Getting to Know Nancy, Part 2

Leslie Basham: What comes to your mind when I say the word "revival"? Today on Revive Our Hearts, Nancy Leigh DeMoss will help us define what true spiritual revival is. Bob Lepine, the cohost of FamilyLife Today, is our guest in the studio, and he's helping us get to know Nancy and to understand her "heart for revival."

Here's Bob.

Bob Lepine: You may have also heard Nancy speak in women's conferences or other meetings all across the country. You may have heard her on radio programs like FamilyLife Today, where you have been a regular guest. I think anyone who has heard you speak knows that one of the messages that you always come back to is the need both personally and corporately for there to be a spiritual awakening in our culture today.

When I say personally and corporately, we need to experience that kind of awakening in our own hearts and lives and then the church as a whole will experience that as many people respond to that work of God.

Nancy: I looked around and saw that so many of the believers that I knew in our church and in my Christian school, kids I went to school with, were "enduring" Christianity rather than "enjoying" Jesus, its author. This was troubling to me then, as probably a twelve- or thirteen-year-old girl. Somehow I came across some writings or some accounts of how God had moved in the history of the church to quicken and awaken the church so that they had a new passion for Christ and a new effectiveness in taking the gospel of Christ out into a lost world.

I read some of these accounts about the great awakenings in our nation's history and how the fear of God and the power of God had come in a great way upon His people and impacted an entire culture. I can remember reading also in the Book of Acts, the account of Pentecost and what happened when the people of God were filled with the Spirit of God and began to live that life out in the secular community. As I read these accounts, something was quickened in my heart and I remember thinking, What's gone wrong?

I knew that God hadn't changed, but obviously we were not enjoying today, most of us, personally and certainly not in a corporate sense, the kind of power of God, the fullness of His Spirit that was true at seasons in our nation's past. This set me on a quest, which has been a lifelong burden and passion to say "Lord, would You do it again?"

I know that God is able in our day to move as He has in times in the past of our nation's history and in other parts of the world, and as He is moving today in other parts of the world. So many times we, as believers today, are operating in our own steam in the energy of the flesh trying to develop new programs, to motivate people, to get people to be spiritually productive.

It's really consuming a whole lot of energy but without necessarily a whole lot of fruit. I look back and realize that there are times when God chooses to reveal His glory in a new way. When the manifest presence of God is known and experienced among His people, then the impact that takes place in the lost world is astounding! This set me on a burden to believe God for Revival in our day.

You can't bring back to life (and that's what the word "revive" means—to bring back to life) something that never had life in the first place. So my burden is that within the Church, within my life as a believer and our lives as believers, that we would allow God to bring us back to that place of first love where Jesus is preeminent in our lives.

You know for so many of us, "Jesus First" is a lapel pin or a slogan or a bumper sticker. It's anything but the reality of our lives. I think what God is wanting to do in our day in the church is to reorient us so that we have a 180 degree turn away from ourselves and toward Christ: loving Him, submitting to Him, letting Him really be the LORD of His Church. When that happens, then others will be drawn to the Christ that right now we have to twist their arm to have an interest in.

You see, I'm in the grass roots, in the trenches out there with women who are attending these churches. Women who are kind of the "cream of the crop" who would come to these revival conferences we do. I ask them in each of these conferences to turn in a prayer card and tell us how we can pray for them. I wish our listeners could read some of the kinds of requests that women turn in, not by way of exception, but more as the rule.

Women who are grappling with deep emotional and spiritual bondages, sin habits that they can't get victory over. As I listen to these women . . . and these are many of the women who are teaching Sunday school classes, singing in the choir, and leading Bible study groups . . . but when the truth is known, they are saying, "I am defeated; I'm discouraged; I'm disillusioned with Christianity." Many of them are saying, "I don't even know for sure if I am a Christian. I have doubts about my relationship with Christ."

Many of them are struggling with issues of basic obedience to the Word of God and to the Lordship of Christ. I'm saying we have to come back to the basics. Who is the Lord? Who is the authority in my life? And surrender ourselves to that.

Bob: It's been interesting for me to be a part of the process here in these early days. As you meet together with twenty or thirty women and teach the Scriptures, we'll record that for later use on Revive Our Hearts. But oftentimes it's not the recording that is the focus, it's what God is doing in that room, in the lives of this handful of women who have shown up that day.

Nancy: We have seen so many precious victories that God has won in the hearts of many of us who have been gathered in that little room here in Little Rock, Arkansas, recording for these radio broadcasts. Of course, now my prayer and our prayer is that God will take what has happened in that room and will allow us now to share this by means of radio with women in their home, their van, perhaps in their office. The truth that we have been enjoying and responding to will become a part of their way of thinking and their relationship with the Lord.

Leslie: Call us and ask for your free copy of A Biblical Portrait of Womanhood. Our number is 1–800–759–4569.  When you call, you can also ask for our free newsletter, which will help you get to know Nancy and this new radio program.

You can also find information on all Nancy's books and tapes on our website. The address is: ReviveOurHearts.com. And you're always welcome to write us.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss has a passion to see women come to know God in more intimate ways. Tomorrow we'll hear about some ways God has uniquely equipped us as women to help build His Kingdom.

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