From Spiraling to Surrender

Dannah Gresh: Here’s Mariah Halvorsen.

Mariah Halvorsen: If it is, “Christ in me and no longer I who live,” what does that mean? “I still have this breath in my lungs, so I will actually do anything for you, Lord!”

Dannah: Welcome to the Revive Our Hearts podcast. It’s December 12, 2023. I’m Dannah Gresh, and our host is the author of Born a Child and Yet a King, Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth. 

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: What sound effect would best describe the level of fruit bearing in your life? Are you like the fruitful tree described in Psalm 1? It’s planted by streams of water [sound of birds twittering in the trees], and it yields its fruit in its season [soft flowing piano music and the sound of rippling water]

Or are you more like the plant described in Jeremiah chapter 17, a shrub in the desert? Hey, Rebekah [a Revive Our Hearts tech], what does a desert sound like [the piano music stutters, descends into a discord, slows and stops] ? Can you find a sound that’s really dry and sandy? [A flat sound starts quietly, grows louder and diminishes and picks up the sound of tuneless clacking wooden sticks].

Jeremiah 17:6 goes on to say that this shrub shall “not see any good come.” This person will “dwell in the parched places of the wilderness, in an uninhabited salt land.” Well the truth is, we all start out as shrubs in the desert.

The young woman we heard from yesterday knew her life was useless and dead. Mariah grew up in a loving Christian home, in a good church. But our family background, our church background can’t save us. She shared yesterday that as soon as she was away from home, she headed straight down a road to addiction, identity crisis, and panic attacks.

But, praise God!, we’re about to hear how God’s Spirit breathed life into that dead soul. And there’s a really fun PS to Mariah’s story, too. I’ll share it at the end of today’s program, so be sure you stay tuned for that.

Now, let’s listen. Here are Brent and Lisa Halvorsen, who serve on the staff at Revive Our Hearts, their daughter Mariah, and Dannah Gresh, the cohost of Revive Our Hearts.

Dannah: Well, let’s get to the good stuff. I know that this girl who started to be angry at God when she was nine or ten years old . . . Then that just escalated and you got angrier and angrier at Him and pushed him further away.

You were conflicted because you saw fruit in your parents’ lives, you saw fruit in your uncle’s life . . . even after he died, you saw fruit from his life. You don’t know what to do with that, you’re spiraling down into sin, into distance, into anxiety. What changed it?

I moved to North Carolina after I had decided to end my engagement. My parents had moved there, so I was going to drop off all my personal belongings, pack a couple of bags and move to Budapest or something and find the best version of myself.

And I was going to do that in the most worldly, secular, “free” way that I thought I could and, you know, a couple weeks later COVID hit, and the world literally shut down! I felt like God was out to get me . . . again! I needed somebody else to blame, and so I blamed it on the Lord.

COVID was the first time in my life where I had to be still. We were in North Carolina, and it was super strict, too. There was no other option for me than to just be still . . . and I had just never, ever done that in my life.

I went out to dinner with one of my friends whom I had just met in North Carolina, and I was telling her a little bit about how I got there. She looked at me and she was like, “Wow, you must have been really far from God to have been living the way that you were living.”

And I said, “Excuse me?” Like, “Me? Far from God. He forgot about me a long time ago!” I left there and just could not shake that question: “Me? Far from God?” I left that dinner and once again tried to be like, “Okay, well, I will be close to God. I’ll be good; I’ll make right decisions.” And I couldn’t do it.

I again couldn’t do it. I was making all the wrong decisions. I remember just waking up on a Monday morning. It was the most mundane, routine, wake-up call. I remember laying in my bed. There was no music, there was no sermon, there was no nothing. It just felt like I was in God’s throne room, and it felt like the Lord was just standing right there with me.

I woke up and immediately just this fear of not my consequences anymore, not all the wrong decisions that I’d made, not the fear of my parents finding out, not the fear of me anymore.

It was just the fear of, “Oh, my goodness. I think I’m going to be separated from God for the rest of my life if something doesn’t change!” And it was like this total recall of all the things that did make me unrighteous. And then there was this just kindness of the Lord that was crushing me in the most beautiful comforting way than I had ever experienced in my life!

I called my dad and said, “You have no idea who I am. You have no idea the life that I’ve been living. I’m too far gone. I’m so scared!” 

And he said, “Mariah, if you have any desire at all to repent, do that! Your mom and I have been contending for you for years, so if you have any desire, turn now and repent!”

And it was like this spiritual understanding of what repentance actually meant, and it didn’t mean sitting in sorrow for yourself. It meant actually turning to God. So I stood there in my house alone, in the presence of the Lord, and verbalized the things I didn’t even know were in Scripture. 

I was asking Him, “Lord, I have nothing to offer You. I actually have nothing except for this rebellion, except for this hurt, except for this brokenness, and I need You to do what I cannot do for myself. Please give me a new heart that actually wants to love you.” 

And that moment was the death-to-life for me, because in that moment it was like I was finally breathing again. It was like this tombstone that was in my soul—since as long as I can remember—it was finally taken out and there was just peace. I had never experienced that before in my life—just this soul-deep peace, like Romans 5:1, “I am at peace with my God because He has done what I cannot do.” 

And from that moment, the chains of addiction and identity crisis and panic attacks were gone. They fell off of me! I love the Lord with all my heart and with all my mind and with all my soul. That’s when things started to change.

Dannah: Wow, God is good!

Mariah: Yes!

Dannah: Did the desire to drink completely go away? Did your tendency toward anxiety or panic completely go away?

Mariah: Yes, the desire to drink completely went away. It’s not even a thought in my mind anymore. The tendency to panic left, too. I would have night terrors. I would have panic attacks sometimes, during seasons, four or five times a day. 

It was just gone, because I had this assurance. I understood where the root of my panic attacks came from. It was the lack of assurance of, “Am I right with this Person, am I right with this Creator? Am I right with this Person who is going to determine eternity for me?” I finally had my answer that, yes, I was, because He sent His Son into the world.

Dannah: Jesus, He changes everything! How long ago was that, Mariah?

Mariah: That was about two years ago.

Dannah: Two years ago. What has happened since then? What does your life look like now? 

Mariah: How much time do you have? Oh my goodness! Well, since then . . . It was a beautiful season right after I said yes to the Lord, right after He opened my eyes. It was still COVID; it was still quarantine. So the world was still, still.

I was living alone at that time, and I just started asking the Lord so many questions. I just started asking, “Alright, teach me, Lord. Teach me who You are. What is this all about?” I finally opened up the Bible, like truly for the first time with new eyes to understand it. I just got in the Word for like eight months. I just read it cover to cover, over and inside-out and four times again. I was just discovering the Lord, and it was just so beautiful!

Dannah: Your countenance is totally different talking about this part of your story. You’re like smiling now, you’re glowy, you’re like, “Let’s talk; let’s do it!” 

Mariah: Let’s talk. This is the good thing! I’ll never forget the pit, but the Lord . . . that I’ll remember forever!

Dannah: Was your ability to understand the Word different? 

Mariah: Yeah, it was very different. It was like the Holy Spirit was just my teacher. It was like He was just giving me downloads of understanding. The more I read, the more I sought Him. It was like He was just giving me this understanding of things that made no sense before.

And it wasn’t for head knowledge. The first time I’d opened up the Scripture not for head knowledge, but to understand, “Who are you, Lord?” And when I know that, it’s going to help me to know who I am. Those have been two things that had sent me on the spirals. So, yeah, it was beautiful.

I also just started to run. I actually ran a marathon in that time, because I seriously just felt so free, so I was able to run a marathon. So in that time I’m thinking, Okay, if it is, “Christ in me and no longer I who live,” (Galatians 2:20), what does that mean? I still have this breath in my lungs, so I will actually do anything for you, Lord!

And obviously, the Great Commission came to mind. It crushed so hard on my heart. I had gone on a missions trip in 2019. I got the opportunity to go through my volleyball team at college. I honestly went because I thought it was going to save me.

I went to get a passport stamped to Barcelona . . . sure, why not? I went and was able to have a conversation with a guy from Russia who had never heard the name of Jesus. I’m sitting there, and I knew enough about John 3:16 at the time to give him the Sunday school bullet point answer. 

As I’m explaining this thing to him that he had never heard but I had heard a million times, I was so jealous of his reaction. He was floored. He was in such awe that somebody would die for him!

I had not even believed this thing yet in my heart. But I was telling him this and there was just this moment of alignment, this quiet little whisper in my soul saying, “This is what you are going to do for the rest of your life!”

And yet there was also this counterpart of deep, deep shame. When I did give my life to the Lord, I remembered that moment. and I was like, “I’ll do it! I will be the one to actually go to the ends of the earth. I will be the one to go to every tongue, tribe, and nation that has never heard, because Your Name will set people free, Lord!”

I just started getting into that headspace of, “What would it mean to sacrifice everything and do that?”

Dannah: Wow, so where are you headed?

Mariah: Where am I heading next? To a place that I can’t name, but to a place that people have said is hard ground, that people will never come to the Lord there because they’ve been gripped in a different religion.

But they are not a forgotten people, and it is a promise in Revelation 5:9 that people from every tongue, tribe, and nation are going to be represented. And so, I’m going to go to a people group that people have said will never know the Lord. I’m going to tell them about Him.

Dannah: From spiraling out to surrender! I want to ask you a couple of questions about your parents. What did they do well during this time? What did they do right?

Mariah: They never gave up! They never gave up on the Lord. They never once verbalized if they had any frustration or anger or resentment. They never said, like, “Lord, You said raise up a child in this way. What is going on? What is happening right now?”

They never once ever blamed it on the Lord. They just stayed faithful to living that life sold out to Christ. If I ever want to get close to the Father’s heart, I will just sit with my dad, because he is the picture of unending mercy and love and grace. I have an access to him that other people don’t have. There are just so many parallels to my earthly father that I can point to Christ.

And my mom, she would give anything for her children—over and over and over again, no matter what. I just saw that again and again. I could stomp on her foot. I could spit on the ground. I could betray her a hundred times, and she still just gave her love. She never once withheld anything good from me. That was such a picture of the Lord.

Dannah: That’s beautiful. I love it. 

Okay, Lisa, Mariah gets teary when she thinks about how you’ve sacrificed for her. You’ve been there for her. What did that look like to be there for her when she was drifting?

Lisa Halvorsen: She was gone for two years. She came home and went to another college for two years. I think a lot of the time, she was away when she was kind of beginning this downward spiral, and then when she would come home, she was fine.

She could put on a good face. She wasn’t disrespectful to us or didn’t want to hang out with her family or ran off and went out with people. She didn’t do that kind of stuff. She came home for one semester and lived with us, and then she was out again on her own.

So, it might look a lot different than how some people can describe the pain of seeing a child be so far away from the Lord. 

Dannah: You were not really aware of her drinking?

Lisa: No, we were not really aware of the extent of it anyway. I always know a lot more about the things that our kids have done than Brent does just because I’m a mom, and I find these things out. But no, I didn’t know the extent of it truly until she got saved and was able to explain it.

Dannah: And then it made sense. 

Lisa: And then a lot more made sense—when she was able to describe just kind of the depth of yuk that she was in. It also explains why she had such major panic attacks. She was in such turmoil inside that she just did not express this stuff out loud.

So I would say they were definitely just moments of sadness, of confusion . . .

Brent Halvorsen: . . . because it was subtle in some ways, because it was masked really well by Mariah, so we never really saw extremes. We knew there was just a lot of straddling, and it was like, “How long are you going to waver between two opinions?” 

Dannah: I want to talk about that, because she said you talked to her about how it wasl like she was living in two different worlds. That sounds to me like a really gentle way to confront her.

Brent: Yes, well it was, because I just saw in her a straddling, a struggle, a lack of clarity, a lack of conviction. She’s a dreamer a little bit. She loves adventure, so some of it was, we thought, Okay, eventually she’s going to come down to earth and get a little bit more practical with some things, and she’ll mature.

But there was such gray in how she was acting that we just didn’t know quite the extent of it. But, yes, I mean, we’re pretty direct with our kids. I was getting just so frustrated with Lisa because she would keep finding out things, and I was like, “Stop finding out things!” (I said it kind of jokingly.)

But it was a battle without a doubt, because things were so confusing and unclear. But she was definitely in two worlds. 

Lisa: I do think there were probably moments of me wondering if she would ever really get it. I would say I thought she got it some, but there just wasn’t a lot of fruit from what I thought she got. She just sort of rode the fence so much that I was just like, “I don’t know . . .”

I didn’t know she was as down and dark as she was, so that explains more why she felt such a strong need for the Lord to rescue her. But from what I could see, I was like, “She’s kind of got it good in both worlds here. She seems like she gets it enough, yet she can still kind of straddle this worldly fence, too, and look pretty put together. And I don’t know if she’s ever going to really get it, and give her life to Him.” 

Dannah: But she did! She did really get it, and the first thing she did when she got it was, she called her Dad. She says you were contending for her for years. What does that mean? To contend for your child for years?

Brent: Pray, plead with the Lord . . . almost be consumed. I just don’t want to rest from a circumstantial kind of standpoint. I mean, resting in the Lord, but I just don’t want to rest until there is conclusion here. “Conclusion” being that there is redemption, there’s restoration, there’s salvation. So it’s just like a constant pleading with the Lord that her eyes would be opened and that she wouldn’t get too deep into difficult things that would really cause a lot of heartache and stuff in the future. You’re hoping that some of that will be kind of minimized. 

But, yeah, I think it’s a constant, constant pleading with the Lord. And then, “Lord, give us insight, and what can we say, and how shall we say this to her?” Those kinds of things.

Dannah: Is she different?

Brent: I mean, just radically different! Totally different! Christ is in her, the hope of glory, joy, purpose, direction. Yeah, totally different; it’s amazing. We just praise the Lord!

Lisa: I just wonder how many other moms have their twenty-seven-year-old daughters live with them and don’t want them to move out. I love having her here now! 

Brent: Yeah, because there was a while where there was just tension, where when she was here I just didn’t feel like there was rest or peace. When she would leave I was like, “Alright, I’m just kind of glad at the moment, because I just know that we’re not lining it up, and this lack of alignment is really thick!” 

Dannah: You could feel it in the spiritual realm.

Brent: You could feel it.

Dannah: Yeah. Looking back, would you have done something different? Like, if you could go back and talk to yourselves as parents, what would you say?

Brent: That’s a good question.

Dannah: I guess for those who are in it right now and they’re saying, “Oh, that sounds like my daughter, that sounds like my son.” What advice would you give them?

Brent: For sure. Well, I think there was definitely a lot of . . . We always believed that it’s the Lord’s doing, He is the One that is going to have to change hearts. We were never necessarily fooled that, “Hey, just because we are trying to raise children who are going to hopefully love Jesus, that they’re 100% going to, like it’s guaranteed.”

I think we just kept hoping, we kept praying as the distance kind of continued to grow. It was like, “Okay, Lord, we’ve got to act, we have to get even more serious here about our communication with her or specific prayers, or whatever it is.” 

I think it was constant like, “God’s sovereign. He’s in control. This hurts, and it’s a little bit weird, but we know at any moment He can change her and grab her heart.” So,I don’t know how many more things we would do different, per se.

Two big things we talked about the other day . . . You say, “Well, I don’t know, maybe if I wasn’t a pastor,” where I was just giving up so much mind time to preaching and mind time and heart time to leading and counseling. 

But it’s like, “Hey, that’s stuff you’re called to do,” but it took up a lot of time. So maybe for me personally I may have been distracted sometimes, or maybe didn’t have the energy sometimes to drill a little bit deeper. I think that sometimes. [to Lisa] How about you?

Lisa: Yes, I have thought about this a lot, because we have four kids, and they’ve all kind of done their share of wandering a little bit kind of later in life, understanding their relationship with God in a different way than when they were younger.

So sometimes I think, I wonder what we could have done differently for this to take root at a younger age so they wouldn’t have had to go through such dark, twisted times to come to this realization. And I really, honestly, I don’t know.

Going back, I was a stay-at-home mom. I nurtured them most and was very involved in all of their lives. I read to them and all the things. But I think I would probably ask more questions about where they were spiritually.

We teach them a lot, we show them, we read to them, we go to church with them, they go to youth group, we talk about, “What did you learn in church today?” We asked those kinds of questions.

But when I hear Mariah say (and actually another one of our kids has said it, too) they didn’t really understand why they needed a Savior. They didn’t understand the sin part enough. It’s hard to explain to a nine- or a ten-year-old that you’re a sinful person and you need Jesus. We know that. They all accepted Jesus with words at a young age. We would explain it to them.

But I think if I were to give advice to parents, if they were to ask, Christian parents trying to raise kids in a Christian home, it would be to never, ever think that just because they said the words when they were five or six or seven, that the job is done.

Dannah: Yeah, and I think, too, just the whole asking-questions things is huge! We do find that we think they understand something, but when you stop and say, “Do you understand what it means to be a Christian?” you might find that they don’t have the language to say it.

Well, if they don’t have the language to say it, they probably don’t have it in their mind to believe it. You know, “Do you know what sin is? Have you ever sinned? What do your sins look like? How do your sins make you feel? Do you feel closer to God or closer to people when you sin, or do you feel far away from them?”

“Oh, yeah, well here’s where it says that in the Bible, and that’s why Jesus . . .” And you follow the trail of where they are. I think that is really good wisdom.

Brent: Yes, I think that’s so good, Dannah. The other thing we try to do sometimes, kind of connecting the dots . . . With me being in ministry, and of course the whole family was in ministry in many ways because of that, we didn’t try to overcorrect. Like, we’re never going to talk about the Bible because we just don’t want our kids to think that they have to be perfect, and they have to know everything about the Bible because they’re pastor’s kids.

We didn’t extremely overcorrect, but sometimes we overcorrected a little bit, where we tried to protect them. We didn’t want to just make them seem like they were always at church, even in the home. 

And so, that’s why I say sometimes if I wasn’t a pastor, maybe we would have used a little bit more of that energy to do even more, like, sit down as a family in the living room, let’s open up our Bibles, and let’s talk a little bit. Did we do that? Yes, I don’t want to make it sound like we didn’t do that at all.

Our home was saturated by, “Alright, let’s just try to be Christ-like.” I think that was a dynamic as well, but for sure, though . . . I remember preaching about this too, one time.I said, “Look, for our kids, I would rather that they see the sincerity of the love of God in our home rather than know who all the kings are, good and bad, in the Old Testament. I want them to see that Christianity’s real, that it works, that the love of God is powerful.” 

So I think, first and foremost, that’s what Lisa and I tried to show the most. I think like Mariah mentioned to us, when lightbulbs went on, that that love we showed her was so powerful.

Dannah: Mariah, what would you say to somebody who’s still spiraling, still running?

Mariah: I think I would tell them to read Psalm 116, that He has heard your voice, and He has heard your plea. And even if you don’t feel like you're crying out to Him, you are, because eternity is set in your heart, and you are made for a face-to-face relationship with Jesus.

One day you’re going to realize that you’re calling out to Him and He’s going to be right there, and He’s going to call you to Himself. He’s going to restore you, and there’s going to be nothing that He has not already decided to forgive or love you for. 

And Ephesians, maybe Ephesians 2, when I read that, that is what changed everything. Ephesians 2 is what honestly saved my life!

And you were dead in your trespasses and sins in which you previously walked according to the ways of this world, according to the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit now working in the disobedient.

We too all previously lived among them in our fleshly desires, carrying out the inclinations of our flesh and thoughts, and we were by nature children under wrath as the others were also. But God, who is rich in mercy, because of his great love that he had for us,made us alive with Christ even though we were dead in trespasses. You are saved by grace!

He’s not surprised. He’s just not surprised by anything. He factored all of the spiraling into the equation, and He still sent His Son!

Dannah: I love it! You are a beautiful testimony of what we dream of for women here at Revive Our Hearts, and that is, you’ve experienced the freedom of Jesus. He’s filled you with His Word and His Spirit. He’s filled you with passion, and now, you are fruitful! What a gift. I love it.

Mariah: Thank you.

Nancy: What an amazing God we serve! He can stop someone who is barrelling headlong toward destruction, turn her around, and not only point her in the right direction, but transform her life! He gives her purpose and meaning and a job to do. That’s what He did in Mariah’s life.

If there’s a son or a daughter in your life who’s where Mariah was at one time, if you’re the parent of a prodigal, maybe you’ve been crying yourself to sleep at night, longing for God to turn their heart toward Himself; then I know you were encouraged to not only hear from Mariah, but from her dad and mom, Brent and Lisa, as well.

I hope you won’t stop praying, stop trusting, stop pleading with the Lord to move on behalf of your prodigal. It doesn’t mean God is going to write their story the same way He wrote Mariah’s story, but you can trust that God is always at work in your life, in the life of your prodigal, even when you can’t see what He’s doing.

And Lord, how I do thank You for what You did in Mariah’s life, what a miracle it is, what a wonder! I know her parents still have not gotten over the wonder of that transformation. But how I pray that You would do this again in the hearts of many who perhaps are either listening to this episode, or they’re a mom or a dad, a grandparent, a friend, an aunt, a relative, a colleague, a roommate of someone who desperately needs to find life in Christ.

May we cry out to You on their behalf. May we plead with You. May we believe You. May we wait. May we persevere in waiting for You to do what only You can do in turning their lives, their hearts from darkness to light, from death to life! We pray it for Your sake, for the glory of Your great name, amen!

I told you there’s a fun ending to this story, and here’s the deal. That conversation we just heard was recorded in January of 2023 just before Mariah went to a closed country in the Middle East to serve the Lord there.

Well, in the months since then, God brought a godly young man into Mariah’s life. He traveled to where she was serving, he proposed, and just this past weekend, they were married! And so now there’s a whole new chapter that God is writing in the story of this young woman and her family. 

Both of them are deeply committed to Christ, so pray that the Lord will use them in powerful ways in the days ahead!

Dannah: Oh, I love that! And while you’re praying for Wyatt and Mariah, would you pray for Revive Our Hearts, too? Ask the Lord to provide for our needs and ask Him how He wants you to be involved. 

This time of year is crucial for us as we prepare for the coming year. We’re trusting the Lord to work in the hearts of listeners like you to give us just the amount of donations that we need here at the year’s end.

Your donation this month will be matched dollar-for-dollar, and that means if you give $10, the matching fund will contribute $10, making the overall donation $20. Your donation of $100 will be matched and become $200, and so on.

But we need to hear from you before the end of the year in order for the matching funds to apply. To give, visit ReviveOurHearts.com, or call us at 1-800-569-5959. Today’s the last day of our Celebrate the Season sale, so you can check that out, too at ReviveOurHearts.com.

Tomorrow, we’ll hear from another young woman who is now seeing God’s fruit in her life. I hope you’ll join us to hear Ashley’s story. That’s tomorrow on Revive Our Hearts.

Revive Our Hearts with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth wants to show you the freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness you can have in Christ.

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