Wrestling with God, Doubt and Finding True Peace: Lisa Victoria Fields

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Wrestling with God, Doubt and Finding True Peace

Guest:Lisa Victoria Fields

From the series:When Faith Disappoints (Day 2 of 2)

Air date:April 11, 2025

Lisa:If you think you achieve purpose and you’re not a good friend, then you missed it because it’s who you become, not what you do. And I think that’s the difference that the mindset shift that needs to happen. I’m becoming something who I am will flow out in what I do.

Dave:Welcome to FamilyLife Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I’m Dave Wilson.

Ann:And I’m Ann Wilson. And you can find us at FamilyLifeToday.com. This is FamilyLife Today.

Based on our prior interview, I have a question to ask you to start us off.

Dave:You mean from yesterday?

Ann:Yeah.

Dave:Oh no.

Ann:When have you felt the most resentment toward God?

Dave:Wow, we’re going deep. We’re starting right there. Here’s what’s going through my mind—it hasn’t just been once—the biggies come to my mind: my brother dying, my mom and dad divorcing, it’s hurts. And it’s feeling like the God I thought was there, felt like He wasn’t there. I now know He was, but it didn’t feel like He was. Why are you asking me this? Ask Lisa. She’s sitting over there. She wrote the book on this.

Ann:We ended our last program of encouraging parents, especially to ask those questions to your kids of when they have felt resentment toward God. And I think it’s great to ask that question to a friend, to a spouse, to a parent. It’s fascinating because everyone will have a story. Because mine, instantly, my sister dying. It makes no sense. I don’t even get it. What was the point? And so it’s easy to build up resentment if we haven’t built a foundation. And I think having Lisa Fields back with us today, Lisa, I’m so glad you’re back because when you talk about this whole thing, it’s bridging the gap of what we believe and what we experience.

Dave:And you’re giving words to the disappointment everybody feels. And the fact that we can actually talk about this out loud.

Ann:You’re saying it’s healthy.

Dave:Church has often become a place where if you have those doubts, you would never say them out loud there. Maybe in a bar or at a ball game with somebody, but not at church because you sort of sit there thinking nobody has doubts like me. But you’re revealing to the world almost everybody does, right?

Lisa:Yeah, yeah,

Dave:Yeah.

Lisa:It’s normal. And it’s okay to express to him because God is not fragile.

Ann:Yes.

Lisa:He’s not fragile. He already knows what’s in our head. So it’s like we think we’re hiding. “Oh, I can’t tell God that I’m upset with him because He’s going to strike me down.” And it’s like, well, if He’s all knowing, He already knows.

Dave:But in some ways, we can think God’s not fragile, but my mom is, or my spouse is.

Ann:That is true actually.

Dave:And so we’re afraid to tell them because they might freak out like “Are you kidding me?” I mean, I literally had that experience as a high school kid in church, and I didn’t go much, but my mom sort of made me go. But I learned the rules pretty quickly there. You don’t doubt. Nobody hears doubting. You don’t question. And when I did question—

Ann:You don’t reveal your sin.

Dave:Oh yeah. And so when I questioned, my mom sort of looked at me, “Why do you think that? You just believe.” And she had every reason to question herself with her husband, but it was like the place you weren’t allowed to question.

Ann:Oh, I have a good quote. Listen to this. “Wrestling isn’t the death of your faith. On the contrary, wrestling is the key to your growth. And the way we get to know anyone is through questions.”

Dave:Who wrote that?

Ann:That’s Lisa.

Dave:I know.

Ann:Lisa, that is so good. And that just, it lets you sigh the sigh of relief knowing that wrestling isn’t the death of your faith, but it’s the key to your growth. How can that be?

Lisa:Yeah, because when you meet anyone, if you’re starting a dating relationship, if you’re starting just a friendship, the first thing you do is ask them questions.

Ann:Yeah.

Lisa:Because that’s how you get to know them. But in our minds, when we come to faith, we’re like, “Oh, I want to know God deeply.” And you start doing all these things, but nobody thinks to tell people like questioning is the way that you get to know Him on a deeper level.

Dave:Yeah. I remember learning years ago, decades ago, we would lead a weekly Bible study for the Detroit Lions, couples mostly. And I remember, just the way I’m wired, I never wanted conflict in the Bible study.

Ann:Yeah, you didn’t.

Dave:I sort of wanted to lead a study where everybody goes, “Amen. Yeah, I agree,” and go home. And I started to realize you don’t really grow without conflict. Tension is not always a bad thing. So I got to the point where I would throw out almost devil’s advocate type thoughts, almost like “I believe this, what do you think?” And they’d be like, “What?!” And then there’d be this tension in the room and people come up at the end and go, “That was the best Bible study ever.” You had to own or understand and wrestle with theology, the Bible, other people’s thoughts. So explain that. You mentioned in your book: angry with God compared to wrestle with God. What’s the difference?

Lisa:Yeah, so there’s a book we had to read in seminary called The Green Letters, and the author says, any truth that you have must go into a battle.

Ann:You went to a good seminary.

Lisa:It must go through a battle before you can really say that you believe this. The wrestling is what moves it from your head to your heart. When I first got exposed to apologetics and I started learning all the ideas, I was like, “Man, this is so good. I want to tell the world.” And you can debate all these concepts. You’re starting to learn all this knowledge and you get puffed up. I was the one that was like, “Oh, your pastor’s wrong. This is what the right messaging is.” Or “He got it wrong on this theological point.”

But when you start going through life and experiences, it humbles you and you’re like, “You know what? I still have the conviction, but I have a level of grace and empathy for those who don’t believe like me because I know how hard life is and the concepts that I’m trying to hold onto are difficult to hold onto as I’m wrestling with these experiences.” And so I believe that the wrestling actually helps us delineate what we actually believe, not what we memorized, but what we believe in our hearts.

Dave:And one of your points is behind every doubt, maybe I’m over exaggerating, you tell me I’m quoting you back to you, but something to the effect behind every doubt is a pain point.

Lisa:Yeah, and I really, that came to me as an undergrad student once I got beyond that New Testament class and I started taking all these religion courses, I had a level of pride from the knowledge I was picking up and I was no longer intimidated by my PhD professor. I felt like I had knowledge that I could go back and forth. I remember going back and forth with one particular religion professor. We were arguing and I was like, “Man, I think I’m killing it,” going back and forth. Then in the middle of the argument he says, “Why did God allow my daughter to be born with Down syndrome?”

Dave:There it is.

Lisa:We weren’t talking about the logic; we were talking about the pain, and I was too young to fully understand it at that time. But it helped me realize at the root of the logic that I think we’re arguing about is pain. And that’s something that I’ve seen over and over in my conversations.

Dave:So what are the pain points?

Lisa:Pain points, peace—

Dave:They all start with the letter P.

Lisa:—personhood, power, provision, purpose, protection.

Dave:Well, let’s talk about peace because we live in a culture—it’s always been true from the beginning of time, but man, we’re talking mental health. We’re talking anxiety at levels that I don’t think we’ve experienced in this world in a long time. Some of it coming out of the pandemic, but how is that a pressure point?

Lisa:Yeah, because so many people are leaving and moving to alternative practices to find peace. And I think oftentimes they’re looking for something that doesn’t exist.

Ann:Me too.

Lisa:And it is the absence of any negative emotion is what people are really saying when they are looking for peace in general that I found. They’re not trying to have any negative emotion. They think that negative emotions mean they don’t have peace.

I remember asking some college students, I said, “So how do you define peace?” And they were like, one said, “The absence of negative emotion.” And then I said, “Well, did Jesus have negative emotions?” And they were like, “Yeah.” So if He’s the Prince of Peace and He has these negative emotions, then we have to define peace in a different way. It’s not the absence of crying; it’s not the absence of pain. You have peace when you know that God is with you; that you have an assurance of God’s presence in the midst of your pain is when we have the peace we’re searching for.

Ann:We’re not alone.

Lisa:Yes.

Ann:And that’s just so comforting, in the midst of our fear, loneliness, anger; to know that He’s with us is reassuring. What did that person say?

Lisa:Well, then we dived into how I break down peace into three tiers: peace with God, which is the work that Jesus did on the cross, peace with people, which is the work we have to do with reconciliation, and then peace within. And I believe that God will sometimes strip us from inner peace until we accept His work or do our work.

Ann:Ooh girl, that is good.

Lisa:And in culture, people are like, “I want peace.” They don’t want it with God though. And God is like, “You are not going to get inner peace without me.”

But then you have the second-tier people who are like, “Man, I accept God’s work,” but they don’t want to do the hard work in relationship. So they’ll have a ton of broken relationships with family, with friends, with church members. And they’ll be like, “Well, I’m just going to be in isolation. It’s just me and God.” And God is like, “No, I’m committed not only to my relationship with you, but I’m committed to your relationship with one another.”

My pastor said something Sunday that he was like, look at the disciples and the differences in their personality. You have a tax collector and a zealot in the same group. The amount of work they had to do in relationship to stay committed to one another in this group to share the gospel was immense because of their background, the conflict. That shows us that God is committed to our relationships with people that are different than us. And if you don’t do the work to repair, then you don’t have inner peace.

I think we have a culture of Christians who’s just like, “Man, I’m just going to say to myself, working that out is too hard.” But they still don’t have inner peace because God is like, “You’re not going to get that unless you do the work that I’m asking you to do.” And so I think a lot of people get stuck to me at level two.

Ann:Me too.

Lisa:And then they want the inner peace and God’s like, “No, accept my work, do your work and then you can have the gift of peace.”

Dave:Have you ever gotten stuck at number two?

Lisa:Oh yes.

Dave:I’ve heard your story a little bit with forgiveness and resentment.

Lisa:Yeah, yeah.

Dave:How’d you work through that?

Lisa:So a really traumatic story, 2011, I had been dating a preacher for four years and he got married in our relationship.

Ann:Wait, what?! How did I miss that? Oh my.

Lisa:That’s how I opened up my peace chapter.

Ann:Oh my goodness.

Lisa:He got married in the relationship. Him and another woman that were a preacher had been having an affair. She was married and I did not know that they were having an affair. So when she got divorced, they got married.

Ann:I want to go beat him up for you. Wait, that’s not the good Jesus response.

Dave:That’s the way to respond.

Lisa:So that was my 2011. That really rocked me because I had to figure out what it looks like to forgive, to walk through that, to let that go. It was very difficult because I had saw him the day before his wedding and he didn’t mention it all.

Dave:The day before, total secret.

Ann:Lisa, that’s insane.

Lisa:That happened in March.

Ann:Thank you, Jesus, that you did not marry this man.

Lisa:February, he gave me a card for Valentine’s Day, said he’s excited about our future together knowing we don’t have a future. They had a full wedding. And so it took me years to get over that; 13 years before I even talked about it. And I always tell people sometimes you need to allow yourself to heal before you tell these traumatic stories. Because when you’re healed, you tell the story differently. You see what God was doing through the process.

My dad is a standup guy; what he preaches about he lives. So if I had went into the job I have now with that level of naivete where I’m engaging leaders all the time who are sometimes good, sometimes bad, I would always be blindsided and hurt even though I feel like God could give me a memo and not that experience.

Ann:You learn more.

Lisa:I learned how to navigate with different personalities, but I also learned how to forgive.

Ann:That’s a big deal.

Lisa:Learned how to let it go and release it. And I remember out of courtesy, I just told him, I’m writing this book and—

Dave:—and you’re in it.

Lisa:—you’re in it. Every time we talk, he apologizes. But by the time he apologized, I had already did the work. Because if he had apologized maybe as soon as it happened, I wouldn’t have believed him.

Ann:You were free at that point because you’d forgiven him. Sorry, I’m just still teary over this whole—that makes me so sad for you and mad too. But it’s so sweet of God, when we go through those really hard things, that he shapes us, he teaches us, so that as you’re having these conversations, you can identify and understand. And if you haven’t been able to forgive, to me it feels like you’re not as qualified for what God has called you to do.

Lisa:Yeah, forgive and to release the person and say, “You don’t owe me anything.” Because I think that’s, I quote Dr. Darius Daniels in that, and one of the most freeing things about forgiveness that he shared was like the person can never repay you. So there’s always going to be a debt that they can never, so you just have to wipe the slate clean. Because they can’t pay you back the days you were mad. They can’t pay you back for the times you spent crying. They can never repay you. If they stole money from you, they could give you the money back but there’s days you lost being offended that they can never. And so you just have to write it off as bad debt and say, “I accept what Jesus did as the payment for what was done.”

Dave:I mean, when that was going on, were you angry at God as well?

Lisa:That’s a great question. That’s the first question my dad asked me.

Dave:Really?

Lisa:I still stayed at home with my parents. I graduated from undergrad in 2009, so 2011 I was still at home with my parents. And I remember my friend calling me telling me that he got married and I just screamed because I didn’t know what to do. And so my mom comes in the room, she’s like, what’s going on? Did he die? So my dad was like, that was the first thing. He was like, he hugged me. He was just like, are you okay? Are you mad at God? And I don’t know in that moment if I was like, “I’m mad at God.” I know I was mad at him.

Dave:Yeah. I mean, again, I don’t know what your perspective is but hearing the story on this side and reading it in your book, it’s like, “Okay, so in a strange way, God protected you.

Ann:Totally.

Lisa:Yes.

Dave:Because his character was revealed by that decision that you weren’t able to see, who knows where you are today if you would’ve married him.

Lisa:Yeah. It’s crazy because my dad never liked him. My dad’s the nicest guy, and when he would come over, my dad would just go in his room. And so I knew that was the signal. My dad doesn’t do that. He is very hospitable. And he said, “I prayed just the week before this happened, ‘God show her.’” And you can’t get any more showing than that.

Ann:I tell parents a lot. I talked to somebody last night and we prayed. I prayed with a mom, and we prayed like, “Lord, reveal if our kids are doing things or dating someone, bring things into the light that our kids need to see.” And God certainly brought that into the light.

Lisa:Yes.

Ann:Wow.

Lisa:So I think I was sad and crying, but I think my parents were secretly probably jumping up and down when they went back there.

Ann:Answered prayer! Well, let me ask you, where are kids going to find peace these days? If we asked our kids or your teenagers, “Hey, where do you think, your peers are going to find peace?” You’ve already mentioned some of those, in some crystals and say they’re trying to find peace.

Lisa:—in relationships, in drugs.

Ann:Yeah.

Lisa:One girl, we were giving out the book at Clark Atlanta and she was like, “Thank you. I need this because I’ve been on and off drugs and just trying to find my way,” and this is a college student saying this. “And so I really need this to help me, be like a guide for me in this season of my life.”

Ann:Right.

Dave:Yeah. It’s interesting as I’m looking at your pain points, I’m thinking this was true 50 years ago.

Ann:But it’s escalated.

Dave:It’s different in how it plays out but people today, like before, look for life, happiness, value, peace, in a person, in transcendental meditation or drugs for peace and stuff, things provision, money, pleasure, sex, porn, purpose, protection, power. It hasn’t changed. It’s same thing we saw in the Bible. So what’s happening? Why is it we’re going all these places and it’s so hard to go to the right place?

Lisa:I think one is we don’t have really good definitions for the things we’re searching for.

Dave:What do you mean?

Lisa:So purpose for example, is a thing everybody’s searching for, but they don’t really know what they’re actually looking for. Some people, they’re just looking for a whole bunch of followers on social media and that to them is purpose.

Ann:Would they put purpose and happiness together do you think?

Lisa:I think for some, but I think for some people are looking for happiness through pleasure.

Ann:Yeah, that’s true. Purpose is different.

Lisa:Purpose is meaning, trying to make sense of the pain that I’m experiencing. And so I say, if you think purpose for a younger demographic, for a lot of college students, they feel like they don’t have value if they’re not doing something they feel like is celebrated. So if they don’t have a whole bunch of likes, if they’re not on the stage, their life is meaningless. I want to reframe purpose. Purpose is not what you do but who you become. We are to be conformed into the image of Christ. That is our purpose. That could take many forms.

I’m doing Jude 3 project right now, but 10 years from now, God could have me doing something completely different. My purpose isn’t tied to what I’m doing. And that’s freeing for people that your purpose is who you become. Am I a good person? I talk about at the end of the chapter, if you think you achieved your purpose, but you’re not a good parent, then you miss purpose. If you think you achieved your purpose, but you’re not a good spouse, then you miss purpose. If you think you achieve purpose and you’re not a good friend, then you missed it because it’s who you become, not what you do.

And I think that’s the difference that the mindset shift that needs to happen. I’m becoming something. God is not obsessed with what I do. He’s obsessed with who I become and as who I am will flow out in what I do.

Dave:How do you think this might be—like as we wrap up—how does a person, and again, we’re thinking because we talked so much to people in marriage and family space, how do I as a parent, or even as a spouse, encourage or walk beside somebody that’s finding life in all these wrong places? How do I nudge them, my kids, to find life in Jesus? How do you really find it in a faith that disappoints? There’s that tension. It’s disappointing at times, but yet it’s the answer. He’s the answer. How do you guide people there, especially as a parent?

Lisa:It’s helping to shape people’s faith through the word of God. And what I say, I say this all the time. William Lane has a quote that we claim to be people of the book, but we’re really people of our favorite passages.

Dave:That’s true.

Lisa:So our faith is shaped really by particular passages and principles. And we have a very fragmented faith. And so we’re disappointed because we’re hanging on to promises God never gave us.

Dave:So we’re disappointed.

Lisa:Because we have not consulted the author of the scriptures or read the scriptures from cover to cover to know what we’ve actually signed up for. So I use this illustration all the time. I have all Apple products. I lie every time they ask me to upgrade because you have to say, have you read the terms and conditions? And I hit yes, but I have not. I’ve never read them. I don’t know if—

Dave:Can’t believe you do that. That’s just despicable. I do the same; everybody does.

Ann:We all do it.

Lisa:But that’s how people come to faith. They’re like, “I believe Genesis to Revelation.” “Have you ever read it?” “No.” “How do you believe what you haven’t read?” And then you build a faith believing something that you’ve never took the time to investigate. And then disappointment just comes because it’s like I’m holding on to “Why am I experiencing pain?” And then it’s like, “Oh, if I read the manual, many are the afflictions of the righteous.”

Ann:I mean, this is my pound the table thing because we are illiterate biblically these days and most of the people growing up have no idea. You’re exactly right. And so if you’re a listener, start reading your Bible. I don’t know if they’re teaching that. Hopefully they’re teaching the Word at church but even if you’re in series, can I just say read your Bible from Genesis all the way to Revelation; read the whole thing because it ties together. I remember the first time I went through the Old Testament, I’m like, “God, you are just mean and unmerciful.” But the more you read it, the more you understand it, the more you see God’s grace, God’s love. And our kids need to see us reading the Bible and depending on it.

Lisa:And we can’t water it down. That’s my thing with youth ministry. We treat kids like they can’t understand the difference between David and Daniel.

Ann:Thank you.

Lisa:But they’re learning chemistry, geometry, history, physics, all of that in school. And then we come to church and then we dumb it down.

Ann:We have to play games, not that games are bad, but I’m just saying give them the stuff.

Lisa:Yeah. They’re used to dealing with more rigor than probably adults because they’re in school; adults are distant from school, and they’re not using their minds in the ways they were as students. So young people are actually in a better position to engage complex theological ideas than we think because of what they’re learning in school. They’re already exercising their brain. So when they come to youth ministry and it’s all lights and we’re just going to have fun, it’s like that’s really not taking advantage of where they are in life and what they’re able to do. So it’s like if we just give them more information, it’ll help them and it’ll keep them.

Dave:And I think another part of that is give them truth which is real. At the FamilyLife Weekend to Remember® marriage getaway we talk about this little, we use this little visual. When you get married, you have expectations, but here’s reality. And you know what this gap is? It’s what you’re talking about here, disappointment. And we have unreal expectations because nobody’s really told us.

I think the same thing happens in our faith. I had a woman come up to me after a church service and basically say the word of God promises me prosperity, promises me health, promises me jobs. I’m struggling in life. Nobody cares about me; nobody’s taking care of me. I don’t have that, going on and on, and I just look at her and I go, “That’s not in the Word of God.” “Oh yeah. It’s all through the Word of God, and that’s what I’ve heard at other churches I’ve been at.”

I wasn’t very nice, like, “That is not in the word of God. Here’s what’s in the Word of God. So everything you just told me is a lie. So let’s start with truth. And it’s like it was that expectation, and I’m disappointed where expectation was not even scriptural. What you just said is scriptural. Now does God bless us? Yes, but there’s no promise that there will never be pain, never be trial, never be affliction.”

I even said to her, “Then what happened to Jesus? What happened to every disciple?” It’s like, anyway, this is why I think your book is so important is to help us understand where’s that gap coming from and how do we navigate it? Especially for families who are trying to raise children, to be men and women of God, they’re going to struggle just like we’ve struggled. Give them this book. Here it is. When Faith Disappoints: The Gap Between What We Believe and What We Experience. We’d love to give it to you. You need this. And I would say not only get it for yourself, let your high school kid, college kid read it, right?

Lisa:Yes. I think it’s very important. One of my friends has said he’s given it to all his nieces and nephews.

Ann:Yes, and we will send this to you if you give a donation of any amount. We’ll send this to you because I think this is one of those books you need to have it in your library. I think it’ll answer a lot of questions but also provide you with a lot of questions and conversations to have with your kids and your friends and your spouse.

Dave:Yeah, we’re a listener supported ministry. We thrive because people like you believe in what we do and they say, “I want to be a part of this.” We covet your prayers, but financially we need you to be a partner as well. And so we’d love to send this to you for a gift of any amount. Just go to FamilyLifeToday.com or call us 1-800-358-6329. Thank you.

Lisa:Thank you.

Dave:It’s been great.

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