A Family Chat

Leslie Basham: Nancy Leigh DeMoss is inspired by Revive Our Hearts’ listeners who want to pass on the truths they’ve learned.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: One woman said, “You helped me years ago in breaking free from an online adulterous relationship. Now I have a married friend who’s in deep trouble. She has just exchanged “vows” with a single man through instant messaging. How can I help her break free as you helped me a few years ago?”

Leslie: This is Revive Our Hearts with Nancy Leigh DeMoss for Wednesday, May 6.

God can do amazing things through weak people who are committed to Him. He is touching lives in powerful ways every weekday over the radio, and we’re about to hear some of those stories.

Nancy recently gave the Revive Our Hearts’ staff an update about the opportunities and the needs of the ministry. She referred to it as “a family chat.” Because you as a listener are a crucial part of this ministry, we’re going to let you in on this important message as well. I think you’ll be encouraged about what God is doing.

Nancy: As we come to the end of our fiscal year, I want to take some time today to share my heart with you about where I see us as a ministry, to update you on our current financial situation, and also share some thoughts that the Lord has been putting on my heart about our perspective and our response in the midst of economic crises.

Let me start by saying that since the inception of Revive Our Hearts, I have never sensed greater spiritual need, interest, and hunger in women’s lives. We’re hearing from women all around the world who are being impacted through this ministry and who are eager for resources. From Bermuda, from South Africa, from Tel-Aviv, from Jerusalem, from Mymar, Burma—all around the world we’re hearing from people, and of course, all across the United States.

Every day we are receiving emails, letters, and phone calls from women who are desperate for help. They’re earnestly seeking answers; they’re seeking hope, and they are writing and saying, “What can you do to help?”

Let me share with you a few emails we received recently that particularly touched my heart. One woman said:

You helped me years ago in breaking free from an online adulterous relationship. Now I have a married friend who is in deep trouble. She has just exchanged “vows” with a single man through instant messaging. How can I help her break free as you helped me a few years ago?

Here’s another one. This woman says:

For the past year I have been depressed and cutting myself, can you help me?

Another lady who said:

I don’t own a Bible. I don’t know what kind to buy. Would you be able to guide me? It’s important to me to get one. I recently started listening to the broadcast and I want to know God better and be able to read His Word.

By the way, we sent that last woman a Bible and some books along with a card on which several of you jotted notes to let her know that you were praying for her, and last week we received another email from this woman. She said:

I was so surprised to see the box on my porch when I got home on Friday. Thank you for all the prayers. Tears came to my eyes when I saw all the cards with all the encouraging comments. I started reading Nancy’s book, A Place of Quiet Rest. Already I’m starting to get answers to questions in my life. I always wanted someone to love me. I could never find it with a man. Now I know why. There is only One who can fill this need, this hole: Jesus Christ.

Women are not only needy, but they’re responsive to the message, and you see the emails. We try to share those with you as much as possible about women who are writing in. So the hunger is great, the responsiveness is great, and then, here’s another thing: I have never in all the years we’ve had this ministry seen greater opportunities and open doors for reaching the hearts of women than we have today.

Let me give you several examples of those. For example, we have women’s ministry leaders in local churches who are begging us.(am I right?) they are begging us for more resources to help the women in their churches fulfill their God-created calling and mission. This year we are conducting four retreats here at The Lodge in Michigan for women’s ministry leaders.

Several of you are involved in the Pure in Heart Conferences for mothers and daughters. The first one that was held in Davenport, IA, just last month, sold out six weeks in advance. What an incredible hunger and thirst we are seeing on the part of women to plant seeds of purity in the lives of their daughters.

We have another Pure in Heart Conference that is scheduled in Dallas for November. So be getting the word out about that. We’re trusting the Lord will fill that and believing that He will. We’re getting requests from churches all across the country who are saying, “Can you bring this conference to our area?”

So we’re working on some practical ways that we can multiply this ministry. Our team can’t do it . . . If we could be in a different city each weekend, that wouldn’t touch the demand. So we are working and developing that "Conference in a Box," so to speak, so that people can put on the Pure in Heart Conference in their area.

Women are eager for more True Woman resources and conferences so that they can help engage women’s hearts for Christ for such a time as this. We’re going to be letting you know shortly about our plans for True Woman conferences in 2010. Please be praying for the final decisions about venues and locations, and we hope very shortly to be announcing news about that.

Then, as it relates to resources for True Woman, I’m working right now with Mary Kassian on a True Woman curriculum that we hope, Lord willing, will be released early in 2010 so that the groups that are taking this message on to homes and churches across the country can have a foundational and introductory curriculum to explain the mission and the message.

Going to the whole radio area, we have many more radio stations in major markets that would love to broadcast Revive Our Hearts. They would love to include us in their lineup if we had the funds to underwrite those releases.

The web ministry is making significant inroads into places where our teams or our broadcasts can’t go—especially into the lives of younger women, some of whom don’t even know what a radio is. Around the world, people who can’t access the broadcast are getting exposed to the message through the Internet. The potential there is huge for multiplying the message of biblical womanhood through web-based social networking vehicles.

Let me say that in the midst of such hunger, openness, responsiveness, and opportunity for great ministries, we have never been so stretched financially. Like a lot of other non-profit organizations, we’ve been experiencing a serious shortfall in our financial support.

On the one hand, and this is encouraging news, more people than ever are giving to help support this ministry, and some of them in ways that demonstrate amazing and sweet sacrifice. I’m just so touched. Some of these gifts I think, “We ought to be giving to you!” But God is putting it on people’s hearts to participate in the ministry. I thank the Lord for these faithful and generous supporters.

However, due to the economic—I don’t know whether to call it a downturn or a slump or a catastrophe, I’m not sure what word you’d use, but you know what I’m talking about—there are several donors who’ve been able to support the ministry with larger gifts in the past who just are no longer able to give at the level that they once could and they wish that they still could. So that has impacted our total income in a significant way.

Over the past few months we have carefully and prayerfully evaluated every one of our expense areas. I’m so grateful for Martin, for his leadership in that area and for his careful and prayerful monitoring of each of our budget areas. We’ve made budget cuts in more than a dozen areas—totally, close to 20% of our total budget for this year. We’re doing that so that we can bring our expenses in line with what has been reduced income since last October.

But there have been cuts to direct ministry. Unfortunately, because airtime is one of our primary expenses, we’ve been forced to cancel some of the stations that carry our programs. We’ve also made substantial cuts in our Internet ministry. I would be less than truthful if I didn’t say to you that those have been very tough decisions.

Martin can tell you, as we’ve prayed about those decisions, I’ve said at times, “Oh, do we have to? That station? That outreach?” Our basic principle is that we’re not going to spend money we don’t have. Unless we’re able to get back on track in relation to that income, we understand that in the near future, we’re going to have to move into the next round of ministry cuts, which will be even more critical and deep than the ones that we’ve already made.

What will that mean? It would likely mean going off the air in several additional markets. It would affect other outreaches and initiatives that are aimed at igniting the True Woman Movement—including True Woman conferences, True Woman curriculum, expanded web outreach. These remain at risk without a significant outpouring of an infusion of funds over these next days.

So here’s the bottom line—and I want you to know this so that you can be praying, so you can be believing God with us to meet the needs according to His good pleasure. The bottom line: We need more than $300,000 between now and the end of May to make up the shortfall in our already-reduced budget and to help carry us through the summer month when, as you know, giving typically is somewhat in a decline each year during those summer months. So that’s $300,000 between now and the end of May.

We’re asking the Lord to provide that amount. Not because we think that our programs are essential to His kingdom. God can do His work without us. We’re asking Him for this because we think that He would be glorified by getting this message of revival and biblical womanhood into the hearts of women who are hungry, receptive, and responsive at this time. They are desperate for the hope and the help that they never will find apart from Christ.

So whatever God is pleased to provide beyond that $300,000 will allow us to move forward with other efforts we have had to either cut back or cancel or put on hold.

I want you to know that my heart is at peace in this situation, and I hope yours is, too. I know that God is sovereign, and I know that He is still on His throne, and that these circumstances have not caught Him off guard. As I’ve often shared with women over the years, and you’ve heard me say, “Anything that makes us need God is a blessing.” Right?

So we need to embrace these circumstances and attempt to be wise stewards of whatever God provides and try to discern what God is saying and doing in these critical times. Then we need to pray and not hesitate to ask God to meet our needs, asking God for daily bread—supernatural supply. And not only to supply our ministry’s needs, but I know many of you have personal and family needs—financially and in other ways. I want to encourage you; don’t hesitate to tell the Lord what you need and to ask Him for His supernatural supply.

I want us to remember that we’re not alone in this. Many of our Ministry Partners have been deeply impacted by the economic recession, and they’re having to make the same kinds of decisions. They are tightening their belts, spending more carefully. So as we ask the Lord to meet our needs, let’s ask the Lord to be meeting the needs of those who are partnering with us in this ministry.

Our natural tendency in times of financial uncertainty is to hold on to what we have and give less. But I want to tell you that as I have been reviewing my own personal finances in recent weeks, I’ve been impressed that this whole economic climate is providing a wonderful opportunity for us as followers of Christ to showcase to the world the goodness of God, the grace of God. How do we do that? Through our generosity in our time of need.

I think back to that passage . . . and I love those two chapters in 2 Corinthians 8 & 9, where the apostle Paul commended the sacrificial giving of the Macedonian churches. He says this in chapter 8:2-3,

For in a severe test of affliction, their abundance of joy and their extreme poverty have overflowed in a wealth of generosity . . . for they gave according to their means . . . and beyond their means, of their own accord.

You see the phrases that are put together in that one passage? They encountered a severe test of affliction, and they had extreme poverty. At the same time, they were known for their overflowing generosity and their abundance of joy. That’s a combination that just does not make sense to our natural, human reasoning, but it’s the way that things work in God’s economy. Those Macedonian believers gave beyond what anyone would have thought they were capable of giving.

That’s what I want to be true in my own life, and that’s why I regularly take my ledger, which is on my computer, and my bank statements . . . my bank account . . . and I lay them before the Lord—as I’ve done within the last week—and I ask the Lord, “How can I be a faithful steward of what You’ve entrusted to me? How can I exercise greater faith and sacrifice in my area of personal giving?”

What that means for me will look different than what it means for you, but I want to challenge you to think that way in this time when the natural response is to hold on more tightly to what we have. I want to challenge us to be givers, to be generous, to be generous-hearted. There are ways we can give besides money. It’s time and effort and things. Maybe clearing out some of the extra stuff we have that we don’t need, and sharing.

I love to see that happening among our staff as people are giving to help minister to the needs of others. I thank you for modeling that kind of heart, and for the fact that I don’t hear around this place grumbling or complaining about how hard times are financially. I know that’s true for many, but what I see is a trust and a joy. I think you all live out and exemplify the kind of spirit we see Paul talking about in 2 Corinthians chapter 8.

These days it seems that almost everywhere I go I’m hearing conversations that we didn’t use to hear. People are talking about preparing for disaster. They’re talking about (and even people who are affluent) laying up stores in their home of water and food and even guns and ammo and preparing for this impending doom—whatever that might be. They want to be sure in the case of a disaster that their own needs are met.

What’s sad to me is that I don’t hear nearly as many people talking about how to meet the needs of others who are in a critical, financial, or spiritual condition. Let me be quick to say, I believe the Bible encourages us to be prudent in preparing for the future. If that means having a supply of water and food in your basement or whatever, a generator—alternate energy source—you seek the Lord and ask Him what that means for you.

But as Christians, I believe our greatest focus should be on preparing for eternity and seeking to lay up treasure in heaven, not just in our basement or under our mattress or in our bank accounts. We certainly don’t want to lay it up in the stock market right now, but laying up treasure in heaven through investing in His kingdom.

In the midst of this crisis we are called to be Christ-centered and others-centered rather than self-centered. It’s amazing how your faith grows as you get your eyes off yourself and you start looking at how we can be involved in ministering to the needs of others.

So as we’re this month asking our friends and supporters, those who listen to this ministry, to partner with us in giving to help meet our needs coming up to our fiscal yearend, May 31, we’re sharing with them this need of $300,000 to meet our reduced budget and beyond that as the Lord would provide.

We’re sharing about this wonderful challenge that the Lord has made available to us—$40,000 matching challenge, dollar for dollar for any person who has never before given to Revive Our Hearts—first time donors—that gift will be matched up to $40,000. That’s an exciting opportunity.

We’re sharing this in direct mail and on the air and on the Internet. But as we share those needs with others, I don’t want us, as a team, to just look to others to be doing the giving. I want us as a Revive Our Hearts team, starting with the woman who is wearing this microphone right now, starting with myself, to be models of biblical giving.

So as you consider your financial situation at this time, what God has given to you . . . I love that verse in Deuteronomy that says, "Every man shall give as he is able, according to the blessing of the Lord" (Deuteronomy 16:17, NIV).

So the question is:

• How much has God blessed me?
• Am I giving in proportion to the way that He has blessed me?

As you consider your giving at this time, I want to encourage you to ask the Lord what He wants you to give. Not just what He wants you to spend, not just how you can get more income in, but also, as part of your whole financial picture,

• What does He want you to be giving at this time?
• Not only what He wants you to give, but where He wants you to give it?

Last night I was signing letters, thanking people for donations this past week to Revive Our Hearts. It was such a blessing to me in that particular batch of letters to see a number of gifts from some of you in this room. I’m so thankful for those on our team who do support—some of you monthly, some of you periodically as partners—who are supporting this ministry financially. I thank you for that. Those dollars are being multiplied, and only eternity will reveal the full fruit of that investment.

I want to thank you for giving more than your dollars. I want to thank you for giving more than the hours that you put in to your job here at Revive Our Hearts. I want to thank you for pouring out your heart and your life and your prayers to support this ministry.

I know that you’re not doing it because . . . well, you do love me, and I believe that, but that’s not the reason you’re laying down your lives here, because of your love for me. It’s because of your love for the Lord. It’s not even just your heart for Revive Our Hearts. It’s your heart for Christ and your desire to see women and their families experience the freedom that there is in Christ, the fullness that there is in Christ, and to see them become fruitful servants of Christ themselves.

So thank you for serving. Thank you for giving. Thank you for praying. Thank you for covering me with your prayers as I head out of town for this extended period now. Thank you for exercising faith with me for what God wants to do in the ministry—not just financially, but on every front.

Please pray for wisdom as we make decisions about which of these opportunities to move forward in, which ones are a great opportunity but it’s not what God has for us right now. God makes everything beautiful in its time, in the right season. So pray for wisdom for our leadership team—those managing the different areas of responsibility.

Then always, always, always be praying for fresh oil; for anointing of the Holy Spirit on the messages that are recorded, on the messages as they go out, that God would not only anoint my lips and our efforts but also would also anoint the ears and the hearts of those who receive these messages.

That God would break down resistance; that He would tear down the high places, fill in the low places, make the crooked places straight and the rough places plain, as it says in Isaiah chapter 40:3-5, to prepare in the wilderness a pathway for our God. And then the Scriptures says, "All flesh will see the glory of God." That’s what we long for, for the day when the glory of the Lord covers the earth as the waters cover the sea.

Men and women who are part of this team, our goal is not for Revive Our Hearts to be known throughout the earth. Our goal is for the fame of His name to be known throughout the earth, for God to be glorified, for every knee to bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

Leslie: Nancy Leigh DeMoss shared that message with the Revive Our Hearts’ staff in Michigan not long ago. Because you are an important part of the Revive Our Hearts ministry, we wanted to let you in on this family meeting so you could know how to effectively pray, share, and give.

We don’t have time to air all of Nancy’s thoughts, but when you get a copy of that message on CD, you’ll hear quite a bit more material. Visit ReviveOurHeartsRadio.com to find out how to get your copy of the entire message.

That’s also how to respond to the needs Nancy presented. She explained why we’re praying for $300,000.00 in donations this month. When you help us meet this goal with a donation of any amount, we’ll show our gratitude by sending her workbook, A 30-Day Walk with God in the Psalms.

The Bible songbook is a rich source of comfort for troubling times. You’ll appreciate it and understand it like never before as Nancy takes you through one psalm per day for 30 days. Ask for A 30-Day Walk with God in the Psalms when you donate any amount by calling 1-800-569-5959 or you can visit ReviveOurHeartsRadio.com.

Janet Parshall is a radio host interacting with decision makers in the nation’s capital. This highly visible activity doesn’t make up her most important role in life. Find out what she considers a higher priority tomorrow on Revive Our Hearts.

Revive Our Hearts with Nancy Leigh DeMoss is an outreach of Life Action Ministries.

 

*Offers available only during the broadcast of the podcast season.