Imagine hearing your physician tell you that chips and queso contain more nutritional benefits than kale and quinoa.

In her new book, The Sacrament of Happy: What a Smiling God Brings to a Wounded World, Lisa Harper unveils a similarly extravagant, unexpected surprise, declaring that happiness is a gift from God that we can unashamedly enjoy.

Wearing the twin hats of both seminarian and belly-laughing adoptive mom, Harper builds upon solid theological scaffolding for happiness in a warm, vignette style. She dismantles the old-school idea that joy, not happiness, is the truly spiritual emotion of the Christian family and asserts that Christ-followers are actually called to happiness . . . to such a deep conviction in the unmitigated goodness of our Creator-Redeemer that we are free to feel and express genuine joy, fulfillment and contentment, regardless of personal and global tumult.

Harper’s personal story includes such happiness killers as sexual abuse, the death of loved ones, and heartbreaking failed adoptions. Yet she writes on themes like:

• "The lost sacrament of laughter"
• "Happiness is not the absence of sadness"
• "Tuning out the Pharisees who try to mute your happiness in the context of spiritual maturity"

This book goes well beneath most people’s surface understanding of happiness, gently guiding readers closer to the heart of God . . . with naturally a few genuine guffaws to enjoy along the way.

Lisa Harper

Lisa Harper is a gifted communicator, whose writing and speaking overflow with colorful pop culture references that connect the dots between the Bible era and modern life. Her style combines sound scriptural exposition with easy-to-relate to anecdotes and comedic wit.

Lisa's vocational resume includes six years as the director of Focus on the Family’s national women’s ministry where she created the popular Renewing the Heart conferences, attended by almost 200,000 women, followed by six years as the women’s ministry director at a large church in Nashville. Her academic resume includes a Masters of Theological Studies with honors from Covenant Seminary in St. Louis. Now a sought-after Bible teacher and speaker, Lisa was on the Women of Faith national arena tour for eight years and speaks at many other large multi-denominational events as well as at hundreds of churches all over the world.

She’s had eleven books published including A Perfect Mess: Why You Don’t Have To Worry About Being Good Enough For God and  her latest, Believing Jesus: Are You Willing To Risk Everything?. She also has three best-selling video-based Bible study curriculums with LifeWay: Malachi: A Love That Never Lets Go; Hebrews: The Nearness of King Jesus; and Mark: The Jesus We’re Aching For (which just released in ‘16).

In April 2014, after a difficult two-year journey, Lisa finally got to bring her adopted daughter home from Haiti and she hasn’t stopped grinning since.