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Grit ‘n’ Grace: Good Girls Breaking Bad Rules

Episode #69: How to Be Prepared Not Panicked: Walking in Your Warrior Boots

 

Amy

One of our listeners cut right to the heart of things with this email. She said,

 

… I’m a lazy perfectionist, so I’m not willing to put in the time to actually achieve the perfection I desire, which, leaves me feeling worthless, and my house pretty messy, too. I often say I just want to be good at what I do which suggests that I base my worth on outside circumstances instead of the price God paid for me. The struggle to remember His love for me and my value in Him is real.

 

Cheri

Oh, my goodness. I love her honesty! And you want to know the truth?

 

Amy

Yeah. Give me the scoop!

 

Cheri

Okay, you promise you won’t tell ANYONE?!?

 

Amy

Hopefully, nobody overhears this, but I won’t tell!

 

Cheri

In so many areas, I’m a lazy perfectionist, too. I’ve got this small collection of things I do really, really well. I’m kind of like a magician, I divert people’s attention to what I WANT them to see. But then there’s this whole host of things I don’t do AT ALL … even though I feel plenty of conviction in my heart that God really wants me to.

 

Amy

Oh, mercy! That describes me exactly.

 

Cheri

Well, this is Cheri Gregory…

 

Amy

…and I’m Amy Carroll…

 

Cheri

…and you’re listening to “Grit ‘n’ Grace: Good Girls Breaking Bad Rules.”

 

Amy

Today, we’re talking with Lisa Whittle, author of Put Your Warrior Boots On: Walking Jesus Strong, Once and for All.

 

Lisa is a leader, author and speaker with a heart and passion to communicate one thing: Jesus is everything. She is the author of six books and a sought after Bible teacher for her wit and bold, bottom line approach.  She is a wife and mother of three who currently resides in North Carolina.

 

Cheri

So, If you’re ready to get out of that “lazy perfectionism” funk and into the action God’s called you to, Lisa’s words today are a serious boot to the backside … as only a good girlfriend can deliver!

 

Amy
So girl, we are doing a series on grit, and I was just thinking, I always think of you as one of my grittiest friends! I’m so happy you’re with us!

 

Lisa

Oh thank you! I don’t know if that’s a compliment or not, but I’m going to receive it as such.

 

Amy
It is! It is! Well, so last year you spoke in my area, and I was so blessed to get to hear one of your first talks, I think, from Put Your Warrior Boots On. And I was in such a downtrodden place when I came to hear you. It was just what I needed to hear. I was so encouraged. So tell us about Warrior Boots that we have available to us.

 

Lisa
Yes, well actually I think that was the very first time I spoke on Put Your Warrior Boots On. So I’m glad you got something out of that very rusty, pedestrian first attempt — but that’s how good God is, right? The Warrior Boots, man, this is to me, this is really all about the strength of God. I mean it’s just a visual — these boots — this sort of preparatory — not wimpy flip flops kind of a visual I hope that the readers get. The strength of God, the power of God to walk through this life — ‘cause we’re walking through this life whether we wear flip flops or whether we wear — and by the way, I love flip flops — but listen, as we walk through this life, we’re walking anyway so I want us to walk prepared for through this life in what I call Jesus strong rather than human brave. And so that’s really what The Warrior Boots are really are all about. It’s about walking prepared rather than panicked and walking steady, ready, and sure. And so that’s really what the Warrior Boots message is all about.

 

Amy
And it was just what my heart needed, just that reminder that we have a choice. That we can limp along in our flip flops like you said, or we can put on Warrior Boots because they’ve been provided to us. So good!

 

Lisa
I’m glad you said choice because really, I think that we forget that we really do have a choice. We want this strength to walk through this life, but we feel like we’re victims. And so a lot of what I say in the book is, please don’t go on your feelings. Because your feelings are going to make you feel like you can’t do this. And so that’s why I spend the whole first chapter of the book saying, “By the way, you are able to do this.” Because I think that’s what we don’t realize is, that we’re evil, and so we’ve got to get that off the table first. You’re able to do this. It doesn’t matter who you are. You’re going to walk regardless through this life, so you need to choose to walk strong.

 

Cheri
Speaking of the first chapter. It was a good one, but a challenging one for me because I am not a naturally gritty person. I’m what you call a highly sensitive person and so not only do I feel my feelings, I feel them a little bit more intensely than some people and so my people, kind of, we have all the fears and then we feel all this guilt because we don’t have enough faith. And I liked how you said how you sensed God saying, “My people need to get real, get a strategy, and get strong.” What does it mean to get real, to get a strategy, and get strong so that I can be more intentional and maybe recognize that I have more choices than I realize?

 

Lisa

You know I don’t feel like this naturally gritty person. I felt for that personality as I was writing this book, because there are a lot of people that feel that way. And actually people might say Lisa, you’re a gritty person, but as I talk about in the intro of the book, I, many days, don’t feel that way myself, right? So I get that, that’s why I want to take brave off the table ‘cause if it’s up to me, we’re in trouble. So to me, this saying, “Get real.” To me, that says, that the hills are the hard things in life — the really extra hard moments, because we all have regular hard moments. But they expose our lack of spiritual depth, which actually is a gift that we never want, but we need to know where we are. That’s why I spend the whole third chapter of the book — The Declaration — saying, “I will tell the truth to myself.” Because the reality is, Cheri, is that we don’t tell the truth to ourselves and we might think that insulates us and makes us feel better and maybe for a second it does. But then the reality is, okay, then we go through our whole life without living a life of truth and so what we do to ourselves is actually so detrimental, because we harm ourselves in that process. We can’t fight well. We come in ill equipped for a battle that’s being waged whether we want it or not. So we can pretend that there’s a way around that, but there’s not. And so I just suggest, man, let’s get real about this ‘cause John 16:33 says, “In this world there will be trouble.” That’s not an ‘if’ statement, that’s a ‘when’ statement. Right, so hard times are going to happen and so get real and then get a strategy. So far our strategy has not been real effective — it’s been let’s panic, and let’s fear. So strategy has sort of been a non-strategy. It’s been, let’s just react to the world and so when the world goes crazy, let’s just sort of respond to it, you know? And the reason why I wrote the book, by the way, was because – not only was God calling me out saying, “Lisa, girl, you’re living below your spiritual potential. Do you realize according to Ephesians 1, I have called you to walk in my authority — and so you walk as my adopted child in that powerful authority. But right now you’re living below your spiritual potential.” Which is what I believe a lot of us do as readers. And so, rather than this strategy of living this nonstrategy of panic and fear, let’s get a better strategy which is preparation and here’s the reality — the Bible is a book of preparation. That’s what it is. It’s all throughout the Bible it’s saying, “Get ready. Prepare. Do this” Why do you think Jesus left us the word of God? It was so that we would know what to do. And it says, He has given us everything we need for life and godliness while we’re here on earth. That means he didn’t leave one thing out. So everything we need to know is in the word of God. We just got to get a strategy – the strategy is the preparedness that comes through the word of God. And then what I mean by get strong is — what I mean is, Jesus strong. There’s an endless supply of strength that comes only from Jesus. It’s different from human brave, which has an expiration date to it. It comes through our own you know, let’s get — let’s feel really empowered to do this. In and of myself, I’m going to be really gritty or whatever the case may be. Forget it! Even those of us who have strong personalities — we run out, man. So that’s what I’m saying.

 

Amy
So good! So a lot of us recovering perfectionists, we have a whole list of rules. We’ve come out of our own legalism, and we’re coming out of it, so we do this crazy swing to the opposite direction to complete permissiveness. And you say about that in your book, “Satan has rendered us ineffective by causing us to think that we must always say yes to everything in order to be a loving, open, grace-filled person.” So how do these two things work together? How does living by a standard still include grace?

 

Lisa
That’s what I see happening a lot in the world. And I understand it, Amy, because, you know, a lot of us do come from this sort of, like — and whether our church kind of put us in that place, whether we grew up in that space or whether just through our own desire to be really in line with the word or whatever, we’ve just been legalistic. I don’t know, you know? We’ve fallen into that trap, now we’re like, “Oh, I just want to give people grace!” Here’s what I think the main problem is. It’s in the misunderstanding of grace. This is what I talk about in the book. You know, and I give the illustration of my mentor who goes to this church, and he’s a consultant with churches. And he goes in and the guy says, “Hey, we’re a grace church.” You know, that’s sort of how he defines it. My mentor, who’s not pious at all, but he says, “Oh, great, then I can’t wait to hear about your convictions.” You know? And the pastor’s like, “What?”

 

<Laughter>

 

‘Cause that’s not usually what they expect to hear. But here’s the reality of it. There’s a conviction and a standard in grace. Grace came by the holy grit of the cross. Right? Like Jesus had this huge conviction and this standard in order to give us grace. And then we water it down — I cheat on my taxes, but grace.” You know or whatever the dumb thing that we do to sort of throw in grace. We water down what God did for us on the cross. Grace is not meant to be used like that and so grace and conviction are tightly bound by Jesus on the cross. Part of our standard in conviction will be to give people grace, but grace is not permissiveness to sin. I think that’s where we go wrong is we misunderstand grace. That’s the part where we get way off track, so we’ve got to understand the difference there. We absolutely are called to live by a standard. That’s the whole word of God. And yet we are required to give people grace. We’re just humans, and we don’t know how to balance that very well. That’s why we need Jesus so very desperately. You know, yet another reason and proof!

 

Cheri
We’ve talked in the past about how easy it is to confuse grace and license.

 

Lisa
Oh yes. Well, that’s a great way to put it. I mean that’s exactly what it is. And, of course, Satan has set us up with this, sort of, yes and no system. He’s basically made us confused to say, if you say no to everything. He wants us to say no to everything and yes to everything. And so we’re confused all the time. And basically he’s made it seem like, you know, the people that live with a standard are people that aren’t loving. And it just couldn’t be further from the truth. If you have a standard and a conviction for your life, then part of that includes an equal conviction to love. We cherry pick what we have convictions about, right? Maybe you have this high conviction to not see a rated R movie, right, because you want to be very pure in your mind. And I can appreciate that because I believe we should fortify our minds with what we see and take in, but then you totally ignore your neighbors. You know your neighbors down the street; they’re not even on your radar screen. You don’t care about loving them at all. Hey, you’ve got to have an equal conviction to love as you do to live your convictions about the word of God that are to fortify your mind and things like that. Does that make sense?

Amy
Totally. Without love, all those convictions do cross over into legalism. Inevitably. So good!

 

Lisa
And Jesus, of course, did them all perfectly. We won’t. But that’s why again we stay tightly tethered to Him so that we know how to live this life the best we possibly can in human flesh.

 

Cheri

You talk about the difference between passive faith and activated faith. Talk to us about that.

 

Lisa

 

People might think faith is faith — actually, no. Because according to the word of God, James 2:14, faith without works is dead, right? So here’s the reality of it — I talk in the book about the example of the debit card. You have to activate it in order for it to receive the power it needs in order to make transactions. I was remiss and didn’t do that when I recently got a new debit card. So I was in a grocery store line with 5 people behind me, and then I realize, “Oh, I haven’t activated this dumb card.” So now, I’m getting the death glare from everybody behind me, right? And faith is the same way. Passive faith and activated faith are different. So, examples would be — a passive faith says, “Listen I’m going to wait, and I’m going to get all the details of how God wants to use me. So I’m going to need to just wait, and wait, and wait. I need a few more details, God. So, I know God wants me to do something, but I just don’t have all of the details.” So that’s to me a passive faith ‘cause we’re still waiting on that. An active faith would say, “I’m going to pray. And I’m going to follow the leadership of God. Obviously, I’m not going to be, you know, not use my brain on this, ‘cause that’s a gift from God, too. But then I’m going to go. I’m going to go on what I sense the Holy Spirit asking me to do. And I’m not going to wait to get all the details ironed out.” Because if we wait on that, as we all know, we’ll be waiting forever. A passive faith says, let me collect all the information — I’m going to collect all the biblical information I can, and I’m going to sit for year and years and years and collect biblical information after biblical information. I just need some more information. I just get more and more and more information. And then the other says, the active faith says, “I’m going to preach what I know. This is what I learned last week! You know? This is what I learned today! This is what I know. And I may not be a biblical scholar, and I may not have been to seminary, but I’m going to preach what I know.” And then a passive faith might say, “I’m just going to settle for, sort of this, okay relationship with God. Sort of this ‘Goddish,’ so, sort of this fringe, sort of this, having all the trinkets of spirituality, right? In the Bible it says having a form of godliness but denying the power to make them godly. It’s settling for this sort of okay relationship with God. That would be a passive faith. But an active faith says, “I’m not going to settle. I don’t’ want to settle in, or settle for.” So that’s kind of the difference between a passive faith and an active faith. Listen. Faith without works is dead. It says it in the Bible. So it’s like a debit card. You can have the card, you can have the faith — but until you activate it — and really declarations in 4 and 5, those two chapters are all about the activation of your faith. The ‘I will rise up and stand firm’ — chapter 4, declaration 4 — then declaration 5 ‘ I will go on record – it’s saying I going to go forward in my faith. I’m going to put my money where my mouth is, if you will. And I think some of us are kind of settling, and we’re saying, “I’m a Christian. I’m going to heaven. I’m kind of okay with where I am.” And I believe that God has called us to do more. And by the way when we do those things, here’s the irony about it: we get stronger. So people are – I think people are waiting. Hey, I’m going to wait to get strong to kind of rise up and stand firm — I’m going to wait until I’m strong, or I don’t really have that personality. My mom is one of the most humble, quiet, meek women you would ever know, but that woman is a bulldog in her faith. I’ve seen her walk straight t up to people and tell them about Jesus Christ. This has nothing to do with personality type. And in those activations of our faith, God makes us strong warriors. I’ve watched it over and over again in people that did not have gritty personality types.

 

Amy
I don’t know about you Cheri, but I feel something in me rise up as I hear Lisa talk about it! It’s awesome! I believe that’s the Spirit!

 

Cheri
I have some goose bumps.

 

Lisa
Yay! Well, honestly, that is one of my goals for people that pick up the book that God will infuse them with this strength and this knowledge. You’re able to do this, and you’re ready to do this. Because listen, that’s the Holy Spirit, that’s not me, that’s not my words. I’m not powerful enough to do that, man. And in my daily life, I hope that I’ve assured the readers through the introduction, if nothing else. You may see me as strong. You may see me as gritty. My personality is more of a stronger personality, but I feel very weak many times. I can tell you, I’ve felt scared to go to bed. I’ve felt — woken up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, afraid for my children. I had nearly a panic attack on the airplane. There’s plenty of times I feel very afraid. It is only the power of God that makes anybody Jesus strong. My father just went to heaven 3 weeks ago. And I can tell you there was not a moment of human bravery in the months I watched him slip away from me before that — I watched my father die in front of my eyes. And I can tell you, if it were about natural personality, it’s not good enough. It’s just not. And we’ll come to the end of that at some point. Jesus strong is the only way that makes any of that possible.

 

Amy
As we wrap up, Lisa, I know you’ve got some free resources that come with your book, so how does our audience get that. And then, just wrap us up with a few last thoughts that you want to leave them with.

 

Lisa
You can go to my website, which is lisawhittle.com. But in order to really know a lot about the book, the best place to go is warriorbootsbook.com. (It) has all of the info on there, has all of the — book trailer and really, really neat things you can download. I have 2 free Bible studies. One is called Declare. It’s a 10-day Bible study. And then we have one called Jesus Strong. It’s a 5-day Bible study. And if anybody wants to really just quickly access all of this, they can text on their phone right now to ‘44222’ the word ‘warriorboots’ – one word. Text that to ‘44222.’ And they’ll immediately get, kind of like, this notice that says, “Hi, put your email address in here, and you’ll get all this neat stuff.’ So all they literally have to do is then put in their email address, and they’ll get access to all the free stuff, and everything they need to know about the book. So, that’s all really cool and fun and something really easy! Even technically challenged people like myself can do this. But yeah, I mean, I would just say really in closing, first of all, I’m with you, and I know exactly where you are, because I’m there, too. This book is for us. This book is for all of us. I’ve often said, you know, I wrote the book, but everybody authored the words, because I got this book from conversations on social media. From really listening to my sisters and brothers in Christ as I’ve traveled around the United States and heard the panic and the fear and people saying, “I don’t know how to do this.” Because the reality is, is we’re not to our best life yet. Our best life is heaven. But we’re here now. So right now, we have to know how to do this, and I believe we can do it better. And I really want us to find the joy and release in rising to our spiritual potential. I think a lot of us live below it, and I don’t want us to do it anymore. So here’s what I would say, first of all, we need to lay down our need to believe in yourself or our need to be brave. So I hope that creates a moment of just exhale for some people. Lay down your need to believe in yourself or your need to be brave, that’s not going to be necessary on this Warrior Boot’s journey. You’re not going to need that at all. Then the next think I think I would say is to deal with the God problem rather than all of the smoke screen issues because here’s what I say that I truly, truly believe. That if we were to truly deal with those problems then I believe a myriad of problems would then go away, because the priority of God brings order to the chaos of our lives. And I just believe that if we were to deal with those things, so many things — other things would go away. And then last, I would say, would leave us with the words of Matthew 11:28-30. I love this in the Message, which is not a translation I teach from, but a translation I enjoy in some of these sort of takeaway moments. Here’s what it says, “Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out from religion? Come to me, get away with me, and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me, and work with me. Watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill fitting on you. Keep company with me, and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.” And here’s what I truly believe is that when we come to the end of our strategies and human brave, God can make us His kind of strong.

 

Cheri

Head over to GritNGraceGirls.com/episode69.

 

Amy

You’ll find links to this week’s giveaway, Digging Deeper Download, Bible verse art, and transcript.

 

Cheri

You’ll find our private facebook group at www.facebook.com/groups/gritngracegirls.

 

Amy

Be sure to join us next week, when we’ll be processing together what we learned from our time with Lisa!

 

Cheri

For today: grow your grit … embrace God’s grace … and when you run across a bad rule, you know what to do: go right on ahead and…

 

Amy ‘n’ Cheri

BREAK IT!!!

 

Outtakes

 

Lisa

What I call in the Bible ‘Goddish’, sort of…

 

Amy
I loved that term when you talked about it! I was like, ‘Goddish!’ Man…

 

Cheri
Lisa? Lisa! I’m going to have you say that phrase again, because what you said is “What I say in the Bible,” and I think what you meant to say is, “What I say in my book”…I need you to re-say that so I can put it in the podcast!

 

Lisa
Yes, ‘cause I didn’t write the Bible, I don’t know if you knew that or not. I wasn’t asked to author part of it.

 

That’s hilarious. Okay. So, you want to start with what I say in the book? Or go back to the…

 

Cheri
What I say in the book.

 

Lisa
Okay. So what I say in the book is…um…I don’t remember!

 

<Laughter>

 

What do I say in this book? Did I write this book? Okay. What do I say in the book. Oh – Goddish, okay.