Counsel Your Heart

Dannah Gresh: Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth encourages you to pray for God’s will to be done today.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: We often equate joy with “things going my way.” I have to come to the place where I want to have the will of God more than I want to have my way.

Dannah: This is the Revive Our Hearts podcast with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, author of Surrender: The Heart God Controls, for August 7, 2025. I’m Dannah Gresh.

Is there some area of life you wish could just be healed? This week Nancy has given us perspective on healing, waiting, and God’s ability to address the deepest needs of our hearts.

Nancy’s been teaching through Mark 5. Let me read you some of this passage. 

And a great crowd followed him and thronged about him. And there was a woman who had had a discharge of blood for twelve years, and who had suffered much under many physicians, and had spent all that she had, and was no better but rather grew worse.

She had heard the reports about Jesus and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his garment. For she said, “If I touch even his garments, I will be made well.” And immediately the flow of blood dried up, and she felt in her body that she was healed of her disease. 

And Jesus, perceiving in himself that power had gone out from him, immediately turned about in the crowd and said, “Who touched my garments?” 

And his disciples said to him, “You see the crowd pressing around you, and yet you say, ‘Who touched me?’” And he looked around to see who had done it. But the woman, knowing what had happened to her, came in fear and trembling and fell down before him and told him the whole truth. 

And he said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well; go in peace, and be healed of your disease.” (vv. 24–34)

Isn’t it beautiful? Just a snapshot of a moment in an otherwise hectic, chaotic day.

Let’s review some of what we’ve heard so far. Nancy told us when we feel like this woman in need of healing, we can actually be in a good place.

Nancy: Because when you exhaust all hope— all human hope—when everything that we've looked to try and help us with our need has failed, that may be when we finally get through the crowd to Jesus.

Dannah: Nancy helped us gain perspective on prayers that haven’t been answered the way we’d like.

Nancy: Sometimes what we think we need is for the pressure to be off, for the problem to be solved, for there to be no more difficulty. But God may know that what we really need it to experience His grace and His wholeness in our lives in the midst of the problem or difficulty.

Dannah: She also showed us that we all need more than just physical health.

Nancy: You see what good is it to be physically well if your heart is sick if you are cut off from relationships, if you are cut off from a relationship with God? 

Dannah: If you missed any of those programs, you can hear them at ReviveOurHearts.com, or on the Revive Our Hearts app.

This series has brought up a lot of difficult topics. I hope you’ll dig into Mark 5 for yourself and get with wise people from your local church about your specific needs.

Today Nancy will share some of the practical outworkings of this teaching. If you’ve been praying about something and you still haven’t seen the results you want, Nancy will encourage you as you continue to pray and wait.

Nancy: This woman got what it was that Jesus knew she really needed. She did get a physical healing and that was a significant issue in her life. When He said, "Your faith has made you well," I think He was talking about something that is more than physically well. He realized the ultimate issue of her life was not her physical ailment, it was the ailment of her soul and spirit that was separated from God.

Her physical blood disorder that had caused her to be separated from people was just a picture. It was very real, but it was really just an earthly picture of a much more serious reality and that was her separation from God because of the defilement of her sin. Jesus is saying, "You've been saved"—saved in the eternal sense, the sense of your spirit saved from its sinfulness and the defilement and the contamination of sin.

At the same time he also did a physical miracle and touched her body so that she was physically healed, which I think was intended to be significant in itself. But more than that, it's a picture of an inner reality that had happened to her that was much more significant than her physical healing.

What would be the use of being physically whole—no aches and pains, no physical problems, no physical sickness—if you were still separated from God, and eternally separated from God, because of your internal heart sickness of sin? This woman's healing pictured a deeper, more significant, eternal healing.

The fact is, even with her physical healing, she was still going to die some day. We're all physically terminal; she was just more aware of it than most of us are. With this picture of the physical healing, Jesus was showing a greater and deeper and more significant miracle, which was her spiritual wholeness and wellness and salvation. She came to Him maybe concerned because of her symptoms, her physical situation. But what she got was even much more than what she had asked for.

Jesus does sometimes, as many of us have experienced, provide a significant measure of physical healing. All of us (who) are sitting in this room today are physically well; that's a gift of God's grace. There have been times in many of our cases we've had a physical illness; and through some means, God has touched our life, touched our body and restored us physically. What a blessing! Thank Him for it.

But the real issue He's wanting to deal with is the issue of our spiritual wellness, our spiritual wholeness, our spiritual defilement and contamination from sin. That's the promise that He makes: if we come to Him we can know that we are spiritually whole, that our souls are whole, that He will bring restoration of the years "the locusts have eaten," as the Old Testament says it, when we come in humility, faith, repentance, submission to Him.

He may or may not choose to bring the physical or temporal or material blessing that we're looking for. But He will give us what we really need, which is His grace, His power, His Spirit. I would say this: that the issues of our souls—issues of bitterness, anger, indifference, guilt, shame—these are issues that directly tie to our spiritual relationship with God.

That is an area where I believe many women are living today in a sickness, just assuming they have to continue living that way. They've gone to the counselors. They've gone to the therapists. They're taking the medicine. They've got all the therapies and the programs and the seminars and read the books and listened to the tapes, but they're no more well than they were.

That's where I think this story says to us, as do other passages, you don't have to keep living as a spiritually sick woman. Now for the physical, it would be nice not to have to keep living as a sick woman physically either. But we're all physically sick. We're all physically going to die, but there can be spiritual and soul-wholeness even with a body that is deteriorating and dying as all of ours are.

My challenge to women today is: you don't have to live with the bondage, the baggage of that past hurt, those past offenses, those past failures, and what that has brought about in your life, you don't have to live under that load. You get to Jesus, and you can be set free from that—not to a problem-free life, not to a life with no more hurt—but to a life where you can be a victor instead of a victim in the midst of real life hurts and situations.

The problem is that we often equate joy with things going "my way." I have to come to the place in my life where I want the will of God and the purposes of God to be fulfilled more than I want to have my way. I think one of the scariest thoughts is that God would let me have my way. What if God really released me from every pain and problem and depressive thought, and I didn't have to endure any of that? You say, "Wouldn't that be wonderful?"

Well, for a moment. But then we would forfeit the beauty, the fragrance, the glory that He wants to bring out of those circumstances. I want the outcome of glorifying God with my life and His purposes being fulfilled more than I want relief from my pain. Now there are moments when I want relief from my pain real badly, when I want that more than I think I want anything else. But that's when I have to step back and get perspective and say, "Look, my life is not my own. My life belongs to the Lord. I am here to fulfill His purposes. If in the process of doing so I die, or whatever worse thing you can think of, that's okay, because my life isn't my own. I don't live to please me. I have to get my values adjusted, my purpose adjusted."

I think there are some practical ways—things I have found helpful to refocus, to get my thinking adjusted to God's way of thinking. Singing to the Lord is one of those. I often ask women who are depressed or discouraged, "Are you singing to the Lord, and are you memorizing Scripture?" Those two things in my life have been a very powerful means of release and healing.

Sometimes I have to sing through the tears, hardly able to get the words out of my mouth. I mean, sometimes the sobbing, heaving tears, where nobody would recognize the song. I have learned at times to keep singing until the cloud lifts. Singing doesn't usually make my circumstances change. It may make people leave. But I will sometimes pull out a hymnal and just begin to sing praise to the Lord, to sing what I know is true.

There is something very powerful about singing to the Lord, and I think that's one of the reasons that God tells us so many times in the Scripture to sing to the Lord. I think it's also something the enemy doesn't want us to do. He knows when we begin to praise, we're bringing God into our circumstances and our perspective's going to change.

The matter of Scripture memory, when you don't have words of your own or don't know what to pray or feel at a total loss for words or don't want to pray—as there are times in my own experience—then to have the words of Scripture right there in my heart or on a card to help me remember or just a little Bible with me. I have some cards that have Scripture written out on them. Sometimes when I'm out walking, I've taken those cards with me and repeating them out loud, the Word of the Lord, speaking to my own heart what I know is true.

That's really the way I counsel my own heart. I'm saying, "Heart, this is what God says. What God says may be totally opposed to what it seems like and what your circumstances look like; but I'm not going to believe what my emotions tell me, what my circumstances tell me. I'm going to choose instead to believe that what God has said is true."

Susan shared with us that God's giving her a chance to embrace to gift of another child when her quiver she thought was quite full. There's an adjustment there to her thinking. There's an emotional adjustment. She's got her hands full. Many of you mothers know exactly what that feeling is. But she is counseling her heart according to the Word of God. She's realizing that God's Word says that this child in her womb is a gift. Yes, she's got morning sickness (or afternoon or all day sickness!) in the early stages of this pregnancy. No, prayer and faith may not make that go away. But in the midst of that nausea, in the midst of overwhelming sense of "How can I handle one more child?" she's counseling her heart according to God's Word. She's saying, "God, I choose to give you thanks because You've said this child is a gift. I'm going to accept this as a gift from You." 

Sometimes it takes me a long while for my emotions to catch up to the truth. I'm glad we have a Savior who understands our emotions and who's tender with us, but I can't afford to let my mind run away with thoughts that are not true. I can't afford to let myself say things that are not God's way of thinking about the situation. I've got to just keep speaking truth into the situation, casting myself upon Him in desperation.

There's that verse in Psalms that says, "Thou hast enlarged me when I was in distress." God increases our capacity for pressure and our capacity for Himself. Where? When we're in distress. There's growth that takes place. In the midst of the distress I have to say, "As distasteful as this is to me, as hard as this is, Lord, I thank You for it. I embrace it, and by faith I know that You will get me through it."

Dannah: When you’ve been praying about a tough situation a long time, it can get very discouraging. Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth has been helping us keep an eternal perspective, and she’ll be right back.

But let me cut in and say, if you’re desiring healing, if you’re in a period of praying and waiting on the Lord, Nancy has endorsed a resource that I think will be a comfort to you. A Small Book for Hurting Hearts is written by Pastor Paul Tautges, a man who knows what it’s like to wait on the Lord for healing. This short devotional is written with all the tenderness of someone who really gets it. 

When Nancy recommended it, she wrote, “How often I have wished for this kind of resource to share with a friend in the throes of grief.” It’s gentle, pastoral, and filled with counsel from the Word. When you make a donation of any amount to support Revive Our Hearts, we’d love to send you Pastor Paul Tautges’ book as a thank you gift. To donate, just visit ReviveOurHearts.com or call us at 1-800-569-5959. When you do, be sure to request this warm and practical resource.

Let’s get back to Nancy’s practical discussion. When you’re like the woman we read about in Mark 5, waiting for healing so long, how do you persevere?

Nancy: Let me remind us first that it is possible to be spiritually well, spiritually whole, and still live in the midst of circumstances that are extremely difficult, extremely painful and that may not change anytime soon. A woman who lives with an unbelieving husband, who has no respect for her faith, who puts her down, who is verbally demeaning, and it goes on and on and on and on. A woman living with the issue of a wayward child, a son or daughter, who's far from the Lord. That pain, even though the child may be away from home, that child's not away from that mother's heart. Some of you have walked through or are walking through right now, that kind of circumstance.

But in the midst of those circumstances it is possible to still have intact a relationship with God whereby you are whole and you are able to have a right conscience toward God, to be rightly related to Him, and, could I say this, to walk in joy in the midst of the pain.

Jean knows what I'm talking about. You've been there, Jean. You've seen the pain and the loss—some of it because of your sin, some of it because of the sin of others, things over which you had no control—but you've learned. You're learning how to walk as a whole woman in the midst of that circumstance.

Here's another encouraging reminder. It's encouraging to me, and I think it should be to all of us. And that is that our suffering is not forever. There will be an end. God will right all wrongs. Every knee will bow, of the most unrepentant mate or child or parent or friend. All things will be made right in the end. He's a redeeming God. He's redeeming our circumstances. We just can't see the whole picture right now. We can't see the end right now; we have to take that by faith.

When you say, "I can't go on. This is going on forever." Remember, this is not forever. Nothing in this life is forever. Paul says in the book of Romans, "I'm convinced that our sufferings of this present time are nothing compared to the glory which will be revealed in us" (8:18). There will be an end. There will be redemption. There will be restoration of those broken, messed up, frazzled pieces around us—some of it things that we were responsible for, some of it things that had been circumstances utterly outside of our own control.

 

Then remember this, that in the midst of the fire, in the midst of the valley, there walks One with you whose presence is enough. Those three Hebrew young men who were cast into the fiery furnace for their faith, their refusal to bend the knee to the wicked king's edict . . . They knew it might cost them their lives. They said, "Oh, King, we're going to submit to God, and He's able to deliver us. He may; but if He doesn't, we still won't bow to your image." For taking that stand, they were cast into a real furnace, with a real fire that was heated up very hot.

They went into the fire. Some of you are in the fire. If you know the story, you'll remember that there went into that fire with them a fourth Man, the Son of God. Those men never got closer to Jesus than they did when they were in the middle of that fiery furnace. That's why the psalmist could say, "Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil for You are with me" (Psalm 23:4).

You say, "Well, that's nice for him in that valley; but I'm living here in this life, in this home, with this man, with this circumstance, with this situation in my workplace." And God says, "Yep, right there. I will be with you."

He says to you as He does to me, "My grace is sufficient for you." He didn't say, "My grace will take all your problems away." In fact, those very problems are what God is using to fulfill in us what we really want, and that is to be like Jesus. That's what's shaping and molding and honing and refining and purging. It's the problems. So why should we resent or resist or run from the very things that God is using to make us like Jesus? We want the outcome, but we don't want the process to get there.

God's grace is sufficient—not to take away all the problems, that's not the promise that He gives. But He does say, "In the midst of the problems, I will be with you. I will meet your needs. I will be enough for you." That's when we have to, even though sometimes our eyes are filled with tears, lift our eyes upward and say, "Oh, God, by faith I believe that Your grace is sufficient for me for this moment, for this circumstance, for this situation, and that hurt as it may, painful as it may be, I believe there is grace for this."

In some of my most desperate moments, something I do that is very helpful is to look back. I kind of step out of my situation for a moment and look back on previous years and previous circumstances and situations that I thought were helpless or desperate then. I look back and reflect on how God walked me through it and on how He met my needs in the midst of that situation.

Then I step back into current situation, and I say, "Lord, You've been faithful all these years." I can look back and I can truly say in the most desperate and painful situations, God has always been there. I look back; I rehearse it. I remind myself, and I remind Him.

I say, "Lord, You have been faithful to me every day, every moment, of these years. There are some things I still don't understand. There are some pieces I still haven't put together, some dots I still can't connect; but I do know that You've been faithful. I know that You've been faithful to every child of Yours in all of history, in every circumstance, in every situation, in every part of the world.

"Now, I really don't think that this is the moment, and I'm the person, and this is the circumstance in which for the first time in the history of the world You're not going to come through. You've been faithful. And I now accept by faith, I thank You by faith, that in spite of the pain, in spite of the endurance race this has become, that You're going to get me through this. And You will not just get me through it but bring me out on the other side into a broad place, a place of abundance and plenty; that out of the woundedness, out of the brokenness comes life and wholeness and grace and wonder and beauty."

Then we look back, as we will a moment or two from now, in light of eternity when we see Him . . . We'll look back over all this whole pilgrimage, the things we had to endure; and the things we thought we couldn't endure. We'll look back and we'll say, "Lord, You did all things well." And we will worship Him for the very things that now we struggle to accept.

It's a walk of faith; sight comes later. Prayer comes now. Faith comes now. And we praise by faith, believing that in the final outcome we will know that He has done all things well.

Dannah: Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth has been reminding you that God himself is a far better gift than the healing we seek from Him. But if you’ve been asking the Lord for some kind of healing—emotional, relational, or physical—keep at it! He never grows tired of hearing from you. 

I’ve mentioned this before, but here’s a little reminder. If you’d like some reinforcements as you bring your requests before the Lord, we’d love to come alongside you in that. You can send us your prayer requests at ReviveOurHearts.com/prayer and know that a member of our team will pray for you and ask God for healing on your behalf. 

Well tomorrow, Nancy’s wrapping up our series, His Healing Touch. We’ll also hear from some friends who know what it is to endure physical suffering in Jesus’ presence. Please be back for Revive Our Hearts.

This program is a listener-supported production of Revive Our Hearts in Niles, Michigan, calling women to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.

All Scripture is taken from the NKJV.

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