Blessed with Life

Dannah Gresh: Wherever you are right now, I want you to pause for a second. Take a breath. Fill your lungs. Exhale. Now, find your pulse. Feel your heartbeat? Isn’t that amazing? We’ve been given the gift of life, and that’s what we’re talking about on today’s episode of Revive Our Hearts Weekend.

If you’re hearing this (or reading the transcript on our website), you’re alive. And while that’s probably not news to you, does the miracle of life ever get lost in your busy calendar, your stress-filled situations, or your ongoing to-do list? 

I’m Dannah Gresh, and I’m so glad you’ve joined me for this episode of Revive Our Hearts Weekend. November is a time we tend to focus on thankfulness, hence the important holiday coming up. This month we want to take you deeper into that theme here on the weekends as we focus on different aspects of blessings—blessed with life, by family, by trials, and blessed to bless. 

Today, we’re honing in on the truth that life is a gift. If you haven’t thought about that lately, or if life feels like anything but a gift right now, I think, I hope, you’ll come away with a different perspective. We’re about to hear encouragement from Mary Kassian, biblical truth from Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth and Erin Davis, and powerful testimonies from Ryan and Bethany Bomberger. 

First up is a wise woman full of biblical insight, and also my friend, Mary Kassian. We have a lot to be grateful for in life. Mary’s helping us discover why our gratitude as believers goes richer and deeper than the gratitude of this world. 

Mary Kassian: I think people that don’t know Jesus miss out on the fullness of gratitude because they have hearts, perhaps, that are grateful for a sunset or grateful for their gratitude socks, but if their hearts are grateful but not grateful to God, they’re not being grateful in the right sort of way.

For a Christian, that’s where gratitude is markedly different. Gratitude is always linked to God, who is the Giver of all good things. James 1:17 says, 

Every generous act, every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of Lights.

So when I see that sunset, when I see the autumn leaves changing, when I’m able to enjoy something, my heart ought to recognize that that is from God, that is a gift from God. And even when I’m going through hard times we can recognize that in those times, also, God is with us. And that is a gift from God.

Christians ought to be the most grateful people because we have the most to be grateful for, and the ultimate object of our gratitude is God and who God is. He’s good. He’s all powerful. He reigns. He’s holy. He’s wise. 

When I look at a sunset . . . I just snapped a picture when my husband and I were driving on the highway the other day. There was just this sunset . . . the sky was crimson, and there was like this spotlight of red in the middle of this gold and yellow sky, and the fields of harvest all were alongside. It was breathtaking! Breathtaking! 

My cry at that moment was not, “Oh, I am so grateful for the scenery.” My cry at the moment was, “I am so grateful, God, that You are so creative! You are an artist. This is spectacular!” Our gratitude is being directed toward Him. And oh, He’s happy, He’s merciful. There are so many things about God that are spectacular and that we can be grateful for.

Dannah: You know what word is rising up in my heart that I feel like I need to say? Hallelujah!

Mary: Hallelujah!

Dannah: As you were saying that, I just felt it in me, like I wanted it to come out. I think there have been times in my life when I would hear a conversation like this and tune out, like, “Those kooky women! What . . .?”

And what I have learned is that the more I’m in the Word and the more I’m in the presence of other women like you who speak the language of gratitude—the language of praise, the language of thanks—the more it makes sense to me, and the more it naturally pops out of me.

I love gardening. I have dahlias and gladiolas and roses. I marvel every year to just grow something new that I’ve never grown before. And when it blooms, I burst into praise! It’s a miracle to me every time!

I don’t think I was always like that, but I direct my thanks to God: “Lord, thank You for that beautiful Dinnerplate Dahlia that is brightening my day. What a wonderful God You are! You must have been feeling very cheerful when You made that bright yellow color.” You know, that’s how I talk when I’m walking through my flowerbeds. And that would, I guess, sound a little crazy to some people.

Mary: Well, that Christian perception on gratitude is so much different, because the Word of God moves gratitude away from a me-centered focus to a God-centered focus. It’s not just, “Oh, I’m happy about this because this serves me, this is about me, this is about my happiness, my joy, about me feeling comfortable, about me being in a place where I’m feeling it. I’m feeling good.” 

This is more gratitude for who God is, what God does. It’s about Him. A lifestyle of gratitude involves the discipline of meditating on the attributes of God, and giving Him thanks and praise. 

And you know what, Dannah, just the fact that you look at your flowers and the flowers evoke praise to God, and I look at the sunset while I’m driving and that evokes, stirs up in my spirit, this praise and this adoration of the God who is so creative; that just shows that the Holy Spirit is at work in our hearts and in our lives, because that is a mark. 

Directing the praise to God and all of creation speaking His name and calling out to us through the beauty and through what’s going on and pointing us towards God . . . that’s why He created those things!

Dannah: Yes! Every time we notice the beauty of life, our praise goes beyond that to our Creator. Good words from Mary Kassian. 

Now, what happens when we stop noticing the wonder of life? It’s easy for us to lose our sense of awe for the very things that should capture our attention—like how your beating heart is what’s keeping you alive or how delightful it is to taste the food you eat. And ultimately this awe should direct our gaze to the Lord. But we get bogged down in this fallen world. We get caught up in the temporary. We’re a people easily distracted, and we forget that life all around us is a wonder itself, given to us by a good and gracious Father. Nancy’s here to help us get a better perspective by taking us to the story of the Queen of Sheba in 1 Kings chapter 10. 

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: I read a John Piper interview yesterday, about an issue that he says is “an epidemic among human beings in general,” and that is the tragic loss of wonder and amazement. He said,

We are so easily bored with glorious reality. We go to visit the magnificent Rockies, or Alps or Himalayas and, for a day or two, we’re breathless with amazement. But by the end of the week, we’re sitting in front of the television in our chalet on top of the mountain, watching pitiful, human, cinematic efforts to create amazement. It’s the great, tragic effect of the fall: superficiality in a world of wonder, easy boredom, loving something for two, three repetitions, and then after that, ho hum.

We need to reverse a superficial mind-set and replace it with a deeply joyful mind, ready to discover wonders and be amazed everywhere we look. We need to set ourselves on a conscious quest to cultivate a spiritual mind that is fully alert to the glories of God.

When I read that interview, I thought of the Queen of Sheba, who was fully alert to the glories of Solomon’s kingdom, to the wonder of it all. She had no breath left in her. She was speechless. She was overwhelmed. She was on this kind of intentional quest, this conscious quest, her mind fully alert to what she was seeing.

The psalmist had that same kind of mind-set.

Psalm 111, for example, verse 2, says: “Great are the works of the Lord, studied by all who delight in them. Full of splendor and majesty is his work.” There’s a sense of wonder, a sense of awe.

I love those places in the Psalms. You see it some in Job. You see it in other places of Scripture where it talks about the wonders of the Lord, and then it mentions rain. I mean, how is rain one of the wonders of the Lord? But as you go and study what it takes for rain, how it develops, how it comes on the earth, and how it ties in with everything else in creation, it is wonderful. But we don’t stop and ponder and study and meditate on and delight in the works of the Lord so often because we’re moving too fast—and I’m preaching to myself here when I say this. It would take our breath away if we would stop to look at and ponder the amazing wisdom and works of God.

When one day we see the King (capital “K”) face to face, we will be awestruck. We will say as the Queen of Sheba did in Solomon’s presence, “The half was not told us! We didn’t dream how wonderful You are. Your wisdom, Your beauty, Your glory surpasses any report that we have ever heard.”

Well, verse 8 of chapter 10, the Queen of Sheba continues, and she says,

Happy are your men! Happy are your servants. [She’d been watching them. She’d seen that they were happy people serving the King of Israel, King Solomon.] Happy are your servants who continually stand before you and hear your wisdom! 

His employees were happy. That word means blessed. Solomon’s employees were happy. They were blessed. They would have said, “This is the greatest place ever to work.”

But not only were the employees happy, the general population was happy. 1 Kings 4, verse 20, says, “Judah and Israel were as many as the sand by the sea. They ate and drank and were happy.

This was a golden era for Solomon’s kingdom. The people were happy, and the Queen of Sheba noticed this. It must have been different from where she came from because she pointed it out as something unusual. It seems that she almost envied those who had the privilege of living or serving near this amazing king and hearing his wisdom day after day. They may have taken it for granted, but she didn’t. She wasn’t used to this. This was special to her. She was thrilled to hear this, and she recognized the blessing it was just to be near this king.

Those who recognize the greatness of our King, King Jesus, and His wisdom consider His servants to be in an enviable position. Great joy is the inevitable by-product of being one of the King’s servants, of being in His presence daily, of listening to His words and wisdom. That should make us happy. And it will make us happy.

Psalm 65, verse 4: “Blessed [same word—happy] is the one you choose and bring near, to dwell in your courts! We shall be satisfied with the goodness of your house, the holiness of your temple!”

It’s sweet. It’s satisfying. It fills you up. It blesses you. If you’ve been a child of God any length of time, and you’ve known what it is to soak in His Word, to soak in His presence, to be with His people, you know that, even though at times there are tears, there are hard things, there are hard places—we talk a lot about that on Revive Our Hearts—but there’s also joy. There’s happiness to be in the presence of the Lord and with His people.

Dannah: We are blessed. This life is a blessing from God. It’s dangerous to forget that truth. The pro-life and pro-choice conversation in our society is evidence of that, because it’s a conversation we shouldn’t even have to have. All life, every life is precious . . . which takes us to a topic I love: babies! Have you ever held a newborn baby? My children have been making grandbabies for me these last four years, and I have been holding newborns. Every time I do I'm reminded: babies are such a blessing.

Ryan and Bethany Bomberger are passionate about new life and all life. You’re about to hear why, followed by a word from Erin Davis on the pro-life posture we find in Scripture.

Ryan Bomberger: My pro-life story starts when I began. I am literally the 1% that is used 100% of the time to justify abortion. My birth mom experienced the horror and the violence of rape. Yet, she was courageous enough not only to give me life, she gave me the incredible gift of adoption. 

So, when we talk about the issue of life, oftentimes the conversation inevitably gets to that question. Well, what about rape? I'm the tangible example of that. The circumstances of our conception never changed the condition of our worth. We’re all created by God, whether we were humanly planned or not. We're all still part of His divine plan. 

And so, my pro-life story is that many say that I should have been aborted, but God saw otherwise. I'm just grateful to my courageous birth mom, because I wouldn't be here, and I wouldn't be married to this amazing woman. I wouldn't have the four incredible kiddos that I have. And I wouldn't be able to live out this God-given purpose.

Dannah: I love what you just said about your birth mom. You called her “courageous.” I think it is a brave thing for a woman to think beyond her own life, beyond her own wants, desires, needs, and plans and to think selflessly about that baby growing in her womb. That is just such a brave choice. Bethany, what's your pro-life story?

Bethany Bomberger: So, I feel like I have many, but the most defining profound one is my own personal story of transformation. I grew up in church and had a career, had gotten my master's degree. And somewhere in my twenties, I found myself really struggling with life's disappointments, things I thought were going to come to fruition that hadn't. And during that season, I just really became very selfish and walked away from the Lord and embraced my misery and depression and found myself in a really abusive relationship and found myself pregnant. 

It was interesting, because I have many, many colleagues who said, “Just abort, nobody will even know.” The biological father encouraged me, offered funds and said, “Just quietly, go get an abortion, and we'll move on with our lives.” And in the deepest part of my soul, I knew that I couldn't do that in good conscience. I ended up going to get my very first ultrasound. 

I feel like it's really personal that it ended up being a Saturday morning, February 14, 2004. It was Valentine's Day. I was by myself; the place was empty. I was the only one there. It felt just cold. I laid there, and I had that ultrasound. I looked up at the screen, and I saw this little piece of rice blinking. It was very early. There weren't parts to see, other than this little thing that was blinking. That was a big thing, because it was my daughter's heart. 

And in that moment, it was defining for me, because I honestly felt this embrace of the Holy Spirit. It was like God was just picking me up, taking that baby's heart, my heart, and just enveloping them, both of those in His heart. I went home that night by myself, and I opened up an old journal that I had found. And in the margin of that journal was Psalm 34:5. It said, “I sought the Lord . . . He delivered me from all my fears. Those that look to him will be radiant, and their faces will never be covered with shame.” And that night, I decided that shame was not going to be my portion. 

Dannah: Amen. Ryan and Bethany Bomberger, they're with the Radiance Foundation. You’ll want to check that out online, you will be encouraged today. And Bethany is also the author of a book called Pro-Life Kids. If you have grandkids or children in your house, you’ll want to check that out. Erin. 

Erin Davis: Usually, this is where I say it's time to get grounded in God's Word. But today, I'm going to say it's time to stay grounded in God's Word. I'm so grateful Bethany took us to the Psalms. 

When I was trying to decide where I wanted to teach from for this segment, I had a little difficulty, because frankly, I could go to Genesis to get a pro-life ethos, I could go to the Psalms, I could go to the Gospels, I could go to Revelation. But where I want us to park for just a few minutes this morning is John chapter 10. 

In John chapter 10, we find a verse that I feel is like the stake in the ground for why Jesus' followers are pro-life. Because truly to follow Jesus and to obey His Word is to believe that human life matters. We do see it all over our Bibles from Genesis all the way to the end. 

In Genesis, God spoke all of life into creation; God is a life-giving God. And in Revelation, we read about the realities of the eternal, beautiful, breathtaking, eternal life that God has in store for those of us who love Him. He is a life-giving God. But perhaps the most pro-life verse in the whole Bible is John 10:10. As promised, I'm going to read it to you. 

John 10:10 says this, “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.” (ESV)

This is a really important juxtaposition as we consider pro-life or pro-choice as it's framed in our culture. All of us who bear God's image, all of humanity, from the littlest to the biggest, from the most able bodied, to the least able bodied, all of humanity has a relentless enemy. His name is Satan, and his mission is singular. Satan is focused on death. Don't be mad at the people who don't think like you do. They are deceived. 

You want to be mad at somebody? Be mad at Satan, whose mission is to kill and destroy. He is focused on death all the time. I hate him. I'm mad at him for the ways he has destroyed people's lives with this idea that life is anything other than a gift. 

All of us bear God's image, which is all of us, all of humanity. The other side of that coin, if you flip it over, all of us have a Savior, Jesus. He has a name too. And you want to run to somebody, you run to Him, because He came to earth, and He was laser focused on one mission. As laser focused as Satan is on death, Jesus is laser focused on the mission to give us life. 

Why am I pro-life? I'm pro-life because I have life in my lungs today. I'm pro-life because my sweet Elisha is in basketball practice right now, fully healthy. But I'm really pro-life because of the humongous price that Jesus paid so that I could have life. I was dead. I was dead in my trespasses and sin. Death was my only option because of my rebellion. But Jesus went to the cross so that I could have life. 

And what John 10:10 tells us is He didn't just go to the cross so we could have any old life. Jesus went to the cross so that we could have abundant, full, joy-filled life. To be a follower of Jesus is to celebrate life.

Dannah: Life is a gift, and it’s worth celebrating. Erin Davis has been helping us see how life is a blessing because of Christ. Jesus came to this earth to live and die so that we would have abundant life. 

I hope this truth can linger in our hearts as we get ready to celebrate life with a special holiday coming up. We want to help you enter the Christmas season watchful and ready to celebrate our King. 

If you haven’t already requested your set of our tabletop Advent cards, you’ll want to check them out on our website, ReviveOurHearts.com. These beautiful five-inch square cards come with a stand to remind you of truth from Scripture and encouraging words from Nancy this Christmas. This set is based on Nancy’s Advent devotional Born a Child and Yet a King: The Gospel in the Carols. These are great resources to have on hand to prepare your heart for the season.

The tabletop card set is yours with your gift of any amount to Revive Our Hearts. We’d love to send it to you to thank you for supporting this ministry. And when you make a donation of $40 or more, we’ll send you both the card set and Nancy’s book.

You can request yours when you give by calling 1-800-569-5959, or go to ReviveOurHearts.com/weekend and click on today’s episode. 

We’ve seen how we’re blessed with life. Next week we’re going to take a look at the blessing of family. Whether you have an amazing family, or not so great family relationships; whether God has added to your family through giving birth or through adoption, there will be something for you. I hope you’ll join us next time.

Thanks for listening today. I’m Dannah Gresh inviting you back for Revive Our Hearts Weekend.

Revive Our Hearts Weekend is calling you to freedom, fullness and fruitfulness in Christ.

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