With The Perrys - Church Girl with Dr. Sarita Lyons

Episode Date: August 5, 2024

Dr. Sarita Lyons has written a book to encourage Black women specifically – based on their unique lived experience – and she sits down with the Perrys to talk about it. She also shares about her faith journey of spiritual confusion. When she went to college, she started to embrace African spiritualism with the Christian faith of her childhood but quickly learned that you can’t mix Jesus with false gods. Church Girl: A Gospel Vision to Encourage and Challenge Black Christian Women, is available for pre-order now, or grab it wherever you buy books on August 20, 2024. Follow Dr. Sarita Lyons: https://www.instagram.com/drsaritalyons/ Subscribe to the Perrys' newsletter: https://withtheperrys.myflodesk.com/zhfus4jx1s Join Preston's discipleship community for men: https://www.patreon.com/PrestonPerry/membership To support the work of the Perrys, donate via PayPal: https://paypal.me/withtheperrys Shop BOLD Apparel: boldapparel.shop Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hi, Preston Perry. Hey, Jackie O'Perry. How are you? I'm doing good. Well, I'm not doing all the way good. Why not? Because you're not doing good. Oh, I mean, you know.

It's becoming a habit or a pattern that when we have these podcasts, there's some kind of affliction in my body. The enemy would be like, no, make her sick, killer. She's out here giving truth. Killer is crazy. How's your teeth going? Oh, man. You got Envisaline. I got Envisal.

You got a rubber band on there. Shout out to mint, mint orthodonics in Atlanta, who making sure we get our little tea situation straight. Pun intended. Yeah, like literally straight. If you want a good dinner in Georgia, ment orthodontics is the way to go. But it's good.

It's just when I transition a week to week. With the trays. With the trays. They just become so tight. And every time I try to eat, I can't eat steak or chicken. I got to eat soup.

It feels like I'm an old person because my teeth hurt so bad. How's yours going? Because I, you know what? What's funny is when I went to the dentist the other day, I said, how long I got to keep my rubber bands? I got to have rubber bands on my business line. And I said, man, Jackie don't have to have rubber bands. He said, y'all got different journeys.

She said, your teeth is very crowded. I said, you didn't have to say all that. I said, you didn't have to add the crowded part. You could have just say it. The journey was very kind. It was like, y'all got different journeys. Your teeth throwing up gang, sign. How does that make you feel?

It made me feel insecure a little bit. I was like, bad. Like, you see me. Anyway, I'm just, I'm thankful we can go through the Invisaline process together so we can both, you know, share our own, like, issues with the tracks. You know this. People don't know this. I kind of felt the way that she was kind of closing your gap.

Why? Because your gap was just, you're beautiful with it. Thank you. So I think I'm going to miss it a little bit. That's fine. I got a lot of pictures. What I'm not going to miss is, When we go to Nigeria, how people be in your face.

And Nigerian men love gaps. No, Nigeria, I feel light skin. I feel light skin with red hair. I was like, man, if you ever get out of my wife's face? No, I feel like, I feel like, I'm like, I'll just how light skin people feel. Like, that's crazy. This gap is light skin. Praise God.

It's like the wider the gap, the lighter I get. You know? Can't say that. I'm just saying. It's like. I feel like light skin people was like popping like at one point. I feel like people are starting to respect all shit. shades of color, brown, brown, black.

Yeah. You know, it's in the 80s when people was like, the John B. You know, what's his name? I just feel like I'm standing in proxy with light skin in Africa. Like, that's what, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, what we're talking about today, but. We're talking to Dr. Sarita Alliance. Dr. Sarita Lyons.

I'm sorry. The light skin, doctor's right? Come on. The prophetess. How do you feel good, light skin? Tell us about it. Oh, gosh. What was that experience?

It feels like nothing. Is it my light skin privilege? I don't know. How are you doing? and Dr. Sarita. I'm well. I'm excited to be here. It's such an honor for you to be here.

Thank you. Thank you. And our kids start screaming like literally. It's all right. On cue. No, I'm really happy for you to be here. I feel like I've seen you and Jackie

operate in the glory space and you're just always on fire there. So for you to be on our couch. Yeah. It's your first book. It's an honor. It's honor. Thank you.

Yeah. I think most people know if you attended a glory conference, me and Dr. Sarita would do a Q&A together where we talk about discipleship and all the things. And at some point, she would get to preaching. People would be delivered to spirits and demons and they're repenting of their sins. Shoes came off.

They would be equipped and instructed on how to love the Lord God with all their heart, mind, and soul and strength. And I think even beyond that, a lot of people don't know, or they might know that you just, you love your children and you love your husband and you serve in a local church. And so even what you do on stage is an expression of what you do privately. And so I'm just glad to have you. Thank you. Thanks for having me. I'm glad to be here. No problem.

So you got this book. We got both copies. We got this ain't a real copy. I mean, we might as a, you know, we might as well just, this is how some people read their Bible anyway. Oh, my gosh. This ain't a real copy. But this is the cover of Church Girl, a gospel vision to encourage and challenge black Christian women. How does it feel to be an author?

Oh, my goodness. It feels amazing. I think out of all the things I have ever done, especially professionally, educationally, this feels like the hardest thing I've ever done. Why? Because it's vulnerable.

I know you know. You want to be clear and sure you're hearing from the Lord. I mean, it's sacred work. So I'm not just studying law. I'm not just studying psychology, writing a paper for class. I feel like I was literally given an assignment from God to be a vessel for God into the world

and particularly to speak truth, encouragement, challenge, upliftment to black Christian women and then anyone else who reached the book, who I believe will be blessed by it. So that's weighty. That's a weighty responsibility.

And you want to get it right. Because ultimately it's not even, even though I'm the author, more than my name being on the line, it's like God's name is on the line. So you want to do that well with excellence. That's good. I'm curious.

With your history and ministry, with your knowledge of God, with all of the tools and resources that you could be communicating, what provoked this subject when you had other options? Yes. So honestly, I didn't feel like I had other options.

Okay. When I wrote this, it may appear that way. this was the word, this was the message that God put heavy on my heart. I felt like he was leaning on me. And to be honest, while I was writing the book, I was kind of like, my first book, God, this. Like, you know, I almost was like, can I write on prayer? Nobody feels away about a book on prayer, you know, or discipleship. It felt like it would have been an easier, I could think of other topics that would have been an easier entrance into the world, into Christendom.

as an author. But I feel it's a very prophetic word, a timely word, a needed word for our culture and generation and the church. So that end of itself was the motivation. So I had to say yes more than I said, yippee, like, like, oh, I get to do this. I felt the burden and the weight of the responsibility. How much of you doing ministry, because you do a lot of ministry with women in your local church, how much does the ministry that you do in your local church paid a part of,

you, I'm pretty sure you see so many different things and encounter so many different things with women. How much did they play a part of you wanting to write this book, doing ministry? Oh, yeah, absolutely. Well, I would say I'm very blessed and fortunate that God set up my life. Even though I do public ministry, my foundation, my heart, my priority outside of my home is the ministry I get to do at the local church, at Epiphany Fellowship Church in Philly. And I think doing ministry at the local church in an urban environment gives me a perspective and an insight that if you do not serve in the local church,

you just don't have even about the subject matter. So I am a servant of the local church, which makes me a student of the local church. That's good. So I'm learning the faith in a very contextualized way. I get to do life with women. So I'm not writing to arbitrary black women. It's like these are women I know, I love,

I pray for. Yeah, you do life with. I cry with. Yeah, I do life with them. Yeah, yeah. And in fact, when I had, you know, some kind of writing, instruction, coaching around target audience, like they wanted to, you know, bring this target audience down much smaller. And so they, this word called an avatar, which meant pick one woman to write this book to,

which was like, what? Yeah. And so actually the one woman that I picked to write this book to that would then be a representative of so many other women. She's an actual woman that serves with me in women's ministry. So I had her in mind and on my heart. And I was able to even talk with her as I went through the writing process. That's dope seeing seeing you. Not only are you a brilliant woman. I really just, I really do think you're brilliant, but you're actually writing from a real place, you know, out of a place of experience. So that's really dope. Thank you. This is a gospel vision to encourage and challenge black Christian women.

The first time I shared your book cover, I got a DM that said, this is so divisive. What would y'all say if someone said a gospel vision for white women? We got white people listening. And I'm sure they're asking that question. And so my question would be, what about your subtitle is not divisive? Break it down. Break it down. Well, hi white people.

So it's definitely, I mean, divisive is a strong. word. It's aggressive. It's a very strong word for a book that is targeting a particular segment of the church. Yeah, yeah. Right? And so I think the question that I have is do you feel that strongly if a book is written to Asian Americans? Because there are lots of books in Christendom written to Asian Americans. Do you feel that strongly when it's written to Native Americans? There are books written to Native American. Or men or women or women or mothers or singles. So books have target audiences. What strikes me, which is why I'm even writing a subject like this, and I don't know this woman who said that, but I think it is white privilege that allows white people to

stand at a place of judgment on black people and black authors to tell them how dare you talk to your people. Because there is a presupposition that when white people write, they don't- Say the word one more time. Presupposition. Yeah. There's an original belief. Right. There's an original belief that when white people write, it is for everybody or not in whoever will can come and read. And so it's not that there's different biblical truth or a different gospel vision for black women versus white women or any other color, right? But what I am doing is intentionally contextualizing the message and the faith to women who are often not seen or missing or excluded,

who have been reading books by white women for years who have biblical truth but have felt missing in the message. And so what I've told my publicist and people in the publishing community is that I am still preaching the gospel through the book. I am still exalting Jesus through the book. I am still pointing women to the truth about what it means to be a woman in the book.

But I am contextualizing it for black women because we need that. We've longed for it. We have felt not seen, not valued, not propelled into our gifts and in ministry the way other people so naturally do it. And so I feel like I'm writing the whiz for their wizard of us. Yeah, yeah, that's really good. That's really good. Yeah, you just preach the whole sermon.

And also, too, I think one of the problems I have with that statements like that is they act like God didn't create culture. Right. We God create culture and culture it's not inherently evil, right? And so for a person to speak to a particular culture, it's okay, right? That's the culture that God called you to. And I think if you look in the New Testament as the church was spreading, he sent some people to Gentiles. He sent some people to the Jews. Yeah.

He sent, you know, he sent people broadly to preach the message of the gospel based on their unique heritage and upbringing so that they could even minister to a people group from a place. of commonality. So even God was strategic in the spreading of the gospel. And so I feel like, at least for my first book, God wanted me to love women, black women in a very particular way by helping to encourage their faith in the Lord in a way that minister to them based on their lived experience. That's good. That's good. And I think people, if people understood your story and your background probably more, they probably would have those questions like that. So I would like to ask, you know, if you can explain kind of your faith, your background story, how you came to faith, your struggles as a black woman, and also would encourage you to write the book in spite of that.

Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, I, like many people, I talk about it in the book. I was raised in the black church. You know, I've always been a member and an attender of the black church in Philly. My parents were both people who introduced me to Jesus Christ and helped me to have. have a very strong, robust faith as a child. Later in life, my dad entered into the preaching ministry.

I mean, he was always a deacon and we participated and served. And as a child, I had a very, you know, my story feels unlikely given how it started. So, you know, growing up in church as a young girl, I really loved the Lord. I was at VBS. I did all the things. I was like the model church girl. so to speak. But one of the things, you know, kind of in hindsight,

looking back on my faith journey, I was a cultural Christian in some ways. And I had not apprehended and clung to the truth of the gospel for myself in a very, very meaningful way. And I didn't know that until it got tested. And so when I got to college, I went to an HBCU, Florida A&M University, was the first time because I kind of lived in a Christian bubble.

like a lot of us do, you know? I got to Florida Annam University and I was met with a bunch of black people who did not believe in Jesus. And I was like, what? You know, like there was this naivete that basically black people believed in Jesus. And even though I'd seen Muslims and other things,

it never really registered to me as a child that I had someone that would be in opposition to the faith that had been given to me as a child. And so I salute, walked away from the faith. And I think it's important to think about walking away from the faith as a drift, a slow, you know, backward peddling away from truth, almost so that it's unrecognizable until it's very clear.

Wow. And I would say what spurred it was just being reintroduced or represented issues around culture. Like, who are you as a, and if you go to HBCU, you're going to be surrounded by all things, blackety black, black power, black pride, all of those things, which I believe the black conscious community is, and Christians who latch on to it, it becomes an overcorrection for something that actually needs correcting. And so being a black person, living in America, living in this country, we grow up with racism. We grow up with white supremacy being normed.

and we often are taught consciously or explicitly or unexplicitly to not really value yourself, to not think you're as smart, to not think you're as pretty, right, which is that whole light skin, dark skin conversation that we have. And so I was like, yeah. And so I started getting presented with information about blackness from an African perspective. So my parents taught me the civil rights movement. I knew all of that about blackness. but my parents never really taught me about Africa.

And one of the things I say in the book is that African Americans in the West, we are very disoriented about our heritage and where we come from. You know, white people can place themselves in Ireland and Italy and France and all that kind of stuff. We just say Africa, like it's a country. Yeah. But we don't have a, a lot of us don't have the gift of a connection. So as I'm learning about Kimit, which is what they would call Egypt, and as I'm learning about

the West African. slave trade and all these sorts of things. This lie underneath all of it, which I now know was a tactic of Satan. Wow. Right. Doctrines of demons in the overcorrection of self-esteem for black people was trying to get me and so many other people to believe that Christianity was the white man's religion, that Christianity was beat into slaves, and that you wouldn't be a Christian if your

ancestors hadn't been plummeted and robbed from their land. And so I really started to feel like, wow, my parents are really good people. They were well-intentioned when they gave me Christ, but they were ignorant. Wow. And so I slowly began to engage in syncretism. And I think that's important because I didn't just one day say, you know what? I don't want to have nothing to do with Jesus anymore. I don't want Jesus.

He's a white God. I'm going after my African gods. And can you define that term? Yeah. So syncretism, what started for me was a blending or a mixing. of what I was holding on to as a profession of Christian faith with African spiritualism.

But those two things are in opposition to each other. You know, you can't serve two gods, right? You can't serve that. You can't mix Jesus with false gods. But what I was doing was literally, I built an altar in my apartment. I had all of these things from nature

and candles that I was told to build an altar to my ancestors, my poor grandparents. I had them on my altar. You had like candles and water and oranges and all of that stuff. It looked like that nails a lot a little bit. It was, yeah, Lord. Oh my gosh.

It was, it was like a, it felt like a junk drawer. Okay. It felt like a junk drawer of spiritual confusion. Wow. But I also had a Bible on the altar. So this is what I mean by syncretism. And then one day the Bible's not on the altar. And the Bible got off the altar because what I learned in this community,

because they didn't just offer another way of thinking about faith or religion. In fact, we didn't talk even about God and goddesses so much. It was more a rejection of Christ than it was an evangelism for false gods. Wow. And so what the barter that I was given or the choice that I was forced to make, even if it wasn't explicitly told to me, is that if I want community, if I don't want to be alone, if I want to have friends, if I want to go to African dance class,

if I want people to teach me how to take care of my skin and my body and eat healthy, if I want people who I can go do spoken word with, then they wanted everything that I cared about except Jesus. They wanted me, but I had to show up without him. Wow. Wow. And so that's how over time, I began to walk farther and farther away from the faith.

And just practically, the way the enemy began to just rob me of joy and stability in him, is very basic. I stopped practicing spiritual disciplines. So instead of going to church on Sunday, I'm now doing yoga. You know what I mean? Instead of spending time with believers and even, I never even thought that why didn't I call my parents

or why didn't I call someone that I respected from the church just to say, hey, what did you think about this? Yeah, yeah. I never did. I never thought to do that. But I think part of the reason that was also holding me hostage is because I was also now living a life of sin, right? So my morality was now in the toilet.

And so I didn't just have questions about faith. I couldn't just go. I didn't feel like I didn't feel clean anymore. So I didn't just have an apologetic question. I had a broken spirit that had been beat up by my willingness to dishonor God with my body, with my thoughts, with my presence in certain places. And so I wasn't just a good girl calling home with some good questions. I was now feeling like a bad girl.

And the way I got distant from the conviction of my sin is to act like, well, this God isn't real anyway. So I was no longer accountable to his standard. Wow. Eesh. You talk about in the book how one of the catalysts for you pursuing or walking in syncretism was hurt. Right. And I think I want to explore that because I feel like sometimes we think that people, people are deconstructing or in African spiritualism or whatever, primarily because they

have theological issues. Yeah. Not recognizing that some of that is hurt and pain. So it's emotional issues that's driving the theological issue. Absolutely. And so can you speak to that? Yeah. So I would say what drove me to the actual place where I started getting introduced to all

of this stuff was a breakup with a boyfriend. And I always say, it's always a dude. Yeah. No offense. But anyway. So it was like heartbreak. and the people that I was seeking refuge in for just kind of counsel and picking my face and heart up off the floor were people who didn't believe in the Lord, right? But that was the most obvious thing.

What I have now, like connecting all the dots so many years later, when I first got to campus, I had great intentions of going to church. And so what's common on many college campuses is there was a, there were churches in the area that would send like church vans and things like that to pick up the kids from the dorms. And so me and my roommate, we were getting on a church van. We went to this church. And while I'm at the church, it's like the actual pastor of the church was trying to kick it with like he was trying to talk to me. Okay. And so, I mean, he was just really inappropriate.

Was he married? Yes. Oh, my gosh. I was a college student. and the pastor of the church that I'm visiting for the very first time is being seductive with me. And as a girl, you're thinking, like, what did I do to warrant this treatment? It's like women are programmed to experience abuse and all forms of maltreatment and first not think something is wrong with him.

My initial thought was, what's wrong with me? I came back to the church the next Sunday, and it happened again. Now, I will say, you know, I could have easily gone to another church, right? But those experiences just turned me off completely. And then the, prior, the semester prior to me actually getting involved in African spiritualism, I was home for a Thanksgiving break. And there was kind of like, you know, the church youth group or whatever, you know.

And one of the ministers was like inviting me to like, hey, while you're in town, do you want to go get some breakfast while you're here? And I was like, oh, okay, sure, you know, whatever. I wasn't well known because I hadn't been around the church in a while. And this person was new, like kind of transient minister. And he called me to set up the breakfast. but he never talked about the breakfast. He literally said to me,

would you take a bath with me? Okay. So I was like... Now we're getting in the tub. Yeah, it was really like... But, you know, so again, and I'll admit, like, I just... I didn't even tell my dad about that

because I honestly felt like my dad would be in jail right now. Yeah. If I would have told him that. And I, you know, my heart breaks that I didn't. trust or feel like I could tell my dad. And I think a lot of times what happens with people is you hear these lessons.

Like my mother even had told me lessons from her childhood of things that had happened to her and her mother telling her, you can't tell your dad. He'll kill him. He'll go to jail. So I had that in my head. And so I didn't do anything. Obviously, I didn't go to dinner. I didn't get in the tub with him.

But I think those kinds of wounds that happen in the church just began to plant seeds of distrust of godly community. So when the devil was going to present me with a false gospel, my heart was primed for it. Wow. Yeah, I have two questions. And it all kind of senses around like parenthood. You talked about your parents as you kind of like went to college

and how they kind of like didn't prepare you, how they should. And I do a lot of like events surrounding apologetics. And every time I do an event, if I talk to people afterwards, there's always some parent who it seems as if they have like this reactionary faith. They want to come to an apologetics conference or event because their child went off to college and they got hit with these different worldviews and now they're struggling with their faith. And so my first question is, were the things that your parents could have did to prepare you to engage with the outside world once you got to college better?

And what are those things? That's my first question. My second question, because I'm a father of three daughters. particularly when you experienced that heartbreak. Is it something that your father could have did? Or I don't want to blame your dad, but you know, like, is it, is it, is it, is it, is it, is it, is it, is it, is it, is it's, is it, is it's, is it's, is it's, it's, which is why I believe the passage of scripture that says, you know, train up a child in the way they should go. when they are old, they will not depart from it. I think that's real.

We don't know how old that's going to be. Yeah, yeah. But my parents did, I think they did a great job of putting me in church and giving me faith and doing everything that they had the skills to do, which was probably far more than they received as children. Right. So I have a lot of empathy for parents who are just doing the best they can at that stage. But I think two critical things that I was not prepared for. one, I was just never prepared for someone else or another group of people to be anti-Jesus.

So I just went to college not ever thinking about the fact that someone else would have another faith, could possibly try to sway me, and what it really means to kind of stand firm in your convictions. Right. So I was unprepared for that. And what was also confusing is the people who rejected Jesus knew more Bible than me. Wow. So I was like, so a lot of times when we would have conversations, they would bring up things that were in scripture or I could tell they were handling the Word of God, but I just didn't know how to defend any of that.

So I didn't have an idea of defending the faith or that that was ever a real thing. So I was learning things about the faith, but not understanding that we live in a fallen world and everyone is not apprehending the gospel or the truth, and that I would also be someone that would maybe need to evangelize, to share it, or even defend it. I was just a Christian. I wasn't even thinking necessarily as an evangelist, not even an apologist.

Okay? And I think that's different in terms of preparation and just having your mind and eyes and ears open, right? So I think that's one. Number two is I think my parents loved me well, and I think I was kind of Christian. and spoiled. And what I mean by that is I grew up and it was okay to be a good Christian just the way I was. I was completely unprepared to contend with my flesh.

Like, like, I never really, and what I mean by that is I didn't have an understanding that in my flesh no good thing dwelt. I didn't have an understanding that I would have wants and desires that were contrary to what God wanted and desire for me. So I didn't really think about myself as a sinner, right? You know what I mean? In terms of a sinner saved by grace with the propensity to fall. Yeah. Is that because the environment introduced you to different temptations? Partly.

Okay. But also I think I had a youthful Christian arrogance. Okay. About me. Yeah. Just that I'm saved and I'm good and I'm probably going to always be like this. It was just naive. You know what I didn't think about.

So, and then this goes into your second question, which I kind of remember now. I think one of the things that my family could have prepared me better for was, and I think as young girls, it was always like, don't have sex, don't get pregnant, don't do drugs. It was a lot of the don'ts. Don't, don't, don't, don't. And it reminded me of the drug, the war on drug campaign with like, Reagan, right, back then when it was like say no to drugs. That was like all the campaigns said, say no to drugs, say no to drugs. But what they never did is tell you what to say yes to.

It's really good. So I was told what to say no to as if I didn't have something that like, you know, take off, but put on. Yeah, yeah. And so I was, so, and I think that's what also the enemy use shame because I want to please my parents. I want to be the good girl. I want to be the good Christian. And if I never thought that my parents even thought that I could go to school and mess up and fall and sin, I didn't even know how to have a conversation that I thought would just

disappoint them. So when I was falling, when I was sin and when I was missing the mark, I didn't know how to even bring that up to people who had never talked to me about you could be tempted in this way. This is how you stand firm. These are some strategies to be in good community and, you know, all those sorts of things. That's really good. You got a question?

Because I got a bunch of questions, but you can go. So in your own parenting with your children, how many children you have in college now? We have two in college, one on the way. So how have you prepared them in light of what you experienced? Yes. So I would say lots and lots and lots of conversations, both my husband, Mark and I, being very open and honest about our own failures as Christians, not like being. You know, we talk about BC days.

I'm talking about I feel like I did more sinning in the AD. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? And so, and really just talking about those struggles, being very open and meeting them where they are, like, assuming that if they love God, they, like, talking to them about an enemy and what he's doing in your life now. Like, like, the enemy is not waiting for you to get to college. He's at work now.

That's good. So the conversations we talk to them about with their friendships and what they're seeing, And like one of the things that we didn't have to contend with that my kids have to contend with is the phone and the internet and what they can just have access to so easily. So just being really comfortable with having conversations about sex and pornography and masturbation and bitterness and anger and temptations when you're trying to fit in and have friends and not want to be isolated. And what does it feel like to stand alone? And sometimes when you live for Christ, you're not. going to have a big community of people standing with you. You know, how do you manage that? And so one of the things we've just done since they were very early is we always have family meetings.

So like once a week, we just got together and we talked and we just talked about whatever. It wasn't necessarily our Bible study, even though we often interjected and talked about the Bible in those times. But we just made it a safe place for people to be great and not great. Feel good and not feel good. Be strong. struggling and succeeding and all while trying to wait to appropriate stages to share how we've been there, done that, got a lot of T-shirts. I think the conversation part is really big because I think it's natural for Christian parents to give their kids spiritual things and say, go out to the world and you'd be good because you've

got Jesus. But I think what the conversation does essentially is to teach people how to have good critical thinking skills to critically think through different worldviews as you go out in the world. And I think a lot of times we go up in a Christian worldview, Christian home, Christian, you know, environment. And when you get hit with that first real question by unbeliever, if you haven't been taught, like practically taught how to critically think through these ideas, your worldview is going to be rocked. Absolutely. And so those good conversations are good. And I think some practical things we do, too, is like just going through music.

Like, I remember one time we heard somebody in the house listening to some crazy song. I don't remember what it was, but like I made them, we like made them go print the song out. And they were like, we were like print all the lyrics. And they were like, so we passed out all the lyrics and we made everybody go around and read a few lines. Like they're literally, booty popping. Like they're like literally reading the lyrics to the song. And we're like interrogating it. Like when the beat is up underneath it, you're not necessarily realizing how you're being influenced and condition.

and educated through this song. What is this song teaching you? Now there's no beat. And now there's shame and embarrassment to read the lyrics. And it's like, yeah, because we want you to fill it. Or another thing we would do in the house. And we still kind of do it, which the joke is like,

we don't want to watch a movie with mom and dad. Now, dad does do this more than me. But we'll watch movies together as a family. Something happened on the screen. It can be sinful or just a point that he feels like he wants to go through. He will pause it. It takes forever for us to watch movies as a family.

So he pauses things. Okay, what happened? What just happened? What did they just say? Commercials just so that we are, we're knowing that they're being influenced, but we're trying to slow the rate of the education down to teach them to think. We definitely stealing this. I'm going to have eating here reading Whistle, Why You Twerk?

Seriously. All the things. Insanity. Speaking of music, Beyonce. say. Oh my gosh. I'm talking out the conversation right now. Not me, we're here.

So she, I think, has introduced on a mass scale the name Ocean and the different orisha's and your like all of those practices. And it's not just her. It's kind of it's she's one of the bigger voices. And so I think from your vantage point knowing your history and what God brought you from, what do you suspect is happening when it comes to our generation and the way. way the media and the music is influencing them towards syncretism and other gods. Yeah, so we're normalizing witchcraft.

Yeah. Yeah, we're just making witchcraft palatable. And if you can get a star to do it, that makes it even more attractive and beautiful. So there's art, artistry and beauty and musical gifting presenting witchcraft. Satan disguises himself as angel. It's the angel of life. So witchcraft is no longer a boogeyman movie. Where it's like, oh, you see that woman making a necklace with bones?

It's in a dark room. She looks crazy. The whole thing looks suspicious. Nobody wants that witchcraft. But when witchcraft has hips and flowing hair and a nice sounding voice and a belly button that's exposed. Wow. Okay. Yeah.

It's like, okay, I can get with some witches. And I want to be that witch. Because I want to look like that too. I want to have that money. It's like, oh, I'd marry kids, seem normal. You don't see anybody's life falling apart because the enemy, you know, overpromises, underdelivers. He's not going to show you all that. So I think it's the way in which is being presented, which normalizes it.

And I also think it has become kind of a black version of, you know, astrology. So people for years been talking about I'm a Taurus, I'm a Libra, I'm a this. And so now I'm just Oshun. I'm O'Goon. I'm yemen, yeah, I'm Obatala. So it's just like they just... What language would you just speak? These are names?

Those are names of like the Eretius from the male and female deities from that faith. Wow. You thought she was speaking to tongues? I thought she was doing something. It sounded like tongues because you said it real fast. Right.

So I mean, I just... And people are hungry and desperate for identity. That's good. We want to know who we are. That's why we get into Intergram. That's why we take all these personalities tests. That's what... Because we're like...

like we want to know who we are, but we don't want to know who we are based on what God said about us. Because there is a way to know who you are. Yeah. But it requires you to first know God. And it's like, okay, I just want to know about me. But you got to know about you by knowing about him. Yes.

And so if somebody can give me something quick so that I can define myself, understand myself, and actually send it to other people who can know me better, my boyfriend, my girlfriend, relate to me better, then I think that's empowering. people feel empowered. People don't feel as lost and confused. And if you ever noticed all of these tests or things, they may have like one kind of like quirky part of your personality. But the entire printout about who you are is always like perfection.

It's always something that makes you seem amazing. So no matter what you are, you're great. Like these things aren't pointing out your sin nature. Yeah. These things are pointing out reasons for you to repent to a holy God. And so, yeah, I mean, we just dismiss God. We don't want to do what God says. We don't want to be known based on how God has already bestowed an identity.

Like, I think that's the thing we miss about God. Like God, the creator of the universe, graciously, lovingly, creatively bestowed, gave, graciously gave you and you all of us in identity. Yeah. And it's like, and if you believe him to be creator, why not want to go to the creator to get his idea about who you are? Yeah. And then, but here's the central thing.

We want to be not only want to know who we are, but we want to be unique. Yeah. We want to be different. We want to be special. And we feel like, I think people don't realize, actually, here's who you need to become like Jesus. So it's not a greater version of you. Like, that's the language of the culture.

I want to be the best version of myself. No, you don't. Because the best version of you still belongs in hell. You should have big hey. We want to be like Christ. Yeah. And so it's like, oh, so now I have to be like someone else because we actually, we think that the world has a self-esteem problem.

No, we have a lover of self-problem. That's so good. We actually love ourselves too much. Keep going. So we're not. Preach, we ain't I'm talking about. I mean, we're here now. Yeah, so I'm just saying, I think that the idea of saying, seeing yourself as fallen and broken

and in need of a savior, that you get imputed righteousness when you, by faith, receive grace because you put your confidence in him. It's like, then we feel missing. Where am I in all of this? Right? But the Bible tells us that I've been crucified with God. Oh, I die. It's no longer I who live, but Christ who lives.

me. So this life I live in the flesh is not my dreams. It's not all that stuff I wrote in my journal. It's not my five year, 10 year plan. I live now my life according to the son of God who that. It's like, oh. What would you say to the black person who feel like they have to lose their ethnic identity in the gain of that? Because I think that's the, you know, I told this story in my book launch event a couple of weeks ago that me and this past, named Pastor Phil of Mitchell. We was out, you know, talking and I gave the gospel. to this guy who practiced witchcraft. And when I started to give him the gospel,

he just immediately got angry. And he started telling me that, man, the gospel that y'all believe in makes me want to abandon, you know, my heritage and my people in Africa don't believe in this stuff. And I said, no, bro, I actually, you know, went to Africa in 2019, went to the bush in Nairobi, Kenya, and sat with a woman who said witchcraft has destroyed their whole tribe. And she said when she see black Americans, you know,

engage in witchcraft as if that's a way. to connect with God when it's destroyed our whole lives, right? And so what would you say to the one who feels like in order to gain an identity in Christ, I have to lose my ethnic identity? Yeah. So I want to just make sure I answer that first and say, that's not true. Yeah. You do not have to put down your ethnic identity when you pick up the cross.

Mm-hmm. You just have to submit all of who you are up under it. That's good. So you submit. You'll be preaching. Okay, I'm sorry. Go, go. So we're called to submit all of who we are up under the Lordship of Jesus Christ.

We never ask that question. Like when we read that scripture about there's no longer male or female or Jew, you know, we use that as if to say God makes us blank slates. That's not what that scripture is saying. We never say I cease from being a woman when I come to Christ. I cease from being a man when I come to Christ no more than you cease from being black or white or anything else. And God intends to use all of the beautiful variations of his creation.

to honor and glorify him and represent him in the earth. So I just wanted to say that first. But I think what we have to acknowledge is that even though Christianity is not, not the white man's religion, even though Christianity was present in Africa long before the transatlantic slave trade, we still have to contend with the reality that people who held Bibles in their hands and walked into churches and claimed to be Christians were either not Christians, right? Not real Christians or totally misappropriated the use of scripture and enslaved all of our people. Right? And so we cannot act like that didn't happen.

Yeah. Which is why people feel like why would God allow that to happen? Why would God, you know, this can't be good for black people if it was in the hands of slave owners and people who misrepresented the text. But that happened. That was wrong. That was true. And they will have to answer to God for that. But we have a long history of faith of people who were slaves who read the Bible for themselves and said, this is not what our enslavers are presenting us. They believed in the real God, even though the false God was the one being presented to them.

That's good. That's good. You know, there used to be this device called an answering machine. And like, you know, people would call people if they ain't pick up, it'd be on the speakerphone. Like you could just hear like, hey girl, I was at the flea market. I missed you. And you talk about how in your story that you had an answer machine and your daddy would call you all the time and do something on there. I just want us to hear about the godliness of your father.

While you was, you know, bathing in honey with Oshund and all these people and flipping over the tarot cards and smudging the house. I don't know if you smudging. Yeah, I did all that. You look like you was smudging. I was smudging. Aggressively, too. Like just passionately smudging. Like, sage.

Sage. Okay, gotcha. You thought it was like paint. I was like, is she painting? Is she doing a picture? Yeah, pain with her hand. Barying stakes in the ground. What was happening in your life?

Like, where did your dad show up and your mom show up during that season? Yeah, so I will say, I don't think my parents had a clue really what was going on with me. But I think they started figuring out something was wrong. So I remember when I first came home from college, I was dressing completely differently, had my hair wrapped up. You know, I was dressing very Afrocentric. You like Queen Latifah? Yeah, more like Erica Badu from Baduism.

Okay. It was bracelets up to here. Okay. You know, all that. And so my dad, my mom and dad actually thought that it was cute. They was like, she had that HBCU embracing her heritage. You know what I mean? Because I wasn't coming home forcefully coming against Christ.

That's the other thing. I would come home for holidays and take my behind the church. Okay. My parents would be like, time go church. And I just walk up in there with all my stuff on. And they would just be like, Syrika's back. She had to HBCU finding her roots. Yeah.

They didn't think that I had walked away from the Lord. You know what I mean? And so, I mean, they had no idea that I was sitting in service, you know, very judgmental and self-righteous and wrong, uh, judging what was happening in that service. but, and this is why you need godly community. There was someone that I went to high school with that I wasn't close to in college. And anybody from my past, I wasn't close to them anyway when I was whiling out.

But she just kind of saw what I was getting into. She didn't fully understand it, but she cared enough about me to call my house. And she called and told on me. But she didn't fully know. She just, my parents were like, she called and was like, Sarita down here and some weird stuff. I just see her walking around with these people. She's dressing different.

She don't go to church. So that was all they understood. And what my father used to do, like I think there were a couple times when he tried to like ask me about it. And I was minimizing or shutting it down, not really engaging it. And he didn't have the experience. He didn't know anything about African spiritualism and all this kind of stuff. But he knew something was wrong with his baby. And my dad would call my answer machine.

He wouldn't even say, hi, Sarita, this is your dad. He would just call the machine and be like, Father God in the mighty name of Jesus. I plead the blood over Sarita right now. Would you cover her and anoint her from the crown of her head to the souls of her feet? I rebuke every demonic spirit that's coming again. And, oh, I mean, he would pray like that until the tape popped.

And nobody else could leave a message. And my dad would do that days upon days upon days. That's powerful. So that when God actually delivered me and I called home, I couldn't even get the words out of my mouth because tears were just running down my face. The fact that I called him crying, he just started saying, Hallelujah, hallelujah, I knew it, you know. And he just, he knew.

He knew exactly what God had done for me. And so I am so grateful for the faith of my father and my mother because what I didn't know is my mother would be with him when he would call. She wouldn't say anything. My dad would be the one that would pray. But the fact that they both prayed for me, the fact that they were, he said we even had a discussion not long before you called and said God had moved, that we were like trying to put money together because we were going to try to fly to Florida

to see what was going on with you. But God just moved before they ended up having to do that. What's fascinating about that is one of your feet. years, it seems, was if your parents knew you would be met with shame. Yes. But when they found out, they only met you with love. And so, like, it just reveals how much the devil was just lying to you. Yes.

Even about their own character. Absolutely. And it took me time to confess and share with my parents. Now, I will say, I didn't tell them everything. I was like, I didn't want my, like, some stuff your daddy just don't want to hear. Like, you know what I'm saying? But it took me time to really. expressed to them

what I had gone through in a way that made sense to them because it was foreign. Like that idea, like my parents would have understood if I said, yeah, I was in the Black Panther movement. Or yeah, I was, because, you know, I did do, I took over a radio station.

I was doing the whole, you know, picketing and protesting and I got arrested for all those sorts of things. They were down with that. They didn't know nothing about this. And so, you know, I just remember my dad and mom at times being like, what? What? Oh, my goodness, girl, you should have told us or you could have or, you know, and I, you know,

I thank them for that. But not everybody responded that way. I really feel like even when I was trying to share, and this is a lesson too, I tried to share too much too soon. I think with people that just did not have an idea of what I was talking about, it would have been easier for me to come back home from college and say, I was smoking crack and I was a whore and I was getting drunk, they would have been like, oh, God delivered you. They understood that. But talking about Oshun, Ogun, and taking baths and honey and smudging and taking meat and burying it

in the ground and putting cakes in the ocean, them people was looking at me like something was still on me. Yeah, yeah. I can see that's scary for some church. That was very, very scary. And I just remember this one prayer band meeting I went to is when I shared the testimony and it was silent. One of the prayer band ladies, oh my gosh, I'm going to cry. She got up and she just started singing. She didn't know what to say. She just said, something happened. And now I know he touched me and he made me whole.

And she just saying that, oh gosh, she didn't know what happened. But she knew that based on what I had said, God had intervened in my life and touched me. And so she just rallied the prayer band to sing that song and lay hands on me and pray for me. They didn't ask for no extra explanation. I just remember her walking slow singing that song. And that is what I needed. That was all that I needed to say, we love you and we're glad you're back.

Wow. That's beautiful. That you found peace and love in the church. That's dope. That's so dope. That's good. That's good. A powerhouse for the Lord.

Bigging disciples in your home and in the church and not globally. Yeah. I have one more question. It would be the end of my questions. As a man who loves the church, loves the church body, it's the fake one. This is the right. When I read this church girl, you know, I think a lot of men and leaders in the church can probably assume that this is for women, right?

But what role can male leaders do in one getting behind this book? and how impactful, you know, would it be for male leaders to kind of, you know, get behind this book and to push this book in their local churches? Yeah, thank you for asking that question. I definitely think God called me to write a book not only to black Christian women, but for the church and, dare I say, even the world. Particularly leaders, I think, you know, people don't know what they don't know. I do think that while we have some leaders that represent the caricatures that are expressed in media about bad pastors and bad leaders and things like that, there are those. I think the majority and the people that I've had the privilege of sitting under and just meeting really do love their congregations and are doing the best that they can. And people don't know what they don't know.

And I want to help invite men into the lived, experience of faith of black women and as an education, as an encouragement, and hopefully equip them to begin to start and have some of these conversations with the other leaders and the women of their church, particularly the one around church hurt, because all people experience some form of church hurt, even leaders, experience church hurt. But I think that black women experience some versions of church hurt in very unique ways that I wanted to know. name and also give biblical prescriptions for healing. And so the book is not meant to be divisive at all between white, black men, women within the church, married, single, but really a clarion

call for us to see God's vision for our lives. And if women are seeing God's vision for their lives, maybe there are some parts of a black woman's life that even leaders don't see. Yeah. And I often think about the story in the gospel when when Jesus takes the blind man out of the village and he is performing this healing for him right and he he puts the the mud on his eyes and he says then you know he washes it off he says tell me what you see yeah and he says oh I see trees as men walking so he had some vision but he didn't have clear vision yeah and so that this is and then he touches him again and he says, what do you see? And now he can see everything clearly. And I think sometimes I pray that this book will be a second touch. It doesn't mean Jesus' first touch is ineffective. But I think

one of the application points from that passage is that we often need more learning, more clarity, that we're often seeing through a glass dimly, even black women. And that God wants to kind of pull back the cataracts on our lives, pull back the cataracts. Pull back the cataracts that are on men's lives from privilege or just they never had to attend to it. Yeah. So that we can practice the one another's, love one another, lead and serve one another better. Yeah, a couple of years ago, I had a conversation with a woman who worshipped her ancestors. And it became, at that time, it was like my most popular video on my YouTube, my apologetic

YouTube channel. And when I first saw talking to her, she was just like, basically telling me, like, why her ancestors deserved her worship and not Jesus. And I remember going to all the scriptures as an evangelist, like about ancestry or worship, trying to, you know, give these scriptures to her. And I felt like the Lord told me, Preston, she knows all this. She just hates what she knows, right? And so then I had to try to figure out how can I give this woman the gospel in a way that she can receive it?

Because one, I noticed that she was very defensive with men. And she ended up saying, and I made it a clip, it was like really big on my Instagram, you know. Was it was it my fault that I got raised? because the church told me it was my fault. Was it my fault that I got molested? Was it my fault that I didn't have a relationship with my parents and my mother? And I remember finding a door

by telling her my wife's testimony. And the only resource that I had to really point to as a man to her was kind of gay girl, good God at that time. Like, look at what God did with my wife's pain? But I think about it. Like, what if I had this resource? What if I had church girl to point her to? You know?

And so I think for men, especially evangelists and apologists out there who are dealing with black women in these communities who went to witchcraft because of hurt and pain, not only can you give them the gospel, but you have a good resource to point them to. And so as an evangelist, I have that in mind. I think returning back to, you know, how I wanted the catalyst for what brought you where you were and stuff like that, was like pain and suffering. And you mentioned church hurt in the book in this conversation. And it feels like we need to learn how to navigate pain in healthy ways. What would you say are some of the problematic ways or temptations that women in the church can sometimes find, like, what are the ways they're coping that aren't healthy?

And what are the practices or disciplines we should be cultivating instead so that we can nap? Because suffering is going to happen. Pain is going to happen. Hurt is going to happen because sin is here. And so we have to learn how to navigate it well if we want to stay like on the narrow path. Does it make sense? Absolutely. So just a couple of things I talk about in the book.

One, I think we have to be careful to not identify all of our pain as the same. And so we use terms like spiritual abuse, church hurt, almost interchangeably. And they mean very different things. And there are degrees to the pain. And if you just experience any kind of pain, discomfort, offense in the church, and you treat it as if somebody asked you to take a bath with them. Or you treat it as if somebody sexually abused you, then you are often, even in those cases too, though,

but you're often missing an opportunity for God's gospel of grace to be at work in a local church. because one of the things I think people do when they feel pain is they run. They just immediately ghost everybody. And we do not practice the path of reconciliation that God lays out for us in Scripture. And so I think one of the unhealthy things we do is we just immediately bolt. And that's because we believe that, you know, when you become Christian, everybody going to get along, everybody going to do the right thing. we are supposed to have an higher expectation,

because I do believe Christians should be held to a higher expectation, but we also have to believe that there is none perfect but Christ. So we have to increase our willingness for offense. We have to increase our willingness for discomfort. We have to increase our willingness for conflict, even in the house, even in the house, so that we can be the people that practice the biblical blueprint for reconciliation,

with one another because the audacity of a people to tell a dying world, you can be reconciled back to a holy God and we never get reconciled back to other flesh. That's good. And so I think that just leaving, never ever trying to have a conversation, never pointing things out to people because sometimes people hurt and create offense and they just don't know. You know, so I think we just have to be more open about working through things with one another. I also think one of the dangerous things that happen when people go or when they stay and it gets messy and divisive is people like to find people that are also angry and mad to build connection with. It's like somebody mad at you, you better know they're going to find somebody else that's mad at you.

And they're going to become besties. And we have to begin to work through our hurt and discomfort with people of peace. Now, I don't mean people of peace as people of cover up, people who never tell the truth about things that. are going on at a wrong in the church. But I'm talking about people who think well of the gospel, people who think well of Jesus. And their goal is to practice and walk in truth. And when possible, bring people together for reconciliation. And if not reconciliation, at least peace.

That's great. At least peace. What's threatened if we don't do that? I think actually our mission. I think the mission that we have to spread the gospel and to help people. Like the Bible talks about he's making, we're his ambassadors. God is making his appeal through us to men to be reconciled back to God. And if we, you know, people say, what ministry should I join?

Well, we all are put on the ministry of reconciliation. Like I know they don't have a ministry of reconciliation in your church to sign up. But that is the ministry. God said all of you all are a part of. Put your hand to the plow. I think when we do that, we leave ourselves open for people to mock our faith. to mock the sincerity of what we say we believe is possible if we invite God into our situations. Really good.

Towards the end of the book, you talk about Babylon and you just compare like, I guess the system of the world, their worldviews, their frameworks, their way of being to like this kind of Babylonian metaphor. But you're trying to help women navigate life in Babylon as Christians, as church girls. by using the story of Daniel. Yes. Can you encourage us? Because it's getting crazy out here, like, you know, people out here lying all the time. People are hurting our feelings and betraying us and being mean.

People stealing from us. You know what I'm saying? They're abusing us. And we're doing the same thing. So we being, as much as we're being abused, we're also being provoked to respond in the same way. And so how do we navigate Babylonian empire in a way that, like, mimics heaven?

Like, how do we do that? Well, I think, one, you have to, see yourself as an exile. Like God saves us from the world to send us back into the world. And so one, we're not supposed to cower and hide out in a church bubble, but we're also not supposed to be in the world and be

indistinguishable from the world. So you have to see your role that we are not from this world. We are not from this kingdom. We do not, this king is not our king and we live according to a different set of rules. And I think everything is on,

everything is at stake, particularly the glory of God, right? The way we live, the way we move, the way we navigate. I think one of the things I love about the story of Daniel is that Daniel was very on fire for God, very committed to God, but his timing was impeccable for when he was going to be a disruptor. He was wise for a teenage, you know,

and then you see different stages of his life throughout the book. But for instance, in the beginning, when he wanted to be committed to God and not eat the king's food, he asked the person over him if he could test it out with him. He asked, so he was able to, in his desire to be submitted to God, still submit to the system that was in place in the world, right, which showed reverence for God, but also honor of the system and the place that God had put him in. That's good. You know what me. And I think we have to become more wise and strategic about how we navigate the world. We want to have our Psalm calendars on our desk and we want to play gospel music at work. But then we don't

come on time. You know what I mean? We don't do excellent work. And so I think that we just have to be excellent Christians in this world so that we do not disgrace the name of God. I think that's one thing. And in terms of even just kind of like all the stuff that we go through, the hurt and how hard it is, I think we have to learn how to manage, you know, the fatigue of being faithful. Wow. In the book I call it, I was about to call it to scripture. Sorry, Lord. In the book, Church Girl, I call it faithfulness fatigue.

And when you are a soldier for the Lord in the Lord's Army who is a committed, devoted soldier who's constantly getting hit, you will have limitations. You will get fatigued. And so we have to find appropriate ways to sometimes come off of the front line, go rest, get refueled, take care of our wounds so that we can reenter the fight stronger. And so I think that is, you know, obviously how we think of Sabbath resting in Christ, but then also how we have healthy community where we don't have a savior complex. Like God is trying to do everything just through us, but that we actually work in tandem with other believers because. Daniel, we talk, it's called the book of Daniel, but Daniel has Shadrach, Meshach, and Abindigo. Yeah.

He had friends. He had people that he did life with, that he prayed with, and probably others that just aren't named in the book, that I think help us make it in Babylon. And never, like, knowing that Babylon, the goal of the system, the goal of the empire, is to change you. Like, we have to realize we're in this world, but just like Daniel, and his friends, they were put through a system, a training system, where they were stripping them of their name, because Shatrak, Meshach, and Abindigo, or their Babylonian names. Those aren't the names

that came with their heritage, right? And so they're trying to change your name. They're trying to teach you the ways of the land so you can serve their king. Daniel was trained to serve Nebuchadnezzar, and yet even though he successfully went through the training, he was still committed to serving God. Wow. Yeah. Oh, that was it. Oh, yeah. It felt like a dot, dot, dot.

Oh, no, just. That was good. Say lie. Okay. You got? No, I want nothing else. Well, I mean, you know, I respect you. I value you a lot.

I've learned how to be just a better lie. I was going to say liar. I'm not a liar. A better leader. A better wife, a better mother. Because of just the things you poured into me and challenged me with. And so I just appreciate you. And I'm thankful.

I'm sure he appreciates you, too. I appreciate you for being all the things to Jackie because she's a better woman because of you. Oh, praise God. We should have bought you some flowers or something. Just being here. We got chocolate cup of pretzels over there just for you. And so thank you, Dr. Sarreel. We love you.

I love you both too. Thank you so much. Go get her book. Church girl. Peace. That one. Peace. And you wrote the forward.

Oh, yeah, I wrote the fore. There we go. Bye. With the Perrys is produced by the Perrys with support from a Amanda Reed and Channing McBride, video recording and audio production by Kim Powell, Abishai Perez, and Xavier Fairley, edited by the team at Tread Lively, artwork by hop, and music by swoop. Thank you for listening. Now go with God.