Lisa Harper | Theology for the Tenderhearted

The world is becoming increasingly proficient at telling stories that deny God. As such, we need thinking Christian to become as natural as breathing. Welcome to the Thinking Christian Podcast. I'm Dr. James Spencer. Through calm, thoughtful theological discussions, Thinking Christian highlights the ways God is working in the world and questions the underlying social, cultural, and political assumptions that hinder Christians from becoming more like Christ. Now, on to today's episode of Thinking Christian. Before we start today's episode, I want to take a moment to tell you about Useful2God.com. From online courses to free downloadable study guides, I'm confident you'll find something to help you live faithfully in today's world. You can also check out some of my books, including Christian Resistance, Serpents and Doves, and my most recent contribution, the D. L. Moody Essentials Collection. Coming this fall, we're also running a German Reformation tour. The tour runs from October 30th through November 9th, and we'll be visiting sites from Berlin to Munich. The booking deadline for the tour is May 31st, and spots are filling up fast. If you're interested in learning more about the Reformation, World War II, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, you can check out the tour at the link in today's show notes. As always, if you find this podcast valuable, take a second to like, share, and leave a positive review. It really does make a difference. And if you haven't yet, subscribe to our YouTube channel for even more content to equip and encourage you. Now, let's get into today's episode. Hey, everyone. Welcome to this episode of Thinking Christian. I'm Dr. James Spencer, and I'm joined by Lisa Harper today. Lisa is a Bible teacher, and she's done a lot of different things, but she's an author. And today we're going to be talking about her book, Jesus Shaped Life, how diving deeper into theology can transform us and our world with the radical kindness of God. And so I'm really excited to have Lisa on the show today. Lisa, welcome. Thank you so much, Dr. Spencer. I've heard you before, so this is kind of exciting. Well, that's very nice to hear. I was a big fan of Back Porch Theology when you did it. Oh, you're kidding! Yeah, yeah. I really enjoyed that. We thought, you know, when I was approached about doing a podcast, I was like, no stinking way. I was like, yeah, it's too busy. I don't have time. Well, then when my boss at Caleb just explained really the connect with podcasts, how it really is an on-ramp for people who are either disenfranchised with Christianity, with church as a whole. And he talked about the, really the outreach. I was like, okay, you know, I am nothing if not evangelistic. And I just love being able to talk to people who are disenfranchised about how so much of what we term Christianity tends to be more preference than really the way God described it and the way Jesus lived it out. And so I was like, oh, all right. So then I told him what I wanted to do and they're like, yeah, that won't work. And I was like, well, don't mean to be rude, but you're the one who invited me to the table. So we thought it would be Allison and Dr. Howard and my mother and Alison's husband and Dr. Howard's wife. And it would be just kind of us five and no more. And we've been really undone by the real legitimate interest people have in theology, that it's not this arcane academic subject matter, but it really is conversations about God. So thank you. We've, we've been kind of taken aback by the reception. Yeah, it's, it's really an engaging podcast and I think it It's very accessible, which I love. I have a buddy who teaches, used to teach undergraduate school and he always described what he did as he's a cartoonist. He's taking these really complex topics and he's making them accessible to undergraduate students. So, you know, his job is to sort of translate from the really heavy scholarship down to an undergraduate level. And I feel like I, I think about that comment whenever I listen to Back Porch Theology. It's just one of those where it just feels like you've got something really, really good where you're making these really difficult concepts more accessible to people and diving deep. So, yeah. I, you know, I still need that. I mean, my first couple of classes, one of the reasons I went to Denver Seminary is I'm a massive Craig Blomberg fan. And so sitting in my very first doctoral class at Denver Seminary and I knew well enough to not speak the first hour or two because I will, I will betray my own ignorance. And so I waited a while to ask my first question. I thought it was, you know, a really astute question for a budding doctoral candidate. And I'd been studying Blomberg for 30 years, you know, just in my, my goshogram. He was just, he's just such a seminal professor on especially synoptic gospels. Well, anyway, he's standing at the board. He's writing something in Greek. I'm having to Google to figure out because I cannot read Greek. I know just enough to, to make me really dangerous. He's writing something, you know, from the Septuagint. And I said something and I said, Dr. Blomberg, the pericope. And he literally stops, stops, Dr. Spencer, at the board and he turns around and he was like, Lisa, is it? And I was like, yes, sir. And he said, you do know it's pronounced pericopy. And I was like, no, sir, I did not. I've read it all these years. And I said, I would prefer passage. Not sure why we have to add all this elitism. Like the first two hours in my doctoral program, I just told the code that I need the cookies on the lower shelf. And so do you think we aren't careful with elitist academic language? We make concepts so austere that people go, oh, I'm just, I can't go there. And I'm like, yes, it's not about accruing knowledge as much as it is intimacy with Jesus. So let's, let's, as best we can, put things in more understandable vernacular. Yeah, I know, I know I'm doing it right when my wife's eyes don't glaze over at some point. You know, I notice her just sort of drifting off. Like I don't understand a word you're saying. I'm like, okay, I've gone too far. This needs to pull back. But she knows I'm a huge geek and would much prefer a book with, you know, 900 footnotes than, you know, something really, really simple. But I do think. Those are my favorites too. I actually fought in the book, and it's not that academic, but it is concepts distilled. But I fought for my footnotes to be in the pages instead of in the back. And they were like, at least nobody does that with trade books. I was like, but I love footnotes. That's right. I said, if you get them in the back, nobody's ever going to go there. But if somebody even just skims City of God, if they just skim some of these books, they're going to be so blessed. So I don't fight for much as a writer, but, but I, I always fight for footnotes actually on the pages instead of in the end notes. Yeah. I've lost that battle a couple of times, but I'm with you. End notes just aren't as functional for me. I like to be able to look right down and go, oh, okay, great. And then I get, you know, 50 other books that I need to buy later. Well, that's, that's how I'm cheating on my lit review to try to finish my thesis. I'm borrowing everybody else's citations. That's right. That's right. Oh, very good. Well, let's, let's get into a Jesus-shaped life because I, I'm interested to hear in the midst of everything else you're doing, what would have prompted you to say, I need to write a book called A Jesus-Shaped Life? What was, what was the driving force behind this? The driving force, great question, was my driving force for seminary was I adopted really late in life. I became a mom at the age of 50 and my little girl's from Haiti. And so I knew school with her not speaking English would be a bit of a, a grind, especially initially. And I thought, you know, I'll go back to school. I love to study. I'll go back and work on a doctorate, not for academic reasons, just because I think, you know, we see Jesus more clearly through God's word and Holy Spirit. And I love sitting under brilliant men and women who, who've been walking with Jesus, studying his word longer than I have. So I thought, well, I'll go back to school and we can do our homework together at the kitchen table. And what I was so taken aback, I didn't expect to just have this radical encounter with Jesus. I didn't expect to be so taken back by the kindness of God. I think, I think I just assumed I'd be accruing a lot more information and distilling concepts that I was already, you know, relatively adept in whether it was exegesis. And then learning things about things I really didn't know, wasn't super clear on. I thought, man, I need a little, you know, I need a few more handholds when it comes to a study of the Trinity. What I didn't expect was to have, to almost be regospeled, to have this really fresh encounter with Jesus. And I don't know why I hadn't thought, of course, if you dive into theology at its core,

And so that's that's it. It was as much a labor of love for me as it was, you know, a new book. Yeah, it's funny. My my wife and I often refer to my doctoral education, really my all of my education as the longest, most expensive discipleship process we could have ever gone through. And I think it's really true because when you're studying these things, it's hard not to. I don't know if if you're really sincere about studying them. And I think if you're approaching it with the perspective of this is God's word, this is something that I need to sit under this authority and have my life governed by it. It's very difficult not to study these things and be changed afterwards. And so it's just a yeah, I think that's a fantastic process to go through. It is, you know, you hear hermeneutical spiral. I remember memorizing that phrase when I was getting a master's and being quite impressed with myself that I had such a fancy multi-syllabic theological phrase now, you know, whip out in small groups and be impressive. But then I remember James sitting in, it was my second class. And I I've experienced a little bit of just some ache and angst along the way as a woman, as a single woman in ministry, but always want to be soft instead of strident. And I had never heard the takeaway on the daughters of Zelophehad the way I had in class that day. And I found myself so taken aback that, you know, 3,500 years before women marched for the right to vote, our creator redeemer is saying, I love my daughters. I love my daughters. I love my daughters and gave them some of the promised land. And so he was, you know, there's a there's some cultural. Some cultural boundaries that can really pinch if you feel like you're in part of the image bearers who is marginalized. And then you see that God is always effectively stepping over the fence of culture with redemption. And I remember sitting in my seat that day and when the whole crowd dissipated from class, I couldn't get out of my seat. I was just undone. And my professor had forgotten something. So he comes walking back into the classroom and I'm sitting in the class, you know, with tears streaming down my face. And you know how your professors because he didn't know me. He's now become a mentor. But I think he was thinking she needs to be in the counseling track instead of the theology track. But he asked me, he's like, are you OK? And I said, I'm just I said, yes, sir. I said, I'm just I'm just undone by the kindness of God. You know, I said, I had hoped he was true, but I think there is a corner of my heart that was a little bit emotionally agnostic. I had not seen all of the kindness of God that I was so desperate for because of my own finite dinky little brain. And and studying theology to me has been much more of a love story than an academic story. Yeah. Yeah. That's a great way to put it, too. I love it. Well, tell us a little bit about the book, A Jesus Shaped Life, because you do delve into some pretty hefty theological topics, but you do so in such a, I think, a really engaging way. Well, thank you. Very, very kind. You and my mom are saying things about it. Well, we dive into really the one of the foundational walls of Christian orthodoxy. You know, I know your listeners are much brighter than I am. Ortho comes from Greek for correct. Why we go to the orthodontist when we have crooked teeth and then doxy would be beliefs. And so our orthodoxy as Christians would be right beliefs that are informed by the Holy Scriptures and the Holy Spirit. And so some of those core walls of Christian orthodoxy would be the Trinity, would be the hypostatic union, would be community. You know, 98% of the imperatives. That's where God tells us to do something in the New Testament canon are set in the context of community. So we dive into things like that. Eschatology, not to be confused with scatology. I got those confused during my master's, James, and realized that's about hunters chasing animal scat, not about the doctrine of the end times. And so, you know, I am all the time having to go, Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean that. Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean that. Mispronouncing. I just massacre the Greek and Hebrew, but I try real, real sincere. But when you dive into all of those concepts that again can sound academic or lofty or a little austere and you find out at the core of all those things, our God says, Let's create male and female in our image. You see that one of the core verses of the Trinity, not that's, of course, where we get Imago Dei from our dignity that we were made in his image. So all of us, regardless of ethnicity or gender, are inherently valuable because we're made in God's image. But you also get that our God is in us. I love that Augustine says only the Christian God exists in a perfect community unto himself. And so on my loneliest day as a Christ follower, I may feel completely alone. I may feel like there's nobody in my corner. But the most basic concept of the takeaway is we're never actually alone. We have a God who exists in community, models community. And if you've put your hope in Jesus, then you are part of a family. I love going back to Ephraim and Manasseh, how Jacob crossed his arms, the right hand of blessing on the second son, effectively saying there's no hierarchy in God's family. And so to me, every single one of these concepts really goes back to a relational, compassionate God whom my publisher said, You're going to try to tie theology to the kindness of God. And I said, Oh, I think theology just is a megaphone for the kindness and the compassion of God. What other little G God in all the world religions lays down a scepter and glory and condescends to be close to us as Jesus did in his incarnate ministry? I can't wrap my mind around the fact that John got to lean against his breast. But when he envisioned a glorified Jesus, you know, it blew his hard drive and he just fell out. And I'm like, Dang, we have this God who is transcendent. There is no other like him. And yet he allows me to lean into his presence and in effect suits for me to accommodate my humanity, not to have disdain for my weakness, but to envelop my weakness. Oh, I'm just I'm undone by the character of God. But it always comes back to the compassion and the mercy and the grace of God. So I think if you get transcendence, but you don't get accessibility, that it's like, you know, how Jesus said to the Pharisees in John's gospel account, you've memorized Torah. You understand the scriptures, but you've missed me. If we can pronounce all the hard theological multi-syllabic terms, but there's no intimacy in our relationship with Jesus. I'm like, you've missed the main point. Yeah. And I don't know whether you've run across a lot of it, but I mean, a lot of the older Old Testament scholarship really did focus on God's presence. I think that's seeing a Renaissance as we come into some of the newer theological works that are really recognizing the temple symbolism, let's say, of creation and the symbolic value of the tabernacle and even getting into the book of Hebrews and Revelation, obviously, and seeing that sanctuary symbolism all across the Old and New Testaments, because that's that's our access. You know, that was the point of access there that came in after the fall. Now you have these tabernacles, these temples, these spaces, the high priest, like all of that sort of functionality that we view as sometimes can view as very strange and odd and, you know, cultic sacrifices. And, you know, we don't, we don't need to look at Leviticus and those laws. But I think that what I guess I'm getting at is that expression, that imminence of God's presence was something that was to be strived for. Right. It was the driving force really behind a lot of what happened in the Old Testament. And it was the longing of the hearts of the Israelites to be in God's presence in that way. And so you see even laments like, am I ever going to make it back to worship at the temple? These were moments where they're trying to draw near to God's eminence and really, you know, understand that presence in our midst. Yeah. Excuse me, Dexter. No, you're fine. I love that you brought up Leviticus. We actually dive into Leviticus at one point in this book because I used to avoid Leviticus like sticking my hand in a wounder. I was like, I don't want to talk about blood and scabs. But when you get that prior to God's people and Leviticus, blood was considered evil. You know, all the pagan religions thought the demonic activity came in with the blood. For me as a woman, just thinking practically who brought more blood into the camp, men or women? Well, it was women. And so you see this cultural misogyny that they assume that my great, great, great, great. And then some grandmamas when they were having children, that they were bringing evil into the camp. And then you get to Leviticus and the beginning is an invitation. God is saying, if you want to have relationship with me, here's some parameters for relationship. But then from the.

Very beginning, he's saying, no, no, no, blood is unclean. Blood isn't evil. Blood is unclean. The stigma that lifted off the women of their day is wildly liberating. And so for us to see Leviticus as, oh, let's just keep that kind of in the past, I'm like, oh my heavens, the promise of Leviticus, Leviticus 7, the thanksgiving offering. When he says, you know, bring your meat, bring your bread. Don't you love that bread's always there? I think keto is from the devil. But he says, bring your meat, your bread, make your sacrifice. And then you have to eat all of it before the sun comes up. And so, you know, if they were poor, they might have sacrificed a sheep or a goat, 20, 30 pounds of meat. If they, you know, if they were wealthy, they would have bought, brought a bull, so 300 to 400 pounds of meat. All that bread, they give a couple of steaks to the priest, and then they've got all that meat somewhere between 30 and 300 pounds-ish of meat, all that bread, and they've got to eat that within less than 24 hours. There's no stinking way one family can consume that. So even in those parameters, God is saying, when you're thankful for me, I want you to have a party. I want you to have a block party. And just imagine the people who are invited that don't know. They just, they need some more warm bodies to consume all the meat. And I can just imagine those original Israelites going, come to my house. My wife just had a healthy baby. Come to our house and celebrate. Our crops were plentiful this year. And you go, even that synergy of praising God that that should be reflected in community, that's not just a Book of Acts takeaway. That's from the very beginning. We were made really in the context of a community God. We're called to exercise our faith in the context of community, I think. In my personal experience, being a first-world American Christian, I have been tacitly taught to privatize my faith. Everything's been about personal, personal, personal. Well, of course, we don't get saved in community. My hope in Jesus, that is a very personal experience. But after that, I'm called to be in community. Loneliness came with a fall. So even that takeaway for some people goes, oh. Good theology actually creates bridges instead of distance between us and others. Let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed? With inflation, market volatility, and ongoing global uncertainty, more families are taking a closer look at whether their retirement plan is truly built to hold up. And many are finding that adding a layer of protection makes a lot of sense. Sanctuary Metals is a Christian-owned company that helps families strengthen their retirement savings with physical gold and silver through a gold IRA. During uncertain times, many people look to precious metals as a way to add stability when other assets may be under pressure. If you'd like to explore whether a gold IRA is a good fit for your situation, Sanctuary Metals makes it easy to get started. Text GUIDE to 94878 to receive your free retirement defense guide or call 888-958-6579 to speak with one of their knowledgeable team members. Again, text GUIDE to 94878 or call 888-958-6579. Yeah, yeah, and I think sometimes we... I think back on Leviticus. I think back on some of the odder parts of the Old Testament, and you do see those echoed back in the New Testament. You do have to understand them within a covenantal sort of framework. And I think, actually, that's part of what, when you talk about the privatization, my tendency is to think, we've privatized because we've misunderstood we're in covenant. And that covenant relationship isn't really something that's natural for us. It's not something that we have normally in our culture. We have more contractual relationships. We have familial relationships, obviously. Marriage is one of those that's probably more covenantal than anything else, but it's still only between two people. And so, as we've lost that sort of notion of covenant and what that means and what it all entails, I think we have sort of retreated to a private space where it's just my Jesus and my God and my life. And, yeah, I'll connect with other people occasionally, but really, it's my Jesus, my life, and my everyday living. I love all the dead guys. I have so many pretend theological boyfriends, but a recent... Jesus now, but I don't know if you're a Newbigin fan. I'm a big Leslie Newbigin fan. Oh, yeah, yeah. And I love how he says, and of course, I'm paraphrasing. He says it much wiser than this, but effectively, he says that community is the most effective hermeneutic of the gospel. And so, when I'm not in community, my understanding of God, my connection with Jesus is blurrier than it has to be. And, of course, we need those times of solitude and silence where we go away, just like Jesus did with his heavenly father. But more often than not, when I get in a ditch, when I am not walking with the Holy Spirit, it's because I'm either embarrassed by what I'm doing, or I give in to this martyrdom of kind of my Elijah. I'm the only one doing this. And I've backed up from accountability and from healthy community. And when I do, man, I'm just headed toward a train wreck when I'm not. I think that's one of the things I've seen even post-COVID is a lot of people. And I would say certainly in America, I have most of my, I have a lot, a lot of friends who are pastors and people got so comfortable, you know, in their stretchy pants, you know, drinking a mocha and cherry picking their favorite pastors that now they're like, I mean, I don't know the church actually has to be physical. I mean, I have great Zoom church and I'm like, man, you are, you are settling for McDonald's when you could have filet because we need to be shoulder to shoulder. We need to be, you know, I love where the pastor of the Hebrews says, don't forsake the assembling. So of course, if you have a medical issue of, you know, there's, there's a few nuances to that, but for most of us, we need to be up in it shoulder to shoulder with each other. And, and I need, I just need community. But I think how cool to that we have a God who exists in that ontological equality. When people paint him as you know, a unibrowed bully as a narcissist, I'm like, you don't understand the Trinity and not that I understand it. I've got to tell you another crazy story. Since you are PhD doctor Spencer, I'll, I'll tell you all my dumb stuff. I was getting in my last class in my doctoral residency at Denver seminary. Great professor, Dr. Kathleen Mulhern. And we were talking about how just some of the common misunderstandings of the Trinity tend to be because of the way we think as humans. And modalism is the most common because it, it sounds right. But you know, and she said, of course, and she's talking to us very graciously as if of course we would never make this mistake. And she said, you know, I mean, you think of one of the more common modalistic metaphors. And she said, you need to think of H2O, water, ice, and steam. And most of us heard that in youth group. But that's all modalistic because ice can't be simultaneously steam. Steam can't simultaneously be water, etc. And I could feel my neck getting splotchy because it's the most recent trade book I had written like two years before. I'd used exactly that metaphor as just kind of the easy layman's term for the Trinity. I was like, oh, I'm such a moron. But you know, we can't perfectly get some of these concepts. You just still process through our human mind. It's going to get distorted at some level, mine worse than most. But I think, mind God, that he doesn't chastise us. If we come before him with a pure heart, doing our best to be a brand, that I am, I am constantly unlearning bad theology. And I love that he's wooing me into that. And it's all about getting closer to Jesus. It's less about me getting it right and more about me understanding how much he loves me. What a good God he is. When I think that really does tie back into your conversation about community because there's, I don't know whether you're familiar with John Verveke, but he's a cognitive psychologist and he talks about participatory knowing, sort of knowing we can only accumulate having done something. And so usually the analogy I use is like we all, you know, if I talked about riding a bicycle uphill and, you know, and I say, you know how your quads burn when you ride a bike uphill? Right. Well, you only know that because you've experienced it. That's right. You know, you, you like actually can almost feel it if you really think about it hard enough. You're like, oh yeah, I remember those. Right. And so I think that so much of what we do with the words is important. Like explaining the Trinity well from a verbal perspective is crucial. But I mean, there's book-length treatments of that, and it's very complex and it's extremely hard. But we can also catch a vision of it through community. We start to know it a little bit different.

in community and now that sort of supplements what we're doing with the words and we can begin to understand it that much differently. Have there been things in your own study where you feel like you thought you knew it and then you realized what you had was so blurry and then God elucidates it and you go, oh, oh wow, I was, you know, I was three degrees separated from what he was trying to teach me. Oh yeah. I mean, I think probably the one I usually go back to an awful lot is the notion of what God gives. So understanding gift, I think was a big revelation for me. You know that God gives us things, and we have gifts, and he blesses us, and he gives us all these amazing things. But uh when my first son was born, he was wrongly diagnosed. They told us from an early scan that he was going to have some sort of genetic disease. And so I had a buddy who, you know, just in the midst of us trying to sort of wrestle with, okay, our first child is going to be born with some sort of disability. And he said, you need to mourn the child that you thought you were going to have and embrace the child that God is giving you. And even though my son turned out, didn't have a genetic disease, didn't have a genetic problem, I think that that process God was so kind to me because my son and I are completely different in so many ways. I think I would have been, um, I would have wrestled with him being so different from me had I not been through that process that like just shake me out of this idea that, you know, he's going to be the big football player and he's going to do, you know, you know, whatever I'm going to live vicariously through him. Just allowing him to be who he was going to be was the gift. And I think that really carried through in a lot of other ways in a lot of different aspects of my life. Um, but yeah, I mean, that was one of those where I just kind of sat back and I was like, how did I not catch that one? Right. And I think you're so right, James, in that when we bring our expectations to the table and then he rewrites the story and over and over, I'm 61 and I'm so grateful for what he's still done. I thought 61 would be a scooter and a flag, you know, to still be and learning and, and there've been so many things where like you, I missed what was right in front of me. You know, my, my, where my heart was. And again, that I, I told you kind of my doctorate, my doctoral thesis work is really more on theodicy that our God is always good. Um, even though there is evil, there is hardship. We live in a broken world. Um, you know, my, my little girl from Haiti. Has some medical issues and she is very different for me in the most glorious ways. And I think I would have missed it if I had been a young mom because my expectations were my expectations were a little more concrete than my faith in God being a good God, even when I can't see around the corner of my circumstances. So there's something about longevity with God, you know, being able to look back and go, oh wow, I've never seen his back. He has always been faithful. So there's a, there's more ease. My life is harder than I would have prayed, but there's more ease now at this age and stage of the game because I just, I trust him more than I trust my expectations. My expectations have been far too small for most of my life. Yeah, I think there's a, I've come to talk about discipleship. I say, uh, discipleship opens up opportunities that are abundantly beyond anything we could ask or think, sort of playing off of Ephesians 3.20. And I've come to believe that that's really true. And I, I always think back when I had a mentor in seminary who said, you won't get any respect in academia until you, you know, have a gray hair and a pot belly. And, you know, at the time I was just, I was newly married, you have absolutely no respect whatsoever right now. I know, right. I've resisted the respect. Um, but I, I, I get what he's saying now. You know, at 47 versus when I started my, uh, my theological studies, which was in my twenties, I get it. There was just so much. There's something about life. And I don't know whether it's marriage and kids that it's, you know, it's the secret formula. I don't think that, but I do think that you have to live a life studying theology, you know, doing the hermeneutical spiral, right. Reading the scriptures, understanding theology, going through experiencing, circling back to the scriptures, you know, and just letting it wind. And the more time you have doing that, you develop a different perspective on these things. And the theology starts to what used to be in standard definition is now in high definition. That's right. That's right. Um, I, I think, um, I was reading the, the Velveteen Rabbit to my daughter not long ago. There's some English books that even though she's 15 now, we're going backwards because she's beginning to get colloquialisms and so forth. And as I was reading about the old skin horse, he was talking about, you need to have some fur rubbed off and everything to really love. Well, I thought, man, that's good theology. That's just really, really good theology. Um, when you were talking about participatory knowledge, one of the professors at Denver Seminary that I never got a chance to sit under, he had passed before I started my program there. His name is Dr. Bruce Dimerest. and he was a, a pretty, um, well received, well respected Old Testament scholar and was very respected as an academic and a theologian at some level. And his wife went to a retreat and he writes very candidly about how he just was gonna eye roll and like, I don't wanna get any of this touchy feely stuff. And he got wrecked, almost like, uh, you know, there, there's so many of the old saints that I love their stories, um, the way they got wrecked. I love, um, Thomas Chalmers, the explosive power, the new affection. Dr. Demarest says that he realized with all of his, not, not to disregard what God had revealed through a study of scriptures, but he said he realized he had really missed Jesus because he had not trusted experience. He had been taught to only trust datum and not to trust his heart. And I think when you, when you recognize orthodoxy, Francis Schaeffer says biblical orthodoxy without compassion is surely the ugliest thing in the world. And, you know, you mentioned family and I agree with you. I was single for a long time without kids, so I never wanna say it takes being a parent. Right. Um, and I'm still looking for a husband. So 1-800-588, please call Lisa for a date. Um, but, but I do think it's life in relationship and failure and having to say I'm sorry and confession and communal life that you start going, if I know it, but I only know it cognitively and I cannot be Jesus shaped, Christoformic with this understanding of who he is or whatever it is, eschatology, the Trinity. If this isn't making a difference in my relationship first and foremost with my creator Redeemer, secondly, with the people he allows me to rub shoulders with, then it's just noise. It doesn't matter. Yeah. Yeah. I can remember just a fun story. My first class ever. Uh, I just had, my son had just been born. I went from like, I think he was born on a Thursday. I had to teach on a Saturday and they called me on the Wednesday because somebody else had dropped out. So they said, Hey, can you teach Old Testament survey this Saturday? And I'm like, sure. It's the first class. You don't say no. Like, yes, I'm doing it. Right. So first opportunity. And I remember driving to that class thinking to myself, this is gonna be amazing. You know, I remember how my seminary professors would stand up front and they had all this, you know, they were just conveying knowledge and people were sitting in the class just eating it up. I mean, I walked in the classroom and I mean it was like 40 year olds, 50 year olds, 60 year olds. And when they started introducing themselves and they're talking about the, you know, I've been in ministry for 25 years. I've been doing this for, you know, I'm just like, they've been doing this longer than I've been alive. Right. And I, I think it was just, there are those little experiences in my life where I, you know, in the moment, they're really hard. But when I look back on them, I just see the hand of God sort of nudging me going. It's not the way you think it is. It's going to be something different than this. And, you know, so I had to sort of recalibrate real quick and be like, okay, this needs to be more of a discussion. I shouldn't just, you know, try to try to, you know, impress these people because I'm not that impressive, right? Yeah. And, and so, and I think that carried through in the rest of, whenever I teach, even afterwards, even if I was, you know, sort of the oldest and, uh, most knowledgeable person in the room on my, the way I just

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When I first moved to Nashville right out of, it was long before you were born, Spencer, but I moved to Nashville to work for a youth ministry and oh, my heavens, I got, whoo, I thought I was bringing something to the table. I got just served every day with kids to hang out with. But anyway, my boss way back then, he had a real strong Southern accent and was interesting, but he said, Lisa, when you look at a fruit tree, as soon as that fruit falls off the tree, it starts to rot. He said, but as long as it hangs on the tree, it's still growing. And he said, just try never to come off the tree. And as simple as that was, there have been a lot of times in my life because just simply because of my age and I've been in ministry for a long, long time, 40 years, sometimes people will attribute wisdom to me. And I think, guys, don't ever read your own press release because as soon as I stop learning, I'm a, you know, and I love, I love, like for me, I love when people show intellectual humility. Anytime I've been with a professor who says, what do you think? And I'll think, I'm not going to talk about Isaiah. You studied the text of Isaiah for 40 years. I'm not going to say anything, but they genuinely want to know what. And that slays me. I love intellectual humility. Yeah, I'm always amazed. I mean, I just finished teaching a class at my church on Thursday nights on Genesis. And I've been through Genesis, like, that feels like a thousand times, right? You know, I've taught Genesis multiple times. Every time I do it, somebody asks a question that I haven't thought of. Every time I do it. It doesn't matter. Somebody will notice something in the text that I just had breezed past because I guess I'm too familiar with it or whatever. You know what I mean? Like, and it's just every time I'm like, yeah, I don't know. Never noticed that before. Not too long ago, we were talking about Genesis 15, my favorite passages in the blood covenant. But not too long ago, I was with my mentor professor, Dr. Howard, and he said, you know what I love about that passage? And of course, I thought he was going to talk about, that's the first theophany that what the precedent that says, the mercy of God going through the blood covenant, he goes, God's mercy with the Assyrians. And I was like, what? I had not even seen the Assyrians in Genesis 15. I was like, I didn't know there were mentioned in Genesis 15. And I thought I knew that it's one of my favorite passages. And I agree. You know, I love that Scripture is not, it is supernatural. And I don't get that, but there's always more. And Dr. Craig Keener has become a, kind of a mentor and a dear friend. And he says, and I'm paraphrasing, he says it better than this. Matter of fact, when I told him, he said this to me, he said, I've said that? But you know, Dr. Keener, when he talks about Jesus, he weeps. Just the most humble, humble, brilliant man. But he says, if you get out of the Bible, what you're expecting to get out of the Bible, you need to change your expectations because it's always bigger and it's always better. And that's certainly been my experience. Yeah, yeah. Well, tell me a little bit, because I think I've addressed this on the show a number of different times, you know, sort of Christlikeness, imitation of Christ. When you say Jesus-shaped life in the book, I think we're kind of getting at it, right? Maybe how we get there. But what do you envision that Jesus-shaped life to look like? It's pretty, it's, you know, I'd go back to a word that you've taught me, I've learned. I knew I'd learned something from you, but participatory knowledge. When you participate in your own, what Holy Spirit is doing to make all of us more Christ-like, when you participate in that, I'm real cognizant of the places where I am not Christomorphic. I'm an impatient woman. Trust does not come easily to me. I tend to be wary. There's some abuse in my background. And so I'm much better at being a dutiful Christ follower than I am in being delighted in. I'm still a bit wary when it comes to being held by Jesus. I had a friend recently say, I hate it when you say being held by Jesus. And I was like, wow, that's kind of startling. And he said, I just don't think men identify with that. And I was like, really? Because a man modeled it. Have you studied John? And I think anywhere I feel myself poked, it's usually fear. And so I think all of us to be conformed to the image of Christ, it looks different in all of us because we all have a different trajectory. And so people will be convicted in different ways, even for you to recognize with the birth of your son, where have I made an idol of my own experience? I want my son to love football or to love this. And you recognize that's not, if God's boundary lines for us fall in pleasant places, then maybe I've made an idol out of my own boundary lines. And so for me, it's being very, very alert as to what God is doing in us instead of what we hope he does in us. Again, my hopes, my dreams oftentimes have been far too small. I would have never, I wouldn't have written my story the way it's played out and I couldn't have written it this redemptive. And so I think Christoformity at its most simple is how can I be closer to Jesus myself? I want a more vibrant, real relationship with my Savior, with my Redeemer. I want the gravitas. I want to be undone the way John was undone. When I say a prayer and quickly say in the name of Jesus, I want to stop myself and go, oh wow, I'm actually confessing that the blood of Jesus that he sacrificed on my behalf is the only thing that mediates me to a holy God. And so let me never pray that as if that's a rabbit's foot. So I think it's being very cognizant of, I would say, hypostatic union, of the transcendence of Jesus and what a miracle it is that we can approach his throne. But then the fact that we can approach it as a mercy seat because he's an empathetic high priest. He condescended to be accessible to us. I want that to inform every single thing I do. This is, I'll tell you with a quick illustration, a story that happened recently better than I can wrap words around this. I was at a women's event. I do a lot of women's events recently. And it was, it was a, it wasn't a big event. There were only four or 500 women there, but it was a real tight space. And at the end, we had this time of prayer and the woman who was speaking, she just said, you know, instead of just saying, we're going to pray for each other, let's go ahead and practice, you know, intercessory prayer right now. Let's pray for each other. And she said, I just feel kind of impressed to, to call out loneliness. I just feel like there's a lot of women struggling with loneliness. These women start standing up all over the room. And it was in the American South, which can be a bit of a, you know, we're all tempted to wear Spanx and matching sweater sets. And so even the vulnerability of standing up saying I'm lonely in a setting of faith, I thought was really courageous. Well, there's this woman, woman who stood up at the front and James, I mean, the second she stood up, it's like the dam broken her and she just began to sob. And I thought, oh my goodness, because she was on the front row. She was right next to the stage. And I thought she just, she just needs another human. And I thought I've got nothing. If not I can hug like a boss. So I thought I'm going to hustle and make my way to this woman and just hug her. She doesn't need to stand sobbing like that by herself. She needs something tactile. So I get, you know, make my way to this woman and I just envelop her in a bear hug. And you know, I'm old enough now that usually I can hug people and there's nothing weird. Um, you know, hugging spiritual Nana. So I just grab this woman and I'm just, I mean, we are just bear hugging and she is just heaving into me. And I'm holding her

Like she catches up on her prayer life. And after four or five minutes, it gets really awkward. I mean, this woman and I are locked in this embrace. I can't back up because the stage is right there. She can't back up because the chairs are so tight. And we're just locked in this very intimate that now feels like almost humorously awkward because I can feel her sweat. She can feel mine. And so I back up kind of my head because I'm not going to let her go because she's still crying. But I back up just to kind of use a little levity to acknowledge this is weird. This is a little weird. And she goes, I'm sorry. And I said, oh, no, no, no, no. You don't have to apologize. This is, I mean, this is life on life. This is what Jesus talked about. We get to love each other and to mourn with those who mourn. And she goes, no, I'm sorry. And again, I'm kind of like, oh, no, you don't have to worry about crying. Tomorrow will be me crying. You hold me up. And she goes, no, I'm sorry. I just got a lot of snot in your hair. And I was like, oh, it was so powerful because then I was the next person going up to speak and I couldn't get to the restroom. It was very apparent that the residue of her heartache was in my hair on the big screens with everybody else. And I just got tickled. And that night I was washing my hair and I thought, you know, I've been on the road 170 days this year. I've spoken at, you know, a ton of events, been to a ton of conferences. I think that's the most Christlike thing I've done in 12 months was be close enough to another image bearer that the residue of her heartache got in my hair. And James, I sat down in my shower and just began to weep because I thought the king of all kings gets the residue of our heartache on him and doesn't recoil from us. You know, he knew when he laid down the scepter in glory that he would be picking up a towel to wash Judas feet. That's so much more personal than the phrase hypostatic union. But that's what I want to be shaped like. I want Jesus, but he calls me his ambassador. And so to be willing to lean toward the other image bearers I get to rub shoulders with, I think for all of us, it looks different. For me, it looks like engaging more in dialogue than diatribe. It looks like being inside my own weariness to lean into intimacy first with Jesus and with others. It's going to look different for all of us, but I do think it involves us being alert and us really paying attention to the posture he took. He takes throughout Scripture, but certainly during his incarnate ministry. I love that idea of, well, number one, I think the story is really a wonderful illustration of what Christ did for us. I mean, here you are, you sort of, you're in a situation where looking pristine is going to be relatively important, at least at the beginning. But at the end of the day, you go up there and speak and you're mushed by the, you know, the sort of the warp and woof of ministry. I mean, that's a really beautiful picture. And that's what Christ really did do for us. I mean, he gave up his pristine existence to come and humble himself and live in the dirt with us. And it's just what he did. But I also think there is something really profound about recognizing that, number one, you know, so often we're never, we're not going to connect with God if we just do what we want to do. Our desires have to be set aside to really understand what it is, who he is, what he wants us to do, and to allow him to show up. There's something, I think, when you say it's, you know, sort of each of us have this journey that we're on toward Christlikeness. I think mine has always been more not by my strength, but by his. You know, that sort of idea. And you have to sort of embrace the vulnerability. Otherwise, you're just using the gifts that God gave you. And you may acknowledge that to some degree, but if you're not being vulnerable, he really won't show up. You won't see him. Don't you think that's the heart of sound, biblically informed theology? It's less about learning and more about living of what we have to study to begin to grapple with these concepts revealed in Scripture. But if you're not living it, if it's just cognitive, then that's not a good theology was meant to be lived. Yeah. I mean, you know, I always go back to the Great Commission. Jesus doesn't say learn about everything I taught. He says, learn to observe all I commanded. And so it's not that the two are mutually exclusive to your point. You have to know about them in order to do them, but you can't stop with learning about. You actually have to learn to. And there's there is absolutely something to that. Is that sort of, you know, just my favorite Greek word because it's walk. It's walk. You got it. You got to put, you know, you've got to put your feet in the water and the Jordan real will roll back when it's flood stage. But you've got to participate in this in this life. He's given us where we're called to be stars that shine like the universe. You got to get out there in the dark if you're going to shine. Well, we're about out of time. I've really enjoyed this conversation. I think what I want to ask is sort of the last question here is as people seek to live this Jesus shaped life, what advice would you give them? Obviously, you went back for a doctoral degree because you kind of gave the story. You had this desire in your heart. You wanted to go and learn and you wanted it to be, you know, something where you were growing in Christ and going and doing a doctoral degree was your way of doing that. That was largely mine too. Like I've had that experience, but, you know, a lot of people probably aren't going to do that. So any advice for people who are really thinking, how do I engage theology in the way that you're talking about? What does that look like? I'd say start at the beginning. You know, like we broke down that word theology into the two Greek root words, theos, God, logos, phrases or conversations. And so I'd say pay attention to where you're talking about God. Pay attention to where you're asking questions about God. Pay attention to where your heart has become rote with regards to a relationship with God. And for me, I had to take a spiritual inventory. I do this on a pretty regular basis of where do I look like Jesus? Where am I shaped like Jesus with compassion, with kindness? And of course, he, you know, the gospel is the extension of death to those who are dying. So there's also a place where you see Jesus is not, you know, the dance around the shore of Galilee with hair extensions. There is a very confrontational side to Jesus. But it was usually, you know, it was dialogue. It's just there was conviction. But I want to be really alert to where I look like Jesus and then real alert to what I'm running from because I tend to, I tend to back up from anything that would cause undue exposure. I'm still sometimes afraid somebody will look under the hood of my life and find me to be a fraud. And then I'm fearful of anything that would cause me heartache. And I think, okay, Jesus was called the king of all kings, was called a fraud by the religious, you know, the players of his day. And he leaned into that. And Jesus was crucified by those he came to save. So I'm like, okay, where am I avoiding pain? And pain was part of his incarnate ministry. And oftentimes in the economy of God, it's a promotion. It's your shoulders are strong enough to carry this in a way that will bring me glory. And usually it involves a little bit of discomfort for me. There's always, it's always joyful, but I've found there's more joy for me when I'm willing to kind of step over that. That line that line of demarcation between, oh, I've really gotten comfortable. I don't want to be comfortable in my relationship with Jesus. I wanna, I wanna be engaged and have fun and have passion, have conviction and all of that, but I don't want to get wrote. I want it to always be fresh. I want to always be getting closer to him. Very cool. I love that. Well, Lisa, it's been a pleasure talking to you. I'm glad we got to do this and it was just awesome meeting you. So great to meet you face to face. I love your work. Now you've made me go. I want to go back to Genesis. Have you written something on Genesis that I can? I've got a few articles out there, but no, no, no books or anything fun like that. Okay, so where's the Genesis book? We need a fresh book on Genesis. Maybe it's in the works. Yeah. A couple other projects beforehand and then maybe I'll get to it. Well, thank you so much, Dr. Cesis. It's been an honor. Yeah, thank you. And everybody, I'll put the link to A Jesus Shaped Life in the show notes. I really recommend this book. And, you know, as you've heard from Lisa today, it's gonna be a really accessible, really helpful book. So I encourage you to go pick it up from Baker Publishing, Revell Publishing, I think is their imprint that you published under. And just really appreciate you being here, Lisa, and really

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