Benediction

Dannah Gresh: Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth exhorts us never to take for granted the gifts given by the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: The magnitude of the blessing that we receive individually and collectively from the Triune God is deeper and wider than anything we could possibly imagine.

Dannah: This is the Revive Our Hearts podcast with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, author of Adorned, for December 31, 2021. I’m Dannah Gresh.

Nancy: Well, here we are—New Year’s Eve—the final day of this year, and a new year that stands before us. As we’re hinged between these two years, my heart is full, and my heart is grateful for a lot of reasons. 

On a personal note, my sweet husband Robert is sitting in the back of the room listening today as we record. A year ago today, we didn’t know whether that would be the case. Robert had just completed chemo, and today, as far as we know, he is in complete remission. What precious words are those, and, yes, you can clap. We’re so thrilled.

Thank you for praying. Thank you for your encouragement. We don’t know what that means for the future, but we don’t have the future—we have today. And we have the grace of God for what’s past and what is today and what is to come.

And then for Revive Our Hearts, this has been an amazing year of growth and impact. Our team has developed several new podcasts, including the newest, True Girl, a podcast for moms and tween girls. So as the mom is chauffeuring the girl to whatever class or ballet lessons or whatever, they can be listening to these and sparking these kinds of conversations between moms and girls.

The Revive Our Hearts content is now in thirteen languages with eight more in early stages of development. So women who can’t understand me like this and I couldn’t understand them if they were to speak, but they can understand this truth and receive it because it’s being captured for them in their language.

This year there have been sixty-three million downloads of our audio content (that we know about). There’s way more than that because we know that lots of people are taking the content and are sharing it in ways that we can’t count.

We’ve come not too long ago through Revive ’21, which was just an amazing time of hearing from the Lord, worshiping with women. God just worked in amazing ways. And the messages from that conference, if you didn’t sign up to get to hear them online or the livestream, shortly we’ll be offering the messages from that conference. I want you to hear all of them. We’re airing some of them on Revive Our Hearts, but it was just a sweet conference.

I’m so grateful for His provision for Revive Our Hearts this year, for thousands of listeners, friends like you, who have prayed for the needs of the ministry, prayed for the outreaches of the ministry, who have sent financial support—some of them just a few dollars; some of them a few more zeroes—but from their hearts.

I talked with a woman this past week who had sent a gift that was fairly sizeable, and it was her first gift. I just called her to tell her how much it meant to us. She said, 

I’ve only been listening for a couple of months, but it has meant so much to me. Our pastor preached recently on generosity. And when there was some inheritance left to us, we wanted to share it, and this was the ministry God put on our hearts.

God leads people in unusual ways and in different ways—big amounts, small amounts. We’re grateful for it all. And that giving has helped to make this one of the most fruitful years of the past twenty years of this ministry ever.

We’ve been sharing with you throughout this month about our year-end need, and we’ve been praying, as you’ve heard, for $2.8 million to be given during this month, including the matching challenge—that’s part of that.

We’ve been sharing with you that 40% of the donations we need for the entire year come during the month of December, and a huge percentage of that comes in the last three days of the year. So during these three days, we’re praying. We’re seeking the Lord. We’re waiting. Our accounting department is taking the funds that come in and trying to count and keep up with it and open mail and see what’s come in on the Internet. We won’t really know the outcome for probably another several days or even a week into the new year. So, if you’re one of those who have already participated . . . thank you! Thank you so much for your investment in this mission.

And if you’ve not taken advantage of this opportunity, it’s not too late! You can give online at ReviveOurHearts.com, or you can call us at 1–800–569–5959. And if you want to mail your gift, you just need to be sure that it’s postmarked by midnight tonight.

So, in advance, we’re thanking the Lord for what He’s provided already, what He will provide through the balance of this day, and trusting Him to know what we need and to provide exactly what He knows is needed. We know the amount we’re praying for, but He knows what’s actually needed. So thank you for joining us in praying and believing Him for that.

So many of our listeners have blessed us, have prayed for us, and have encouraged us this year, particularly over these recent weeks. So at the close of this year, I want to leave you with a blessing—a blessing from the Word and the heart of God.

Over the last couple of days, we’ve been looking at the last paragraph of 2 Corinthians chapter 13. Let me encourage you to turn there if you’re able to pick up a Bible or scroll in your phone to the end of 2 Corinthians chapter 13.

Now, this is a little complicated what I’m about to say, and it took me a while to figure it out, but most translations have fourteen verses in this chapter. The translation I’m using, the Christian Standard Bible, combines the last two verses into one verse, so it only has thirteen verses. So we’re going to look today at verse 13 in my Bible. It might be verse 14 in your Bible. Are you confused yet? You got it.

So we looked a couple of days ago at the exhortations in verse 11: 

Finally, brothers and sisters, rejoice. Become mature, be encouraged [or comfort one another], be of the same mind, and be at peace [or live in peace].

And then we looked at the blessing: “And the God of love and peace will be with you.” That’s a blessing promised to those who live that way—individuals and churches. We want the God of love and peace to be with us and for the world around us to know that He is with us, to see Him among us.

And then we looked yesterday at the greetings. In my Bible, it’s verse 12. Maybe in your translation it’s verse 13. But it says, 

Greet one another with a holy kiss. All the saints send you greetings.

And remember that Paul was probably writing to the Corinthians from Philippi, which was more than 700 miles away. These believers probably did not know each other personally, but there was an awareness nonetheless that their lives were interconnected because they were in Christ. They were part of a family of God that extended far beyond their own geographical location. It transcended socio-economic differences.

So I want to encourage you to remember that and to be mindful, not just of the few believers who are like you, who are near you that you see regularly, but to also be mindful that we have a vast family of God that expands this world. We need to be conscious of how vital and important they are to the whole redeeming mission of God in the world.

Now we come to the last verse of Paul’s letter to the Corinthians, whether it’s 13 or 14 in your Bible. This is the benediction.

The word “benediction” literally means “to speak good of someone.” It’s taken from a Latin word that means “blessed.” It’s a blessing. In many of our church services, we have a benediction. It’s at the end of the service.

So we’ve been worshiping and singing and praying and listening to the preaching of the Word, and responding to the Lord and fellowshipping with His people. Now it’s time to leave and go back out into the world that we came from. We don’t know what we’re going to face there. Monday morning is coming, a new week, new challenges, difficult people, discouraging news. Whatever week it is, that’s likely. Each week there’s going to be some more discouraging news.

So the benediction at the end of our corporate worship sends us out into that world and into the unknown—unknown to us—with a blessing. The benediction is often the words of Scripture because there are some wonderful benedictions in the Old and New Testaments.

But these are words that remind us of what is true. These words in the benediction are a pronouncement of God’s promises, His presence, His grace, His blessing that is going to go with us out into this world no matter what we may face.

This blessing, this benediction is not in who we are or in what we can do or how well we may be able to handle the adversities we’re going to face. This blessing is not saying, “You’ve got this, Sister. You can handle this.” The benediction, the blessing is saying, “God’s got this! He’s got you!”

It’s a reminder that His grace will give you every resource you need—tonight, tomorrow, next week, next month, next year. As we prepare to walk into a new year, He’s going to give you every resource you need to bear up under pressure, to love others well, to be poured out, to be spent, and to represent Christ in your home, in your marriage, in your school, in your workplace.

So, as we come to the end of this year, and we prepare to walk into a new year, we have no idea what it will bring. We have no idea what we will face. But we know that He knows, and that He goes with us into this new year, and that He will give us all that we will need for whatever we will face.

This blessing, this benediction, the one we’re going to look at in 2 Corinthians, as well as others in the Scripture, it assures us that we can thrive in the midst of a world that seems to be spinning out of control and that is trying to squash us and keep us from having an voice and keep us from joy. Yes, those circumstances, those pressures are out there, but this benediction, this blessing, it lifts our hearts. It lifts our soul. It lifts our eyes up to Christ and says that we can face the future—tomorrow, the next day, the next week, the next month, the next year—with joy and with hope. 

So here’s the benediction. Again, it’s verse 13 in my Bible. In many other translations it’s verse 14, the last verse of 2 Corinthians 13:

The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.

Now, this is a beautiful Trinitarian blessing. It’s the only benediction in Paul’s epistles that explicitly references each member of the Trinity—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. One God, three persons, acting in one accord, relating to one another, and relating to those who have been adopted into the family of God.

That’s about all I’m going to say about the Trinity because it’s a huge mystery, and there’s no way we can grasp it or comprehend it, but it’s a magnificent truth. Paul gives us this benediction, this blessing, from the Trinity.

Praise God from whom all blessings flow.
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

We sing that doxology, that Trinitarian worship, amen. By the way, written back in 1674, and we still sing it and love it today. It draws us into our union with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, who are one with each other and with us.

And Paul says, “The grace of the Lord Jesus, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.” (Sounds like Paul is a Southerner!) But he’s making clear that this is a plural you—not just with you, and not just with you, and not just with you, but with you all—all the believers there in Corinth, and all of the believers there in Philippi where Paul probably was writing from, and all the believers in all parts of the world.

This blessing, of course, is ours, individually, as children of God. But it’s also, and maybe more importantly, ours collectively, corporately. It reminds us that we are inseparably linked to the Godhead, the three-in-one, and to one another. Father, Son, and Spirit are with us and in us. Therefore, grace (the grace of Christ), love (the love of God), and fellowship (the fellowship of the Holy Spirit) are ours. And they’re not just with us as individual, isolated believers, but with us “all.” 

You say, “You sound like that’s a big deal.”

That is a big deal because I don’t just relate to God as Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth. Yes, I do, and yes, I am His, and yes, I am in Christ, and all these blessings are mine. But if you are in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is in you, then we are one with each other.

These blessings that come down from our Trinitarian God, our Triune God, to us are ones that we enjoy as one Body in Christ. Together as one, we walk with Him, and we walk with each other, richly endowed with His promises and His gifts that are given to us in this benediction.

As God has extended grace and love and fellowship—the three things He promises to us in this benediction—to all of us as His people; so we leave our fellowship, our times of worship, our times together as believers, and we go out into the world to extend the grace and the love and the fellowship of God to one another. But also, we extend that to the rest of the world that desperately needs the grace and the love and the fellowship of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

And we extend that fellowship not just to the people in our particular local church or our particular denomination or our particular geographic area, but we extend that grace, that love, that fellowship that we have received from Father, Son, and Holy Spirit to all saints of all time and for all eternity.

There’s a grandness. There’s a greatness. There’s a sweetness. There’s a majesty about this benediction because it ties us in to the Triune Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It makes us recipients of His grace, love, and fellowship. It makes us together in union with Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, recipients of His grace, His love, His fellowship. And together we’re sent out into the world to dispense His grace, His love, and His fellowship to the world that desperately needs that.

So I want to take a few moments here just to unpack the three gifts that are promised in this benediction.

First, “the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ.” That word charis is a word that means “favor, a gift, graciousness, bounty, liberality, the generosity of Christ toward us”—the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. These are benefits that He has bestowed upon us. He is the Benefactor. We are the beneficiaries of His amazing grace.

You read earlier in 2 Corinthians chapter 8, verse 9, this marvelous verse: 

For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ [same phrase]: that though he was rich, for your sake he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich.

That’s the grace of Christ. He was willing to be emptied, to be poured out, to be spent, to give everything, including His life, so that we could have life.

We have been saved by the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. We stand today in that grace, accepted by the Father, because of the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ.

We are sanctified by His grace.He gives us grace to suffer hardship. This is a promise you want to take with you into the coming year.

He gives us grace to serve Him and others. You need that if you’ve got a family. You need grace to serve when you don’t feel like serving, when you don’t want to serve.

His grace, the grace of the Lord Jesus, is His undeserved blessing that He pours out on us, that enriches us. It is all-sufficient grace. Where would we be without the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ?

So as you go into the year ahead: May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. 

Then we see “the love of God”—agápē—that generous, rich, abundant, lavish love of God expressed to us through the gift of His Son to die for our sin. And the love of God is not dependent on us being lovable, the way we tend to love others. He loves us though we aren’t loveable.

The love of God is the outpouring of His nature toward us.

• He is relational.
• He is a giving God.
• He’s always seeking our best interests.
• He’s always working for our good.
• He, as someone has said, “loves us just as we are, but He loves us too much to let us stay that way”—the love of God.

So as you go into the year ahead, my prayer is: “May the love of God be with you all.”

And then thirdly, “the fellowship,” or in some translations, the communion of the Holy Spirit. That’s the Greek word koinōnía. It’s a word that means “partnership, participation.”

We are able to enjoy fellowship with God, communion with God, relationship with God, partnership with God, participation with God through His Holy Spirit who brings us into that relationship with God.

So as you go into the year ahead: “May the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.”

Let me just say it again: We have been made one with Christ and therefore we are one with each other. That’s the “you all.”

The magnitude of the blessing that we receive, individually and collectively, from the Triune God is deep and wider than anything we could possibly imagine.

The gifts of God that flow to one of us, flow to all who are in Christ. None gets more. None gets less. You can’t say, “Oh, I’m just not a really good Christian, so I don’t get as much of God’s blessing and as much of His benediction.”

No. If you are in Christ, you get as much blessing and benediction from Him as I do. None gets more. None gets less. I don’t get less than somebody else that I may admire or think, Boy, they’re really in a great place spiritually. No. I get the same. They’re not deserving of it. I’m not deserving of it. You’re not deserving of it. But we get it—blessings He pours out to us.

We can never plumb the depths of this blessing. It is vast enough to meet every need that you have, not only for the year ahead, but also for all time and eternity.

“The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, the fellowship of the Holy Spirit.” What more could you possibly desire? What more could you ask for? What more could you need? 

Dannah: His blessing is abundantly more than we could imagine.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth will be right back in a moment, but first I want to remind you that our team has designed a free downloadable PDF to go along with this series we’ve been listening to. It’s available to you at our website, ReviveOurHearts.com/benediction.

As Nancy mentioned at the beginning of today’s episode, God has been working in amazing ways through Revive Our Hearts this year. If you want to see some of the highlights, just head on over to ReviveOurHearts.com and watch our year-end review video. You’re going to love it. It encouraged me so much. We’re just so grateful to see how women are being transformed by the truth of the gospel and to hear how God is using this ministry to speak to their hearts.

When Nancy shared the message you heard in today’s episode, several women took time to share afterward. Here’s what Gladine had to say:

Gladine: I loved how you ended that. “What more could we possibly ask for? What more could we possibly need? What more could we possibly desire?” And the love of Christ, the grace of the Lord Jesus, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit . . . I’ve been reflecting this past month on just past years and people who’ve influenced me, and you’re on the top of the list. I thank God for you and your ministry here, and the overflow of that is here to my daughter and granddaughter as well. Thank you.

Dannah: Oh, I love that! We’re able to minister to women like Gladine, and their daughters and their granddaughters, through the support of our listeners. If you’d like to help us be a part of reaching women with the truth of Christ, you can give online at ReviveOurHearts.com or call us at 1–800–569–5959.

Now, maybe you’re the kind of person that likes to make your gift by good old snail mail. If you’d like to mail your gift, it’s not too late—but almost. Just make sure that it’s postmarked by tonight in order to be counted toward our year-end matching challenge. This is your last absolute chance to join us in getting this truth to women all around the world. If you need our address, just send it to Revive Our Hearts at P.O. Box 2000, Niles, Michigan. The zip code is 49120.

And I just want to say to those of you who have already participated—thank you. Thank you so much for your support of this ministry, both financially. I know some of you are praying. So, thanks for that, too.

Now, next week we’ll be starting off the year 2022 with some encouragement for digging deep into the Word of God. I sure hope you’ll be here to join us.

Now, here’s Nancy with a word of encouragement.

Nancy: Yesterday I had a lengthy call with a sweet friend that I hadn’t spoken to in some time. We don’t live near each other, so we don’t have a lot of contact. We just kind of updated each other on our lives, and we shared some of the challenges that she and her family have faced over the past year. We shared the burdens that are on our hearts.

As we were closing this conversation, kind of not wanting it to end because it was so sweet, I just said, “Could I benedict this conversation?” Now, keep in mind, I’d been soaking in this last paragraph of 2 Corinthians 13 for weeks, so it’s kind of uppermost on my mind right now. And as we closed in prayer, I prayed over this precious friend the prayer from 2 Corinthians 13 that we’ve been looking at this week. 

So I want to “benedict” our time today. (Is benedict a verb? If it’s not, it should be.) I want to give you a benediction in the closing hours of this year, by praying this passage over you, and at the dawn of a new year by sending this passage with you. So wherever you’re listening from, whatever circumstances you may be facing in your personal life, at home, in your marriage, with your children, with your church, with your work, in your neighborhood, this word is for you. 

Finally, brothers and sisters, rejoice. Become mature, be encouraged, comfort one another, be of the same mind, be at peace, and the God of love and peace will be with you. 

Greet one another with a holy kiss. All the saints send you greetings. [And finally,] The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all [today and all year long.]

Amen? Amen.

Dannah: Amen. Again, that’s Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth closing our time with a benediction from 2 Corinthians, chapter 13.

Now, because you’re listening to the podcast version of today’s episode, we’ve got some bonus content for you today. Some women took time to share after Nancy’s teaching from this three-day series, and I think many of their thoughts will resonate with you as you reflect on what the Lord has been teaching you. So, let’s listen to their interaction with Nancy.

Patty: I just appreciate you being vulnerable, because whenever I hear a speaker, and especially someone I don’t know very well, I have them up on . . . I think, Well, they’re not like me, and they don’t have the same feelings or issues that I might have. So it really helps when somebody . . . “Oh, well Nancy struggled with that, too, or she feels that way, too.” So I just really appreciate that.

Nancy: Thank you, Patty.

Woman: I agree with you, Patty. I want to share an example of visiting at church a year or maybe two years ago. I stepped in and sat by myself. And, Nancy, you looked back and said, “Come sit with Robert and me.” You practice that outreach. I was feeling very alone, but when I went up and sat with you, I was included in the Body, and it made a huge difference.

So I want to encourage all of us, those small things, any kind of prompting of the Spirit is so what we ought to do, because God’s going to use it. We have no idea how sometimes.

Nancy: And your sweet daughter has sat with us a number of times, too, when she’s been there without the family.

And I’ve been there—alone, especially before I got married. I haven’t been so much since I got married, but as a single woman, for years I would say that going to church by myself was one of the hardest things for me about being single. And some are single again—widowed—and it’s just feels awkward. It feels hard.

And my encouragement to all of us is to reach out to those for whom it’s hard. But my encouragement to all of us is if it’s hard for you, be the one who reaches out. If we could all do this, we kind of meet in the middle and be blessed. Right?

Carrie: I was thinking, Nancy, of the number of times in the last year to year-and-a-half hearing from precious, young, single gals, many of them in their late twenties and early thirties. I have never been as aware as I am now of those single gals coming to me as an older woman and just saying, “Can you just give me a hug? I really need a hug.”

And it’s so appropriate and so necessary, the physical touch. I think the last season we’ve been through brought that to the surface in ways, maybe it’s always been there, but it became more significant.

Also, as you were sharing how Robert’s eyes light up when you walk into the room . . . I read a number of studies that secular scientists have said (and this has been in the last decade or two), that what our brains need to run on, the fuel that they need to run on is called joy. They named that joy.

And they defined joy as “glad to be with you.” And said, “Joy is what happens inside of us, neuro-biologically, when someone makes eye contact with us because they’re glad to be with us, and their face lights up.”

I mean, it’s just crazy, beautiful, the things that happen relationally, the things that are happening inside, and also the community things that are happening that are so hard to describe. How do we get our head around what’s actually taking place, what we cannot exactly see, but we feel it communally? And so it just thrills my heart. That’s exactly what happens.

And then I was thinking, too, of the story of the angels coming to the shepherds in the fields and saying, “We bring you good news of great joy.” The one you separated from has come near, and He’s never going anywhere again. He’s always glad to be with us. So, thank you, it was beautiful.

Nancy: Wow! I love that, Carrie. And who better to model this to the world, which is so lonely, so twisted—a twisted view of touch, of sexuality, of relationships, of love—who better to model than us, the people of God, what it means to love well, to be glad to see each other? Sometimes I think we think it, but we don’t say it.

I hate to admit this, but I could go days on end without talking to a human being, and it wouldn’t be hard for me. My husband can tell you this. It takes practice for me. It takes intentionality. I mean, I work at home. I’m on my laptop all day long, so I’m connecting with people, but I’m not talking with them many times.

And it’s been so good for me for lots of reasons—it’s a joy to be in a marriage with a husband who values communication. Robert, you got that from your parents. They had the family at dinner. You don’t just eat your dinner and rush out. You sit and talk with each other. And they embrace each other, and they welcome each other. They have differences, but they welcome each other. That’s been a really growing thing for me.

I’m realizing how much I need this, how much others need it. I’m realizing that what you give out when you come out of your shell, when you step out of your comfort zone, it comes back to you. The God of love and peace will be with you, and you’ll enjoy more of His presence, but then we manifest that presence to this world.

We’re talking about times today in the West where there’s a lot of talk about religious liberty being threatened—not only in the West but around the world. There is persecution taking place in many countries of the world. I don’t know if it’s appropriate to call it persecution here in the United States, but certainly there’s a limiting and restricting and devaluing of the liberties of Christians.

We can get all uptight about that, and we can rant and foam at the mouth and scream and yell, “Give me my liberties!” and “We deserve this!”

Or we can be the people of God, expressing the love and the peace and the grace and the fellowship of the Triune God, making Him visible in our world, letting them see the joy instead of despair, the one anothers being lived out among us.

Though we come from different backgrounds—some are rich, some are poor, some have education, some are not educated, ethnic differences and language differences—we love each other. We touch each other in holy and pure and life-giving ways. We’re not doing it to take from each other. We’re not doing it to manipulate each other. We are pouring out into each other. We are accepting one another in Christ.

I just think this is the greatest hope of revival and of impact that the church can have in our world today. Maybe that’s always been true. Paul seemed to think it was true in the Roman era, where everything was cattywampus.

The government was crazed and in a mess. Politicians could not be any more corrupt today than they were in the Roman era. We think it’s never been like this before. It has been like this before . . . and it is horrific.

I’m not justifying or defending it. I’m just saying this is an opportunity. This is not the time to put our heads down and say, “Oh, woe is me, and woe is us, and what are we going to do? The people of God are being threatened. They’re going to close our churches, and they’re going to say we can’t do this.” They may try to do all of that. I’m not saying there’s not a concerted effort against gospel, Christ-loving people, and churches today. I think there is, and I think it’s going to get worse.

But this is an age of opportunity for us to live out these exhortations and this benediction. This “greet one another with a holy kiss,” could become one of our most powerful means of showing Christ to our world—not so we win the battle. That’s not the point. It’s not whether we win or lose. We are going to be increasingly marginalized, I’m convinced of that. I think the day will come not too far from now when we will think, These were the good days.

I don’t think we’re ever again going to be like this cultural majority in our lifetimes. But we don’t have to be. Christ came.

The coming of Christ to earth was told to people who were marginalized. It wasn’t told to the kings in palaces and to the famous people and to the wealthy people. It was to people who had little and were little and were not respected. They were shepherds. They were lower-class working men. Who cares about them? But God cared about them, and He brought that good news to them.

He brought the good news to that young teenage girl living in Nazareth and turned her life upside down and inside out. That’s what He wants to do in our lives, not because we have some cultural majority. But from this place of smallness, of littleness, of weakness, of nothingness, we shine a spotlight on the greatness and the glory and the love and the grace and the fellowship of God. And at some point, those around us have to stop and say, “Wow!”

That’s what happened in the early church. By the time Paul was imprisoned in Rome, there were guards in the Pretorian force who were high-paid officials in the Roman government who had been converted, who were worshipers of Christ. That didn’t happen by threatening, by marching for their rights. It happened by Christians being Christians. They’re loving each other well. They’re loving God well, greeting one another with a holy kiss.

It was radical then. It was revolutionary then. It is today. And we need it. I need it. You need it. The Body of Christ needs it. But our world really needs it as well. So, go be the Church.

Woman: Some of this wasn’t totally from just today’s message. I’ve been listening to the podcast throughout this year, and what I appreciate is how, even what you have just said, how you bring in today’s struggles and help us to deal with them. We hear so many negative things in the world. We don’t know who to believe. But, I just appreciate the truth that you shared with us and how heaven rules. I really appreciate that.

Nancy: That’s our anchor. Right? When everything else is adrift, everything else is off course, everything else is out of tune—whatever metaphor you could use. The world is off. It has been since Genesis 3, and we were born off. But God in His mercy sent Jesus, won our hearts, not because we were good, not because we were religious, not because we wanted Him, but because He wanted us. He drew us to Himself, and we’re here to enjoy that, to enjoy Him and to glorify Him, honor Him in our world, so others can be part of that redemptive story.

And what we’re doing is pointing people to that unshakeable certainty that heaven really does rule. And that’s not something to be afraid of. (Well, you should be afraid of it if you’re going to rebel against God.) But if you trust Him, if you surrender to Him, if you love Him, then the fact that heaven rules is a source of great comfort and great courage. You can take that with you into the new year.

Revive Our Hearts with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth calls you to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.

All Scripture is taken from the CSB.

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