walked around in his incarnate body and he ate fish and chips so that peter he had just thrown jesus under the bus a week and a half earlier he could appear with peter and have breakfast and go pete it's me so that thomas who was a brainiac so they go thomas when thomas said i'm not so sure you're the christ he said tom touch the nail prints in my wrist here's where they drove the stakes touch them it's me how kind of god that he condescends to reveal himself to us in a way we can understand he could just write things in the sky in a galaxy that we couldn't see but he makes himself accessible how amazing is that he's holy he's transcendent he is perfect but he condescends and says come closer you can touch my wrist she was here for over a month appearing to people going no it really is me i really did experience a bodily resurrection and after about a month his followers at that time there were only a hundred hundred-ish hundred and ten they gathered on a hill at the edge of jerusalem and he stood in front of him and he said i'm going to be with the father i've left you spirit holy spirit who's your periclete your comforter he reminded some of y'all even this morning you have the right to call the god of the universe dad i'm leaving you spirit i'm not leaving you as orphans and he said you will receive power whether you're presbyterian or pentecostal you will receive power when the holy spirit comes upon you eprico my same exact word from christmas we see at pentecost the holy spirit will come upon you ever come i you and when he does you'll be catapulted from this place all over the world to share the gospel in judea and samaria and ozark you will share the hope of the gospel that's the power you'll have this is a motley crew most of his followers were am ha eretz that means people of the earth that means they were illiterate they were not formally educated and he comes upon them in power epico mines them just like he did this 12 year old who gave birth to the christ he upper co-mines them and the holy spirit starts shooting pyrotechnics from their head i mean more incredible than what we saw at dfl on thursday night two shooting flames of fire that's why baptists are afraid of the holy spirit it's like that will be an awkward dinner party i mean you see these tangible expressions of the holy spirit in acts 2 then they have this feast called pentecost pentecost was formerly a festival where they celebrated harvest that god was providing for them taking care of them by the first century pentecost had kind of morphed into a huge global festival for the jews where they celebrated that god brought his word to moses on mount sinai so it is a global celebration it's like the world cup or the super bowl or the semi-annual shoe sale at nordstrom's it's a big deal so jews come from all over the diaspora that's just a fancy word that means where they lived apart from geopolitical israel they come from turkey they come from africa they come from all over according to luke there were at least 15 different nations represented at this pentecost this festival in acts chapter 2. that means there were at least 15 different languages spoken the holy spirit comes down and there's pyrotechnics and then those early believers who were not educated begin to speak in the languages of the people gathered in their known tongue it's called xenolalia there's several different kinds of tongues in scripture and pastor john can clarify this in a way i can't but in acts 2 the tongue spoken were xenolalia that means that an uneducated guy who only spoke aramaic all of a sudden was speaking in the language of someone from africa hadn't done the whatever it is called the rosario stone or whatever that program is to learn another language didn't have anything on his iphone had not been to school to study that language just shazam he began speaking the gospel in a way that it was clear it had been chaotic can you imagine if we were in service this morning and all of us were given our testimonies and we had 15 different languages representing and you'd probably be polite as long as service didn't go too long and you weren't late for denny's or wherever you are going olive garden if you're on a cheap date it happens to me all the time with e-harmony but anyway you'd be like well isn't that pleasant but you couldn't understand them if they're speaking something other than southern english you couldn't understand unless few of you who are bilingual but this is 15 different languages and these early christians went i i don't know how that happened i got nothing i had nothing i've never been trained and all of a sudden i started talking about jesus in sudanese i don't know how that happened when i was in the process of adopting my daughter missy from haiti i met a girl named megan boudreau and we were hiking up this hill because i wanted to see a school that god had built through her she was a kid when i met her she was 24 years old had been a believer for four years came to christ in college was not raised in a christian home had no james river kids had no dfl had no pyrotechnics just came to christ in a bible study when she was a junior in college and because she met jesus he transformed her mind in her heart and after she graduated with a degree in international business she had a great job made a lot of money for a year and then she heard god she'd only been a believer for a year and a half heard god say i want you to go to haiti and share the gospel in haiti now most of us would hear something like that and we'd go i need to take that back to my small group and my counselor and have it executed and marinate in this for a while to make sure i'm hearing the voice of god and walking correctly it's funny how sometimes mature faith can actually get really jaded and we can call things well this is me being mature and i'm like no that's you being odd to pray deprived you don't believe anymore that god can speak clearly one time i want you to do this i love that eugene peterson says obedience is a long walk in the same direction he says go and you go yes sir you don't need to see around the corner of your circumstances you just say he said go so i went and that's what megan did no mission board behind her no financial support behind her she took her savings got on a plane and went to haiti cheerleader in college moves to haiti doesn't speak the language can't find a place to live eventually finds a shack with no running water and no electricity and she was like well god told me to be here she realized pretty quickly she didn't have an affinity for for the language didn't have an affinity to creel so she was having a hard time getting around and so she was so disappointed that the miracle wasn't happening quickly that she found a hill near her shack and she began hiking to the top of that hill in a little rural village called grecier in haiti for those of you who've been there because from the top of that hill she could see the caribbean and she grew up in new orleans and water reminded her of home and so she would hike to the top of that hill and look at the caribbean and she would just go god help me i thought you told me to come here and i'm seeing nothing happen but i'm just gonna keep looking at that water and believing since you breathe that water into existence you're gonna breathe a miracle here i just don't see how it's gonna happen she noticed after a couple of hikes that there were dead dead cats hanging in the tree on top of that hill she would hike daily she didn't know then that high hills in haiti are often used by voodoo priests for worship and that's why the dead cats were hanging in the tree she had no idea that god would use her and the top of that hill would eventually turn into a christian school in a hospital where hundreds have been healed and come to christ she had no idea as a 21 year old that god was going to do that she just hiked that hill in the heat every single day and one day she was hiking that hill and halfway up she saw two beautiful little girls on the side of the trail about six and four we don't know still how old they were because they were restovics child slaves so nobody bothered with a birth certificate much less birthday parties both were bloody both look like they were just absolutely desolate and desperate and so megan stopped and she squatted down and in just a little bit of creole she knew she said are you okay and because she could say three words in creo those little girls assumed she could speak creole and in a torrent of creole they began to weep and travail and tell her how they'd been beaten what had happened to them she didn't understand a word of it and as these kids obviously in distress one just barely out of being a baby were just begging her for help megan began to cry out to god and she said you told me to come here i know i heard your voice and i know you told me to come here and i sacrificed god to come here and now there's these two precious pumpkins that i can't help because i can't understand them i can't understand a word they're saying and they're bloody and they're in distress how can i help them god you didn't even give me the language will you help me shazam she could speak creole she could understand creole she could write creole never went to language school and i said megan i'm having a hard time picking up creole i've got it on my app and i'm having a hard time communicating with missy my daughter because i don't speak her language how did you learn creole and i thought she was going to give me an app or i thought she was going to tell me a language school i could go to and learn it really quick and she went oh that's a funny story 24 years old been a christian for five years she's just talking to me as we're hiking up this hill in the heat and she went oh god gave me creel and she told me the story and then she told me those two little girls on the on the side of the trailer now my daughters she adopted two kids as a 24 year old kid herself they're her daughters they're twoing amazing and she said god gave me creole and i said do you know you experienced pentecost on this mountain and she goes you know i never really thought about it that way she said we've been so busy and he's just been doing so much i was just so grateful he gave me creo when i needed it out of absolute confusion and chaos god brought clarity she didn't bring anything to the table no app no language school and he gave her creole that's what he did in acts 2. sometimes we get so preoccupied with the denominational divisions that have happened as a result of how we understand acts 2 that we miss the miracle the gospel was shared in different languages a 12-year-old carried christ out of nothing out of nothing he breathed vibrancy out of void and yet we still think i got nothing jesus there's no way you can give me a miracle my hands are empty ah deprivation is what we see all over america right now i'm just afraid to hope how could he do it there's no way he could breathe a miracle out of these circumstances turn to ezekiel chapter 37 i know y'all know this prophecy because i know this house i know y'all believe this better than i believed it i have never loved this prophecy more than i did this past easter because this past easter i was diagnosed with covet and because i've already told you i'm a yahoo and a stubborn old broad i wouldn't go to the hospital and by the time i was hospitalized i had a virulent form of pneumonia that had caused what they call broken glass syndrome in my lungs and so the congestion in my lungs had hardened and it was shredding my lungs and so initially the doctors didn't have a whole lot of hope in my survival for for a couple of days they could not um stabilize me and and it looked like i might meet jesus a little sooner than than i planned and and the second day i was in the hospital i had my bible with me and i turned to ezekiel 37 the hand of the lord was upon me and he brought me out in the spirit of the lord and set me down in the middle of the valley and it was full of bones and he led me around among them and behold there were very many on the surface of the valley and behold they were very dry and god said to ezekiel son of man can these bones live and i answered oh lord god you know i love his honesty there i love that he didn't quote some amazing chris tomlin or hillsong lyric i love that he didn't raise his hands i love that there are no pyrotechnics he was just honest he said i don't know lord i don't know i feel like my hands are empty i'm afraid to hope i don't know you know lord some of y'all longed to be healed but you didn't walk forward this morning because you're just kind of afraid to hope again there's been so much disappointment so much bad news that you don't want to tell the physician how much you really hurt because you're afraid he might not choose to heal you i don't know lord i don't know if the bones can live you you know [Music] then god said to ezekiel prophesy over these bones and say to them oh dry bones hear the word of the lord thus says the lord god to these bones behold i will cause breath to enter you and you shall live and i will lay sinners upon you and will cause flesh to come upon you and cover you with skin and put breath in you and you shall live and you shall know that i am the lord your god so i prophesied as i was commanded if you are physically able you need to get your tiny tail in church every time the doors are open we've gotten in the habit of watching church from our couches and neither pastor debbie or pastor john or brandon or david or savannah told me to say this this is free this is all me it's not enough to sit on your couch and zoom church now if you have a comorbidity if you're sick if you're older i get it there is grace for that but those of you who are able-bodied who've just gotten used to wearing your stretchy pants and zooming for church it's not enough for your soul it's not the author of hebrews says don't give up gathering together do you know this is the first sunday in a year and a half that y'all been able to sit in every row do you know what a miracle that is to gather together in the house of god ezekiel had nothing his hands were empty but he remembered what god said that's why we come together church isn't a country club it's more a hospital is a place where all of us are in different stages of sickness needing to be made well telling each other let me help you limp toward jesus and remember what the lord god has spoken over us what he said the healings we've already seen the salvations we've already seen he said i'll say what you say god i'll prophesy what you say god and sinners appeared on the bones but there was no breath in them there was no breath in them after i was in the hospital for three days my doctor really amazing pulmonologist came into my room and he said lisa i just found out from one of the nurses what you do vocationally i found out that you travel around the country and you you teach the bible you preach for a living and he said i hate to be the one to tell you this um but i don't want to give you false hope he said your lungs have been so shredded so eviscerated by this wicked cruel disease you will not be able to preach again he said your lungs have been so so compromised he said it's a miracle you're alive you will be on residual oxygen for the rest of your life you will walk with a tank behind you and you will never be able to speak more than two or three minutes because your lungs won't be able to hold that much air this was april this was easter you won't be able to hold that much air he's a good man he's a really really good doctor i love medical professionals my daughter has hiv it's by the grace of god and good medicine that my daughter's undetectable so those of you who are in the medical community thank you thank you thank you especially this season thank you for your sacrifice thank you that you show up and you care and you serve thank you so much thank you so much but you're not the great physician and so i told my doctor i said doctor thank you so much for saving my life i will bring you chocolate for the rest of your life thank you thank you thank you i said but doc with all due respect you don't actually have the right to tell me if i'll breathe and preach again in the future i said doctor do you remember what the word in the greek is for holy spirit my doctor is a believer i said do you remember what the word is for holy spirit in the new testament the greek word and he kind of looked at me like i had three heads and i said it's pneuma it means breath i said so as much as i respect you only my creator redeemer has the right to say if i'll have breath in my future he's the only one who can prophesy breath after ezekiel didn't yet see the miracle god said to him prophesy to the breath prophesy [Music] prophesy son of man even though you don't see it even though you're afraid to hope again even though you wonder if you'll ever see a miracle in your life you prophesy to the breath thus says the lord god come from the four winds o breath and breathe on these slain that they may live so i prophesied as he commanded me and the breath came into them and they lived and stood on their feet an exceedingly great army i got nothing i wouldn't even walk forward a few minutes ago when brandon welcomed us so warmly because i'm afraid to hope again i've got nothing vibrancy out of void pure light out of pitch black a sanctuary out of a cemetery god does not need your potential he's not looking for your fertility he's looking for a thimble full of faith for you to stand up again and go i can't see it i have no idea how you're going to do it i feel stupid even standing up but i'm going to prophesy what you told me i'm going to prophesy for breath i'm going to believe for a miracle again what's up everybody thank you so much for joining james river church on our youtube channel our prayer is that you were encouraged and your faith was strengthened today and we want to let you know that we want to connect with you on our online family you can just click the link next to me to connect with us as well we would love if you subscribe to the youtube channel today and press that bell for notifications you will be so glad you did because we're always putting out great sermons new worship content that helps you stay up to date with everything that's happening at james river church we hope you have a great day today and we'd love for you to join our live sunday services every sunday and wednesday thank you again for watching god bless

Channel: James River Church

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Keywords: james river church, lisa harper, lisa harper sermons, sermons, sermon, church online, online church, james river church sermons, church, holy spirit, christianity, bible, god, jesus, holy, spirit, christian, theology, promise, god's promises, powerful, christian life, how to live as a christian, james river, encouragement, jrc, acts, empower, christian women speakers, christian women podcast, anatomy, awe, awesome, anatomy of, lisa harper 2021, lisa harper bible study, best sermons, best sermon

Id: 9Nqr-fdcjWs

Length: 37min 22sec (2242 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 11 2021