Freedom, Fullness, and Fruitfulness

Leslie Basham: If the person you married changes over time, is it possible to stay in love? Here’s Anne Ortlund.

Anne Ortlund: Especially you who are believers, you must keep falling in love with that person that your husband becomes. You keep changing. You change; he changes. And you fall out of love, and you fall out of love, and you fall out of love. So what do you do? You just simply say, “Charlie, I take you all over again (at least in your heart) to be my lawfully wedded husband, to have and to hold from this day forward.” You have to keep recommitting yourself to this person who has changed.

Leslie: This is Revive Our Hearts with Nancy Leigh DeMoss for Friday, November 29.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: Well, during this Thanksgiving season, one of the things I am especially grateful for is the people that the Lord has brought into my life over the years to teach me and to encourage me with their examples.

God has been so gracious to bring women around me who have been further down the road spiritually and in life experience than I have been. These women have been instruments to encourage and teach me in the ways of the Lord. And isn’t that what the Scripture says in Titus chapter 2, that older women should teach younger women how to love God, how to love their husbands, how to walk with God in practical ways?

Well, one such woman in my life was Anne Ortlund. Her husband Ray was my pastor when I was a college student. Anne ministered faithfully as a wife to Ray, as a mom to their four children, and also as a musician, a hymn writer, an author, and a speaker.

Well, Anne went home to be with the Lord earlier this month just before she would have turned ninety. She served the Lord faithfully all the way to the finish line. Anne had a heart to disciple other women and to train the generations coming along behind her.

Over the years we’ve aired a few conversations with Anne here on Revive Our Hearts. Today we’re going to hear a portion of one of those. She’ll explain why she wasn’t depressed about aging, and she’ll tell us why she wasn’t afraid of death. Let’s listen to this conversation that first aired in 2004.

We were talking about the title of Anne’s book, The Disciplines of the Beautiful Woman. Now, Anne knew how to make discipline a beautiful subject.

Anne: I mean, doesn’t it beat the alternative?

Nancy: Which is?

Anne: If we’re not disciplined, then we’re just out of control. We’re living frantic, harried lives. Who needs it?

Nancy: You know, Anne, I was thinking about you this morning as I was preparing for this recording. I was thinking that at seventy-nine years of age, which you’ve told me you don’t mind my saying . . .

Anne: Oh, no. Old is good.

Nancy: You are a beautiful woman. It was occurring to me this morning as I was preparing that it’s not just because you’re strikingly physically beautiful—which you are—but it’s something deeper and richer than that. It’s because for so many years you’ve been committed to living out the truths that you talk about in your books. And God’s ways really are a beautifying force in our lives as women, aren’t they?

Anne: I hope that some of the people who sit across from your desk when you’re doing this are saying how beautiful Nancy Leigh DeMoss is because that needs to be said.

You know, Nancy, let me just say that I used to have a favorite verse, and it’s become my life verse—Proverbs 4:18, “The path of the just is as a shining light that shines more and more to the perfect day.”

You said to me, “Let’s do a program on getting old and dying.” I resonate with that because old and death are two words that everybody shies away from. “Let’s not talk about that. Let’s not go there.” But this is reality for everybody, and, boy, if I weren’t a believer, this would be spooky. This would be definitely scary. But I said a minute ago old is good. If you’re with the Lord, then truly “the path of the just is as a shining light that shines more and more to the perfect day.”

Nancy: So it’s not a matter of petering out.

Anne: Oh, no. It’s the opposite. In fact, Paul says, “Forget the outward. It’s the inward that’s important, the invisible that’s important.” He says our outward man is perishing (boy, that’s a King James Version) but our inward person is being renewed day by day.

And I sense this. I have to be careful to put on my makeup every morning. I’ve got to do that. God forbid that people should see me the way I first get out of bed in the morning. But when we have done the little we can do for the outside, you’re right—it’s the inside that counts.

I think about Proverbs 31—this woman that we all want to be. This says that she can laugh at days to come.

Nancy: There’s no fear there.

Anne: Oh, no fear at all. She is not worried about the coming wrinkles or bulges or whatever it’s going to be because the inner person is more and more important to her. And the joy and the peace that this world longs for and doesn’t have is found in Christ, which has nothing to do with age.

Nancy: And it’s really because the bottom line is she fears the Lord which is why she doesn’t have to fear getting old.

Anne: That’s exactly right. I must say that in those years when she is mothering, and a lot of you are single mothers out there that are listening to this. Your lives seem hassled. Hey, better days are coming! Get through this season. It gets better.

Nancy: I have to tell you, Anne, and some will laugh at this, but I have had a goal, a life goal since I was a little girl, and that is to be a godly, old lady.

Anne: Oh, I like that!

Nancy: I’ve had an obsession with this since I was a little girl. I’ve just had this image in my mind of what a godly, old lady looks like or is like. Now that I’m in my forties, I have to say I’m finding that the old part comes easier than the godly part.

But I really do believe God has helped me to look forward to aging because I have this sense that everything that’s happening in my life right now is making me more like Jesus. It’s fitting me, preparing me for a life that is richer and fuller and not to be dreaded, though, I’m sure there are physical aspects of aging that are not easy.

Anne: Hey, whatever. It’s a good American word these days—whatever. Lord, if this is what You have planned for me, a long life . . . Actually, there is that part of us (I have to say this in parenthesis) that loves life and longs for life to be lived a long time. Indeed, one of the Ten Commandments is the commandment with promise that your days will be long upon the earth.

So God understands that, and He’s not making us so despise our present life that all we can do is say, “Oh well, somehow I’m going to grit my teeth and get through it and then heaven is coming.” No, it’s wonderful that’s heaven’s coming, but these days of aging are precious and to be savored more and more.

Nancy: If you’re living these days in the Lord and growing in Him.

Anne: Otherwise, forget it.

Nancy: I’ve seen these older women, some of whom are bitter, cantankerous, ornery . . .

Anne: Which is why little, old ladies get kicked around, because we don’t have an image of a godly, older woman who is an example to others and who walks with Jesus and has joy in her heart.

I love the verse in, I think it’s the 78^th Psalm. I wouldn’t want to swear to it. It’s the left side of the page, if that will help you. It says that she will not rest until she has taught the younger generations the works of the Lord, proclaiming that God is good (see v. 4).

Nancy: Yes, it is Psalm 78.

Anne: I think if we can proclaim, if we’ve even become paraplegics, our legs don’t work, our arms don’t work, if we can still speak, we can do that.

Nancy: Anne, talk to us about beyond aging, death itself. You have a chapter in this book, The Gentle Ways of the Beautiful Woman, and it’s a chapter about being equally at ease with life and death. You don’t read many chapters in books today about how to face dying without fear, with confidence in the Lord.

Anne: This chapter says that one of the keys to that is getting to know the Lord one-on-one. If everything in your life has been the group, everything is the family, everything is church, everything is multiple, if we are not used to being alone with the Lord . . . death is a one-on-one thing. The group gets cut out. The family gets cut out.

The dearest ones around you get cut out in that experience. He must be supreme. He’s got to be priority one or it would simply be too painful to be cut off from the others as something that’s going to happen, but it would be more painful.

Also, it would be so unfamiliar to us. We would not know how to handle one-on-one experiences with the Lord the way sickness is. No matter who loves you or how much they love you, they cannot take your sickness for you, and you realize you’re one-on-one with the Lord.

This is what either brings glory to that situation or it’s just a bad-news thing. I mean, pain is pain, but Jesus is the transforming power. He makes all the difference.

Nancy: Yes.

Okay, you tell us to learn how to live in constant readiness for death. What does that mean, and how do you do it?

Anne: Well, for one thing, you do it simply because if we’re twenty years old, Jesus may come, and He will just come in an instant and snatch up believers to be with Himself. So all of us must be ready for that moment.

If it does not come, if He chooses to wait so that we do experience death, then we need to be in constant readiness for that.

I’m thinking of the 139^th Psalm that says “All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be” (v. 16). And if He has planned a long life or a short life, it’s the quality of the life that counts. It’s living it with Him. It’s being in readiness to go or to stay.

Paul says, “To me to live is Christ, and to die is gain” (Phil. 1:21). And then he tosses that around in Philippians chapter 1. He says, “Well, I’d really rather go, but I may have to stay for the sake of ministry for a while.”

I kind of feel that way. I am so excited about dying. I kid you not. Maybe I’ll go so fast I won’t know, just from one to the other. But however God has planned for it, if it’s through pain, well, hey, I’m not the first, and God will give grace.

Somebody said, “Do you have dying grace?” I think somebody asked Charles or John Wesley this. And he said, “No, but I’m not dying yet.” We have the grace that we need for the moment that we’re living.

Nancy: And the fact is, for every one of us, soon, in light of eternity, we will face death.

Anne: Sooner than we think.

Nancy: We need to be living in constant readiness, not just for the dying process or moment, but for what comes beyond that. That is the moment when we’ll give account to Christ. We will face Him, and I know, Anne, that you want to face Him with joy.

Anne: It gives motivation. We’re not going to be here forever. Our unsaved neighbors will not be here forever. We need to say what we need to say now, not later. We need to live “as dying men to dying men,” Wesley said.

Nancy: Yes.

You and Ray have demonstrated that it really is possible to leave a godly legacy, to build a godly heritage. You were the product, as I have been, of a godly legacy. Tell us a little bit about your family growing up.

Anne: Well, you had wonderful parents, Nancy, and I had wonderful parents. God’s been good to both of us.

Nancy: Yes.

Anne: Our parents were good friends of each other.

Nancy: Yes.

Anne: Daddy was a general in the U.S. Army, so I grew up an Army brat. They had plenty of faults, the way I do, and the way everybody does, but I noticed that they were faithful in three crucial disciplines of the home.

Number one: They built strong habit patterns that affirmed their love for each other. They always stood up for each other. In front of other people, they always affirmed each other.

After they met the Lord, their life direction together became more focused on teaching His Word. Daddy and Mother taught Bible classes on all the Army posts where they were stationed and led hundreds of officers and wives to Christ. It was wonderful.

But anyway, their love for each other—I got ahead of my story.

And number two: They had the discipline of affirming their love for their children. Daddy hugged us all the time and told everybody how wonderful we were. Mother was the one who spanked. We needed both.

And thirdly: Together they built strong habit patterns that affirmed their love for God, and each night ended with parents and children on their knees in prayer. We had family devotions every day of our lives. We memorized Scripture. It was a strong foundation for us kids.

Nancy: And you now have passed the baton on to your children who are rearing their children.

Anne: Our children walk with God, all four of them. Three of them are in ministry, and the other one is strongly for Jesus. Now their children are in seminary, most of them, and are preparing for full-time Christian service and teaching their children, our great-grandchildren to walk closely with Jesus.

Nancy: I want our listeners to have a vision for how their lives can be part of passing on the baton of faith from one generation to the next. I know your parents did not come to know the Lord until they were adults. My parents did not come to know the Lord until they were young adults. They did not inherit from their parents this great godly heritage, but they started as the first generation of believers and then were committed to passing that on to their children.

Anne: That’s so exciting for your listeners, Nancy, because they may be the first generation.

Nancy: That’s right. They can start a whole new line.

Anne: Absolutely. There are not only forty that have come from Ray and me that are all walking with the Lord, except the little toddlers that are pre-Christians, but also, there are an even hundred now of my parents’ living descendants, and they are all either in ministry or in very active Christian service.

Nancy: This is the greatest means we have of evangelizing the world, to bring up children who have a heart for God. And it really is possible.

Anne: This is the way to do it. Disciplines of the home, that’s where it all begins.

Nancy: And you talk about a couple of drastic “don’ts” as it relates to building a home for God. One of those in particular just goes against the whole culture today. You say, “Don’t divorce from now on, whatever your past.”

Anne: This means there are people listening who have divorced in the past, and I just love the thought that God is the God of new beginnings.

They can’t go back and fix yesterday, so they have to start where they are and ask God to forgive their sins, which He does when they receive Christ. And that shed blood on the cross is ample to take care of all the divorces and all the baloney of past days.

But wherever they are right now, especially you who are believers, you must keep falling in love with that person that your husband becomes. You keep changing. You change; he changes. And you fall out of love, and you fall out of love, and you fall out of love. So what do you do? You just simply say, “Charlie, I take you all over again (at least in your heart) to be my lawfully wedded husband, to have and to hold from this day forward.” You have to keep recommitting yourself to this person who has changed.

Nancy: Even though he may not even be a believer, he may not have a heart for God, and there may be a lot of tension and pressure in your home, but the way to deal with it is not to take the escape route.

Anne: Oh, no. This is a very extreme illustration, but then there are a lot of extreme situations these days. Ray and I have dear friends. He was a drinking, womanizing, no-good for thirty years of their marriage, and Mary simply was patient. She just hung in with him. Sometimes Mary would call Ray, her pastor, and they would go from bar to bar looking for him. Then they would practically carry him home.

After thirty years, he accepted Jesus, and from then on, they both lived a long time. Those last years of their marriage, he treated her like a queen. He was so thrilled that she had not given up and divorced him, and there wasn’t anything good enough for Mary.

I just see how the legacy that they left was not of a divorce, but it was something that finally turned out good, and the children remember that after all was said and done, at the end of the day, they were a couple in love.

Nancy: And yet so many Christian counselors and even, sadly, some pastors today, would have said to that woman, and you can sure find books in the bookstore, or somebody to tell you, “You shouldn’t stay with that man.”

Anne: First Corinthians does say that if he insists on leaving you because you’re a believer or because he’s unfaithful, if he will not stay, let him go, but if he will stay, though he is a bum, she should stay with him for the children’s sake because then they have more of a chance to be sanctified instead of ungodly.

Nancy: The Mary, the woman you described is such a marvelous picture of the love and grace of God toward us and the faithfulness of Christ to us. He is our Bridegroom, and we are often a faithless, adulterous Bride. But His love is consistent. It’s unconditional. He is loyal. He keeps His covenant. He is a covenant-keeping God.

And the woman who is willing to stay in that marriage against all odds, this woman will find the grace of God because she is representing and illustrating the heart of Christ, not only to her husband but to a watching world that so desperately needs to see what God is like.

Anne: Yes. So if you have that kind of a husband, listener, take a look at 1 Peter 3, verses 1–5. That will tell you how to live with this man when he’s not a perfect husband. He may be saved, maybe unsaved, but if he’s giving you trouble, 1 Peter 3:1–5.

Nancy: And what does it say? It goes back to this matter of beauty, talking about a woman having that internal heart beauty of a gentle and a quiet spirit.

Anne: It does, and that’s what will change her husband. God will use it. She can’t do it. God does it. But it’s through her being the kind of woman that she needs to be.

Nancy: Well, that’s my friend Anne Ortlund in a conversation we first aired in 2004 here on Revive Our Hearts. Anne went home to be with the Lord just a few weeks ago, and she truly left an amazing legacy of investing in her children and encouraging other women in passing the baton of faith on to the next generation.

Now as Anne has gone on to be in the presence of the Lord, I’m asking the Lord to raise up many, many more women like her, women who will say, “Building God’s kingdom is more important than my comfort and my plans,” women who will say, “I want to be part of passing the baton of faith to the next generation.”

In that conversation, Anne showed us the beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit. She showed us some ways to build strong marriages and the ways a wife can affirm her husband and encourage her children.

Well, I’m so encouraged when I hear stories of younger women who are learning and applying these truths. Last month our team talked with a younger couple named Andy and Beth. Their story illustrates many of the truths that Anne has been sharing. Beth came to know the Lord after she and Andy were married. It took her a while to start to understand the concept of a gentle and quiet spirit.

Beth: Growing up, I learned that the wife was supposed to be the controller. My mom was a very hard worker, so that was my pursuit in life—just to be a hard worker and lead my family and tell my husband what to do.

Nancy: Andy was open to hearing about things of the Lord, but conflict at home was a big stumbling block for him.

Andy: There was a lot of arguing and arguing in front of the kids. It was very hard.

Beth: I think it pushed him not only away from me but even away from our new pursuit of God.

Andy: I remember a lot of times just being glad to go to work.

Beth: I would say that I loved God, but I was not loving Andy, and so I think he got a wrong picture of who God was through me.

Andy: I wasn’t sure if there was hope. I hoped things would change.

Beth: I was listening to a broadcast, and Nancy was talking about the white flag of surrender. Submissive was not a word that went over well. I knew what it was, I thought, I guess, until I really started listening to the program. After the first few times that I listened, I couldn’t stop. So it was just encouraging. It was radically changing—just in my thought process.

Kimberly Wagner was on the program, and I listened to that whole week, and that’s when I really went to him and apologized.

Andy: I could tell that it was definitely from her heart, and I was very thankful because it made me feel like she did care about me.

Beth: I remember sitting down as a family, and I just told him I was very sorry for not respecting him, for not submitting to him, and I apologized to the kids. I told them it was not okay for the way that I treated him in front of them.

Andy: It made me want to change, too, to be a better husband and better father. It’s freeing to know, yes, I’m going to make mistakes, but my wife is beside me. She’s not there criticizing me. She’s encouraging me to continue to lead and make the decisions.

Beth: I had felt God placed it on my heart to give to be a Ministry Partner. After True Woman 2012, I thought, I have to. This has been such a life-changing experience for me that I have to support other women to be able to have what I have received from the ministry. So at that point I went to Andy, and we decided to become Ministry Partners.

Andy: If God had not used Revive Our Hearts, I just don’t even want to think about where we would be.

Nancy: Our team has captured Andy and Beth’s story on video. Visit ReviveOurHearts.com to watch their story. I’m so grateful for this reminder that God still provides hope for couples whose situation seems to be hopeless. I’m thankful He is using Revive Our Hearts day after day to speak to women like Beth. And He uses a lot of listeners like you to help make this ministry possible.

Beth was able to hear this program thanks to listeners who support Revive Our Hearts financially. You know, there are a lot more families like Andy and Beth’s who need to discover freedom and fullness and fruitfulness in Christ. And you can help Revive Our Hearts reach those women by making a year-end gift.

Now is a great time to do that because some generous friends of the ministry will match every gift given to the ministry between now and the end of December up to $530,000. That means your gift at this time will be doubled.

Day after day we trust the Lord to meet all the ministry’s needs. So over these next weeks, we’re asking Him to speak to listeners who will joyfully give and partner with us. So would you consider helping us meet this matching challenge?

Your gift will help us continue our current outreaches and it will accelerate the movement of revival and biblical womanhood throughout the year ahead. For example, you’ll be helping us expand the new Spanish ministry, explore translating the program into new languages, and speak to more teens and young women.

So would you ask the Lord what He would want you to give as Revive Our Hearts prepares for a new year of helping women discover, embrace, and delight in Christ and in His plan for their lives?

To make a donation by phone, you can call us at 1–800–569–5959, or visit us online at ReviveOurHearts.com.

Leslie: Thanks, Nancy.

Well, it’s so easy to get caught up with what’s happening right around you that you miss some of the exciting things the Lord is doing around the world. I think you’ll be encouraged when you hear about some of the big things God is doing in the Spanish speaking world. That’s Monday on Revive Our Hearts.

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