135: The Hidden Treasure Of Difficult Times: Let’s Stop Faking It Through The Hard Stuff with Lisa Harper

March 8, 2021

Do you live your life trying to avoid pain? Maybe you’ve pretended everything is fine even though you feel like you are crumbling inside. While most people would never choose to go through a difficult season, we have all walked through some very dark days. In Episode 135, we interview Lisa Harper about the hidden treasure of difficult times and why it’s important not to fake it through the hard stuff of life.

In This Episode, You Will Hear About:

What this pandemic can help us learn.
Why “faking it ’till we make it” is a horrible idea.
How to stop pretending everything is fine and what to do instead.
How Jesus is enough…even in really difficult circumstances:
1. When you are single and parenting
2. When you lose a loved one
3. When you are hurt by other people, especially Christians
4. When you are learning what it means to grieve with hope

Resources Mentioned During the Episode:

Purchase a copy of Lisa Harper’s devotional: Life: An Obsessively Grateful, Undone by Jesus, Genuinely Happy, and Not Faking It Through The Hard Stuff Kind Of 100-Day Devotional
To learn more about Lisa Harper, go to lisaharper.net
Are you looking for more encouragement during this time? Listen to our previous episodes:

Quotes and Tweets:

Honest humility ushers in freedom. @lisadharper
The Word of God is not just a plumb line, it is a lifeline. @lisadharper
Comparison thinking makes us feel smug or it makes us feel small. @lisadharper
If you’re in a disillusioned, despairing kind of lonely season, I strongly encourage you not to limp into a corner with your back to the bride of Christ. Instead, find a motley crew of passionate—albeit flawed—Christ-followers to assist you as you hobble toward healing. Find two or three sweet-spirited saints. @lisadharper
Take comfort in the fact that you can hurl all the sad, angry, and disappointed words you’ve been saving up toward the heavens because God is perfectly safe to share them with. @lisadharper
I realized that my old habit of not entrusting God with my grief had also greatly hindered my capacity to access His compassion. @lisadharper
One of the most valuable gifts we can give the world around us—a culture that’s obviously wrestling in the dark with deep pain—is to quit pretending like we’ve never ached, and instead authentically testify to God’s ability to heal us. To meet us in the dark and to help us find our way forward. @lisadharper
Trusting God with my hurt stretched my heart in such a way that it could carry a lot more love. In my experience, the loveliest blooms grow in soil that has been softened by tears. @lisadharper
Yes, we live in a broken world that is marred by gut-wrenching loss and great grief, and global pandemics, but God’s compassionate presence is never absent no matter how dark or difficult the season. @lisadharper

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Meet Lisa Harper:

Lisa Harper is an engaging, hilarious communicator as well as an authentic and substantive Bible teacher that many enjoy hearing in person. She holds a Master of Theological Studies from Covenant Seminary and a doctorate-in-progress at Denver Seminary. She’s been in vocational ministry for thirty years and has written fifteen books and Bible study curriculums, but says her greatest accomplishment by far is that of becoming Missy’s (her adopted daughter from Haiti) mama! They live on a hilly farmette south of Nashville, TN, where they enjoy eating copious amounts of chips, queso, and guacamole.