Cultivating a Relationship with God

Dannah Gresh: Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth knows that busy moms are always on the job.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: You just wish there was one little place in the whole world that you could get away from the crowd. You say, “I know, I’ll go in the bathroom.” Right? And then these little fingers come under the door, and they go, “Mommy!” (laughter)

Dannah: This is Revive Our Hearts with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, author of A Place of Quiet Rest, for Monday January 3, 2022. I'm Dannah Gresh.

Nancy covers a lot of topics on Revive Our Hearts, but she often says that if she could only speak on one topic, it’s the one we’re about to hear. Nancy delivered this message at Moody Bible Institute, and I hope it invites you to greater intimacy with God as we start out 2022.

Nancy: I'm going to share one of the most practical ways that I know to seek God's heart and to cultivate true spiritual hunger. In fact, I'll go so far as to say that I'm not sure it's possible to really know God and to have that kind of deep hunger for Him, apart from what I want to talk about this morning.

You see, spiritual hunger has to be cultivated. It has to be nourished. It's really the opposite of physical hunger in a sense, because the more I eat physically the more full I am and the less hungry I am. You get stuffed, and finally, you don't want anything more to eat. Spiritual hunger, I have found, works just the opposite way. The more you feed your spiritual hunger, the hungrier you get. So if you're not spiritually hungry and you are a child of God, it may be that you've not been feeding your soul. Because the more I eat, the more I want, the more hungry I am for God.

I've said many times over the years that if I could only share one message with the women that I minister to on a normal basis, it would be this one. Students, let me just say that this one practice that if you would make it a part of your life starting now during your school years, I think this could make the single greatest difference in your life for the rest of your life.

Those who are guests with us this week, those listening by means of the radio or the Internet, if you get what we are going to talk about in these next moments, you will have what you need to deal with every other area and season and situation of your life.

What I want to talk about is how to have, how to create, how to cultivate an intimate relationship with God through a daily devotional life, a personal, daily devotional life. I want to talk about the priority of a devotional life and then a bit about the purpose of a devotional life, a few thoughts on the practice of a devotional life, and then just wrapping up with a thought about the product—what's the outcome of a personal devotional life.

I know this is a habit that some of you already have already. Some of you have had for years and years this habit of a devotional life. I hope you'll be encouraged this morning as to the value of what you are giving time each day to seek the Lord in His Word and in prayer. Some of you may have had a devotional life at some point in the past . . . but, life changes and gets crazy and it gets busy. Suddenly, or just gradually, you may not be sure where or when it happened . . . busyness, stuff, things, life, school, has crowded out time for the Lord.

I asked the student driver who brought us over this morning how many students he thought (and nobody knows the answer to this), what percentage of the students at this school have a consistent, personal devotional life? I was really encouraged by his response. Especially when he said to me that there were a group of guys on his floor that were getting up every morning, not to meet with each other, but holding each other accountable to have their own personal time with the Lord before they run into their day, into class, and into other responsibilities. I was so thrilled to hear that.

But for some of you, that may be a thing of the past. It may have slipped out of your practice. And for some of you, you don't even know what I'm talking about. You maybe have heard of this idea before, but it certainly has not been a practice in your life. Wherever you are on that spectrum, my prayer is that today you will leave to take one step further into cultivating an intimate relationship with the God of the universe through the means of a daily devotional life.

Oh God, how I pray that You would speak to us by the power of Your Holy Spirit, through the power of Your Word. Create in us that seed of hunger, of longing for You. I pray that You would show us that it can only be filled with You, with Your Word. Draw us near, Father. Put in us that desire to seek You, to seek Your face daily, every day, for all the days of our lives. I pray in Jesus' holy name, amen.

What I’m going to do (I’m just telling you in advance) is to ask you to make a commitment that, as God reminds you and enables you, that every day for the next thirty days that you will take some time each day to spend alone with the Lord in His Word and in prayer. So let me just tell you, that’s coming. But in order to lead us to that point, I want to talk about the priority of a daily devotional life.

I’ve been memorizing this week and meditating in Psalm chapter 27 where David talks about all of his enemies, his foes, his stresses, his pressures, all that’s going on in his life, and then in verse 4 he says, “One thing have I asked of the LORD.”

You think about all the things David could have asked God for, all the things David could have desired for God to do for him, but he said, “There’s one thing, if I had to reduce it to its irreducible minimum; if I could only ask God for one thing.” What would it be, David? “One thing have I asked of the LORD, that will I seek after” . . . that will I pursue, that will I be intentional about. What is it? “That I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to inquire in his temple.”

David says, “With all that’s going on around me, all the crises in my life—the crises in my government, the crises with the opposition, the political decisions that need to be made—the one thing that matters most to me is that I can live in the presence of God. I can look upon His beauty, gaze upon Him. I can live in His presence. I can look upon His beauty, and I can learn from Him every day of my life.” That’s the one thing, David, a man of one consuming passion that drove his life.

What’s your passion? What’s the one thing that you desire from God above all others? Would it be what David said in Psalm 27:4?

You remember that wonderful passage in Luke chapter 10 where Mary and Martha had Jesus over for dinner. Remember how Mary sat at the Lord’s feet listening to His Word?

The priority of cultivating an intimate relationship with Jesus Christ by spending time in His presence, listening to His Word.

Now, the contrast in that passage—and you know the story—is the sister Martha, who, unlike Mary, as the Scripture tells us, is distracted with much serving.

Now, I just have to tell you, I far more often find myself in Martha’s shoes than in Mary’s—distracted with much serving. Busyness. Doing good things. Serving the Lord. Spending so much time in the work of the ministry that we don’t have time for the Lord of the ministry.

Ministry itself, tasks in the ministry can actually keep us from seeking God’s heart. Now, they don’t have to, but they can. So Jesus says to Martha, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things” (Luke 10:41). 

Think about your to-do list, your agenda, all the things on your list, and at the end of the day, you say, “Boy, I just didn’t even get to those things at all.”

“Martha, Martha, you are troubled and anxious about many things, but one thing is needful.”

David said, “One thing have I asked of the Lord.”

Jesus says to Martha, “One thing is absolutely necessary. If you don’t get anything else done on your to-do list today, will it be this one thing? One thing is needful.”

What is that thing? It’s what Mary has chosen—to sit at the feet of Jesus and listen to Him, to commune with Him. He says, “Mary has chosen that good portion, [that one needful thing] which will not be taken away from her” (vv. 41–42). This requires a conscious, deliberate choice.

I’ve found, and I’m sure you have, too, that if I just try and fit God into my day, He’s going to get crowded out. What I need to do is plant Him in the middle of my day, first in my day, core central in my day, and then let everything else fill its way in. “Mary has chosen that good part.”

Our churches and our ministries, so many of them, are filled with stressed-out servants, busy, people who need to get to the feet of Jesus and sit and listen to His Word.

I’m so thankful for the example of this principle that I had in my life of a dad, Art DeMoss, whose first priority at the beginning of each day was to seek the Lord in that quiet time—call it devotions, quiet time, holy hour. I don’t really care what you call it. I do care that you get it.

My dad became a Christian in his mid-twenties. He was not from a godly background. He had been a wild profligate rebel, and in his mid-twenties the gospel of Christ was presented to him, and God rescued him from himself, brought him to Christ. It was a dramatic conversion, and his life was totally transformed . . . which is the way I think it’s supposed to be with all of us.

Then somebody challenged my dad in his first year as a Christian to begin giving to God the first hour of every day in the Word and in prayer. My dad took that challenge, and he kept that commitment every single day for the rest of his life until twenty-eight years later when he went home to be with the Lord.

Now, he started a business later on, when we were little, and he was a very busy man. He traveled a lot. He had a lot going on in his life, but nothing to him was more important, nothing was more important than that time in the morning of seeking the Lord. He was a man of ritual, a man of habit. It wasn’t a legalistic thing for him. It was a delight, but he didn’t vary his routine much, if at all.

He had a little kneeling pad (I don’t know how many of those he wore out over the years) that he’d pull out from under his bed, and that’s where he would kneel. We kids knew that before we were up in the morning, our dad had been up on his knees praying for us and for many, many, many others who were on his prayer list—people who needed Christ; marriages that needed put back together.

We knew that he was going to be in this Book reading two chapters from the Old Testament, one chapter from the New, five chapters from the Psalms, and one from the Proverbs. That was his practice. That’s not “the right practice,” but it was one that kept him in the whole counsel of God, seeking God for wisdom every single day of his life.

No matter what was on the schedule, no matter how late he’d come in the night before . . . although I’ll tell you this: A devotional habit in the morning really begins the night before, and my dad was religious about getting to bed the night before. We’d laugh about how we’d have company at the house, and at 10 o’clock he would exit. No matter what was going on, he’d say, “You all turn out the lights and lock the door when you leave.” (laughter) Because he had an appointment in the morning.

By the way, it’s also a reason that the whole time we were growing up we didn’t have a television in our home. Poor, deprived DeMoss kids. The biggest reason (there were other reasons) but the biggest reason was he didn’t want himself or us frittering away nighttime hours that would be keeping us from having a heart and a hunger and the alertness to get up and meet God in the morning.

Let me just say, by the way, to those of you who are parents: My parents made a lot of mistakes; they’d be the first to say that. But there’s something very powerful about your children knowing that you are meeting with the Lord at the start of every day to seek Him.

When I get ready to hit my day running, to hit my email, to hit the tasks of the day, I have this indelible image imprinted on my heart of a dad who was up first thing in the morning to seek the Lord, and I’m so thankful for that example and that image.

Now, I want to take us today to another example of the priority of a devotional life, and none greater than the Lord Jesus Himself. So let me ask you if you’d turn in your Bible to the gospel of Mark, chapter 1.

David and Moses, we’ve looked at their examples, but both of those spiritual giants pointed to Christ—Christ the greater Moses; Christ the son of David, the greater David.

I want us to look at a day in the life of the Lord Jesus because there are a lot of us in this room today and listening on the radio or over the Internet who are thinking, I just don’t have time in my day to do one more thing, and you’re just piling one more responsibility on me.

If you’re going to be spiritual, let me just say, this is not a spiritual good-luck charm, like your day will go better if you have a devotional time. We’re talking about relationship here and how you cultivate relationship with the God of the universe.

For those of us who think we are so busy, I want us to look at this single day in the life of the Lord Jesus, who, by the way, when you think about a long to-do list . . . Think about the fact that Jesus was given three years to accomplish the eternal plan of redemption. Now somehow I don’t think my agenda is more important or more difficult or challenging or demanding than His, and I think my days are so full. But I want us to look at just a day in the life of the Lord Jesus, beginning in verse 21 of Mark 1.

They went into Capernaum, and immediately on the Sabbath he entered the synagogue and was teaching. And they were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one who had authority, and not as the scribes (vv. 21–22).

Now some of you are involved in teaching the Word, ministering the Word. You teach a Sunday school class, you lead a small group in your Bible study, you’re involved in one-on-one discipleship, you’re imparting the Word of God to others. Hundreds of you here are students who are studying to do that, Lord willing, for the rest of your lives. Let me just say I know, as a woman who is teaching the Word to other women on a consistent basis, that it takes something out of you to do what Jesus did here.

You’re giving. There’s this giving out in the moment of giving out the Word, and then afterwards the ministering to people. There’s this whole process there when you’re teaching the Word that involves being depleted, giving out to others, and Jesus knows about what that is like.

Verse 23:

And immediately there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit. And he cried out, "What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are—the Holy One of God." But Jesus rebuked him, saying, "Be silent, and come out of him!" And the unclean spirit, convulsing him and crying out with a loud voice, came out of him. And they were all amazed, so that they questioned among themselves, saying, "What is this? A new teaching with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.” (vv. 23–28) 

As you read the Scriptures, wherever Jesus went, Hell reared its ugly head. And by the power of God and the anointing of the Holy Spirit on and in and through Jesus’ life, Hell was shattered wherever Jesus went.

You say, “Well, I’m not involved in exorcisms and all of that.” Well, according to my Bible, Ephesians chapter 6 and other passages, we’re all in a spiritual battle and Satan is alive and well, and there are enemy forces always seeking to undo, to stop the progress of the gospel in and through our lives.

Day after day we are involved in that warfare, in dependence upon the name of Christ and the power of His Holy Spirit, and that takes something out of you. This is not just like an ordinary, every day Sunday service. There’s stuff going on here. This is battle, and we are sent into battle.

Some of you who are parents, some of you moms, you say, “Yes, I don’t even have to leave my house, and there’s a battle going on. I’ve got all these little kids, and it’s just so tough.” Life is tough, and there’s an enemy who is always seeking to destroy and to defile. So there’s that giving out, that expenditure in the battle.

Then, verse 28:

And at once his fame spread everywhere throughout all the surrounding region of Galilee.

So all of a sudden Jesus is front page, headline news. Everybody’s talking about Him. Everybody wants Him to come to their event and speak. Everybody wants Him to sign their copy of His Book. Everybody wants a piece out of Him.

For those who think they’d like that kind of popularity and fame, chances are you’ve never had it, because it’s exhausting. People all the time wanting something from you.

You see that as you get into verse 29 and following:

And immediately he left the synagogue and entered the house of [His good friend] Simon and Andrew, with James and John.

You think, “Whew!” Finally, a chance to let your hair down. You’ve had a long day of ministry; finally you get to relax at home, kick your feet up, pick up a copy of the newspaper or magazine, whatever, check your email . . . look what happens.

Verse 30:

Now Simon’s mother-in-law lay ill with a fever, and immediately they told him about her.

There’s still someone with a need, and who are they going to look to? The one they know can meet the need, the Lord Jesus. So, as you would expect, in verse 31,

He came and took her by the hand and lifted her up, and the fever left her, and she began to serve them.

“Whew! Now I can just let down.” Right? Look at the next verse:

That evening at sundown [same day] they brought to him all who were sick or oppressed by demons. [The crowd is knocking at the door.] And the whole city was gathered together at the door (vv. 32–33).

Now, I don’t know how many people were in that city, but it sounds like a lot to me. Do you ever feel like the whole city is gathered at your door?

I mean, you’re an R.A. here on campus, and you’re trying to get your studies done and trying to seek the Lord and trying to do the ministry God’s called you to, and there’s always somebody knocking at your door. “I want help.” And it’s not just normal daytime hours. You can’t just say, “Okay, these are the hours you can have a crisis.” (laughter) It’s the middle of the night.

Again, some of you are moms, and that’s who I’m usually ministering to. You moms know. You just wish there was like one little place in the whole world where you could get away from the crowd. You say, “I know, I’ll go in the bathroom.” Right? And then these little fingers come under the door, and they go, “Mommy!” You want to say, “My name’s not Mommy anymore. Go find another mommy.” (laughter)

The whole city—there’s always someone with a need. If you haven’t experienced it yet, if you’re going to be in ministry, you will experience that, especially if God is using you. People are going to want help. People are needy. It’s a fallen, broken world, and the whole city is gathered at the door—same day. It’s not like Jesus is fresh and first thing in the morning. He’s been serving all day.

He healed many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons. And he would not permit the demons to speak, because they knew him. (v. 34)

Now, as I read about this day, I think about my own days. My tendency in days like this is to get frenzied and frazzled and really tired of the crowds. I say, “How did Jesus do it? How did He keep His cool? How did He not start to resent these people?”

I’ll just be honest with you: There are times at the end of a long day or a long weekend of ministry when I just want all the people to go away. I’m basically an introvert. When you’re on the platform, people don’t usually think of you that way, but crowds drain me. There are times . . . I’m not proud of this; I’m not bragging about it. I’m just telling you, there are times when I can start to resent the very people the Lord sent me to serve.

Now nobody will come up and talk to me afterwards because you’re afraid I’ll resent you! (laughter)

I look at Jesus, and I say, “How did He do it?”

You say, “He was God.”

Well, He was God, of course, but He was serving as a man to show us how we as humans filled with His grace and His Holy Spirit could serve like Him.

I think the very next verse, verse 35, gives us the key. Are you ready?

Very early in the morning, while it was still dark Jesus got up.

Now, there’s more, but let me just stop there for a moment. I can just tell you that after a day like Jesus just had, that full of giving out and spending and pouring out in ministry, there’s only one thing I want to do very early the next morning while it’s still dark, and that is spelled S-L-E-E-P. (laughter) Keep those curtains down. I like breakfast. It’s my favorite meal of the day . . . if I can have it at 11:00. (laughter)

But “very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus gets up,” and what does He do? He left the house and went off to a solitary place where He prayed.

Dannah: Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth has been giving us a message called "Discovering the Joy of Daily Devotions." We'll hear more of that tomorrow. 

If a daily time in God’s Word and in prayer is something you struggle to do, I’d encourage you to check out the 30-day devotional A Place of Quiet Rest Journal. Nancy designed this journal to help you form the habit of a daily devotional life. And this month, it’s our thank-you gift to you for your donation of any amount to support Revive Our Hearts. For more information, just go to ReviveOurHearts.com, or call us at 1–800–569–5959.

And speaking of donations, a HUGE thank you if you were one of our thousands of listeners who contacted us in December with a donation toward our matching gift challenge. We’re still counting up the results, and we’ll let you know on Thursday how it all shook out. Thanks so much! Speaking of thanks, a listener named Elizabeth called from Florida a few weeks ago to thank us for making our resources available. She said she downloaded the Revive Our Hearts app on her phone.  

Elizabeth: Then I noticed all the wonderful things that you had. I saw one of your 30-day challenges and decided to take it sit down every morning, which I wasn't doing, I was not getting up having a  devotional time with the Lord in the morning. I decided to do that, using one of your 30-day challenges. I also decided that it was so wonderful I had to share it with people on Facebook, so I have been getting up and doing it with people on Facebook, allowing them to see me in my own imperfections. It has truly truly opened up doors, I am being used by the Lord. I am so thankful that I have you guys'  resources and encouragement with blogs and videos and podcasts. I thank you so much, and yes, all the glory to God, thank you.

Dannah: Thank you, Elizabeth, for taking the time to call us with that testimony. We appreciate hearing from you.

If you'd like to let us know how God is using Revive Our Hearts in your life, you can do that at this number. Ready? Area code (269) 697–6161. Again, our testimony call-in line is 269–697–6161.

So, think about this: What would it look like this year, in 2022, to spend consistent time alone with God in the Bible and in prayer, just as Elizabeth is doing? Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth knows what it’s like to fight to protect that time. She’ll provide practical insights, steps you can take right away, on how to cultivate time alone with God. That’s tomorrow on Revive Our Hearts.

Revive Our Hearts with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth invites you to a daily devotional life, to find freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.  

All Scripture is taken from the English Standard Version unless otherwise noted.

 

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