Living Out the Beauty of the Gospel in Mexico

Leslie Basham: Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth is called to speak to women, but here on Revive Our Hearts, we know men do sometimes listen in. We’re also grateful how God can use the program in the lives of men.

One man wrote to tell us his story.

Darrell: Dear Mrs. Wolgemuth, I have enjoyed listening to you for many years now. I remember the first time I heard you on the program Gateway To Joy with Elisabeth Elliot before Revive Our Hearts took over the time slot. Recently I’ve been downloading your podcasts and enjoying them as well.

Leslie: Darrell told us he’s been listening to the podcast archives, in order, from the beginning and has made it to 2016. That’s about fifteen years' worth of programs.

Darrell: This email comes to you in response to the series “A Cry for Revival” from June 2016.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth (from "A Cry for Revival"): Let’s take a look at two chapters toward the end of Isaiah’s prophecy. Isaiah, chapter 63 and 64, and we’re jumping into the middle. 

Darrell: As I listened to the second part, I began to look inward, and that message resonated with me.

Nancy (from "A Cry for Revival"): Listen, all those things you hold precious, that you love, that you cherish, that you think are so beautiful and lovely, that attract you to this world and pull you away from God; God loves you enough that, if need be, He will swallow it all up, lay it all in ruin, and multiply mourning and lamentation in your life until you look up and say, “What have I done? Oh God, be merciful to me.”

Darrell: I saw myself experiencing tough love from God because I wasn’t putting Him first in my life. One night as I listened to your words, all I could do was weep. I wept well into the night. During the night I got up and prayed and asked the Lord to forgive me.

I remembered your quote from G. Campbell Morgan.

Nancy (from "A Cry for Revival"): One of my very favorite quotes of all time is one from G. Campbell Morgan, who was a great Bible teacher, expositor in the twentieth century. He said, “The supreme need in every hour of difficulty and distress is for a fresh vision of God. Seeing Him, all else takes on proper perspective and proportion.”

Let me say it again, because the English is a little bit old. “The supreme need in every hour of difficulty and distress is for a fresh vision of God. Seeing Him, all else takes on proper perspective and proportion.”

Darrell: I realized I needed a fresh vision from God. I couldn’t just rest and skate by. Thank you again for opening my eyes to who I was and who God is and should be in my life.

Nancy: If you have ever supported Revive Our Hearts with a financial gift, did you realize that you play a part in this story? You helped make it possible for this man to be up through the night, weeping in repentance and finding true forgiveness and hope.

All month we’ve been telling you why Revive Our Hearts especially needs your support during the month of May. As I’ve shared in recent weeks, our donations over the past several months have dropped, and that’s come at a time when we’re gearing up for the summer months when cash flow usually gets tighter.

So in order to continue connecting listeners with the truth of God’s Word, we’ve been asking the Lord to provide $830,000 by the end of May, just two days from now. I want to say “thank you” to each person who has contributed to help meet this need. Thank you for your generosity, which is a reflection of God’s giving heart.

Now, as I said, there are only a couple of days left before the end of our fiscal year on Wednesday when we wrap up our budget accounts. So please contact us right away if God is prompting your heart to make a gift to help meet this need. You can call us at 1–800–569–5959, or you can donate online at ReviveOurHearts.com. When you go to that website, there will be an update about how much has come in thus far and what the remaining need still is.

Thank you so much for prayerfully considering what part God might want you to have in helping to meet the remaining need.

Leslie: This is Revive Our Hearts with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, author of Holiness: The Heart God Purifies, on Memorial Day, May 29, 2017.

Nancy: When you engage with a younger women in the faith in a discipling relationship, it can have really significant results. In fact, earlier this year Revive Our Hearts hosted a sold-out conference in Mexico. We called it Mujer Verdadera ’17, that’s True Woman ’17. And the Lord used two women who had been encouraging each other in their faith to take on the enormous task of bringing this conference to their country.

The story starts with Margarita, a pastor’s wife living in Mexico.

In her early years of marriage, Margarita had a couple of older women who taught her the Scripture. She knew what the Bible said about being a woman of God, but somehow it felt like a list of rules to Margarita.

Margarita: I didn’t do it for Him, for His glory, and that is very, very different.

Nancy: Years later, another pastor’s wife gave her the book, Spiritual Mothering, by Susan Hunt. Margarita had never heard anything like this before.

Margarita: I couldn’t believe what I was reading. I had read Titus 2 many times in my Christian life, but I didn’t realize what that really means. So I was excited for what I was reading. I thought I couldn’t keep this for me only. I have to share with the women in the church, so I started translating it.

Nancy: This book gave her a fresh understanding of the importance of investing in other women’s lives.

Margarita: Years before, I shared Bible studies with many women in the church, but this point of view was different. It was to share my life, not only a Bible study, but my life with them. So I started to pray for a new generation of disciples. I couldn’t keep this for me only. I have to share with the women in the church.

Nancy: So Margarita began doing just that. Several women in her church began meeting together and shared their lives with each other. They also began working through the True Woman 101 study from Revive Our Hearts.

Margarita: When they knew that it was a new study about spiritual mothering, they asked me about it.  They wanted to study that, too, because they could see a difference in the women that were in that Bible study with us. It was great. The Spiritual Mothering study teaches praying for women, praying for couples, for marriages, for problems they have. It began a revival in women’s hearts in our church, and everybody notices it.

They started growing in faith, in recognizing God is enough. He is sufficient for everything, and that was a great revival. Our husbands and many people could see that.

As we were studying Spiritual Mothering, there was one point that says that you must pray for a spiritual daughter. So I started to pray for spiritual daughters in the young generation. I said it was to share my life, not only a Bible study, but my life with them, so I started to pray for a new generation of disciples, women.

Very soon the Lord had an answer for me. Two young ladies came to me and asked for a Bible study because they were just married. One was just married a month before, and she needed to learn. I prayed to the Lord, “What was I going to teach them?” And He led me to True Woman 101.

So I started translating it, and I shared with them the study. It was amazing how at first they didn’t want to receive all that information, all that truth, because they were seeing that their lives were very different. They grew up in a very different culture about that, and they never thought the Bible teaches that we were helpers for our husbands.

So the Lord made a work in their hearts, and in mine, too, because so many times they’d just call and say, “Margarita, I know it’s half past an hour we should be with you, but we’re not going.” And that was a work in my heart, too, because I knew I must double my prayers for them. The Lord was faithful, and He made the work in their hearts.

Nancy: One of the women He brought to her was Myrna. Myrna was walking through an extremely difficult valley in her life. She’d recently miscarried a baby, and she was in the process of going through a divorce.

Myrna: When I had the problems in my marriage, a friend told me, “You should go to Margarita and have a close friendship with her.”

I said, “Well, I will look like a weirdo going, like, ‘I want to be your friend,’ because we saw each other in the church. I went to her house for a small group, but it was just the pastor and some couples.

But then they invited us to have lunch, and that day she told me that she was doing some crafts with wood. She was making the names of children, and she was giving them as a present, and she was selling them.

I asked her if she could teach me. So I think then we started Titus 2. She said, “Yes, of course.” I started going to her house, and she was telling me and teaching me how to make those decorations. In those days she also told me how to cook. I said, “I have nothing in my fridge.” She showed me how to make a soup.

Many things like that, and just regular talking. She told me a lot, like I have to do things for the Lord, not for my husband, even when he was not being nice. Margarita was pointing me to the Lord.

I think the work started there—the Lord’s work in my life started there. He was preparing me and us, I think. She to be a spiritual mother, and me to be a daughter and be teachable.

Nancy: On top of all that, she was dealing with a heavy guilt of a secret, a past abortion. As she wrestled through all of these things, Myrna began praying for someone that she could talk to about her abortion.

Myrna: I prayed, “Who could I have that I could tell about that thing that I had hidden for a long time?” There was Margarita, but it was difficult because you always think, They are not going to love me anymore. Maybe they’ll ask me to go out of the church," or “They are going to see me different,” or something like that. But I think that is a lie.

She was really kind and really lovely to me. I listened to her and not judging because we sin maybe in different ways, but we sin against the Lord.

Nancy: As Margarita listened and counseled with Myrna, she realized this was the first time a woman had ever shared a deep struggle with her.

Margarita: Before, I didn’t open my heart to anybody. The Lord is teaching me now I must be involved in their lives and to know them more and to be walking with them in their troubles and their fears and their struggling. When I did this, it was freedom for me, too.

Myrna: Margarita was pointing me to the Lord, so I think the work started there, the Lord’s work started there. He was preparing me and us, I think. She to be a spiritual mother and me to be a daughter.

Nancy: God was about to use this friendship in greater ways than what Margarita and Myrna could imagine.

They began translating True Woman 101 into Spanish. Then Myrna had the idea to host a women’s conference in their city. They invited some of the leadership of the Spanish outreach of Revive Our Hearts, Aviva Nuestros Corazones, to speak at this small conference.

Margarita: My faith was very little, and I said, “Myrna, are you crazy? How do you think they will come to Quetétaro? We are such a small church.”

Laura Gonzales (Director of Aviva Nuestros Corazones): The first thing we said was, “No. Who are we to go to talk to this church? Nobody knows us. We don’t have anything. We are not speakers.” That’s what we said. And we have other things going on. So we immediately said “no.”

But they kept insisting, and they kept insisting. Then we knew that they were very connected to the ministry. They had translated True Woman 101. So we said, “God is doing something there. So we must listen. Let’s see what is happening.”

Nancy: So Laura and our Spanish team said “yes” to Myrna’s request to speak.

Margarita: When they said “yes,” we couldn’t believe that. So we started planning that conference. Instead of 150 women that we expected there will be, they came—500. The church was full, and that was a great blessing.

There it began to spread the ANC ministry in Quetétaro and in other churches. That’s very special, too, because we, as a church, we didn’t have a relationship with other churches. We didn’t think we need help or relations with another church. So that was the beginning of a great relationship with other churches. That has been a blessing for us, too, and for them.

Nancy: Well, the Lord used that initial event with 500 women far more than they had expected. He used it to ignite a movement of biblical womanhood and revival in Quetétaro, Mexico. As the team from Revive Our Hearts left Mexico, they began praying that the next international True Woman conference could be held in Mexico, and it was.

This past March, exactly two months ago, over 5,000 women from across Latin America attended Mujer Verdadera, True Woman, in Quetétaro, Mexico.

But this all began with one woman, one woman who embraced the call of Titus 2 to mentor younger women and to walk alongside of them. The Lord used that step of obedience to change Margarita, to change the women around her, and to adorn the beauty of the gospel in her country.

Margarita: I am the servant of the Lord, and I want to do whatever He wants. “My life is in Your hands. So You can use me.”

Nancy: So here’s a question for you: As you think of this story about these two women, how would the Lord have you invest in the lives of other women?

When you get together in that kind of Titus 2 relationship, you have no idea what plans God may have in store for those that you’re discipling. Just as the Lord Jesus multiplied those few loaves and fishes, the Lord may multiply your investment far beyond anything you expect or imagine as the woman you pour into begins to pour into yet others.

Well, we’re going to be exploring the importance of women teaching and discipling other women in a conference this fall called Revive ’17.

Now, the conference is already sold out, but I want to encourage you to get a group of women together and to watch the livestream. I’ll be speaking along with Mary Kassian, Blair Linne, Dannah Gresh, Damaris Carbaugh, and many others. We’ll be walking through the first part of Titus chapter 2, and discovering what it has to say for us as women.

The conference will take place September 29 and 30, and you can get the link to watch the livestream at ReviveOurHearts.com. I hope you’ll join us as together we link our hearts to display the beauty of the gospel in our day.

Leslie: Thanks, Nancy.

What does it take to be great? Is it a bunch of social media likes? Coverage in magazines or blogs? Respect from your family? Tomorrow, Nancy will open the Bible and explore how to be great. Please be with us again for Revive Our Hearts.

Revive Our Hearts with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth knows God can do powerful things in your life. 

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