Transcription
Your redemption happens. Some of us just have to learn to wait, to stand, to stand in the promises. He is good, and He does good, and ultimately everything will work out for our good and His glory.
It's just amazing when you get to give a little bit of testimony in a place where a lot of people don't yet know the love of Christ. But the only thing about that video that kind of gives me pause is it almost implies that we're in happily ever after, that everything from now on will be perfect for us. And that's just not the truth. As a matter of fact, it's heretical. Jesus says, "In this world you will have trouble." He says, "Take heart, I've overcome the world." But in this world, you will have trouble.
And sometimes I think when we have an event like this, and you have amazing communicators like this and incredible worship, a lot of us are deluded into thinking, "If only I tried harder, if only I did better, my life would be perfect too." And y'all, that's just not the gospel. The gospel is, He is good, but life can be really hard.
So in these last few minutes we have together, I don't want it to be a downer, but I do want to talk about perseverance. Because it's one thing to run hard toward Jesus in a place like this. It's one thing to go, "Yes, I'm gonna go home and have sex with my husband," or a cold shower if I'm middle-aged and hanging downy. But either way, I'm excited. It's one thing to do that with 4,000 of your closest friends. It's a whole other thing to do that in the dark by yourself.
And so as we leave, I really want to talk about what it looks like to live and to love and to lead in a way that honors our Creator, Redeemer, when nobody's watching, when nobody's clapping, when really nobody's running alongside us. And so I want to tell you a couple of stories that the video didn't.
One is, I want to tell you what happened two weeks before I started the process with Missy. I was in the process of adopting a little girl named Anna Price. And I had been in the process with her the entire pregnancy of her mama. Her mama's name is Marie, and I just loved Marie as much as I loved her unborn baby girl. Marie is a hardcore crack addict and a prostitute. And by the grace of God, she chose not to abort her baby, even though she had no idea who the daddy was. It was one of her johns. And then by the grace of God, she met me and decided I was supposed to be Anna Price's mother. And I was at every single doctor's appointment. And I spent Christmas a couple of years ago in a crack house with Marie because when I was with her, she used less. And because I'm older, I became a mother figure for her. And I mean, I loved that kid. And I told all my friends, "Do not give me baby gifts. Do not throw parties for me."
Some of you who may have been in the adoption process yourself or know people who are in an adoption like that, it's a very high-risk adoption. It was a very high-risk pregnancy. The doctor said it was unlikely that Anna Price would actually live because of the hardcore drug use. But, you know, month after month, she kept getting stronger and stronger and stronger. But I still said, "Y'all, don't give me any baby gifts. I really won't know until about a week before she's born if I actually get to bring her home to Tennessee."
And five days before I was supposed to go pick her up, the adoption agency called me. And they said, "Lisa, it's unbelievable, but every single paper has been signed. Even the state where Marie lived, they have agreed with the state of Tennessee. The only person who is legally allowed to bring Anna Price home from the hospital is you. They said, 'You can go ahead and get everything ready. You can go ahead and buy the crib. She's coming home with you. Her name is legally Anna Price Harper.'"
And I got off the phone, and I don't know if you've ever carried a dream for a long, long time and it finally comes true, and it's just like, like this weight comes off you. And I just kind of collapsed on the couch and began to just ball crying, happy tears. You know, I was just like, "I can't believe it. After all these months of kind of holding my breath, and all those years of not thinking I was good enough to be a mom, thinking I was too damaged to be a mama, I was like, 'Oh my goodness, in less than a week I'm gonna have a baby girl.'"
And in the upstairs bedroom, I was just undone. And so I called my mama. I called two or three of my best friends. And I just, I could hardly speak, I was so excited. And about 30 minutes after I got that phone call, there was a knock at the door. And it was the UPS man. And he handed me this big box. And I saw in the return address, it was from a friend of mine in Atlanta. And I sat down on the couch and cut it open. And then just went, "Oh my goodness," because there was a miniature, zero to six months, mink coat in the box. My friend's husband has done extremely well. And she wrote me a note. And she said, "I know you told us not to bring you gifts or send you anything for the baby because it's been so precarious. But," she said, "I saw this this week, and I just thought, 'That's for Anna Price.'" And she said, "Lisa, I just couldn't resist." And I thought, "The white will represent the fact that she's innocent, that that generational sin and bondage will end with you being her mama." And I held that little coat, and I just started crying again because I thought, "Nobody's ever sent me a mink coat."
And about 30 minutes after that, the phone rang again. I saw in caller ID, it was the adoption agency. And I thought, "Oh, they've forgotten something. I need to scan something and email it to them." And I said, "Hey." And as soon as I heard my agent's voice, I knew that was not the case because her voice was just, um, just so heavy. And she said, "Lisa, I don't even know how to tell you this, but," she said, "the bottom has fallen out. And I don't have the legal freedom to tell y'all what happened, but I lost that baby." And, um, and basically lost that little mama that I had just grown to love almost like a daughter. And it didn't end pretty. The bottom fell out of that story. There is no pretty bow like on that video.
And I sat back down on the couch and I thought, "God, I, I can't do this. I have waited too long. My heart is too broken. You picked the wrong girl for a story like this." And I don't know how long I sat there crying. And they weren't happy tears anymore. Before my phone rang again, I saw it was my mama. And I thought, "Oh, good night. I don't even know how to tell my mom that I'm not going to bring Anna Price home." But as soon as I picked up the phone, my mama started talking before I started talking. And she said, "Baby, I, I so hate to ruin your celebration today, but," she said, "remember a couple of days ago when I told you about that ongoing bladder infection I had?" And I said, "Yeah, I remember. I was afraid she'd be able to tell I've been crying." And she said, "Well, we just got the test results back. The doctor just called me, and it's actually not a bladder infection at all. I have cancer. And at stage four, it's metastasized into four major organs." And she said, "Honey, um, it's just not good." And she said, "I need you to pray for me."
And so I didn't even tell her about Anna Price at that point. I just started praying for my mama. We're both crying. We got off the phone. I thought, "I'll call her later when I'm stronger and she's stronger, and I'll tell her that, um, she's not going to have a granddaughter." We have three grandsons in our family, but no granddaughters. And then about 30 minutes after that, my phone rang again. And that was my daddy. My parents divorced when I was five. And, uh, I love my daddy. He was a very, very gruff man. He was very abusive when I was younger, but he tendered in his old age, really loved Jesus. He's kind of like a miniature John Wayne. And, um, and I thought, "Oh, good night. I don't, I don't know how to tell this to my dad." I hadn't called him yet and told him that Anna Price was coming home. And so I thought, "He'll be able to tell because I don't know if I can talk."
But again, he started talking. Even though my dad was kind of a monosyllabic man, he started talking before I did. And he said, "Baby, um, the cancer is back." My dad successfully, we thought, had battled colon cancer for a couple of years. And he said, "I just came from the surgeon's office. And he said, 'Honey, I need you to pray for me because he told me that it has now gone into both lungs, and the surgeon just gave me two months to live.'" And he said, "It's going to be okay. I don't want you to worry about it, but I just wanted to tell you she could pray." And I honestly don't remember the end of that phone call. I don't remember if I prayed for my dad or not. I just remember putting the phone down and going, "God, I can't. I can't do this. This is too hard."
And y'all, I heard like two words from the Lord. He said, "Stand, Lisa. Stand and lean. I've got you. I've got this. Let me hear you." I was two weeks before I got the phone call about Missy. I named Anna Price after a woman in Luke's gospel. If you have your Bible, we're going to look at this story pretty quickly. I named that little girl I loved so much Anna Price because I love Anna's story in Luke chapter two. She's one of my favorite women in scripture. Uh, the women in scripture who are great leaders, who were called prophetess, and Anna's one of eight or nine who are considered the great female leaders in scripture. Her story is in Luke chapter two, and we're going to begin here at verse 36. And I'm reading from the ESV. It may read just a hair different than your translation.
"And there was a prophetess, Anna, the daughter of Phanuel, by the way, the name Anna means favor. She was the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher, or the tribe of Aser. She was advanced in years, having lived with her husband seven years from when she was a virgin." That means she was about 13 when she got married. "Then as a widow until she was 84." So if you've done the math, most New Testament theologians think she was approximately 100, 103 when this took place. 103 years old. You talk about hanging downy.
She did not. I'm so sorry, Beth. I'm like, "You are going to pray for me." Just fast and pray for me. She did not depart from the temple, worshiping with fasting and prayer night and day. So she's approximately 103 years old. She's been a widow for over eight decades. And y'all, she goes to church every single day. And the word they're worshiping in the original language, in the Greek, means serving. So she went to church and she just poured everything she had into God's purposes and God's people. So I always imagine her, you know, she's across the street from the temple. She's at the Hebrew Home for Retired Persons. And she gets up every morning and she pulls on her Spanx and she pulls up her nude pantyhose and her stretchy pants, which I believe are from Jesus. And she walks across the street to the temple. And then she goes to the storeroom and she gets some linseed oil and a rag. And she starts rubbing the lamps and she starts praying for the people she knows are going to be worshiping. If they're Baptist on Wednesday night and Sunday morning, she just starts serving in the temple. And y'all, she does that year after year after year after year, 80 plus years. She waits for her dream to come true. Her dream was, "I will see the salvation of God's people. I'll see Jesus." 80 years she persisted. She waited.
You know, waiting and perseverance are not very popular terms in post-postmodern culture. I feel like they're kind of like a hot dog vendor at a vegan festival. You know, nobody's real excited about perseverance and waiting. And yet, God talks about that all the time. And the analogy of scripture, from cover to cover. And I'm a total cover-to-cover Bible girl. From cover to cover, God talks about the benefit of waiting. I brought just a few of the verses.
"I waited patiently for the Lord, and he turned to me and he heard my cry for help. I waited for the Lord, and he heard me." The next one is Isaiah 30:18: "Therefore the Lord waits to be gracious to you, and therefore he exalts himself to show mercy to you. For the Lord is a God of justice; blessed are all those who wait for him." Do you know in the Hebrew, what the word "blessed" means? It means happy. It means you're actually, your joy and your ability to wait are mutually connected. Those are congruent. Your ability to stand and wait and your capacity for joy, to be happy, those are actually congruent. Those are related.
Isaiah 40, you know this one. Most of us cross-stitched it if we grew up Baptist. "But those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles. They will run and not grow weary. They will walk and not faint." Chris quotes this all the time. The next one is in Lamentations: "God proves to be good to the man who passionately waits, to the woman who diligently seeks. It's a good thing to quietly hope, quietly hope for help from God. It's a good thing when you're young to stick it out through the hard times." And then I believe we have Second Peter, Second Peter 3:13-14: "But according to his promise, to God's promise, we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. Therefore, beloved, since you are waiting for these, be diligent to be found by him without spot or blemish, and at peace."
God says, "Wait. If you'll wait, you'll be happy." God tells His people, "I want you to, I want you to stand. I'm going to do the work. I want you to stand." And then after you see the Red Sea part, He says, "All right, gone. Now y'all need to move." Right after that, He tells His people, "I want you to be trained in war. You have seen my Providence. You have experienced my presence. I hovered over you like a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. I have provided for you everything you needed and almost everything you wanted. And so now I want y'all to raise up shields and swords, to speak the word of God. You hold God's word. These promises, y'all, this is not a textbook. This is not a rule book. This is not a collection of benign morality tales. This is a love story. And this is war."
You wonder how you can fight against the crud we see going on around us. It's this right here. You hold this up as a battering ram against the lies of the enemy. Every time, when I got older, I realized the enemy was saying, "Lisa, you're not good enough. You're not lean enough. You're not, you're not godly enough. You say bad words around Beth Moore. You are not good enough to be a leader or a mama." Y'all, here's the deal. When the enemy lies to us, he doesn't lie in a way that we see it coming. You know, if he said to me, "Lisa, you're such an introvert with such a high metabolism," I'd be like, "Liar, liar, pants on fire," 'cause I'd see it coming. That's not how he lies to us. He takes a grain of truth, he weaves it into this toxic poison, and it sounds reasonable to us because there's just enough truth in it, usually from a really painful chapter in our lives where we have not applied these promises. So we go, "Oh, that, that sounds right. That sounds about right." That's why when I was 40 years old, I went, "Oh, I probably should adopt a dog." And that's what I did because I did not believe these promises.
Yo, this book says wait. This book says the posture of perseverance, that's not passivity. It is absolutely not passivity. That is the door to a miracle. If you will stand and go, "No matter what's going on in my life, You are good, and You are sovereign, and You are merciful, and no good thing will You withhold from him whose walk is righteous or her who often stumbles. You are good. You're going to do it, Lord. I believe You're going to do it. I may be old and wobbly, but You're going to do it because You're a good God." What are you standing for? What are you waiting for? What miracle is on the other side of your perseverance?
Shelter's huge miracles that happen. I love the story of Anna because if you back up, you read in the middle of Luke 2 about this teenage couple named Joseph and Mary. And they bring this baby boy named Jesus, Emmanuel, God With Us, Wonderful Counselor. According to the book of Moses, they bring him to Temple in Jerusalem when he's eight days old because that's what the law of Moses said they had to do. It said the first male who opens the womb, in other words, the firstborn son in every family, you bring him to Temple and you present him before the Lord to be consecrated to the Lord. You present him before the Lord as an eight-day-old infant.
So you stop and think about Anna. She's 103, and she's in the girls' bathroom, she's refilling the paper towel dispenser. And she hears her best friend Simeon, who's also old as dirt, and he's in the temple. She hears him begin to sing because Dr. Luke says Simeon, this man had also prayed the same thing Anna had prayed: "Lord, don't take me home until I see. I don't care about anything else, Yahweh. Just let me see Jesus. Let me see Jesus." Most theologians think he's in his 80s based on some other documents. So he's an old man. She's an old woman. I don't know if they dated. It would be so cool if they did.
But when he sees this teenage couple walk into Temple, and Joseph is wearing a backpack from The Gap, and there's pigeons squawking in the backpack because they didn't have enough money for doves to sacrifice. They had to get the scratch-and-dent version of sacrifice because they were poor. And they come walking into the temple, and he's got pigeons in his backpack, and Mary is carrying an eight-day-old baby boy. And the second Simeon sees that baby, he goes, "It's Jesus! It's Jesus! He is the Savior of all mankind!" He begins to sing a song he's written himself. He's never sung it before. He begins to sing in Temple. And Anna's in the bathroom, and she hears the song. And because he's old, his voice is thin, and it's wobbly, and she thinks, "Oh, he's broken another hip." Charges into the temple so that she can help her friend. And this toward him down the aisle, she sees that baby.
And Anna, 103 years old, we're told, "And coming up at that very hour she began to give thanks to God and to speak of him to all who were waiting for the redemption of Israel." He's here! He's here! He's here! Y'all, holding up a sword and a shield and standing, that's not the posture of passivity. That's actually the posture of power to say, "He will do it. Lord, I'll walk where You tell me to walk. And until You tell me to move, I'm going to stand here with my front to the rest of the world, and I'm going to say, 'My God is a great God.'"
The two biggest miracles I've seen with my own eyes that happened in our family were on the other side of waiting. On the other side of waiting a long time. The first, you know about it, is my baby girl Missy. She was actually my third adoption attempt. I can't imagine life without her. She's not my hope; Jesus is my hope. But how kind that He gave me a kid who looks almost exactly like me. You know, most people can't tell she's adopted.
The second miracle happened two weeks after I committed to adopt Missy. Two weeks later, my mom had major surgery. And she went in, she had a five-hour surgery. And the surgeons came out and they said, "We think we've gotten all the cancer. We believe as a result of this surgery, your mom has a really good shot at living past this." And then three days later, when she was still in the hospital and her health was declining, the surgeons met with my sister and I again. And they said, "We actually can't explain why her health is declining. But if something doesn't turn around, her numbers are getting lower and lower and lower. And even though we think we got the cancer, we also think y'all need to prepare for your mama's death."
And my sister and I were keeping vigil at her bedside. They had intubated her. She wasn't speaking much. She was mostly out of it. But four days after the surgery, she opened her eyes and she kind of whispered, "I need to see your father." My sister looked at me because our dad, our stepfather, Dad Angel, had died a year before. And we thought she was just groggy from the meds. And she thought Daddy was still alive. And so my sister is not as Gabby as I am. And she thinks I'm closer to Mama. So she was like, "It's on you. You got to tell her."
And so I leaned down and I said, "Mama, I, I am so sorry, but, um, Daddy died last year. I said, 'Remember, Daddy? Daddy died in the hospital this time last year.'" And she said, "Not that Daddy. She said, 'I want to see your father. I want to see Everett.'" You know, my mom and my dad divorced when I was five. And it was as ugly a divorce as I've ever been witnessed to. A lot of abuse, extreme anger, huge animosity. I think they had spoken maybe two sentences in 40 years. My mother and my father pretty much hated each other. And so I, I wasn't sure how to respond. I said, "Oh, okay, Mama."
And I called Dad. This is the Daddy who had colon cancer that metastasized to lung cancer. And I said, "Daddy, you know, we're in the hospital with Mama, and she's asking for you." And he said, "All right, I'll be there in an hour." My Daddy comes swaggering down that hospital corridor. And I told you, he's like a mini, a mini John Wayne. He's just little, five-seven, 160 pounds soaking wet. I got Mama's jeans. She's actually little too. But anyway, he comes swaggering down the hallway. And he's, he's a quiet man, kind of a taciturn man. And he came up to my sister and I. He had called us when he got there, so we were outside Mama's hospital room. And he said, "I love you girls. Your mom and I need some privacy. Y'all stay out here. I'll be back in a minute." And he goes in.
And I turned to my sister and I said, "What if he puts a pillow over?" Like, I mean, I didn't know. You know, they hadn't seen each other in years and years and years. They hated each other. And I thought, "Oh crud, you know, we're going to be on Jerry Springer." And he didn't come out for about 30 minutes. And and I really was concerned. We didn't know what was happening. He came out about 30 minutes later and he said, "I love you girls. Your mama's gonna be okay. And I'll be back here tomorrow." And he just walked away. My sister and I were like, "..." And we walk into Mom's hospital room. And y'all, she is sitting up in bed. There's color in her cheeks. And this is as close to verbatim as I remember it, what my mother said. She said, "Your father prayed for me. He anointed me with oil, and I'm going to be fine." And I was just like, I mean, I thought they've given her that medicinal pot because I mean, they're, she can't even believe this.
And y'all, that was April of 2012. Um, until my father died, my Daddy Harper died January, uh, February 13th, 2013. And until my Daddy died, every single day he and my mama talked on the phone. And she saw him. They saw each other two or three times a week. It wasn't romantic. They just, they knew each other at their worst when they were kids, and God redeemed their story. And I, I was just amazed by it. That year for Christmas, went home to Orlando. And Mama said, "I've invited your dad to be here." And we have this big family Christmas where all my aunts, my first cousins, and my uncle come in. And we were at my Aunt Darlene's house that year. And I thought, you know, Mama has kind of romanticized this. And and she and Daddy are our friends now. But I thought, "Our family is not gonna accept Daddy because he was, you know, he was mean and really abusive when I was younger. And, you know, they're protecting their sister." And so I was nervous.
And Daddy comes walking in. I'll never forget it, y'all. It was a few weeks before he ended up being bedridden with hospice. He comes walking in. He's still got a little bit of John Wayne swagger. But when he opened the door at my Aunt Darlene's, every single one of my aunts, my uncle, and all of my first cousins ran and greeted him like a heroic soldier returning from the war. I mean, they just, all of them lined up to hug my Daddy. And I thought, "That is it. That is it. I've waited 40 years. I've stopped praying that my mama and my daddy would would ever reconcile or forgive each other." And I saw it. You know, she's the very last person with my father before he died. She was holding his hand, reading the Bible to my Daddy.
Your redemption happens. Some of us just have to learn to wait, to stand, to stand in the promises. He is good, and He does good, and ultimately everything will work out for our good and His glory. I want y'all to stand up, holding up your sword. And some of y'all are just gonna have to stand a whole lot longer and go, "I'm standing for my marriage. I'm standing for my children. I'm standing for the children I have yet to be a mama to. I'm standing for unbelievers in my family. I'm standing for my mean old Daddy. I am going to stand because He is good and He does good."