Truth is Being Proclaimed

Leslie Basham: One of the joys of working at Revive Our Hearts is getting to know our listeners. Here’s Sarah Krause.

Sarah Krause: We hear from young people. We have a young lady that wrote us at 13 years old. She’s now 16, and she wrote us just a few months ago and thanked Nancy for shaping her view of biblical womanhood.

We have a young single this summer who wrote and said, “I want to surrender my life completely to the Lord Jesus on a daily basis. How do I do that?”

We have a young mother who wrote and said, “I have four little children around my table in the morning, and I am using The Attitude of Gratitude for our devotional.”

We have a woman who wrote and said, “I’ve just heard your Becoming a Woman of Discretion series, and I realized that I’m the woman in the church that has caused others to fall, and I want to change my ways.”

We have people in jail that write us, people in prison.

 Nancy Leigh DeMoss: A lot of those.

Sarah: A lot of those.

Leslie: It’s Wednesday, May 16, and this is Revive Our Hearts with Nancy Leigh DeMoss.

Over the last couple of days, we've heard from a delightful lady named Sarah Krause. She stopped by a recording session and talked with Nancy about all the exciting things she’s seen while answering letters from our listeners.

Let’s pick up on that conversation between Nancy Leigh DeMoss and Sarah Krause.

Nancy: Another thing that really encourages me, Sarah, is the number of moms who are using Revive Our Hearts as a resource not only for their own lives, but a resource in the training of their children and the bringing up of a new generation of young women. Are you picking that up?

Sarah: Absolutely. In fact, I think that was one of the things that just was so refreshing to me even when I started with Revive Our Hearts. So much of the message in so many ways is counter-cultural: the Proverbs 31 woman, modesty, godly values, a high standard of biblical womanhood.

Then we’d go to the Revive Our Hearts conference and see it wasn’t the women my age, it wasn’t just people that kind of knew that way back when, but there were scores of young mothers who were taking notes and just hanging on every word of how they could teach their children godly values and how they can help their daughters to see what a true picture of biblical womanhood is.

It’s not like you can’t find any materials on it. The materials that Revive Our Hearts has written, the materials that you have written, Nancy, it’s just like a guide book. “This is what the Bible says, and if you follow these ways, then it teaches godly values. It teaches godly standards.”

I think there is a swell of young mothers across our nations who want to go back to that biblical womanhood, training their children, training their daughters.

Nancy: They didn’t see it modeled when they were growing up, so it’s really a new way of thinking for them.

Sarah: Absolutely.

Nancy: I love it when we see this: They write and they use Revive Our Hearts actually as a part of their home schooling curriculum with their children.

Sarah: Oh, I love that! We’ll have moms write and say, “We stop every morning at 8:45 and have our Bible time.” That’s a part of their daily curriculum, hearing Nancy DeMoss.

Nancy: Do you think about how the next Elisabeth Elliot is out there somewhere, maybe listening to that program and being discipled in the ways of the Lord as it relates to being a woman.

And how many of us as older women wish that we had been instructed in these ways when we were younger and how we would not have made some foolish choices. Thinking of God raising up a whole new generation of young women who are being discipled in God’s ways is very encouraging to me.

Sarah: I think the 1 Corinthians 13 series has been life-changing in many homes. Because when you want to give up, and things don’t seem fair, God tells you to go ahead and act in ways that exhibit His love.

Just like the woman whose husband was so distant, we sent her the 1 Corinthians 13 series. She began to exhibit 1 Corinthians 13 love to her husband, and that’s what brought him to an interest in the Word and interest in the things of God.

It changes homes. It changes lives.

Nancy: And don’t you find that people seem to really want to hear the truth? They resonate with it, and there’s almost a sense of, “I thank you all for being willing to speak the truth.”

Sarah: Definitely. There’s very, very few emails or letters that we get that don’t somewhere in there, especially at the end, say, “Thank you for being willing to stand against the culture, to teach us truth, even when it’s not popular; to challenge me to do what’s right, even though it’s not what the world would accept or choose for me to do.”

That’s a great way to put it—they resonate with truth, and they respond to it.

Nancy: What are some other series that have generated a lot of response?

Sarah: Well, the series Marriage For Better or Worse had a huge response. Forgiveness, in just these last couple of weeks, we have had a heavy mail load. Modesty is always a very popular series, and we get very, very little negative mail really in any subject.

I guess that’s because it’s the truth spoken, and it resonates with people that it is truth.

Nancy, just a short thank you for boldly going where no one has dared to go on the radio before. Your series on modesty and women’s dressing is awesome.

My wife is a new Christian, and a very attractive woman by any standard. Your teachings have been a blessing to us. She is totally open to godly counsel.

Sarah: In modesty, you would think that you would hear a male arguing against this or arguing against that, but we just don’t hear it.

Your open and honest, and at times, strikingly frank discussion is so helpful. The teaching is so real, fresh, to the point, and timely that it is hard to miss the anointing and wisdom from the Holy Spirit that follows each and every word.

Sarah: They accept it as truth, and they see themselves as a vessel of God and want to change or want to know how to train their daughters.

I thank you. My wife thanks you, and I’m sure many more of your listeners thank you, as well. God bless. Continue to follow His leading even when others question what you do.

Sarah: This seems to be an area within churches and church families that deeply committed Christian women are struggling with how to find a way to live within the bounds of accepting people into the church and yet, not standing for a standard that’s a little bit higher than the world’s standard for modesty.

The series is very, very popular.

Nancy: Is there anything that listeners write and ask about Revive Our Hearts that you would like to just go ahead and answer right now so they won’t all have to write and ask—others won’t have to write and ask about it?

Sarah: You can find the modesty series on the web, If you want to have a conference, contact us at info@ReviveOurHearts.com. We have a frequently asked questions section where a lot of those things are answered, such as: No, Nancy DeMoss is not married and does not have children.

Nancy: And no, you can’t date her!

Sarah: And, to put it in terms of a paragraph, our advisory board has set limits on her time and how she can spend it, and so she will not be able to meet you, and we trust you will understand.

Nancy: What has most impacted your life in terms of the message and the ministry of Revive Our Hearts?

Sarah: I’m glad you asked that, because it has. If I were writing a letter to Nancy DeMoss today, I would say thank you for teaching me about brokenness. Thank you for teaching me about forgiveness, and thank you for seeking Him.

Nancy: (at a conference) Proud people focus on the failures of others, but broken people are overwhelmed with a sense of their own spiritual need.

Sarah: I went to a Revive Our Hearts conference after I’d been working at Revive Our Hearts just a couple of weeks, and looked at the program and what blanks we were going to fill in. It was on Saturday morning about brokenness.

I’d just been through what I thought was a very difficult experience in my life and time in my life.

I remember thinking, “Nancy said, ‘If you need to leave, we can’t all go at once, so just slip out and come back in.’” I looked ahead, and I thought, “Well, that brokenness thing, that part I know. I’ve just been there, and so that’s when I’m going to leave, and I won’t miss any of this other.”

Well, you must have spent too long on something, because I came back, and you were right there in brokenness.

Nancy: (at a conference) Proud people are self-righteous. They have a critical, fault-finding spirit. They look at everyone else’s faults with a microscope, but their own with a telescope, and they look down on others. Broken people are compassionate. They can forgive much because they know how much they’ve been forgiven. They think the best of others, and they esteem all others better than themselves.

Sarah: And I tell you the truth of it—I experienced brokenness, I guess really for the first time, and I knew that God had that for me.

Nancy: (at a conference) Proud people have an independent, self-sufficient spirit, but broken people have a dependent spirit and recognize their need for others.

Proud people have to prove that they are right, but broken people are willing to yield the right to be right. Proud people claim rights and have a demanding spirit, but broken people yield their rights and have a meek spirit.

Proud people are self-protective of their time, their rights, and their reputation; but broken people are self-denying. Proud people desire to be served, but broken people are motivated to serve others.

Sarah: And so, I just thank you for that. I thank you for the lessons on forgiveness.

Nancy: (a previous broadcast) People who are not forbearing are not forgiving and generally become hard and cold. They often become depressed and even physically sick. There are many physical ailments today that doctors will tell you come by our unwillingness to forgive.

Sarah: I can remember thinking, contemplating, really trying to know truth and what forgiveness really means: if you do this, if you do that, if they’ve done this, do you have to do that, and what does the Bible really say.

Through Nancy’s teaching on forgiveness, I don’t have any doubt what my responsibility is.

Nancy: (a previous broadcast) Who’s the offender that you need to just make allowances for, just let it go? What’s the offense? What’s the thing that’s caused you to be churning inside? It maybe something that you’ve made a mountain out of a molehill.

If you get honest and get it into perspective, you’d say, “Those piles of my husband’s, they’re not worth losing this marriage over,” but you’ve made it such an issue that you may lose your marriage over it.

Where do you need to forbear? Where do you need to make allowances? Ask the Lord to give you the kind of love that covers over a multitude of offenses.

Sarah: And my responsibility is to forgive. We often look at what other people have done, but not what we have done, and I guess that was Seeking Him for me.

I came to the place in those lessons of realizing that I wanted to have a clear conscience, that I want to have confessed sin. I want to have realized what I’d done over the years. Like one of the ladies had written and said she hadn’t missed one of the days in 12 weeks of the study. She said, “I wanted to say, ‘Lord, please don’t have me plow up my heart any more. Please, when will this end?’”

And I can remember thinking that myself, having thought that I was a good person. And when I stood before the Lord one day, you know, I was going to be okay, and I hadn’t really realized the sins of my heart.

So, plowing up that soil, being able to walk through those steps of seeking Him, where after He has you plow up the soil, then He comforts you with grace and with mercy and with cleansing, and He relieves the guilt.

You know, it’s really not hard to forgive others when you’ve been to the place where you’ve really realized what your sin has been and the guilt and the weight of sin.

And so, when you come to that place, then the rest of the verse seems easier to say, “If you’ll forgive me, I’ll forgive you.”

I think I told you at the table just last year when we were with Martin and Helen that after going through the study, I could have just gotten on a megaphone across the United States and said, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry for anybody I’ve ever hurt.”

It seemed like to me that everything I’d ever done, from a young girl until an adult, it seemed like the Lord had plowed all that up, and I realized for the first time, my sinful condition and sinful heart.

I just wanted to tell the world, “I’m sorry if I’ve ever hurt you, if I’ve ever dishonored the name of Christ before you. I remember it! You can count on the fact that I’ll remember it, and I’m sorry.”

So that has just brought great peace to my heart to have plowed the fallow ground, to be able to walk in a way that is free. For this journey, there’s no doubt for me that God could revive a heart through my life, for the things that He wanted to teach me and places He wanted to grow me and just to experience abundant life through Him.

Nancy: Well, I wanted you to have a chance to get to know Sarah, and she is one of the hearts being revived. I want you to know that we are a ministry that has a personal interest in the people that we’re serving and ministering to.

I tell our team and I’ve told Sarah and those who work in that area over the years, we want to be as absolutely personal as we can be in touching lives. We don’t want to just minister to masses.

Now, we’re not counselors, and we cannot take the place of a relationship of accountability and discipleship and nurture within the context of a local church, and there are limits, big limits to what can be done from a distance.

But we want people that write to us to know that we care. We may not be able to sort through all the complexities and the issues that they are facing in their lives. But we can give a word of grace, a word of encouragement that comes from God’s Word that can just open a window of hope for them and get them in a place where they can take the next step. We encourage them to go back to their local church, back to their pastor, back to godly accountability relationships, where somebody in their community of faith can walk with them through that issue.

We can’t replace any of that, but if we can just get them up on their feet enough to just take that next step, we will feel that we’ve done what we could.

I also think that Sarah’s life illustrates one of our core commitments at Revive Our Hearts, and one of my core commitments in ministry, and that is that those of us that are serving in the Lord’s work need to have a life message, and that ministry flow out of life.

I think you see in spades as you hear Sarah, and you would hear this from others on our staff, as well, if you could hear from them, that they’re committed to living out the message that we’re sharing with others.

It’s neat to see someone in Sarah’s position that she’s sitting on her own. She’s one of our remote team members who’s in link to our ministry’s base in southwest Michigan. So she’s not with the rest of our team. She’s sitting there responding to correspondence and emails very much on her own.

But she’s listening to the message, she’s letting God work in her heart, she’s letting God revive her heart, change her life. She’s applying this message in the context of her marriage and her role as a wife and a mom and a grandmom.

I think there’s power in that, not just if you’re on the staff of a Christian ministry, but anywhere God has you, to be not just in a position of dishing out theory to other people, but the commitment to live it out and practice it.

Then out of the overflow of that comes fruitful ministry. So, Sarah, thank you for serving and giving and for the heart that you carry for the people that write to us. You have a lot more tenderness and patience than I probably would with some of those situations.

They’re hard, and God’s given you a real compassion and tender heart. I’ve also told Sarah, as we’ve told our team, sometimes we do get people who aren’t real happy with something we’ve said. Our rule of thumb is always to thank people for caring enough to come to us with whatever their concern is.

Even if they’re really super-critical, and that doesn’t happen often, but thank them. Take the pathway of humility. You probably remember an email we got one day where I had really offended one of our listeners who had met me in a public setting. I didn’t know I had, didn’t intend to.

But the email came back, and I got involved and just wrote back and said, “I want to take the pathway of humility, and please, forgive me.”

So, we’re trying to live out this message, even in the context of responding to our listeners. We want our listeners to know how much we appreciate the fact that they do write, that they share their hearts.

We have a prayer team. Can you say anything about what that team does?

Sarah: We get a lot of prayer requests, and it is a wonderful thing to be a part of a ministry that you can answer back and say, “I can assure you that this very request will be specifically and individually prayed for by our prayer team.”

It’s a group of women who take every single prayer request that comes into the ministry and prays for those needs, and they care! You know, they’ll send me a note back that says, “Did somebody do this and this and this on it,” because they don’t want it to fall through the cracks.

So they pray. If you ever have a need, a very specific need, you can know that they will pray for it, godly women who take requests before the throne of God.

Nancy: I hope you’ll pray for Sarah and for our correspondence team. This is serious business they’re involved in, ministering to the deep needs of women’s hearts and homes.

They need wisdom, and they need stamina, and they need grace. Pray that God will keep their hearts tender and that God will just show them, and in each case, the Spirit will direct them how to respond to that person in a way that will minister grace.

Sarah: Amen.

Nancy: That’s a look at a behind-the-scenes area. Some of you have had a part in supporting our ministry, and you make it possible for us to have a department like the one that Sarah leads.

Thank you, Sarah, for your part in making all of that possible.

Sarah: Thanks.

Nancy: Well, as you’ve listened to Sarah, I’m sure you can tell what a special woman she is, and I just love hearing her talk about her heart for this ministry and this message and for the people that write into our ministry.

I’m so thankful that we have fellow servants like Sarah who serve with us in this ministry and who really have a heart for the people that we’re seeking to serve through this message.

And Sarah, I want to say a thank you to you for your part in this ministry and to all of the team members at Revive Our Hearts who serve in behind-the-scenes ways. They’re such a blessing, and they love the Lord. They love this message, and they love our listeners as well.

As you’ve listen to Sarah share just some of the fruit of this ministry, some of the changed lives, I want to say that not only would that not be possible without the team and the staff the Lord has given us, but it also would not be possible without those who support this ministry with their prayers, with their financial support.

I’m so grateful for those who are lifting this ministry up, carrying it, making it possible for us to broadcast our two daily programs, Revive Our Hearts and Seeking Him on stations all across this country and by means of Internet, all around the world.

We’re in the month of May, and we’re coming up to our fiscal year-end. May 31 will be the end of our fiscal year, and we’re asking the Lord to touch the hearts of many, many of our listeners, perhaps those who may never have given financially towards this ministry before, to give a special gift here at this fiscal year-end to help us be up-to-date, current with all of our bills, and then to help us get a good start into our next fiscal year.

This is a listener-supported ministry, and your gift will help to make it possible for this ministry to continue reaching many other hearts and homes throughout the days ahead.

When you send your gift, be sure and let us know the call letters of the station on which you listen to Revive Our Hearts. We want to know, is the ministry on your station making a difference in your area and are there listeners there who want the ministry to continue to be broadcast in your area?

So that’s helpful for us to know. Thank you so much for your prayers. Thank you so much for your financial support, especially at this important time of the year for us.

Leslie: When you call us with your donation, make sure to ask for your thank-you gift. It’s a beautifully designed tote bag. You can only get this from Revive Our Hearts, and it has Colossians 3:12 printed on the side.

That’s the verse that tells us what we should put on, not just clothing, but also qualities like compassion and kindness.

Ask for the Revive Our Hearts tote bag when you make donation of any amount. Just call 1-800-569-5959, or look for this offer at ReviveOurHearts.com and make your donation.

So many of the letters Sarah Krause gets at Revive Our Hearts are from women in difficult life circumstances. Starting tomorrow, Nancy will help you understand how to handle a situation that just doesn’t seem to have an end. Learn more about endurance tomorrow on Revive Our Hearts.

Revive Our Hearts with Nancy Leigh DeMoss is an outreach of Life Action Ministries.

 

*Offers available only during the broadcast of the podcast season.