With The Perrys - How to Wrestle with God with Lisa Fields

Episode Date: August 26, 2024

Wrestling with God is a normal part of the Christian faith. We can’t grow in our relationship with God without questioning Him. But many of us run from hard questions or feel discouraged and angry when the answers we find are not emotionally satisfying to us. This week’s guest, Lisa Fields, has a conversation with the Perrys about learning how to wrestle well with God instead of leaving the faith.   Check out Lisa’s new book When Faith Disappoints: The Gap Between What We Believe and What We Experience.  Follow Lisa on social media: https://www.instagram.com/lisavfields Visit Jude3Project.org to learn more about the Christian apologetics organization Lisa founded  to help Black Christians specifically know what they believe and why they believe it. 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

All right. We're here. Hey, bud. On with the paris. You know, Lisa Fields is here, and her outfit made me think of a song. You know, it's a Clark sister song that was the cadence of the song. It was inspired by one of Stevie Wonder's song. And it's like, you brought the sunshine. You rock the line line.

And there's nothing in font What? What are you mumbling? Jesus is the answer. You disheartic. I'm going to let they go. I wore this because the last time we had breakfast when I came to Atlanta, you said Lisa may not come in here with a suit on.

And I didn't. But it's suitish. Lisa be walking. It's suitish. No, Lisa be hanging out playing cards. going to get coffee looking suited and booted. Looking like she's going to go defend a couple of juvenile delinquents. It's given like you graduated from Spellman, Howard.

She would look at like a lawyer every day. It's given principal, administrative like boss, not assistant boss. I was like my mama. No, bro. She used to dress me like I was going to work and it just stuck. Now, every time I see you, you look like you studied your whole life. No, you like you got money. You like you got several accounts.

You give that rich auntie, then they got no kids, and you just always give me their, their niece and their nephew's holding money. It looked like 800 credit score. Like you got CDs. Not the, like not the music. But this is actually nice. It's the most casual. I've never seen Lisa Fields in my entire life.

Welcome to the couch. Lisa Fields, everybody. Lisa has a new book coming out called When Faith Disappoints. Subtitle is The Gap Between What Be Believe and What We Believe and What We Expe. experience. Now, if anybody knows you, they know that you do apologetic work, right? So even when I saw the title of that, this, I was, like, intrigued by it because I was like, oh, you would think that, like, Lisa would come out with, like, defending the faith and how to talk to Hebrew Israelites or something like that. Like, why address faith when it relates to, like, some incongruence

between what we believe and what we know and all the stuff? Yeah, I feel like I do, people do exit interviews with me when they lead the faith. They always want to talk to me on their way out. And there are always, I saw this reoccurring theme of just being disappointed. Whether they grew, they grew up in a word of faith background or a more reformed background, the disappointment of what they thought that the faith was going to bring them versus what they actually were experiencing was one of the reasons they were exiting. And they were, while they had some church hurt or different things, the core issue was they were mad at God. And so I was like, I want to write a book addressing them because they're angry at God and they don't know how to wrestle with God.

That's good. And so if you don't know how to wrestle with God, you'll leave the faith. But when you wrestle with God, your faith becomes stronger. And so I wanted to give really a kind of a guide and help people know that this is a normal occurrence in the Christian faith. That I've wrestled with it. many people throughout scripture have wrestled with it and it's normal for you to be disappointed it's normal for you to be angry and i thought that that was a way to kind of stop the bleeding of the mass exodus we're seeing from people of all ages and races leaving

the faith that's good wow that's good can you talk about that though can you talk about your your your personal wrestle with faith because i i do apologetics too and i think a lot of times when When we are in this space, people like, oh, always be prepared to make a defense for well, you believe what you believe. And so I think they have this misconception that, you know, apologists just always have answers and they never have questions for the Lord. And it's like, no, I think in a lot of ways, the reason why we have answers is because we wrestle through the questions, right?

And so, you know, can you talk about that? I read the book and one of the things that stuck out to me is the kind of experience you had with your professor and your professor saying, you know, yeah, I don't want to ruin it. But can you just talk about that dynamic and that wrestle as being a person who's in a lot of academic spaces, a person who's an apologist, you've graded what you do, but you've also had your own personal experience with doubt and faith? So as a seminary student at Liberty, I was wrestling with my faith. we were learning about the problem of evil, you know, you go through all these courses.

And it just, I was, I heard something about terrorist murdering children. Mm-hmm. And that really struck me because I'm like, God, I understand. I understand all the apology. I know we got free will. I know that you're working these things out for our good. I know, as Tim Keller said, just because we don't know the reason doesn't mean there isn't a good reason. Yeah, yeah.

But it just wasn't emotionally satisfying for me. Yeah. And I think that for a lot of people, that's what it is. It's like, okay, you're giving me the logic. You're giving me the apologetic. But this don't sit right with my soul. Because for me, I grew up with great parents. My parents, if they knew that anything bad was about to happen to me and they could stop it, they would.

So if you're telling me that God loves me more than my parents. And when it comes to adults, sometimes you'd be like, you know, maybe something happened to you that you've, that you've, deserve what's happening. Sometimes people try to ration it out like that. But when it comes to children, you're like, God, they're innocent. There is nothing they did for a terrorist to do this to them. And so in my soul, I just could not reconcile it. And so I went to my professor. I was like, Dr. Pursar, I'm going to go to him. He's the director of the Apologiatist department. He has this Ph.D. in New Testament. So he's going to give me this great answer. So I go in there. I always used to talk to him. I'm, I'm a, I was a student that used my professors, uh, office hours to talk

and flush out stuff. And so he was no stranger to me going, being in his office. And so I was telling him what I was dealing with. And he was like, me too. And I was like, oh, that's the best you're going to give me. He was like, chapel started in 15 minutes. You ready to go? Um, and I think that really helped me know that, like, him sitting with me in that moment. he knew that I knew the reason. Yeah, yeah. The logical reasons. Yeah, yeah.

But he was like, let me give her relatability. Let me sit in this with her to let her know that it's okay. Yeah. And that really was what helped me get to the other side. I think that's beautiful because I think it just shows us that in all the knowledge that we know, you have to, like, leading with our humanity goes a long way, right? Because like Jesus, like I often think. It's funny how God became man to dwell amongst his own creation to lead us in humanity.

And oftentimes we try to help people by having all the answers like God. And a lot of times God was just present. Yeah. And he just empathized. And he said, you know, I'm hurt too. You know, Martha and Mary, I'm going to cry with y'all too over Lazarus death. And so I think that's dope. That's dope.

Do you think your early church experience gave you the tools, the resources, or even the framework? to be able to wrestle with God in that way? Or was it new for you to experience what you were experienced in college? You know, I never questioned God. Like, I just didn't have a reason to question them. I grew up kind of sheltered Christian home. And so there was never anything that I deemed traumatic to question.

Like, I was in a bubble. And you don't, you're not really wrestling with the hard complexities of the world. And so I don't, I never questioned or I never was technically wrestling with something that deep where I had to like wrestle with the question. My dad always told us, because my father's a pastor, like, talk to God, how you talk to me. So that was always kind of my framework of talking to God,

but I never had to wrestle critically until I got to college. Do you think that people are afraid to do that? And if so, why? Yeah, I think a lot of people are. They feel like they're going to get struck down by lightning. If they question God, they feel like how dare they? Because, you know, if you grew up in black churches, it's like, don't question God. And so they're like, I can't do this.

But to grow in any relationship, I love Joe Vitale says, when you enter any relationship, you ask questions. When you meet, when you met Preston or Preston, you met Jackie, y'all asked each other questions. Not because. He asked me a million questions. because you wanted to get to know the person. But when we come to God, it's like, why do you think that you're going to grow in your relationship with him without questioning?

That's good. That's really good. That's really good. I think one of the things that make you so effective is that it's very obvious that you've learned how to critically think through things, right? And so like, but you also said that, you know, in your childhood, I don't know if you're saying that your parents didn't prepare you

for the questions when you went out in the world. but I don't know about you. Being in an apologetic space, I often have parents come to me saying, you know, my child is an atheist now that they went to college. My child is wrestling with, you know, being Hebrew-Israelite or whatever.

And it's like, you know, it almost seems like people in the Christian faith kind of have like this reactionary type faith. Well, we try to prepare once something happened. And so how did you learn how to critically think through things? And also, too, I think the second part of their question is how can we as a church teach people how to critically think through these hard questions with the Lord.

So when we get out to college, when we get out into the real world, we won't be rocked by. Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So undergrad, I was not prepared for my New Testament class at the University of North Florida. Our textbook was Bart Irman, which is a New Testament professor that teaches at UNC Chapel Hill that is now an atheist. So imagine getting an intro to New Testament book written by at the time he was agnostic. He actually is a moody graduate, I believe. Was he a Christian that turned into an agnostic that turned into an atheist?

Yeah, I think he was a moody or Wheaton graduate. But by the time he wrote the book, he was already agnostic. Wow. And so- Why is that the textbook? Why is that on the syllabus? Was nobody a university? It was just a state unit.

It wasn't a Christian school. Oh, okay. Yeah, but they're not looking forward. I'm like, what's going on here? Yeah, so I was not prepared for that. You know, my parents taught me the Bible. but they also my parents didn't go to college until they graduated from college as adults after they had us yeah and so they had never had to wrestle with that themselves so they were not equipped to prepare me

for that so when I took that class I was like what is this yeah I was like can I trust this and then that's when my dad introduced me to apologetics wow which helped me navigate that class But before, I was just like, I don't know what to believe. That's good. I mean, he didn't have the tools to prepare you, but he knew what to point you to do. Which was thought. I think one element of wrestling with God or questions or doubt that's helpful is it teaches you even about yourself. You know what I'm saying?

Because as you come to God with your questions, I think even your own fears and angst and stresses and pain come up in conversation with God. And then you give God the opportunity to clarify himself through his word, through his people, all the stuff. And so I feel like when we run from the hard questions, we actually run from a degree of intimacy. Yeah, knowing God. Yeah, like you limit your ability to like, to like be like,

oh, like you are good. You are faithful. You are confusing, but you are good. Like he's a mystery on some level. Yeah. I got a lot of questions. Were there any, were there any, were there any answers that you got from the questions, from the hard, hard questions that you got that made you, like, believe in God more or,

because I know when you talked about how your professor didn't really have, like, an answer for you when you went in his office. But has there ever been a time where, where the Lord actually. answered a hard question that you had concerning faith, your doubt or whatever, and what did that look like? Yeah, great question. So I think a lot of my questions have been around recently starting Jude 3 is... We need to talk about Jude 3. Is really wrestling with where is God in the calling that he's given me? Talk about it, yellow. Come on.

So I went through it about during the pandemic, I went through a major faith crisis. My mentor was died within the week of my grandfather. A month later, a whole scandal came out about him. Not my grandfather, my mentor. So I went through this crisis like God, why did you call me to a field and success to me starts to look like failure. Like you set people up for failure. Like they do your work, but there's no success at the end.

There's not a finish strong. And I'm like, are you setting me up? Because if you setting me up, I'm good. I don't want no parts. I don't want to do this. And so I went through this whole crisis of like, God, I don't want to do this. And I feel like not only are you setting me up, but you only answer the prayers that's related to ministry.

You don't answer the personal ones. because I'm like I didn't want to do this in the first place my goal was to be a stockbroker working on Wall Street in New York we could tell that ain't no revelation that ain't no revelation that's plain I didn't want to do this

I got called in this because the crisis of faith I had so this is not my goal and there's some personal things that I want that I feel like I pray about that you don't answer, but if I pray about G3 stuff, you answer.

And it's causing this resentment in my heart. Like, because I'm like, God, what is this? Like, I don't want to be here. Wow. These ain't my goals. This is.

What do you say? You got me on edge of my seat. But I feel like I want you to say this sentence because you said it in your book but you also told me over coffee. You was like you feel like God only wants to use me.

Yes. Yeah. I was feeling used by God. not loved by him. Not using the way that people like brag about, but like he's using. Yeah, he's using me to do his work, but not hearing and doing the things that would like make me feel loved. Wow. And care for.

I remember I was sitting in my therapy session and my therapist said, how do you feel about God? And the words flew out of my mouth before I could catch him. I said I resent him. Wow. Now I'm leading a whole ministry. This is only two and a half years ago. I'm leading the whole ministry and people like, they're successful. And I'm telling people how to navigate their questions.

And I didn't realize that I resented the person that called me to the ministry. And I think I had to go through that space. I always say you have to get it out of your mouth to get it out of your heart. And when I was able to voice that, when I gave language to it, the Lord just started ministering to me in ways and showing me the way. ways he had shown up for me. And it's like, you're so focused on that. You don't see all the other things I've done for you.

And so it was a really sweet moment where I had to walk through and do the work, do the work of really pulling up all of that bitterness and resentment. I remember the Lord showed me like in prayer a glass vase with layers of grass and dirt. And at the top layer, it seemed nice. but then you looked underneath, it was layers of just grass and dirt that had died. And he was like, that's your heart. You just piling stuff on top of each other. You haven't been dealing with the things.

You haven't been dealing with the disappointment. And so I went into this intense time where I was like, okay, one of the reasons that this is off is because I've allowed work to take over and I'm so busy that I don't have a strong devotional life. And so I need to get back to the basics. so I need to implement an hour a day of straight devotional where I'm spending quiet time I have I'm very consistent with this now 30 minutes in silence not asking God for anything just saying God look at my heart interrogate my heart show me the things in me that are not like you

then going through scripture then praying and making requests yeah but that has been so transformational for the cult of for him to pull out those things in me that didn't need to be there, the bitterness that didn't need to be there. I remember I was sitting with him one time and he said, called them and make it right. It was a list of people that I either had wronged or they had wronged me. And he wanted me to go reach out to them. And the, with each call, the free our field. And I didn't realize how bound I was by unforgiveness. My goodness. Because I was not letting the Lord show me the places where he needed. needed me devote attention to. Yeah. Yeah, that's so good. That went super deep.

Jesus. Because what it's given is the resentment was legitimate, but it was also being, it was like the fruit of other stuff. That's basically like even her perception of God and how she was like surveying her life and his dealings with her were even coming out of what she said. Like my prayer time, my bitterness, my unbegined, she's like, my goodness, it's always deeper than we think. And what's really dope is I think that when we when we have language for our pain, right, bringing it to the Lord. Because oftentimes the Lord just wants to shift our perspective and allow us to see it from a different angle because I resonated with what you just said. Because the mentor that you had, you know, I think we're talking about the same person, right? You know, he was a mentor for me as well.

And when he fell on it and a lot of stuff came out, my wife would tell you, like, I had the shame. I had the shame. I introduced a lot of people to this particular person's work. And I remember feeling like, man, like, I remember, like, sitting on my deck one day and feeling like this sense of hopelessness because I esteemed this person so high. And I'm doing ministry and I'm so young in ministry. I'm like, man, will I last?

Like, God, why would you allow this to happen? And then I felt shame because I introduced so many people to his work. So I was like, you know, and then I began to pray. I'm in beginning to ask Lord questions. Like, why did you allow this to happen? Yada, yada, yada. And I remember telling the Lord, like, he's taught me so much. And I feel like the Lord spoke to Martin and said, well, I'm still using him to teach you.

I'm still using him to teach you. Like this, this, this, this, like, I use, I use everything. I don't let anything go to ways. And so, like, even that was a, like, it shifted. Like it shifted my perspectives to know like, no, God uses the foolish things of the world, the shame the wise. He uses men's failures. He uses men's faithfulness.

He uses it all. And if we're faithful to him, he can use us. I would say about him that I learn more from his death than his life. That his death and all the events that surrounded it taught me more about how to do ministry better than his life. Yeah. Yeah. And that's the thing I love about God.

He doesn't waste anything. No, he doesn't waste anything. He can use it all. He can use it all. In the book, you talk about pain points. Can you explain? Because you talk about Amazon and you give the mission and the vision of the church of Amazon.

And you talk about pain points of how apologetics answers these things. Like, I want us to flesh that out for the people. Yeah. So I realize after talking with people about their doubts, that every doubt is rooted in pain for the most part. So I could be talking to somebody about science and evolution. And they'll be like, yeah, I don't believe in God because of science. Then you flush it out and you listen to them.

And they'll be like, well, I pray from my mom to be healed from cancer when I was a kid and she died. And so that's at the root. So the pain points is really getting to the root of the question and not arguing with people about the fruit of their question. So I saw this when I was, we do a HBCU tour, historically black college and university and we were at Southern Hebrew Israelites would follow our tour they would come to each stop

the dude you know they had a reader and the guy Read! Read brother and they were doing got up during Q&A. The guy that was the more aggressive one stormed out because he didn't like I think show or events had answered his question in the way he didn't

like so he stormed out of the room. The other guy tears welled up his eyes and he said why are my people suffering like this? Why are we dying in the street? And it was at that moment, I stopped seeing him as an adversary and saw him as just a human wrestling with the problem of evil. And so for him, the pain point was personhood, identity.

And so what I'm pressing for in the book is to look beyond sometimes the aggression of people's questions and see what the pain is underneath. So personhood, peace. When we think about crystals and sage, people are trying to get peace. Yes. They're misguided in this. their peace or they're trying to get protection because they felt unprotected by God. A lot of people are dealing with sexual violence and they feel like God didn't protect them.

So they need other things to protect them. And really I pull on that was I was talking to an apologies in Nigeria. And I was like, what is how is doing apologetic work in Nigeria? He was like, yeah, a lot of people have converted to Christianity. However, they've went back and picked up African spiritualism to supplement it because they still felt like they felt like when they converted to Christianity, God was going to protect them from terrorists. And when they were still having to deal with that, they were like, well, God isn't enough. I need to go add some stuff. And I was like, well, that's similar to what's

happening in the U.S. People are like, I, a Christian, God didn't protect me from this. So I got to pick up some sage. I got to pick up something else to supplement. That's why we got a lot of syncretism now. Yeah. People just mixing religion and blending it. That's deep. That's deep. So peace, protection, provision are all of are wrapped up, especially with provision, I think it hits a lot about prosperity gospel. If you grew up in a prosperity gospel teaching, the reality of life will shake you, right? Because you can't name it and claim it. Yeah. Don't prepare you to suffer.

You can't. So you can't give enough. I mean, you can't call Peter Prop off in the middle of the night. He and get this miracle springboard. That's good. Because that's not how life works. Many are the afflictions of the righteous. You will suffer.

Peter said after you have suffered a while. Suffering will be a part of your life. And sometimes that suffering will be financial. And so there is not enough good works in the world that can allow you to escape the trials of this life. And so provision becomes a pain point. if you have this framework that if I so, I'm going to get back. That's just how how it works. Press down, shaking together, and running over.

Now, this is a very practical question. If you are in ministry, not even in ministry, for yourself as a disciple, how do you identify your own pain points? So I think several things. You have to sit with the Lord. A lot of people don't like quiet. Yeah, we don't. I had a friend, I said, well, why don't you just sit in quiet?

He was like, when too much stuff comes up, I'm like, that's the stuff that needs to come up so you deal with. So one is sit silently. We work our way through pain instead of dealing with pain. So we'll overwork, we'll overeat, we'll have sex, we'll watch porn, all of these things as avoidance tools. So we have to sit with the Lord quietly first. for him to uncover our heart. Two, community is important. Yeah.

People can see what you can't see. And what happens in our culture is people think, I have a therapist, so I'm good. But it's like you need more than that because your therapist is only seeing you one hour a week if that. And they cannot see, they have to determine at what point you're lying. Because everybody else come into therapy with their own side of the story. It takes a therapist a while to flush out sometimes.

this person ain't telling the truth. Or this person has the same issue with multiple people. Like it's going to take them a while to get there. But if you have community that's walking with you, they could point out, hey, you've still got some bitterness in your heart. You don't trust God here. You don't have the peace of God. So a therapist, I think, is a helpful starting point, but it's not the be all the ends all. You need people around you that know you well enough.

And also the scriptures. So I think if you are sitting with God in prayer and in meditation and letting him uncover the things in your heart, God show me where I'm at in my heart. Show me where there's impurities in my heart. Show me where there is bitterness, jealousy, envy, strife in my heart. He will begin to show you. Yeah, he will. And that's why in each chapter with a prayer, like giving people a guide on like, God, I don't trust you.

I don't think you're good. like saying those things rooting your life in scripture yeah um and then that community piece i think it's real basic but we don't do the basics we want something deep it's the hard stuff yeah one thing that i learned by talking to people in other religions is that a lot of times people would like to i think people think that it's like a theological intellectual thing but it's it's always emotional it's always an emotional response and even when you talk to Atheist, brilliant atheists, when it talks about the laws of logic or induction

or the uniformity nature, like all of these things, it's like, no, they had some stuff that happened to them when they were young, when their dad got cancer, or they, mom and dad got a divorce, and they was mad at God, and they sent them down the road, you know, yada, yada, yada. I love stories,

and I love analogies. And in the book, you tell stories well, and you give great analogies, and I used to love the show cheaters. I used to love that show That show was so messy Not cheaters

Not cheaters, not cheetahish I'm sorry I love cheaters and catfish I used to love the show Catfish And you just gave a beautiful analogy in your book And when I read it It resonated with me so much

Because I'm like man I wish I had this analogy When I was on the streets Giving people the gospel Because it's such a great great analogy To help people critically think through The goodness of God

The mercy of God how to accept and embrace when they don't have an answer. Can you break down that analogy and why you wrote it in the book? Yeah, because for many of us, we don't realize our goal line for God is emotionally satisfying answers. Hold on. Hold on, yellow. I'm telling you, this part, man, this part in the book, I read this book. I read it this morning.

Rewind. My gosh. Say it one more time. So for many of us, our goal line for God is. emotionally satisfying answers. If the answers aren't emotionally satisfying, we won't believe they're true. You better teach us.

And so I use Catfish because in Catfish, a person is online getting all emotionally satisfying answers. But none of it is true. And the truth, when the truth comes, they're often upset. The truth makes them mad. It makes them sad.

It makes them cry. But ultimately, it liberates them from the deception of the emotionally satisfying answers. Keep going, but also what you said was when the person who's doing the show gives them the truth, they're in denial at first. They don't want to believe it.

Because the emotionally satisfied answers are more soothing to them. But it's not true. And so what I wanted people to see or think through is like, in life, answers are not always emotionally satisfying. but that doesn't rob the truth from them. Mm-hmm.

Because we reject what doesn't satisfy us emotionally. And that's our culture. Like, I don't feel like this is true or how can this be true? And it's like, that's not the goal line for truth. And sometimes emotionally satisfying answers is what bound keeps us bound. And the truth will be the only thing that liberates us. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I love the end because what you said, like, because it's true.

like they they were giving news that this person who they thought loved them and they thought they were in love with doesn't even exist or they're not even black they're like expanagan somebody and they live in a you know a different town that they thought they lived in but you but you beautifully at the end of that that analogy you beautifully said that even though they're disappointed even though that they're hurt they're still liberated by the truth like that's still set free by the truth they still are in a better place because god revealed truth to them yeah and so I think think that if we understand that as a people like it's a church yeah that's that was so good and the truth does hurt it does it hurts you know like you got jesus saying you know if your eye calls you to see and

gouge it out to gouge it out i have to believe truth i have to obey you i have to believe that what you're saying is actually worthwhile and worthy of my time and my intention but it still hurts to remove the eye. And I think, I think we live in a world where I feel like so much of our sin is just us coping with pain. I really do feel that way. Like it's just, we just, we're hurting, we're irritated, we don't have peace, we're confused, we're perplexed, you know, like all the stuff. And it's like, how can I experience Eden apart from Christ? That's really what it is. Like I want heaven on earth now when that's just not the way it's built, you know. So speaking of peace, you talk about how you know, peace ain't depending on your circumstances and peace ain't primarily a feeling and stuff like that.

That's cool, yellow. But like there's a lot of times when like I do want to experience some like some freedom from angst and stress. Like tell me about a time where your circumstances didn't give you peace, but God did. Yes. I feel like that's most of my life. Okay. I'm ready for it. But I think for me, when I was struggling, it's been several times, with God around leading an organization.

And like, I cannot do this. Sitting with the Lord and allowing him to uncover and do the work was the peace on the other side. So I talk about peace in three tiers, peace with God, which is the work that Jesus did on the cross. and we have to accept his work, right? But then there's this, the part of peace that trips a lot of us up is peace with people. Because we don't want to do the work of reconciling and forgiving. And I know some people are hard to reconcile with because they don't apologize. And I know there's people that we can't reconcile with because they're violent and dangerous.

So I'm not talking about that. But the average interpersonal relationships, we can, most, Most of the time do the work to fix those. We just don't want to. And I believe that sometimes God strips us of inner peace to force us to do that work. And he's like, you're not going to get that because I know that's what you really want. So you'll go and say, well, I'll get peace with Sage and crystals. And God said, no, I want you to go talk to your father.

You pray for peace, God said, he's going to send you on an assignment. no talk to your ex-friend and then you're like no God I need peace I need a peace that's a past of all understanding you said it would be mine he also said if somebody had something against you

go to them or if you know somebody that has something against you go to them so he rigs it he's like it's not just about if you have somebody because sometimes we'll say you know I know I got something against it but I did with it myself

then he's like but if you know that somebody got something against you you go you're always called to be the initiators of peace yeah and healing and relationship and so god is like that's the part that i really feel like a lot of people don't have peace because they're not willing to do the second part that's good so that's one and i think too we misunderstand what peace is jesus is the prince of peace yeah but he still cried he still had what we call negative emotions. He still felt frustrated with the disciples. And so it's like, how are we thinking about peace in light of the example of Jesus? That peace is not the absence of crying. That I can be

crying and still have peace. It's the assurance of the presence of God. That's good. And so I think we have a lot of the things we're trying to achieve that we don't have good definitions for. So I talk about in the book purpose. And it's like, well, everybody's trying to get to purpose. But what is it? And it's like, it's almost like we're pursuing ambiguity. That we don't actually know what we're searching for. Actually, we're just searching for a capitalist success.

Not actual God-given purpose. And so I always say purpose is not what you achieve, is who you become. Becoming more like God, which frees me from an actual external achievement. It's who I become in my character. Yeah. Do I look like Jesus? That's a really good distinction.

And if I look like Jesus, I am living in purpose. Now, he may give me an assignment. Right now, my assignment is to do G3. 10 years from now, it could be doing something else. That's not my purpose. That's not my identity. That's not going to heal me. And I think sometimes for purpose, people are like,

I experience so much pain in my life. I got to do something grand to make it make sense. Because you're looking for healing. You're not looking for purpose. And God is like, no, I'm the healer. You don't have to do anything grand for your healing to take place. Your healing comes from me.

That's good. The person of Jesus. That's really good. You've been teaching this whole time. Probably got to wrap up in a couple of minutes. But I think you are doing such great work with you three. I've seen some of the most, yeah, most intriguing, the most interesting conversations. through the Ju-3 Project and courageous conversations.

Can you just tell the listener, what is Ju-3, why did you start it, all the good things? So, Ju-3 Project is a Christian apologetic organization dedicated to helping black Christians specifically know what they believe and why they believe it. We also have an emphasis on engaging skeptics of African descent. We do this through a lot of ways, through film, through our two documentaries, through our podcast, through conferences, through other events and our multimedia series. That's good. That's good. And you started to win? I started in 2014 in my last year at Liberty.

Yeah, yeah. And so it's a dope, dope, dope ministry. I mean, I've seen you've had conversations where people, like, it would be like three people who are on this side of, you know, rational thinking or theological truth. And, you know, they have, like, really respectful conversations. And so I think it's just really dope to organize this. space where people can come together who disagree and to critically, like, help us think through

the Bible, but also teach us how to, like, engage and respectful, dignifying ways. And so, yeah, it's just been doing really great work, great work. So if your life is given Jacob, and if it ain't, it will, you know, where you wrestling with the Lord. I think you should get the book when faith disappoints by Lisa, Victoria Fields. All the information will be in the show notes. Thank you, Lisa. Thank you for having me. Appreciate you. With the Perrys is produced by The Perrys with support from Amanda Reed and Channing McBride,

video recording and audio production by Matthew Baxter 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.