Faithful Hearts, Not Flawless Homes

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: God used one of Dannah Gresh’s favorite Bible passages to help her see that her approach to hospitality was actually performance-based.

Dannah Gresh: We are to be showing hospitality to each other, not just passing each other on Sunday mornings in the aisle. And we’re to be doing it without grumbling. We don’t need a flawless house, we just need faithful hearts.

Nancy: Welcome to the Revive Our Hearts podcast for February 28, 2022. I’m Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth. And . . . I've got to wish my sweet husband, Robert, a happy birthday.

You’ve probably heard the saying: There’s no such thing as a “Lone Ranger Christian.” I couldn’t agree more. We need one another in the Body of Christ, and now more than ever.

The world around us seems unstable in so many ways! If it weren’t for the solid foundation God gives us in His Word, we wouldn’t know up from down and right from wrong. But when we’re connected in meaningful ways to the people of God, our chances of maintaining a healthy relationship to Christ and the gospel go way up.

That’s something my cohost, Dannah Gresh, addressed last fall at our Revive '21 conference in Indianapolis. The theme for that event was “Grounded: Standing Firm in a Shaking World.”

Today and tomorrow on Revive Our Hearts, we’ll listen to Dannah’s message from that conference. First, though, here’s Dannah to set up the context for what she shared, then we’ll transition right into the first part of her message, “Grounded in Community.”

Dannah: As I prepared for my message at Revive ’21, and even after Revive ’21, I’d been soaking in the book of Acts. In fact, I encourage you to open your Bible to the book of Acts. I want to help us get grounded in community. I have to tell you, as familiar as I have been with the book of Acts for decades, I wasn’t prepared for this deep meditation to call me to make specific changes in the way I approach my interaction with my local congregation and my heart for the body of Christ.

As I shared this message at Revive '21, I even had some insecurity. Would other women respond to what I had learned from God’s Spirit through meditating on these passages? I have heard so many wonderful things about women who said, “I have changed dramatically. I have made big changes in how my heart approaches the church, in how I attend church.” Many women confessed that they weren’t attending with their whole hearts, they weren’t devoted, they weren’t excited about the body of Christ. But after digging into some of this with a little bit of depth and a little bit of meat and a little bit of grit, their hearts are really set free to enjoy the body of Christ and participate in it in a new way. I’m hoping that happens for you today, too.

Before we dive into my message from Revive ’21, I want to give you some background information and set the scene for what we’re about to study. Now, of course, we sometimes call this book of the Bible, Acts of the Apostles. But let me suggest that maybe we should be calling it the Acts of Jesus and the Holy Spirit, because this book is really proof, not that we (the Church) can do mighty things, but that Jesus and God’s Spirit in us accomplishes mighty things.

Let me just defend that point of view, if you don’t mind. In the first verse of Acts, Luke, the author, writes about what he set out to accomplish in the first book he wrote, and that would be him referring to a gospel named after himself, the book of Luke.

Acts 1:1 reads like this: “In the first book I dealt with all Jesus began to do.” I cannot tell you how long I meditated on that verse alone, contemplating the implication that Luke is now going to write about all that Jesus continued to do. Jesus wasn’t finished with His work, He was continuing it, and it’s written about in the book of Acts.

Then, of course, chapter one of Acts records that Jesus spent forty days after His resurrection teaching His true followers and promising that when He goes to heaven to be with the Father, the Holy Spirit of God will come help them, empower them, because they can’t do—the Church cannot do—what it needs to do, what God designed it to do, without the power of the Holy Spirit.

When I meditated on that chapter, I contemplated that time when Jesus said to His disciples, “It is good that I should go.” 

“Good? Good that the Savior of the world, good that the One who’s been teaching us and walking with us and doing miraculous things, it’s good that You should go?”

Yes. He was talking about how it was good that He should go. Why? So that the Holy Spirit, the Helper, could come and empower them.

Then, in Acts 2, it happens. We read that on the day of the Feast of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit comes when they’re gathered together in community. The Spirit comes as a great wind, and something like flames appear over their heads, and they start telling stories about Jesus, about how He’s changed their lives. They’re speaking in languages they don’t even know. But there are many people there in that great melting-pot of a city who do understand the languages, clearly.

Then Peter preaches. After they’ve heard these testimonies in various languages—their languages—Peter preaches, and 3,000 people surrender their hearts to Jesus that day. Wow! What a beginning for the Church, our Church, our family!

What did they have to do to get ready for that harvest of salvations, that harvest of hearts? They had to wait. They had to wait for the Holy Spirit. And He came to them in a room with those tongues of fire above them.

Now, there’s a lot of symbolism in what happened on that Day of Pentecost, and we simply don’t understand it since we didn’t grow up and live in Jewish culture. But Luke does understand; he knows what he’s recording. That fire above them would have reminded faithful Jews of the presence of God in the Old Testament tabernacle. We read about it in Exodus. I believe it’s chapter 40 where the presence of God at night appeared like a fire.

The presence had come again in fire, not in a tabernacle or temple . . . but in people, in the Church. It was and is Christ and the Holy Spirit that does mighty things in and through the body of Christ.

So, as I approached my message for Revive ’21 with a heart to explain how God is helping me to get grounded in community, with the hope that you would have a desire to be deeply grounded in community, of course, I turned to Acts chapter 2. I turned to those early and first days of the Church to see what were the qualities and characteristics of that early body of believers. What was in them that maybe isn’t in us, and what can we learn from them so that we can begin to see mighty harvests for Jesus in our congregations?

Dannah (at Revive '21): I am here this weekend—it’s kind of like a reunion when I come to a Revive Our Hearts event, because I get to see Nancy and Mary and all these sweet friends that I love at Revive Our Hearts. But this year I’ve brought the biggest bunch of friends from my ministry and my church and my family. I have to make them stand up: my daughter-in-law Aleya (she’s so mad at me right now), my mom, Kay, and my lovely daughter Autumn. There are about ten others from my church and my ministry.

I’m wondering who you brought, and I really would like you to tell me. So at the count of three shout it out. Who came with you? One, two, three! Awesome! That’s great. I don’t know what you said, but that’s awesome.

Do you know how significant they are to how you receive from the Lord this weekend? As you spend time with them, as you process what you’re hearing from God through His Word, as you share your burdens and your hurts and you pray for each other, you are bringing one another closer to Jesus. You’re very, very important to one another.

I’ve believed that for a long time. Since I was a little girl, I have read the second chapter of Acts and longed for that to be alive and well in our church. That’s why I love the ministry of Revive Our Hearts, because my heart beats to see big things happen in the body of Christ—big things, important things, revival, so that we look exactly as God intended for us to look, according to the Scriptures.

So, I was very excited when Nancy assigned me the task of talking about being grounded in community. I began meditating right away, reading books—lots of different books—and reading the Scriptures. I came to this little passage in a book called Life Together, by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, that stopped me in my tracks and changed the way I approached this message. I want to share it with you. He writes this:

Are you thankful for the body? In the Christian community, thankfulness is just what it is anywhere else in the Christian life. Only he who gives thanks for little things receives the big things. If we do not give thanks daily for the Christian fellowship in which we have been placed, even when there is no great experience, no discoverable riches, but much weakness, small faith, and [get this] difficulty. If, on the contrary, we only keep complaining to God that everything is so paltry and petty, so far from what we expected, then we hinder God from letting our fellowship grow according to the measure and the riches which are there for us all in Christ Jesus.

Then it went on for leaders. It says a pastor, but I’m going to replace it with a women’s ministry director, a pastor’s wife, a children’s ministry director,

. . . should not complain about [her] congregation, certainly never to other people but also not to God. A congregation has not been entrusted to you in order that you should become its accuser before God and men. 

Ouch. I began right then and there to ask the Lord to not only convict my heart—I was already convicted—but further convict my heart and give me very specific repentance work to do, so that I would be found faithfully thankful. Since I yearn for big things in the body of Christ, I want to participate in those big things, and I felt like God was saying, “Thankfulness is where you begin.”

I found myself, as I allowed the Lord to cleanse my heart, coming up with a list, some of them old sins, some of them current sins, things that were the opposite of thankful. I wonder if any of these sound familiar to you. I’m going to read the list God had me writing over the last few months. I’m going to ask if any of these things have been true in your life, if you’ll enter humbly before the presence of God. After I read this list, will you stand if any of these things reflect your behavior? Uh-oh. Getting real. (laughter)

• Have you recently or in the past intentionally gone five minutes late to church on Sunday so you don’t have to deal with people?

Oh, they’re already standing. I was going to let you stand at the end so you didn’t have to be embarrassed. (laughter) So maybe just wait, and we’ll do it all at once.

• Have you ever, recently or in the past, extended your vacation by an extra day simply so you had an excuse not to attend church on Sunday?
• Have you ever grumbled because your husband, friend, or pastor wanted you to host a church gathering at your house and it stressed you out incredibly?
• Have you determined that you’re not really a complainer, you have a spiritual gift of discernment?
• Have you truly enjoyed the pandemic because you can just watch church in your jammies online?
• Have you decided to just keep watching church online?
• Have you convinced yourself that you are, in fact, the exception to Hebrews 10:25, which says, “Do not neglect meeting together”?

Please stand if one or more of these has been true of your life at any time. Okay. No, no, stay standing! I’m going to pray over us. I’m going to ask the Lord to change our hearts.

Father, You’ve convicted my heart that these are the antithesis of a thankful, grateful heart, and rather, they are a grumbling spirit in me. You’ve been cleansing me. I think You’re still in process. We’re standing here saying, “Lord, help us. Help us to be thankful for the body of Christ in all of its imperfection. Help us to understand how we can participate in revival, how we can participate in the big things you desire to do in us, and how we can participate in looking more like what we read in the second chapter of Acts. In the name of Jesus, amen.”

Okay, open your Bibles to the second chapter of Acts. Are you surprised about that? I want to read to you how the church is described. This is a passage that’s been really special to me for many years, and I have just soaked in it. I saw some different things, as I was soaking over these last few weeks, that I wanted to share. But let me read Acts 2:42–47.

And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship and to the breaking of bread and the prayers. And awe came upon every soul. And many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. And all who believed were together and had all things in common, and they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all as any had need. And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.

I want that. Do you want that?

I want to look at four qualities that describe these early believers. If we’re truly grounded in community, I think we will also reflect these qualities. They are these: the early community of Christians were devoted, they were together, they were generous, they were glad. They were devoted, together, generous, and glad.

Now, this is where I wish I had you at my farm and I could take you to my big farmhouse table ,and we could just sit and reflect. But I don’t have that time, and this is the only table I have. So come close in your hearts, and let’s try to get grounded in community.

The early church was devoted to being grounded in community. They were devoted. What does that word “devoted” mean? Well, it was a Greek word that meant “to stay, to persist, to remain.” Wow. What a word for us if our church is going through any kind of difficulty right now. Stay, persist, remain! They paid persistent attention to their little community of believers.

How persistent? Well, go ahead and look there, because it tells us. In verse 46 it says, “Day by day they were gathering.” That’s persistence. 

You know, I know friends who work out day by day. They’re persistently devoted to working out, and they look like it. I don’t. I have friends who are persistently devoted to social media; they do it day by day, maybe hour by hour. What we are impassioned for we are devoted to. They were impassioned for the church, so they gathered day by day.

How did they gather? Look at verse 42. It says that they attended the temple—the larger, more formal gatherings, right? That’s what we sort of experience on Sunday mornings, if you will. But they also broke bread in their homes—smaller table gatherings.

Now, some Bible scholars say that was the Lord’s Supper, Communion. Others say no, they were eating. It was bread. They ate bread. It was sustenance. And a whole lot of them say it was probably a lot of both. Either way, they were at the table, and they were gathering in these smaller, less formal gatherings.

Here’s where I learned something. They understood the symbolism of the table in the way that we didn’t. You see, for the faithful Jews, they would understand that the table meant one thing to them: the presence of God. You see, they would know that in the book of Exodus it’s written that there was a table built. It was placed in the tabernacle, and on that table once a week they would set it with twelve loaves of bread, one representing each tribe. This was called the bread of the presence. It was the table of the presence of God.

So, the early believers had an understanding of table that we didn’t. It wasn’t where they did their crafts. It wasn’t where they collected their mail. It was where they gathered to experience the presence of the living, loving God of the universe. Christians are people of the table, because there we experience the presence of God.

Now, I think this has very special implications for us as women, because this is where we get to set the tone as well as the table for Christian fellowship. Are we doing that well?

I had to confess as the Lord was convicting me that I am often, because I’m very busy and I’m an overachiever and I like my house to be absolutely just so and have a meal that everyone’s like, “That was amazing! Did you taste Dannah’s apple pie?” I mean, I want them to say that at the end! So, I tend to get stressed.

Recently my husband said, “Baby, I’m feeling like I need to tell you something. You need to let go of having a perfect home and a three-course meal every time God calls us to open our house.”

I didn’t really like it that he said that, but that week the Lord showed me a Scripture that pretty straightforwardly agreed with Bob. It’s 1 Peter 4:9; it says this, “Show hospitality to one another without grumbling.” 

We are to be showing hospitality to each other, not just passing each other on Sunday mornings in the aisle, and we’re to be doing it without grumbling. I struggle with that.

Let me say this to you. We don’t need flawless houses, we just need faithful hearts. One of the greatest table fellowship gatherings that I’ve ever had was at the home of Erin Davis, my dear friend Erin. Now, Erin has a beautifully decorated home, and at the time she had two toddler boys. They also liked decorating her home—with swords and trucks and balls! So, there was a lot of that kind of decoration around.

After she put the toddlers to bed, she tucked those toys in a basket. Then there were three ingredients in the food she prepared for me: popcorn kernels, salt, and in the blessed name of Jesus, butter. (laughter)

But I want to tell you something. In the crazy of toddler living, with only popcorn, Erin Davis and I had sweet Christian fellowship. I want to say this again: God doesn’t need flawless homes, He needs faithful hearts.

So, I’ve been trying to say, “Thank You, Lord, for the opportunity to make my table a space where people experience Your presence.” I am practicing, because I still get stressed out. But I believe the Lord’s convicted me that that would not be what He has for me.

The early church was grounded in community together. Together is a really important word. Together: with or in proximity to people; in companionship.

I want you to look at verse 44. I want to read this to you. “All who were believers were together.” All who believed were together. They were with each other; they experienced true companionship. Now, this is really important. You know why? Because I believe there are a lot of lonely hearts in our churches every week, lonely hearts feeling isolated, not feeling together. We have to tend to that. We must do something about it.

Nancy: That’s the cohost of Revive Our Hearts, Dannah Gresh, in part 1 of a message she gave last fall at Revive '21. Dannah took us to Acts chapter 2 to show us some descriptions of the early New Testament church, characteristics she says need to be true of us, as well. Today she touched on their devotion and the fact that they were together. 

We’re told in Acts 2 that the early believers  devoted themselves to: 

• the apostles' teaching 
• and the fellowship 
• to the breaking of bread 
• and prayers

What are you devoted to? This might be a good time to take inventory of your life. What we’re devoted to is seen in how we spend our time, what we pour our energy and attention and our affection into, where we spend our money, what we post about on social media. Are the things that you’re devoted to helping you grow in your faith and become more like Jesus? Are they helping others grow in their faith? 

Imagine what a difference it would make in your life and your church and in our world if believers today were devoted to the same things that those early Christians were devoted to.

And speaking of Christian community and devotion, if you’re married, there is no more important relationship than the one you have with your mate. I don't want to be guilty of being devoted to lots of other believers outside my home and then failing to be devoted to my husband.

Wives, just let me say, one of the best ways we can be devoted to our husbands is through the ministry of encouragement. Today’s the last day we’ll be mentioning the resource The 30-Day Husband Encouragement Challenge. This tool from Revive Our Hearts is full of some  ways you can build up your husband with your words—for a full month. 

We’ll send you a copy as a thank you for your donation of any size. If you're not married, think of someone who is whom you could encourage with this booklet. As a listener-supported ministry, Revive Our Hearts depends on donations from friends like you to sustain our ongoing work all around the world. So thanks in advance for sharing whatever the Lord lays on your heart.

To give to Revive Our Hearts, just head over to ReviveOurHearts.com, or call us at 1-800-569-5959. Ask about The 30-Day Husband Encouragement Challenge when you call. 

Tomorrow, we’ll hear the second part of Dannah’s message on the importance of being grounded in community, if we’re going to stand firm in this shaking world. I’m Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, inviting you back, for Revive Our Hearts!

Revive Our Hearts is dedicated to helping you discover freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.

All Scripture is taken from the ESV.