Lisa Harper's Back Porch Theology AccessMore

Since we’re right around the corner from The Kerygma Summit ’24 where 1,500 ministry leaders and Bible-loving chicks from three different countries are gathering here in Franklin, TN for a 3-Day spiritual boot camp, I thought it’d be fitting to spend today’s conversation on Back Porch Theology with one of the most gifted Bible expositors and evangelists I’ve ever met, who just so happens to be one of my best friends, Christine Caine. And I can’t wait for y’all to lean into this episode because Chris is going to wrap historical context and practical theology around one single verse in the Gospel according to Luke that can have a resurrective kind of impact on our future. In Luke 17:32, Jesus spoke three interesting words: "Remember Lot's wife." We don’t know her name, history, or all the details of her story. All we know is that when she was fleeing Sodom and Gomorrah with her husband Lot and their two daughters, she intentionally disobeyed God’s clear command to not look back and was consequently zapped into a pillar of salt, making her the first Scary Spice several millennia before the girl band borrowed that moniker. Mrs. Lot is one of the more infamous women in biblical narrative and out of the 170 women referred to in Holy Writ, she's the only one Jesus told us to remember. If you’re feeling stuck this season – mired in all-too-familiar feelings of shame, discouragement, resentment, unforgiveness, apathy or just wishing the reality of your life bore more resemblance to the life of your dreams, I believe today’s conversation could be the catalyst Holy Spirit uses to lift you out of the spiritual doldrums and back into the hope-filled future God promises for all of us through the Old Testament prophet Jeremiah. So please grab a cup of your favorite beverage and your Bible – unless you’re weaving through a herd of anxious cows on a scooter of course – and come hang out on the porch with us.

Today’s episode of Back Porch Theology is a continuation of the hope-fertilizing conversation Alli and I got to have with Dr. Craig Keener – a world-renowned New Testament scholar, and commentarian, who currently serves as a professor at Asbury Theological Seminary. Dr. Keener is one of our heroes of faith, who by the way has graciously agreed to be on the teaching team at Kerygma ’24 at the end of April so we’re over the moon about that! He’s widely respected for his scholarship – he’s got a Ph.D. from Duke – but even more so for his gentle compassion. And it’s in that spirit of kind humility that Dr. Keener dismantles the vitriolic yet increasingly popular claims that the Bible and those who order their lives by the promises and parameters prescribed in it are racist, misogynistic, and imperialistic. Mind you, people claiming to know God have often behaved despicably and His Word has been used to promote all kinds of horror throughout history. However, when people use God’s Word to promote the mistreatment, marginalization, and murder of others, they’ve twisted and distorted it into something God Himself never intended because evil is not divinely causative. So grab a cup of coffee and your Bible and come hang out on the porch with us. 

Today’s conversation on Back Porch Theology took place in Wilmore, KY, on the campus of Asbury Theological Seminary, because Alli and I had the phenomenal privilege of spending time with one of our favorite – and I mean one of the most favorite of all our favorites – Bible scholars, Dr. Craig Keener. I quote or cite Dr. Keener all the time because his book on hermeneutics, his commentaries on the New Testament, and his classic Bible Background Commentary are some of the sturdiest scaffolding I’ve built my Christocentric belief system on. He’s the one I paraphrase every time I say, “If you get out of the Bible what you were expecting to get out of the Bible, you need to raise your expectations!” because Dr. Keener is among the wise saints who’ve taught me that the redemptive truisms in this divine love letter we call the Bible are always bigger and better than our finite human minds can comprehend! His life’s work proves that Scripture isn’t a flat text to memorize or a proposition to study, but it provides a way for us to engage with the only true God who sees us and loves us, and is always in pursuit of our hearts. For Alli and I, getting to spend the day with Dr. Keener felt like being junior high kids who love singing in the choir but aren’t particularly melodic, yet we got invited to harmonize with Pavarotti! And the best part about this conversation wasn’t even the wisdom bombs he humbly dropped, y’all - it was how his heart is surely bigger than his extraordinary brain because even though Dr. Keener is a world-renowned New Testament scholar, almost every time he talked about the love Jesus has lavished him with, his eyes welled up with tears. I’m telling you, this man walks with God and just being in his presence helped us lean more fully into our Savior’s embrace. So please grab a cup of coffee (or one of those fancy electrolyte-enhanced waters) and your Bible – unless you’re picking dog hairs off your black jeans, of course – and come spend some time on the porch with us.

During today’s conversation on Back Porch Theology, we’re going to take a ride in the caboose of the Old Testament book of Malachi so as to get up close and personal with the spirit of entitlement. In this post-exilic era, God’s people were so discouraged and bitter, and prideful that they were down to the last dredges of their faith. As a result, they brazenly questioned God’s goodness and began putting scratch and dent sacrifices in His offering plate. And while their rotten behavior is certainly a fly in the ointment of redemptive history, I’m grateful their story and God’s merciful response was recorded because if we’re honest, I think most of us have been guilty of giving God secondhand stuff we don’t want anymore and pretending it’s a sacrifice, too. The temptation to keep the best for ourselves and give God leftovers didn’t die with the ancient Israelites...the spirit of entitlement is still alive and kicking hard in modern Christendom. Sir C.S. Lewis wisely wrote in his classic book The Screwtape Letters, “Men are not angered by mere misfortune but by misfortune conceived as injury.” Goodness gracious, that dog will hunt, won’t it? How often have we perceived that we haven’t been treated the way we deserve to be treated? How often have we secretly resented giving more than we received? How often have our hearts poked out their bottom lip over a relational return that was paltry compared to our emotional investment? And how has that kind of entitled, egocentric thinking exhausted our peace, gratitude, and intimacy with Jesus? Today’s episode is going to be a liberating sort of spiritual heart bypass for some of us, y’all so grab an extra-large cup of coffee and your Bible – unless you’re practicing for your part-time job as a mime, of course – and come hang out on the porch with Alli, Dr. Howard and me.

Log onto Angel.com/Cabrini for showtimes

During today’s conversation on Back Porch Theology Alli and I are back at Belle’s house with a gaggle of friends because we had such an engaging, provocative, and revelatory time last week when we got to ask Dr. Howard hard questions about God, that we unanimously agreed we wanted an encore! I mean it’s not every day you get to honestly process what sometimes feels like a gaping hole in your faith with someone who has five earned degrees and a PhD from Dallas Theological Seminary. Another one of my theological heroes, Helmut Thielicke, who I won’t get to meet until Glory because he passed away in 1986, said this: “Unless a theology works at the margins of life, it’s not worth anything even if it makes sense at the easy center.” I’m sixty years old now and in my experience, life can be a whole lot of things – it can be breathtakingly beautiful, excruciatingly hard, messy, wonderful, devastating, delightful, surprising – but I’ve rarely found life to be easy. At least not for long. And thankfully our Creator Redeemer doesn’t expect us to pretend like it is. Our Heavenly Father invites us to bring everything to Him – including our questions – nowhere in His Word will you find the command to curate your emotions and only present the optimistic, compliant parts to Him. God created us to be His image bearers, not soulless automatons. Those of you saints who still have questions about things like the nature of the Trinity, or the historical reliability of Scripture, or the sole sufficiency of faith in Jesus for the atonement of sins, or whether there’s a literal heaven, you’re very welcome to join our motley crew of Christ followers. So please grab a cup of your favorite caffeinated beverage and a Bible – if you have one - and come hang out on the porch with us. 
Log onto Angel.com/Cabrini for showtimes
Save 25% on Dwell at DwellBible.com/Lisa

During today’s conversation on Back Porch Theology Alli and I are hanging out with a gang of girlfriends in Belle’s living room - if you’re new to the porch, Belle’s like everybody’s favorite aunt, and we’ve had a neighborhood Bible study at her house every week for almost 15 years in a row so I’m pretty much a piece of the furniture there now. The theme of this taped-with-a-lively-group episode is hurling some spicy, dicey, I probably wouldn’t feel comfortable asking this in church theological questions at Dr. Howard so he can help us process conundrums like: Since God is sovereign and has already laid out the boundary lines of our lives, why do we pray? What’s the difference between that and fatalism? How do you describe the trinitarian nature of our Creator Redeemer to a new believer or non-Christian? Why does God allow suffering and how can I hang onto hope in the ensuing silence? If you’ve ever wished you knew a brilliant, accessible, kind biblical scholar who would help you untangle some complicated issues about God, today’s conversation is curated especially for you! So please grab a cup of coffee – or if you’re like me, a splash of coffee with your cream! - and your Bible – unless you’re hiding in the pantry of an Airbnb because you desperately needed a break during what’s become an especially loud and messy Spring Break – and come put your feet up on the porch with us!
Log onto Angel.com/Cabrini for showtimes
Save 25% on Dwell at DwellBible.com/Lisa