At the beginning of her book, Believing Jesus—Are You Willing to Risk Everything?, Lisa Harper shares a verse from Acts 2:26, “I’ve pitched my tent in the land of hope.” Lisa has hammered many stakes into the soil of her amazing life journey from a childhood of abuse and shame to speaking and teaching platforms where, today, she shares her passion for helping women discover the power of God’s Word and how it can be applied to their lives in relevant and exciting ways. A hilarious storyteller and one who repeatedly shatters stereotypes, Lisa recently adopted a little girl named Missy from Haiti, who keeps her joyfully exhausted and focused on the love of God.
For six years, Lisa was the National Women’s Ministry Director at Focus on the Family, followed by a stint as the women’s ministry director at a large church. The author of eleven books, with a Masters of Theological Studies from Covenant Seminary, she is a gifted communicator who talks about pop culture next to biblical parables and teaches truths about the Bible with a warmth and wit that keeps her in demand and on the go around the world.
“I’m learning to become a much bolder believer,” says Lisa. “I’m starting to live with more radical trust, believing God will do the impossible not simply that He can. It’s been a blast to kick safe, comfortable Christianity to the curb and embrace a wilder walk of faith. Because of this Jesus, this gospel really is worth risking everything for!”
Just Between Us (JBU) had the privilege of speaking with Lisa about her experiences, her walk of faith, and what it’s like to be a never-married, single mother at age 50.
Lisa Harper
JBU:
Tell us about your journey to faith.
Lisa: My mom was a committed believer, and I became a believer when I was five years old. However, my parents divorced that same year. I was devastated and desperate for my dad to stay. I thought it was my fault, something I did that caused him to leave. I watched my mom marry her second husband, Angel, two years later. Both marriages were difficult, but I watched how my mom’s faith carried her, spending every morning in the living room on her knees praying.
I was blessed throughout high school. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t love Jesus. But I felt covered in shame—I loved Jesus, but thought He tolerated me.
Eventually, God redeemed my relationship with my dad in amazing ways. But because he left when I was a little girl, abandonment issues affected my relationship with God early on. I thought, I’d better be a good girl or He might leave me.
Today, God’s immutability brings me so much comfort. God does not change. Even when the Israelites were such stinkers and He disciplined them, He never abandoned them. I can’t tell you how much that means to me as a woman. God won’t leave me, even on my worst days.
JBU:
How did you overcome the pain and disappointments from your past?
Lisa: My dad walked away and my sister and I were sexually molested by men growing up. For me, it underscored the feeling of “less than.” My dad walked away; men sexually molested me. So I became a performer, but I lived shrouded by shame. Guilt says you’ve done something wrong. Shame says you are wrong. It’s very hard to speak the gospel into shame.
The enemy knows the Achilles heel of women is shame. Shame has been a huge issue in my life, and is for women especially. Every single group of women I work with deal with shame. When you peel back the veneer and get to the core of their ache they’re asking, “Does God really love me? Do I have value?”
I had actually started working in the ministry so I could preach grace to everyone else. It was very hard to hang onto myself, like wet soap. At one point, I ended up going away to the beach by myself with my Bible and all of these commentaries on the Song of Songs. And I was undone by the intimacy in this book. When you study Song of Solomon from a Christ-centered perspective, it’s about the intimacy available to us in Jesus. We tend to forget that the gospel is about a supernatural, mind-blowing relationship with the Lord. Most of us are more comfortable appeasing this Darth Vader image we have of God because we read the Bible as a religious rulebook rather than as an amazing love story. Yet in Song of Solomon 4:9, God says through Solomon, “You have stolen my heart with one glance of your eyes.”
Think about what that verse says: The God of the Universe is enamored with us. That’s huge. We wouldn’t say this in a Bible study, but somewhere in our crooked human hearts we assume God loves us because it’s His job. That He’s compelled to because He’s the Creator and we’re the created. But God delights in us. God’s behavior toward us isn’t reserved, rigid, or formal. He makes Himself available to us. He runs toward us. He longs for us to come to Him with affection and abandon. And He wants us to find our satisfaction in Him. I think the more time we spend in His presence, the more we become wonderfully aware of His love.
JBU:
How have you seen God take the messy parts of your life and use them for good?
Lisa: The messy places are where we connect with Christ most because we don’t have it all together. That’s the point of the gospel. I’ve sat in one too many conferences as a kid where whoever had the microphone basically said, “Now that I’m a believer, my life is perfect.” And it never resonated with me. I thought they were lying for sure because they didn’t even look happy while spewing their mess.
Women identify with authenticity. This is the message I always come back to: the love of Christ. If I could leave women with one thing, it would be that Christ loves them. Even on my worst day, He says, “She’s my girl!”
JBU:
Can you share with us your darkest days and what God has taught you during those times of sadness and despair?
Lisa: Six years ago, I lost my relationship with my longtime best friend and my stepfather died. My mom and little brother fell apart too. I had never suffered from depression and had always been a half-full type of person. This was all new. I could barely limp through this season. But when you get to the end of your own strength, you do find that Jesus is enough. I prayed and wept for four months. I was grateful to be able to grieve. I came to understand the intimacy and kindness of Christ. I don’t want to ever be that sad again, but when you feel like you’re a mess emotionally, the triage of Jesus became so much sweeter than I knew. I’ll never regret it.
JBU:
How did you get through your hardest times spiritually?
Lisa: The greatest grief came from my father’s abandonment. I had to be honest enough to say I’ve always wanted a dad, and never really had one. In that place of hurt, I became grateful to be weak and really broken. The things I had preached and written about God—He’s our peace, He’s our strength, He’s our sustenance started to become personal. I began to revel in the affection of Jesus, not just salvation and justification. Moving toward the mercy of God changed everything for me.
I look at Moses, and it used to bug me that he didn’t get to go to the Promised Land. But it hit me that Moses made it, just not in his body. He made it in at the most scenic point next to Jesus because His mercy isn’t bound by time and space. That’s always the part of the gospel I resonate with.
JBU:
Because women feel they have to hide their internal struggles, how can we become more real with each other?
Lisa: Not long ago, I had a woman come up to me at a Bible study and say, “I never went to Bible studies until you started teaching because I never felt like I fit. The women were all so perfect, so blond and thin, but then you came.” As soon as she said it, she realized how it sounded. But I thought, It’s true.
I said, “I know what you’re saying, I’m brunette and chunky.” But really what she was saying is, “You don’t seem to have it altogether; you make me feel welcome.” That’s the whole point of the gospel: we need a Messiah. I think that’s what women identify with.
We women are so hard on ourselves. We get so sucked into our culture’s standards that we don’t have the time to realize that God isn’t more pleased with us if we’re a size two. He sees us through the rose-colored glasses of Jesus—and thinks we’re absolutely beautiful.
We need to look at the truth of who God is and how He feels about us. In becoming real with one another, we admit we’re all a mess. I engage women in narrative, usually the stories of my life where God has redeemed and they respond by saying, “Oh, yes, me too” –and then Jesus becomes the hero for all of us!
JBU:
Where did your passion for ministry for women start?
Lisa: The love of Christ. I’m wired as a shepherd. If you get people all fired up and they’re charging up the hill, but they aren’t compelled by the love of Christ, then it’s no different from anything else. Then it’s just activism. If an activist is compelled by mercy, that’s powerful; that changes the world. We don’t have just one message, but if I had to play one note, it would always be the love and compassion of Christ. That’s what I come back to.
JBU:
Tell us about the Next Door Ministry you’re involved in.
Lisa: It’s a six-month, faith-based rehabilitation facility/recovery center. Most of our girls come straight from Tennessee Prison for Women. All of them have some type of addictions. Some of them are there because they want to be, and some are there on conditions of parole; it’s either this or go back to prison. They don’t necessarily love coming to Bible study. Wild things happen all the time.
Sometimes I take those girls to church. One time, I was going to a church downtown. I think the people there thought I was wild. Most of them smoke and I can’t stand cigarette smoke, so I told them if they had to smoke, they’d have to hang out the windows. So we’ve got smoke trailing us in the car to the church parking lot, we’re listening to the Commodores. You can just tell people are thinking, “Who is that girl?”
We go into church, and our pastor is talking about the unlikeliness of the disciples. How they were not guys who had it altogether and how they were not as clean as you would think. One of my kids, Lindsey, is sitting on my left. She leans back and she elbows me really hard and says, “Jesus had a thing for losers, didn’t He?” And I said, “Yes, He sure did.” That’s Theology 101. It really is all about His righteousness.
JBU:
Tell us about your newest role: becoming a single mother at age 50.
Lisa: When I was 17, my friend and I were leading a Bible study on adoption. We knew when we grew up and got married, we would adopt internationally. I never married, but Cindy eventually did and adopted a bi-racial child.
My adoption process has been a journey. I was in the process of adopting a prostitute’s baby, but I lost her. It was heart-wrenching. Three weeks later, I got a phone call out of the blue from a woman I hadn’t heard from in 20 years. She said she had just returned from Haiti and told me about a little girl, who has HIV and tuberculosis. She was going to die in three or four months, if she wasn’t adopted. She stressed that there was no pressure. I said, “I won’t pray about this, I’ve been praying about it for 20 years.”
When Missy’s picture came up, I knew I had been searching for her since I was 17. Six weeks later, I was on a plane and started the adoption process. It ended up taking two years. In April of 2014, I brought Missy home.
JBU:
What is God teaching you through motherhood?
Lisa: I can’t believe I can love this much. She’s my kid–the sweetest thing I could ever imagine. She’s not my hope, Jesus is. I always go back to Psalm 84:11 “…No good thing does he withhold from those whose walk is blameless.”
Yet as an older single mom who travels for a living, every day is a massive stretch. Every month we go to the pharmacy to get her HIV meds. I never thought in a million years that I’d be in a community with gay men who have AIDS. I wouldn’t have that connection without Missy. It’s one more step in God proving Himself as so kind. I didn’t see this side of God until becoming a mom. I’m learning how truly desperate I am for the sufficiency of His grace every single moment of every day.
I shouldn’t have a kid. I’m going through motherhood and menopause at the same time. How merciful of God! It’s far more joyful and fulfilling than I dared to dream. It’s the most glorious, exhausting thing I’ve ever experienced!
JBU:
Has your perception of who God is as your heavenly Father changed since becoming a mom?
Lisa: Becoming Missy’s mama has radically changed the topography of my heart and given me eyes to see beautiful facets of the fatherhood of God that I was previously blind to. I’m so discombobulated by His compassion and kindness!
JBU:
What is the one best thing about living for Jesus these days?
Lisa: Because of the way He has tangibly redeemed my story and restored unto me the years the locusts ate away in my life (due to my own sinful choices and fears), I find myself in an almost constant state of gratitude. It’s hard to wipe the grin off my face these days! The God of the Universe loves me.
JBU:
What do you most desire in your relationship with God and those you minister to?
Lisa: To focus more on our relationship with God than with being appropriately religious. Author Francis Shaeffer once said, “Our calling is to be not only a faithful bride but also a bride in love.” That’s what I want—to be the bride in love. I don’t want to be faithful only because I’ve mentioned a bunch of facts about the Lord. I want to be so absolutely in love with Jesus that it permeates every facet of my being. I want to reflect the gospel as best I can in this crooked jar of clay.
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