I Belong to My Savior

Dannah Gresh: Today Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth asks some penetrating questions.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: Where do you turn for comfort when the world feels out of control, when your life doesn’t turn out at all as you had hoped? And what will be your comfort in death after this life? Your answer matters. 

Dannah: This is the Revive Our Hearts podcast with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, coauthor of You Can Trust God to Write Your Story, for August 22, 2022. I’m Dannah Gresh.

Nancy: We were sitting with a friend over dinner not too long ago, and in the middle of that conversation, my friend said, just kind of out of the blue, “I’m feeling such low-grade anxiety about our world. It feels like no one knows what to do. It feels like no one’s leading.”

Right about that time, I read a piece by Mark Penn who wrote a New York Time’s guest essay. He was a polster under President Clinton. He said, “Americans haven’t been afraid like this in a long time.” In fact, that was the title of his essay.

He talked about how there was a perfect storm. He said, “It combines the nuclear anxieties of the 1950s and ’60s with the inflation threat of the ’70s, the crimewave of the ’80s and ’90s, and the tensions over illegal immigration in the 2000s and beyond.” He talked about fear–Americans being afraid.

I think we’re all feeling some of this low-grade anxiety. These are hard, crazy days. And as never before, we need,people need, everyone needs a life-preserver for our minds, for our emotions.

I’m here to tell you today, which you already know, and that is that that life-preserver is the Truth. It’s the gospel. That’s what keeps us from going under. That’s what gives us hope. That’s what gives us perseverance. That’s what gives us perspective in this crazy world.

And over the past several months, I found just such a life-preserver in an excerpt from a document that was written 460 years ago. It’s called the Heidelberg Catechism, and I’ve been reciting these ancient words, just a portion of this text, frequently, day and night—as I pillow my head at night, when I awaken during the night, before my feet hit the ground in the morning, sometimes while I’m preparing dinner or while I’m out driving to run an errand.

These words that we’re going to be talking about in this short series have become woven into the fabric of my heart. They have brought me such encouragement and peace. They’ve infused me with courage and strength.

Now, before we look at this passage we’re going to be talking about this week from “The Heidelberg Catechism,” you may be wondering, “What’s a catechism? And why are we talking about catechisms here on Revive Our Hearts?”

Well, catechism comes from a Greek word that just means to teach orally, to speak things to someone else and to teach them. And that means it’s a way of teaching the Christian faith. Particularly, we hear about catechisms being important for teaching children, for teaching young believers, through a series of questions and answers. That’s the format of a catechism.

Now, parents do this all the time. When your children are little, and you’re teaching, you say, “What noise does a cow make?” That’s a question. What’s the answer? Moo. Questions and answers. You’re teaching: “What is two plus two?” That’s a question. What’s the answer? Four. You’re teaching through a kind of catechising.

Well, the Heidelberg Catechism and others like that are a means of teaching the basics of the Christian faith to those who may not be familiar with it. Now, the Heidelberg Catechism is named after a city in Germany. It was first published in 1563 during the Protestant Reformation. 

The churches in that era were in a sorry state. They were broken down. They were in poor condition. People didn’t know the basics of Scripture, and as a result, they were spiritually weak. They were vulnerable to false teaching. They needed solid teachings, solid biblical training in order to rebuild their lives as Christians and revitalize these troubled churches.

So a team of theology professors and ministers were commissioned to come up with a resource that pastors and teachers could use to instruct people in the faith. They wanted it to be simple enough that it would be useful and effective even for children and young people.

This particular catechism has 129 questions and answers. And those questions and answers are divided into 52 weeks. They are actually called “Lord’s Day Sections” because the thought was that pastors could preach through one of these sections each week. Each Lord’s Day Section has several of these questions and answers, and you could get through the entire catechism in the course of a year and educate church members in the Christian faith.

Now, let me say, this is not the Bible. It’s not equal with the Bible. But it’s an attempt, and I think a really good one, to help people know and understand what the Bible teaches on key doctrines. It includes an explanation of the Ten Commandments, how God wants us to live. Sections on The Lord’s Prayer, how to pray. Sections on the Apostles’ Creed, which was the earliest doctrinal creed of the Church. Foundational beliefs of our faith.

If you want to know more about The Heidelberg Catechism, my friend Kevin DeYoung is a pastor in Charlotte, North Carolina, and he’s written a terrific and really accessible book called, The Good News We Almost Forgot: Rediscovering the Gospel in a 16th-Century Catechism. There’s a link to it in the transcript for today’s program that will show you how you can get a copy of that book if you’re interested.

But just to give you a quick overview after a short introduction, the catechism is divided into three main sections: Guilt, Grace, and Gratitude.

Guilt–our misery. This is where it goes through The Ten Commandments, how we are all law breakers. We are all sinners. We have broken God’s holy law, which results in misery. So our misery . . . you’re never going to love the gospel if you don’t know why you need it. If you don’t know that you’re a law breaker, you’re not going to feel that you need a Savior.

Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, “Blessed are those who mourn [blessed are those who know their misery], because they will be comforted” (Matt. 5:4). We’re going to talk a lot about comfort in this series, but you can’t have comfort if you’re not uncomfortable, if you’re not miserable.

So the first section of the catechism, after the introduction, goes into guilt.

And then it comes to Gospel and Grace—how we can be delivered from our guilt. And then the final section on Gratitude—what is our response? We’re guilty. God has poured out grace on us through the gospel of Jesus Christ. How are we to live now that we’ve saved? So it deals with issues of sanctification and Christian growth and how we serve and express our gratitude for God’s amazing grace.

There is a desperate need today (it wasn’t just back in the days of the Reformation) for solid, biblical teaching in our churches. So many people, even in the church today, do not know the Scriptures. They don’t know the basic doctrines of the Christian faith. And as a result, there’s a lot of confusion. There’s a lot of error being taught. We have weak, anemic, confused, misguided believers and entire churches.

And let me add just a little parenthesis here for those of you who have children. We especially need to be teaching the faith to our children. If you don’t teach them what the Word of God says is true, the world will teach them its version of what is true. So, again, on the transcript for today’s program, we’ve linked to a couple of resources that will help you’re a mom with littles to do this catechism-type thing with your children.

Now, this week we want to unpack the first question—the first of 129 questions. (We won’t do that whole series—not in my lifetime.) We want to just unpack the first question of the Heidelberg Catechism.

Here’s the question: “What is your only comfort in life and in death?”

Now, think about this. More than 450 years ago, people were looking for comfort. And they still are. Because God created this world, He said that it was good. He blessed it. But then the serpent came along, and he told Adam and Eve that they would be miserable if they did what God said. So they believed the tempter rather than God, and they ended up with misery, shame, guilt, fear. And from that day to this, every human being has sinned and needs comfort. We’re miserable because of our sin.

So we need comfort. We need comfort in life. We’re all facing the challenges of living in a broken world. I refer to that low-grace anxiety.

One of my sisters told me recently, “I feel like I am getting half the amount of work done in a day since COVID than I was able to do before.” There’s just this kind of weariness, this exhaustion.

There’s people dealing with fears, dealing with pain and sadness and sorrow and grief—our own and that of the world—as we look at the images on the news.

We see the evil in the world and in our own hearts. Sin and guilt and shame we’re having to deal with it all. We need comfort in life.

But we don’t just need comfort in this life. You can have all kinds of earthly comforts and find yourself in misery at the end of this life and in the next life. So we need comfort not only in life, but we need comfort in death. We need comfort when we’re facing the prospect of dying—whether it’s our death or the death of a loved one.

I saw an online piece this week that was about a man who lives in Russia who posted on this particular site and said, “If Russia announced it was nuking Europe and America tomorrow at noon, would you be scared?” And then he answered his own question. He said, “Scared? I guess I would be scared. I’m not religious, so I don’t know what awaits me after death.”

That’s scary! Most of the world is in that condition, whether they realize it or not.

But we need comfort not just in facing literal death, we deal with all kinds of death: death to dreams, death to our hopes, death to security, death to our plans, death to relationships that we had hoped would succeed. We need to know how to find comfort in life and how to find comfort in death.

So, how would you answer that question? 

• What is your only comfort in life and in death? 
• Where do you turn for comfort when the world feels out of control, when your life doesn’t turn out at all as you had hoped? 
• What will be your comfort in death after this life? 

Your answer matters.

Here’s how the Heidelberg Catechism answers this first question:

My only comfort in life and in death is this: that I am not my own but belong,—body and soul, in life and in death—to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ. 

He has fully paid for all my sins with His precious blood and has set me free from the tyranny of the devil.

He also watches over me in such a way that not a hair can fall from my head without the will of my Father in heaven; in fact, all things must work together for my salvation. 

Because I belong to Him, Christ, by His Holy Spirit, assures me of eternal life and makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready from now on to live for Him.

Now, that’s a mouthful. That’s a long answer to a short question: “What is your only comfort in life and in death?”

So, over the next few days, I want to explore this answer more deeply, and I want it to work its way into your heart as it has been into my heart in recent months. I encourage you to memorize that answer, to meditate on it—just a phrase at a time.

And, by the way, to help you do that, our team has designed a beautiful card, a 5x7 card, with these words, this response from the Heidelberg Catechism. And this week, when you send a gift of any amount to support the ministry of Revive Our Hearts, we want to say “thank you” by sending you not just one, but a pack of twelve of those cards.

You say, “Why do I need twelve of those cards?”

Well, you can take a few of them and put them in places, like on your nightstand, on your bathroom mirror, tuck one in your Bible, so that when you’re in different places, you can be reviewing. This is what I’ve been doing. I had it on my phone, a screen shot, and I’m just pulling it up again and again looking at it.

But then you’ll have several other cards left from that pack that you can share when you’re in a conversation with someone who needs comfort in life or in death issues. This has come up in so many conversations I have had. I had wished as I was developing this series, that I’d had a card like this that I could share with friends that I’m talking with. We have that available, and we’ll be happy to send you a set of those when you support this ministry with a gift of any amount.

Now, today we want to look at the first part of the response to this question: “What is your only comfort in life and in death?”

And here’s the answer (just the first part): “I am not my own, but belong—body and soul, in life and in death—to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ.”

In fact, I’m going to ask you that question—because this is how we learn, by questions and answers. Catechism is asking a question, and then the listeners responding. So let me ask the question, and you respond with me with just that part of the answer.

“What is your only comfort in life and in death?”

“I am not my own, but belong—body and soul, in life and in death—to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ.”

Our only comfort, our only hope in life and in death is this: I belong to another. I belong to another. We see this all throughout the Scriptures.

Psalm 100 is a familiar passage. It says,

 Know that the LORD, he is God! It is he who made us, and we are his; we are his people, and the sheep of His pasture.” (v. 3 ESV)

We belong to Him.

Isaiah, chapter 43. I love this passage, and it shows us why we belong to Him. 

This is what the LORD says—the one who created you,
[We belong to Him because He created us.]
and the one who formed you,
“Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;
[We are His by creation, and we are His by redemption. He says,]
I have called you by your name; you are mine.” (v. 1)

We belong to Him. We belong to another—not to ourselves—but to the One who made us and the One who has redeemed us.

So what’s the therefore of that? As you continue in Isaiah chapter 43–and, by the way, all of the Scriptures I use through this series, the references will be in the transcript so you can look those up as you see that. God says, “I’ve called you by your name; you are mine.”

Here’s the therefore, verse 2 of Isaiah 43: 

When you pass through the waters,
I will be with you,
and the rivers will not overwhelm you.
When you walk through the fire,
you will not be scorched,
and the flame will not burn you.
For I am the Lord your God,
the Holy One of Israel, and your Savior. (vv. 2–3)

You are not your own. You belong to another. God says when you walk through these tough life circumstances—cancer and COVID and you add to the list, craziness—in our world today, you don’t go through that alone.

God has created you. If you’re His child, He has redeemed you. He is with you. He is caring for you because you do not belong to yourself; you belong to Him.

We read this in 1 Corinthians, 

You belong to Christ. . . . You are not your own for you were bought at a price. (1 Cor. 3:6; 6:19–20)

He has redeemed us. We are His possession. If you’re a Christian, if you’ve placed your faith in Christ, you belong to Him. And here’s the thing: God takes good care of His property. You can trust God to write your story because you belong to Him.

Knowing this, believing it, affirming it, trusting it gives us freedom from fear, freedom from anxiety. It doesn’t give us freedom from problems, but it frees us up from having to obsess about those problems. It frees us up from having to be emotionally controlled by or devastated by those problems.

We don’t have to control or try to control. We don’t have to manipulate. We don’t have to figure everything out because all of our troubles lie in His hands. Why? Because we are in His hands. Everything about us, all that concerns us—our lives, our times—are in His hands.

I love that verse in Psalm 68 that says, 

Blessed be the LORD! Day after day; he bears our burdens; God is our salvation. (v. 19)

That’s one of the benefits you get when you’re a child of God: you are no longer your own.

Now, that means you’ve got to release control. It means you’ve got to say, “I’m not in control. Hands lifted up. Hands off my life. Hands off my kids’ lives. Hands off my circumstances. I don’t have to fix everything. I don’t have to change everything.”

Now, that doesn’t mean we just stand by and say, “Que sera, sera. God’s gonna do whatever.”

No, He gives us directions about our part, what we’re to do as women, as moms, as mates, as single women in the workplace. He gives us direction. But it’s not ours to worry about because we belong to Him, and, therefore, He bears us and our burdens day after day.

In the Song of Solomon, we read a love story between a groom and the woman that he loves and has chosen to be his bride—much to her surprise. She wasn’t at all expecting this. She wasn’t one of the royal women that she assumed he would choose to be his bride. 

She says, “I’m just a country girl.” She lives out in the middle of nowhere, and her skin’s been darkened and weathered by the sun. She’s been out working in her family’s vineyard.

She’s not a choice for a king, but he chooses her. He says, “I want you to be my bride.”

And this story, the Song of Solomon, as it unfolds, is a beautiful picture of the story of redemption and how the bride finds contentment and joy and comfort in this king who has chosen her.

And one of the phrases that’s repeated throughout this story, she says, “I am my beloved, and my beloved is mine.” There’s a mutuality there. “I belong to him, and he belongs to me.”

I belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to me. This is my hope. This is my comfort in life and in death.

In the catechism here, we see that it’s not just part of us that belongs to Him. It’s not just, “Oh, God, You take care of my salvation. Take care of my heaven. Give me fire insurance for after this life.” It’s not just my soul. It talks about body and soul belong to Him. All of me belongs to Him.

Some of you listen to the Grounded podcast we have here at Revive Our Hearts. A while back there was a gal named Jenny who was one of the guests that day on the podcast. She is the director of a crisis pregnancy center in Pennsylvania. She told on this episode how she found out that she was expecting her seventh child. She was in shock when she discovered that.

She said, “I did not feel blessed when I found out that I was expecting.”

And the host that day said to her, “Jenny, at what point did your heart finally surrender to God’s plan for the size of your family?”

And Jenny said, “I’ll be forty-six next month, and I’m still surrendering my heart. For me, it’s a daily decision to submit my body, which is a living sacrifice, and also our fertility to the Lord.”

We hear a lot of talk today about, “It’s my body, my choice.”

No. As Christians, we affirm that it’s not my body; it’s not my choice. I belong to Christ. It’s His body. It’s His to do with as He wishes. I give to Him my body, my soul, my spirit, my mind, my emotions, my will, my fertility.

Now, that’s easy for me to say in my mid-60s. It may not be easy for you to say. But every part . . As an older woman, I’m starting to think now about some of those health issues—my body belongs to the Lord.

I think about Corrie ten Boom who spent the last five years of her lift unable to talk because she’d had a stroke. And yet, there’s been a book written on the five silent years and how God used her life because she gave her body up to Christ to be His.

Lord, You want me to talk? I’ll talk. You want me to be quiet? I’ll be quiet. You want me to have good health? You want to take my health away? My body is Yours. Would You just be glorified through my body, through my soul? I belong, body and soul, to Christ.

Remember Amy Carmichael, the missionary to India who spent a lifetime giving up her life for the sake of these girls who were being sold into prostitution at the temples? She wrote in one of her notebooks in 1936, “Lord and Master of my life, owner of every minute.” That’s how she spoke to the Lord. 

“Lord and Master of my life, owner of every minute.” That’s what it means that I am owned by Christ, that I belong not to myself but to Him.

So let me ask you again, friends in this room, what is your only comfort in life and in death?

Would you say it with me? “I am not my own, but belong—body and soul, in life and in death—to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ.”

We need to remind ourselves of this truth again and again and again. We need to remind each other.

Now, this series this week may not be the most dramatic topic we ever talk about on Revive Our Hearts, but I’ll tell you, it’s one of the most important. It’s life-giving. It’s life-changing. When we start to think this way, “I am not my own. I belong, body and soul, in life and in death, to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ.”

I am not my own. I belong to Jesus—every part of me—for all of time, for all of eternity. He is my faithful Savior. I am His chosen possession. He will never fail to love and care for me.

This is my only hope and comfort today. This is my only hope and comfort tomorrow. And this will be my only hope and comfort every day for the rest of my life. Amen?

Dannah: We all choose where we’re looking for that hope and comfort, don’t we? Let’s decide now to look to Jesus.

That’s Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth looking at the opening phrases of the Heidelberg Catechism. Nancy mentioned the pack of twelve cards the team here at Revive Our Hearts has designed. They’re all identical, so you can put them in places you see throughout your day, and you can share them with friends who need that same reminder as well.

They’re our gift to you as a thank you for your donation to Revive Our Hearts. To give and request your pack of Heidelberg Catechism question one cards,” just visit ReviveOurHearts.com, or call us at 1-800-569-5959.

There’s more comfort for anxious souls, and part of that is remembering that our sin debts are paid, and we’re free from the tyranny of the devil. That’s what Nancy will show us tomorrow. Please be back for Revive Our Hearts.

Revive Our Hearts with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth reminds you that you belong to Jesus who gives you His freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness.

All Scripture is taken from the CSB unless otherwise noted.

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