Leslie Basham: Here is some of what we heard yesterday from twin sisters Ginger and Amy.
Ginger: I grew up learning to fight for my rights. I was like a bulldog, basically, a pit bull. I would go after it from different directions. Then I got married and I couldn't accept him loving me the way he did, because I'd never experienced that from an earthly man. My dad would call me stupid a lot, so I would tell Andy he was stupid. Then just one night I recognized my need. I repented and I trusted in Him. My life hasn't been the same since.
Leslie Basham: It's Friday, July 18; and this is Revive Our Hearts with Nancy Leigh DeMoss. Yesterday we heard how God began to transform the lives of two young ladies named Ginger and Amy. Each had come to know Him, but they had a lot to learn about marriage. Nancy is going to talk with them again today, and we'll start with Amy--remembering what it was like in her house growing up.
Amy: My mom is the youngest of five girls. All of the women--we pride ourselves in being very strong, very independent. All the cousins--the majority of them are women, too. So we're just a big family of women. We are just so fun to be around, if I may brag a little bit.
But the downside is that there is a very bad culture in not respecting some of the men that are in our lives. So that's the perspective that I'm coming from. I didn't like men. I really thought that they were just goofy. I didn't appreciate the differences. Their differences annoyed me.
So my sister graciously said, "Now Amy, we need to start learning about what it means to be a godly wife." We both were in this new season of life. We just got basically kind of thrown into this marriage thing. This isn't what my mind had created. I realized that I needed to do some work.
Ginger actually invited me to another Revive Our Hearts conference. I can remember one of the sessions that you spoke about was outlining a foolish woman. Me, being so prideful, thought, This isn't going to be for me. I'll just listen to this and take it back to some of the people that I know who are foolish.
I will never forget just a huge lump in my throat as she was going through this. The one specifically that really spoke to my heart and pierced my heart--if I may use a phrase that I've heard Nancy say a couple of times--"A foolish woman does not listen to correction."
I'm like, "Yes, I do. I do, too." I could not deny the fact that I was a foolish woman. Like I said, having a college degree and being in all the honor classes and all my life all the teachers saying, "You're the cream of the crop," and all that. And I'm thinking, Here I am, but I'm really foolish. So that was the beginning of a huge work that the Lord has done in my life.
From that conference on, my heart has been to be a teachable woman. Then my marriage started having a lot of difficulty because of my bulldog nature. I would just argue. Oh, my goodness, I could argue!
Nancy Leigh DeMoss: And that created some problems in your marriage?
Amy: Oh, my goodness, yes! My husband is such a wonderful man. He loved me through my problems. That's the best way I can explain it.
Nancy Leigh DeMoss: So what difference did it make as God started to change your heart?
Amy: The difference is that I've learned to appreciate my husband for his uniqueness. I'm learning to trust him, because I now understand God put the man as the head of the household. At first I didn't like it. I didn't understand it. That's why I didn't like it. Now I understand that God put the man as the head of the household. I am to be his helper. I now so embrace that. I found it such pure joy to help my husband.
Before I saw it as a subservient role. I saw it as lower class, if you will. A helper is not as glorified as the one that you're helping. That's not how I see it anymore.
Nancy Leigh DeMoss: Ginger, your marriage. How does your marriage look different than it did in those first years?
Ginger: More quiet. One of your video series on how to fall and stay in love with Jesus...
Nancy Leigh DeMoss: It's a series on the Song of Solomon.
Ginger: Verse by verse. I love it. God used that to show me He loves me. I had to find out who I was in the Lord and how much He loved me before I could even show that love to Andy, because it's His love through me that would love Andy. So after I got that series--and it was funny, because I had a video tape and Andy was watching it with me.
I've never seen my husband do this before, so I have to brag on you. He was jumping in the bed, literally, about the teaching you were doing. He was so excited that I had found a woman who was teaching the Word and who would teach it unashamedly--just the truth. How that changed was that I would trust God in him. So our marriage now is that we help each other and we pray for each other. We encourage each other.
The big thing on Proverbs 31 was that I had a tongue--a deathly tongue--that would tear him down with the words that I would say when we would get in arguments, about calling him stupid and not really being, "Okay, I trust you."
So we now pray together. We don't argue like we used to. It's not yelling anymore. It's respectable. I'm respecting him more as my husband and the authority and the priest of the home now. You wouldn't see what our marriage is now--it's a different marriage, because I changed.
Nancy Leigh DeMoss: If I could use a modern day way of looking at life, let me ask both of you: Which is the happier way to live? Some people would say if you live under the biblical way of being a woman--you've got to respect your husband, submit to his authority and trust God to work through him--some people would say, "That just sounds really miserable."
Amy: No, because that's more freedom. When you do it God's way, there is blessing. God desires to bless us. It's not easy and you can't do it on your own. The world's way, to me, leads you into more hurt, I think, than freedom.
Ginger: The way I describe it and explain it and the way that I've helped explain it to myself is our Creator created us as women. Our Creator created man as man. We have certain roles and certain inclinations, certain desires, certain tendencies as a woman. We're very nurturing. We're very caring. The world expects you to be selfish. As women, we are not selfish. We are created to nurture.
So if we do it the world's way, we are totally going against our Creator and His Creation, because we weren't created that way.
Nancy Leigh DeMoss: I'm about to burst into tears actually, because I'm thinking"¦Amy, you have now a little son. How old is he?
Amy: He is seven precious months.
Nancy Leigh DeMoss: And Ginger, you're expecting your first in several months. A little boy. And when I think of where God found you girls and how He rescued you and how He has brought the teaching of His Word into your lives and given you now godly husbands, by God's grace, you are starting a whole new family line.
Amy: That is the one thing that just gives me such hope and such joy--it's raising Elijah in a godly home. I can't wait to teach him the truth. I can't wait to sit down and memorize verses and just play Bible games and bring him up in the way of the Lord.
Nancy Leigh DeMoss: I have to tell you girls that several years ago, when God first put on my heart the burden for what has become Revive Our Hearts, I had kind of this mental picture--a vision--it was stirring in my heart--of God taking women out of the world's way of thinking and living and redeeming and rescuing and transforming by His grace their way of thinking, what they love, what they worship, who they are and who they are in their marriages and in their relationships and bringing about as I've said many times before a counterrevolution to go against the revolution that the world has brought about this last 50 years or so. I look at you two sisters and I say, "Lord, this is it. These are the seeds."
Ginger: I just really have to say that I really thank God and I'm very grateful that He placed your ministry in my life. You challenge me in ways that I don't like to be challenged sometimes, but I embrace those challenges because you point people to Jesus. You're like Paul saying, "Come follow me, as I follow Christ." I appreciate that and I appreciate your ministry.
Nancy Leigh DeMoss: Well, you girls are some of the most precious fruit and the reward of lots of labor. I'm so blessed. I'm so thankful. I want to pray for you and just thank the Lord for you.
Lord, as I look at these sisters and I look into their shining eyes and I see the heart of Jesus that You've put in them, I think, It's not my books. It's not my writings. It's not my conferences. It's the power of the Holy Spirit drawing them to Christ and transforming them from the inside out.
Thank You for stirring in them, for giving them a teachable spirit and a responsive heart. I pray Your protection over them from the evil one, from any darts that he would throw at them. He can't be happy that this is happening in them. But You are in them and You are stronger than the evil one. You own them now. They belong to You. So we claim them for You and pray Your protection over their marriages.
Thank You for Larry and for Andy and for the men that You're making them and how now You are going to use these women to be encouragers and helpers so that those men can become all that You made them to be.
Thank You for this precious little boy, Elijah, and Nathan still in the womb. Lord, we pray Your blessing and Your hand to be on those young men--that You would raise them up to be godly men, spiritual leaders in this generation that needs men who know how to walk with You.
Lord, would You do in tens and hundreds of thousands, and even millions, Lord, of women's lives all across this country what we have seen You do in Ginger and in Amy? May there be in our day, Lord, that revival in the hearts of women, so that You can be glorified and the world can see what a glory it is to follow after Christ and to live out the implications of the Gospel. For Jesus' sake we pray it with thanksgiving. Amen.
Leslie Basham: That's why we do what we do. Nancy Leigh DeMoss has been talking with two transformed women--Ginger and Amy. As Nancy said, we're hoping that this story will be multiplied in the lives of hundreds of thousands of women. Revive Our Hearts is committed to giving the next generation of women an authentic picture of biblical womanhood. We need your help.
The ministry that touched the lives of Ginger and Amy was made possible by the gifts of God's people--women just like you. If you believe in what we're doing, would you pray for the ministry of Revive Our Hearts? Would you ask God what He might have you give to help reach women with the truth of God's Word?
You can send your donation to Revive Our Hearts. Or give us a call at 1-800-569-5959. When you contact us, you can find out how to get a copy of the video series that Ginger and Amy referred to that features Nancy's teaching on the Song of Solomon. It's called How to Stay in Love With Jesus. Call 1-800-569-5959. You can get information at our Web site at ReviveOurHearts.com.
On Monday, we'll hear about being in love with Jesus. Nancy will begin a new series called "Here Comes the Bridegroom." We hope you can be here for Revive Our Hearts.
Revive Our Hearts with Nancy Leigh DeMoss is a ministry partnership of Life Action Ministries.
