Celebrating the Truth That Sets Us Free

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth (at True Woman ’18): Here’s the bad new: Lies are everywhere.

Alejandra Slemin: Oh, we are facing so many lies.

Erin Davis: Lies can enter our hearts through any number of ways.

Mary Kassian: Some of the lies that I have struggled with . . .

Erin Davis: . . . about myself, my identity, my own worth . . .

Mary Kassian: . . . are lies like: I need to be perfect.

Julie McGregor: . . . . that I must succeed.

LeAnn Yoder: . . . that I’m not pretty enough.

Mary Kassian: . . . that I need to do it all.

Julie McGregor: . . . that I can’t fail or appear to not be competent.

Mary Kassian: . . . that God needs me.

LeAnn Yoder: I believed all kinds of lies.

Nancy (at True Woman ’18): They are more powerful, more evil, and more destructive than we can even imagine . . . and we are all deeply affected by lies.

Mary Kassian: Satan is always telling us lies about the nature and character of God.

Carol Higgins: I believed that God wasn’t good. I believed that God existed, but I always believed that He was some guy in the sky who didn’t really care about anybody.

Mary Kassian: . . . not believing that God is big enough, not believing that He is really interested in me, not believing that He is going to get me through to the other side.

Nancy (at True Woman ’18): Our post-modern world says there is no such thing as absolute truth. “Truth” is subjective; it’s relative; it changes from one generation to the next. We have your truth, and we have my truth. You can determine your own truth. In fact, you’ll be better off if you do.

Sherrie Seidensticker: I know there was a time where I really struggled with God as my authority.

Jackie Hill Perry: My life was my own. I had the freedom to do whatever I wanted.

Kayla Berg: The lie that I shouldn’t live with unfulfilled longings.

Michelle Hall: . . . how I thought my marriage should be wasn’t what it was, so I was going to go find it somewhere else.

Jackie Hill Perry: I think I thought that this relationship . . . yeah, it’s sexually immoral; yeah, it’s wrong, but it feels good to me, so it must be good.

Nancy (at True Woman ’18): You see, it’s easier than we think for deception to get a toe-hold in our hearts, in our minds, in our lives, and in the lives of those we love.

Kari Windon: I think the lies I was believing about children was that they were a weight to me.

Kayla Berg: You know, the world looks at motherhood and being a wife and seeing that you are sacrificing your time and your life for your children, for your husband, and they see that as something that is a waste of time.

Nicole Furno: One of the lies that I’ve believed is that I’m not productive as a mom.

Kayla Berg: Out in the world it’s like, follow your heart, follow your dreams.

Kari Windon: That was definitely a lie.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: But now for the good news. Here it is: The truth is more powerful than lies. It is more pure and more beautiful than you can imagine . . . and it will set you free!

Leslie Basham: This is Revive Our Hearts with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, author of Lies Women Believe and the Truth That Sets Them Free, for October 5, 2018.

Last week in Indianapolis, Revive Our Hearts hosted the True Woman ’18 Conference. It was an opportunity for the thousands gathered in Indy and across the world via the livestream to focus on the truth that sets us free.

Today on Revive Our Hearts, we’ll hear highlights of the conference and hear what God did in the lives of many of the women there.

Dannah Gresh (at True Woman '18): Helloooo . . . I am Dannah Gresh, and welcome to True Woman 2018—our tenth anniversary!

Betsy Gómez (at True Woman '18): Hello! I’m Besty Gómez. ¡Bienvenidas a True Woman '18, el décimo aniversario!

Nancy: You know, even leading up to the conference, we heard a lot from people who had been to many of the conferences—many to the first one ten years ago. So I think there was a lot of excitement built up from people who were looking forward to celebrating the tenth anniversary and whose lives had been deeply impacted.

Erin Davis: I was at the first one in ’08—ten years younger and had just had baby number one. I didn’t have a concept of a lot of what we talk about. I didn’t have a concept of biblical womanhood, of motherhood as my mission, as my marriage as a picture of the gospel.

I loved Jesus, and I loved His Word, and I loved His Church . . . and that was enough to get me here.

So I think the legacy on my own family is going to be significant!

I just spoke to a woman who came to the first True Woman Conference in ’08 who was ready to divorce her husband and didn’t. The Lord arrested her at that conference, and she’s back again.

Nancy: On the opening night we did some reflections, some retrospective of the ten years of history and how God has moved.

Bob Lepine (at True Woman ’18): I’m thinking back to a night in this room when there was a thunderstorm outside that was so loud that it was deafening. Do some of you remember it?

Priscilla Shirer was up here speaking . . . shouting . . .

Nancy (at True Woman ’18): And we had the women from the McPherson Prison in Arkansas who had been praying for thirty days for us leading up to the event. They had prayed for every woman who was coming to the conference. They had written prayers on little construction paper chain links. There were 12,000 of them, or something like that.

Here’s a remnant of that. We had spread it all the way around the auditorium, because they had been praying, and these were prayers that they had written . . .

Nancy: I just want to say that I could not have imagined that opening night at True Woman ’08 back in Schaumburg, Illinois, that we’d be sitting here tonight, ten years later, with thousands of women from thirty-three different countries here on site in Indy, and thousands more, a hundred countries or more represented on the livestream, celebrating what God has done. But also, women hungry for the Word—women eager and responsive.

I heard so many of them express that as I had a chance to connect with them during the course of the conference.

Julie McGregor: My name is Julie McGregor, and I’m from New Zealand. I currently live, and have lived, for seven years in Cambodia.

I feel like this conference is unlike any other that I’ve ever experienced. Even watching it online—up until this point . . . I’ve watched it on livestream in the past. There is no hype. It truly is about Christ and His Word and the power of His Word in our lives.

Jackie Hill Perry (at True Woman ’18): The rib that the Lord God had taken from man, He made into a woman. If you pay attention to the language: taken out of man, made into woman, you get a sense of the distinction being made here.

These are two different people, made two different ways. He is not her, and she is not him. Why does that matter? It matters because if God made man and woman, then gender is also God’s idea. If it is God’s idea, then it is a good one.

Julie McGregor: I just loved the realness of the people that God was using to share with us.

Jackie Hill Perry (at True Woman ’18): God has created us for real community and real intimacy and real friendship and real love . . . and we really can have it.

Mary Kassian: I loved listening to Jackie Hill Perry’s messages.

My name is Mary Kassian, and I’m from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. And what I loved most about Jackie’s messages is that she is a pursuer of truth, and she is a pursuer of God. She sees that a love for God is bigger and better than a love for other things.

Jackie Hill Perry (at True Woman ’18): If God could create something as good as sex, then how much greater is He than it? There is nothing on earth that is better than God. Meaning: That sex is a good gift, but it is not a better gift than the living God. And since it is not better gift than the living God, then we shouldn’t have to reject Him to satisfy the body in ways that He has not ordained.

Mary Kassian: That’s what has really helped her in her life, to put her affections in the right order. It was fascinating to hear her say that even though she may struggle with same-sex attraction, if her affections are in order, if she is loving Jesus above all else, it takes care of that.

When we love Jesus above all else, then we are willing to do what He says, and we are willing to cling to truth and do things His way.

Jennifer Dunn: She said something the rocked me. She said that for her and her children (and I just applied it to myself), I’m the first Titus 2 woman that my daughter Miriam will ever see.

Jackie Hill Perry: To be able to raise up other women who will be able to believe that they are who God says they are.

Jennifer Dunn: That was just . . . wow!

I’m Jennifer Dunn, or Jenny, from Martinsburg, West Virginia.

Hearing Jackie in a poem that she recited, I think the first evening . . .

Jackie Hill Perry (at True Woman ’18):

A young lady brown as the melanin of her daughter’s eyes behind a mic and that she hated being a woman.
She wanted to know what it meant to be one.

Jennifer Dunn: I need to go back and listen to that, or read that again, just to get it all. It was powerful.

Jackie Hill Perry (at True Woman ’18):

Beautiful is the spine that remembers where it came from.
It lets its knowing of self not be determined by every wind doctrine and dust, but God Himself.
We must unlearn the deep misunderstanding that compose themselves . . .

Jackie Hill Perry: I do believe that teaching Scripture is an art. I feel like communication matters.

Jackie Hill Perry (at True Woman ’18):

Eve did not attain life by finding beauty in lies but only a naked body, and a husband that forgot her first name.
We women must be smarter, must be wiser, must be bent on loving truth—no matter how contradicting it is to a dying culture.
I’ll tell you: A woman is no fool, unless she chooses to be.

Jackie Hill Perry: I think I’ve learned that communication lifts up and allows people to hear the truth, take in the truth, in a way that they might not have heard it if it was said in another way.

Jackie Hill Perry (at True Woman ’18):

Anything that defines our being, that does not shimmer and sing of Christ and His wisdom is a definition destined for flames.
If you asked me, “What is a woman?”
I would simply tell you, “Ask the God who made her.”

Betsy Gómez (at True Woman ’18): Every day I felt like I was trying to reach the finish line by maintaining all my balls in the air. I kept asking myself, How did I get here?

Mary Kassian: I loved the question that Betsy asked.

Betsy Gómez (at True Woman ’18): Take a second and think of the many distractions that are filling your days, causing you stress and anxiety. What are those distractions for you? Are there any changes you need to make in order to make Jesus and His Word a priority?

Mary Kassian: That’s a great question because I think we get distracted. What is it in my life that is distracting me and that I’m putting in that place of hunger for God?

Betsy Gómez (at True Woman ’18): Sisters, taste and see that the Word of God is satisfying. The Word of God will align your affections with the truth. Just like it was in the beginning, His Word will bring order to your chaos. It will put everything in place.

Laura González: My highlight was seeing Betsy on the platform.

Patricia de Saladín: We need her youth and her freshness and her happiness. Laura and I used to call her the sunshine of ANC. [Aviva Nuestros Corazones]

Laura González: My name is Laura González, and I am from the Dominican Republic.

Patricia de Saladín: I’m Patricia de Saladín, and I’m from Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic.

Laura González: Seeing Betsy there, seeing that this was the tenth anniversary of True Woman, and seeing her as a fruit of the ministry.

Patricia de Saladín: Seeing her mature as a young woman, not only being a mother and being a wife, being a pastor’s wife . . .

Laura González: And she has just embraced the message. It started to give fruit in her life, and now seeing her there teaching, it’s like seeing the fruit of this ministry. Not only that, but what is my prayer for ANC, that the movement not only grows horizontally and reaches a lot of people around the world, but also that it changes people’s lives and it grows deep in their hearts.

Betsy represents that.

Patricia de Saladín: It’s a joy to see the fruit of the ministry. It’s like going full circle in one person.

Nancy: I have this sweet sense that the Lord is helping us be in this process of not only reaching younger women, but passing the mantle of this ministry in these next years, over to some younger women who are going to do so well with it. I’m really proud of those women.

Betsy Gómez (at True Woman ’18): Because we only surrender to what we treasure. That is the secret to a balanced life—to make Jesus and His Word the object of our love.

Nancy: Dannah Gresh did a fabulous message on telling ourselves the truth and then letting the truth determine how we feel and how we think.

Dannah Gresh (at True Woman ’18): What if what we put in us to control our emotions was not coffee or pills or chocolate or food or carbs or drugs or alcohol? What if what we put in us to control our emotions was truth?

Laura González: To take all those emotions back to the Word. It’s back to the Word, back to the Word! I love how that was so stressed.

Dannah Gresh (at True Woman ’18): Whatever you are thinking about is going to be how you feel. Your thoughts are the boss of your feelings.

Nancy: I noticed that that phrase got tweeted out there a lot because it caught a lot of our attention. We don’t have to let how we feel govern us. We can have the truth govern our feelings, and then let our feelings be in response to the truth.

Carol Higgins: If I feel something then it’s true is something that I think a lot of women have believed. Because we are emotional beings and we feel emotions so strongly, sometimes it gets muddled with the truth.

There have been many times that I have felt something about myself or God or other people that has been very untrue.

Dannah Gresh (at True Woman ’18): Why would the world want what we have unless they see it working for us? Why would they? This is a gospel imperative that we put in ourselves—the truth. So that we can put on us these emotions that God intends for us to be governed by and to enjoy and to experience.

Carol Higgins: My name is Carol, and I’m from Dublin, Ireland.

Mary Kassian: We had a European delegation here—about forty women or so from all sorts of European countries. I think: France, Switzerland, Germany . . . that’s gathering steam. It reminds me of what happened in the Dominican Republic.

I had a chance to meet up with the European delegation, and they were just telling me about the need for a movement in Europe.

Carol Higgins: So coming here has been a little bit overwhelming to see so many women in one room who love Jesus in the way that they do. I don’t know if there is even this many women in Ireland who know Jesus.

Mary Kassian: They are praying that what God has birthed in the Dominican to the Hispanic community and is now starting to rumble across the world into South Africa, that the same sort of movement will spring up and broaden in Germany and throughout Europe.

Nancy: I will say this. I was so grateful to hear in many cases that the people in Indianapolis and some people on our team reached out and were hospitable and received these people coming from around the world to help provide housing and meals and to help make it possible.

Carol Higgins: The hospitality of the church that we’ve been connected with and the wider Christian community has been really humbling to see their love for complete strangers—knowing that the only connection we have is Jesus.

They organized houses for us to stay in. They organized food. It was because of their love for Christ.

Nancy: It’s just interesting that in the timeframe when this conference was being held that there was a swirl, has been and is a swirl, in the culture around us—particularly here in the United States—of women dealing with sexual abuse issues, with assault.

Mary Kassian: It was difficult addressing the question of sexual abuse because we knew that we were going to open a lot of wounds. However, there is healing in Christ, and healing comes through truth.

Jackie Hill Perry (at True Woman ’18): It’s something that happens to the psyche of a person when a person in a position of power, that you believe is supposed to keep you safe, harms you in that way. It shapes how you see everything. It colors how you see everything. So I think the ramifications are huge.

Mary Kassian (at True Woman ’18): Some of the biggest issues with victims of sexual abuse is keeping it in the dark, is not wanting to talk about it. But when it is hidden and kept in the dark, it can have such power over you. When you bring it out into the light, God wants to heal you of the shame of it. Some women feel so shameful. Some women feel, “It’s my fault,” or “I did something that provoked this.” But those are lies.

Satan wants to keep you in bondage through those lies, through guilt, through shame. He’s telling you to keep it in the darkness. So if that is you, what you need to do as a first step is to bring it out into the light and tell someone.

Mary Kassian: We were really excited to have Bob Lepine share from the perspective of a man, a good man who has that protective spirit towards his wife and children. He’s a man who walks with God. How that kind of man would be impacted by a woman’s pain who had been sexually abused.

Bob Lepine (at True Woman ’18): I believe Jesus is deeply sorry for your pain as well. It’s true He could have stopped it, and He didn’t. I can’t tell you why He didn’t. No one can. But I can tell you that He gave His life to fix it.

He died so that the wrongs of this life will be made right; so that your tears will one day be dried, and that your darkness will be over forever.

Nancy: I think a lot of women had not heard a tenderhearted, wise, godly man express that kind of Christ-like compassion.

Bob Lepine (at True Woman ’18): On behalf of Christian men, I am so sorry for how any man did to you the evil that was done to you. That was wrong. My heart breaks that God’s daughters had that kind of evil perpetrated on them and that your soul has that scar on it.

Mary Kassian (at True Woman ’18): So we have to identify the problem as sin. And we can’t identify the problem as men. The problem is sin; we need to deal with sin. We certainly need to have all of the legal and protective aspects. We need to have the authorities involved when such a sin takes place. However, the problem is sin.

Nancy: At the end of that session we had an opportunity for women to come and express to the Lord their concerns, their fears, their anxieties, and to give these things over to Him—sometimes to forgive, sometimes to repent or seek forgiveness.

Jackie Hill Perry: If you were close, they were weeping.

Nancy: I invited others to come and pray with them.

Jackie Hill Perry: They were crying, and they had friends with them, people with them, hugging and praying over them. That image will probably stay with me for a long time. I was imagining when it comes to sexual abuse and sexual trauma and sexual sin, what people have done to us and what we have done to ourselves. There is a level of shame that many people walk in and have never really had the freedom or the time or the space or the opportunity to just let it out.

Mary Kassian: I prayed with a woman who was sixty-four years old. She shared with me that she had been married for over forty years. She had been sexually abused as a teenager and that sexual abuse had haunted her for the past fifty years—even in marriage.

Even though she had married a man who was gentle and kind and who loved her dearly and who had been faithful and loved her faithfully her whole life, she asked me to pray for her. Because she said that even in that circumstance, there was this protectiveness that she had wrapped her heart up in and she could not get past because she believed that lie that he was still going to hurt her somehow.

And that lie that she had bought in to at the time of her abuse, God had still not healed her of that. She prayed that she would be able to let go of that and to trust and to open up, even at the age of sixty-four, into deeper intimacy with her relationship with her husband.

Jackie Hill Perry: They were tired of holding it in. That was powerful to me that God was able to meet people in such a real way.

Nancy: The truth really does set you free!

Mary Kassian: I actually would describe this whole conference as a truth moment.

Erin Davis: All of the skirmishes are still happening around us, culturally in our own lives. But we are saying that we believe in such a thing as truth, and we believe that truth is the Word of God. That’s what Jesus prayed for us. In John 17:17 He said, “Sanctify them in truth, your word is truth.”

I know that He was looking forward to this moment. He was looking forward to all the moments. But He was looking forward to this moment and the reminder that all of us need to know that there is truth, and the Bible is truth!

Kari Windon: Nancy said this last night. “God’s truth is not just good, but it is beautiful. I’ve watched that flesh out in my life. The truth was that it was good and right that I would be made a mom and a wife when I didn’t know what to do. But God’s Word clearly said it, and it didn’t make any sense. So I said that I’m going to do that. His blessing over my family is overwhelming to me.

Nancy: The power of the truth!

Kayla Berg: In this world I’m never going to have everything I want the way I want it. But it’s okay to live with those unfulfilled longings because God is all that we need, and He is more than enough to fill our deepest longings.

Nancy: The beauty of the truth!

Alejandra Slemin: His plan for me is still good regardless of the outcome.

Nancy: The truth can change our lives!

Erin Davis: Again, it’s that flag in the sand that we’re like, “Oh, yeah! I have a source of truth. I have something that I can look to, and it’s the Word of God!” It’s the perfect theme. I think we could do it two years from now and two years after that and two years after that and two years after that, and it would still have significant impact.

Leslie: We’ve been hearing highlights from the True Woman ’18 conference, discovering how God used this gathering to set women free through the truth of His Word.

In the coming days, you’ll be able to watch online videos from that conference. Keep checking ReviveOurHearts.com as those get posted. And to learn more about the truth that sets us free, get a copy of Nancy’s book, Lies Women Believe. The messages at True Woman ’18 were inspired by this book that’s brought hope to women everywhere—over a million copies have been sold.

We’ll send you a copy when you support the ministry with a gift of any amount. Just visit ReviveOurHearts.com. Provide your support and request the book, or call 1–800–569–5959 and ask for Lies Women Believe.

True Woman ’18 marked the ten-year anniversary of True Woman conferences. On Monday we will look back at what God did to birth a true woman movement in Latin America ten years ago. Please be back, for Revive Our Hearts.

Revive Our Hearts with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth wants to help you live according to the truth. It’s an outreach of Life Action Ministries.