Lift Your Eyes and See

Dannah Gresh: Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth says if we only look at what we see all around us, we have reason to be anxious.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: That’s why we’ve got to lift our eyes up and watch and see what God is saying, what God is doing, and look at everything else through the lens, through the grid of this Book, and of the character and the ways and the plan and the glory of God.

Dannah: This is the Revive Our Hearts podcast with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, author of Lies Women Believe, for May 1, 2025. I’m Dannah Gresh.

Has this ever happened to you? Say you’re looking for something, I don’t know . . . your keys or purse or whatever, and something else distracts you. In fact, you’re so distracted that you don’t even notice the thing you were missing, right in front of your face!

Sometimes, you and I can be distracted and not notice what God is up to. We need reassurance that He’s at work. Nancy’s about to show you where you can see that reassurance. 

Nancy was speaking to a gathering of friends, ministry partners of Revive Our Hearts last fall. She wanted them to be aware of what God is doing around the world. Let’s listen.

Nancy: I want to invite you to turn in your Bible—or just scroll on your phone—to the book of Ezekiel, chapter 47. The commentator pastor Matthew Henry (I call him my friend) said that this last portion of the book of Ezekiel may be the hardest part of the Bible to understand. So you might wonder why we're turning there this morning. We're going to ask the Holy Spirit to give us understanding and eyes to see what God has for us here. 

Ezekiel 47 is an Old Testament passage that describes, I believe, what God is doing in our world and in our day. It's an amazing work. It's a powerful work for those who have eyes to see what He is about. 

Now, Ezekiel, you will remember, was a priest along with thousands of other Israelites. He had been transported from Israel to Babylon, and he had been in exile there in Babylon for twenty-five years. That was their new home.

Throughout the book of Ezekiel, this priest was given multiple visions of God—many of them were messages of judgment, others were messages of hope. You'll see those threads of judgment and salvation running all the way through Scripture. My Bibles are marked with judgment / salvation. Where God is judging, He is also bringing salvation. Where there is salvation, there is also judgment for those who refuse His gift of salvation. So we have both of those threads running through this book. 

In the last several chapters of the book, chapters 40–47, if you're not familiar with it, it can seem a little strange. But the prophet is transported in visions to Jerusalem. He's been gone from Jerusalem for a quarter of a century, but he goes. He's taken in these visions to Jerusalem, where their beloved temple had been destroyed. He is given a heavenly tour guide, probably an angel, possibly Christ Himself. And this tour guide shows him a future restored temple. There has been judgment. There is hope. there will be mercy and salvation.

So, he's going to see this future restored temple in these visions. When we come to chapter 47, this is the end of that tour. Ezekiel was given a vision of water flowing out from the temple. It begins, as we'll read in just a moment, first just a trickle, barely noticeable, but eventually it becomes a great river. 

Now, before we look at the text, let me just point out that this is not the only time a river is mentioned in Scripture. That is a thread that runs through all of Scripture. Scripture begins with a river. You remember Genesis chapter 2. It says: 

A river flowed [That's what rivers do. They flow] out of Eden to water the garden, and there it divided and became four rivers. (v. 10)

We could do a whole message just on that precious, beautiful verse from Genesis 2. So the Bible begins with a river, but the Bible also ends with a river. Revelation 22 the last page of Scripture: 

Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city. [This river produced fruit and it produced life.] On other on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. (vv. 1–2)

I want you to remember that as we come to Ezekiel 47 in just a moment. So in this passage, the prophet is given a vision of a great river that produces life and fruit and healing and blessing, the river of God. 

Now, some Bible scholars believe that the river here in Ezekiel 47 is that this vision is strictly literal, that it describes physical and geographical changes that will take place when Christ comes to reign on the earth. There are others who believe that this vision is totally symbolic of spiritual realities.

I wouldn't compete with any of those scholars, but I think it's probably both, because as sin’s curse is removed, with the return of Christ, this earth will be restored and it will become prosperous as we have a new heaven and a new earth. 

Here's what we know (and this is what makes me think that it is both). Water in the Scripture is often associated with the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Remember how at Pentecost, the Spirit of God was poured out on the Church, and from that point on, the river of the gospel began to spread throughout the world, and that river continues to get deeper and deeper today as the Spirit is moving in hearts and homes and Zoom calls and churches throughout the World to bring gospel blessing and fruit and growth.

So Lord, as we open this passage, I pray that You would open our eyes, open our hearts, give us the vision from Your Word that You would have for us today. May we see it with eyes of fresh wonder, for the glory of our great God, and for the joy and hope of Your people. We pray in Jesus’ name, amen.

Ezekiel chapter 47, verse 1. Let me read it, and we're going to walk through the first part of this passage. I'll just read it 2 or 3 verses at a time. Let's just soak in it. Let's meditate on it and see what God is saying here. Verse 1, Ezekiel 47. 

Then he brought me back to the door of the temple, and behold, water was issuing from below the threshold of the temple toward the east (for the temple faced east). The water was flowing down from below the south end of the threshold of the temple, south of the altar. Then he brought me out by way of the north gate and led me around on the outside to the outer gate that faces toward the east; and behold, the water was trickling out on the south side. (vv. 1–2) 

Now, a few things we want to notice about this, the beginning of this vision. First of all, where did this trickle of water begin in Ezekiel’s vision. Well, it began at the temple. Keyword there. It began near the altar. For us as New Testament believers, the temple represents the presence, the glory of God, our connection to God, our relationship with God. And the altar, of course, represents the sacrificial work of Christ on the cross.

The presence of God and the saving substitutionary atonement and death of Christ. For us, that is always the starting place for the work of the Holy Spirit in our own hearts and in our world. 

Then we see that at first this water was just a trickle . . . but it didn't stay that way. Look at verse 3.

Going on eastward with a measuring line in his hand, the man [this heavenly tour guide] measured one thousand cubits [Now we don't deal with that, but that's about a third of a mile. So he measured about a third of a mile], and then [he] led me through the water, and it was ankle deep. Again he measured one thousand [another third of a mile], and led me through the water, and it was knee-deep. Again he measured one thousand, and led me through the water, and it was waist-deep. (vv. 3–4)

So we’ve got just a trickle, then ankle deep, then knee deep, then waist deep, and then verse 5: 

Again he measured one thousand, and it was a river that I could not pass through, for the water had risen. It was deep enough to swim in, a river that could not be passed through.

So what began as a trickle of water flowing out from the temple from near the altar gradually got deeper and deeper until it became a river too great, too deep to walk through. 

Somebody mentioned the other night when we were talking about this passage, that they had been to the headwaters of the Mississippi River. I've never been there. I'm not even positive I've seen the Mississippi River. I probably have. Maybe I didn't know that I was looking at it. I'm not big on geography. But that river flows from Minnesota down to the Gulf of Mexico, about two thousand three hundred miles. It reaches about one hundred feet deep in New Orleans, but the headwaters that flows out of Lake Itasca in northern Minnesota, it's shallow water, just knee deep. You'd look at this and you'd say, “That's not a mighty anything river.” But that trickle, that shallow water flows and ultimately becomes the mighty Mississippi. Just to give us a picture of what begins small can grow and become a deep river. 

Verse 6, this heavenly tour guide said to Ezekiel: 

“Son of man, have you seen this?” Then he led me back to the bank of the river.

“Ezekiel. Have you seen this? Are you looking?” That, I think, is one of the great key questions as we read the Scripture and as we meditate on the things of God—are you looking? Have you seen what God is saying? Have you seen what God is doing? Are you watching? Are we seeing what God is doing today in this world, in our world, in our lives, in our homes? Places where it looks so meek and meager and humble and small, but have you seen? Are you looking? Are you watching for what God is doing? 

 

If we're only watching what's on the news, we are never going to be encouraged. We're never going to be people of hope. We're not going to have joy. We're going to be anxious like the whole rest of the world, and there's a lot of reason to be anxious if you only look at what's going on in this world. That's why we've got to lift our eyes up and watch and see what God is saying, what God is doing, and look at everything else through the lens, through the grid of this Book, through the character and the ways and the plan and the glory of God. So he said, “Have you seen this?” 

What is God doing today? As I read this passage, I think of a series of events we've seen here over the years in Revive Our Hearts. In March of 2023, eight thousand women came together in Guadalajara, Mexico for Mujer Verdadera ’23—True Woman ’23. They represented thirty-five different countries, most of Latin America—South American, Central American countries, Mexico, of course—but others from Europe and other parts of the world. Thousands more were watching via livestream. It was amazing. 

I was there. Some of you were there. You just sense that this is a river. What God is doing here is amazing. He's doing a great work in the lives of Spanish-speaking women around the world. We just feel blessed to see, to watch it, to look and see what God is doing. 

I had a conversation recently with a leader of a ministry that is quite a bit larger than ours. He was telling me about the widespread impact and influence of Aviva Nuestros Corazones throughout Latin America, impacting other ministries. He was talking about how it has influenced what the ministry He leads is doing in Latin America. 

But here's what I want you to realize, what we're seeing today in the Latin world through the outreaches and the women and the river flowing through Aviva Nuestros Corazones, that river didn't start that way. It started as a trickle in the hearts of a few women in the Dominican Republic, some of those women are here with us today. 

Those women through a whole series of providential circumstances got into the presence of God—the temple. They experienced the life-giving power of God's Spirit and of His cross and His saving work and grace in their lives. And they said, “Yes, Lord, as God was speaking to them through His Word.” 

Then their lives began to touch other lives—their mates, their children, their relatives, their family members, other church members—and the work began to spread. And others said, “Yes, Lord, I want to be a part of what You are doing by Your Spirit, through Your Word in the hearts of women.” In time, the water that started as a trickle got deeper, knee deep, ankle deep, knee deep, waist deep. 

Their hearts, the hearts of these women in the D.R. were captured with a vision of what God might want to do. In 2008, over one hundred Dominican women descended on True Woman ’08, the first True Woman conference in Schaumburg, Illinois. We did not know what hit us. We had six thousand three hundred women there, but you knew the Dominican women were there because they were life. There was a river of the Spirit of life flowing through them. We could see what God was doing in them. That's where their hearts became captured in a fresh way, with a vision to see the Spanish-speaking women of the world flourishing as women of God. 

They said, “We can't keep this to ourselves. This isn't just about us. So they went back to the D.R. They prayed over a long period of time. They sought the Lord, and they began asking Him to send revival to the women of Latin America. 

Well, I'm skipping a lot of details, and I'm fast forwarding, just to give you a sense of how the river grows. In 2012, we met with a handful of the Dominican team at our home base in Michigan to launch Aviva Nuestros Corazones. We we prayed together. We talked about what this meant. It was still not a big thing at all. 

We gathered around a fountain. There are verses around that globe and that fountain that talk about the “glory of the Lord covering the earth as the waters cover the sea” (see Hab. 2:14). We prayed, and we worshiped, and we pled with the Lord, “Please send the water of your Spirit to wash over and through the hearts of these Your servants,” asking for the river of His Spirit to be unleashed throughout Latin America. 

There was still not much happening that you could see, that you could measure. We didn't even broadcast. We didn't have resources in Spanish. But we had hearts that were touched, that were filled with the Spirit of God and mighty faith. 

The next year that team began airing the daily Revive Our Hearts podcast in Spanish. Laura Gonzalez and Patricia Saladin are two women have a precious story of how God brought their lives together—amazing grace. They had been childhood friends. God saved them both, brought them together. They have pastor husbands and those two women, with now a host of others that they have discipled and nurtured, have been trusting God, praying, believing, serving in amazing ways, to give leadership and voice to this message. 

Well, they began airing the daily podcast in 2013, and the water kept getting deeper. I think at first they thought maybe it was going to be mostly the D.R. But the river didn't have bounds. It couldn't be limited. The water continued to rise, and today there is flowing throughout Latin America an increasingly deep, beautiful, precious, powerful river that is too deep to walk through.

 It now keeps us just as we always have been in a place before the Lord. We're watching. We're looking. What are You doing? What do You want next? What are You saying? And how do You want this to be stewarded and nourished well?

Several years ago, the water began to trickle in the heart of a missionary in Sao Paulo, Brazil, named Cindy Rast. She had been listening to Revive Our Hearts in English for years. The Holy Spirit put it in her heart to take this message to the women of Brazil. She began to pray and to share the message with others around her in 2019 before that river became even ankle deep, when it was still just a trickle. 

Cindy died after a four-year battle with brain cancer. From a human standpoint, it looked like maybe that was kind of it. She was the one who had, if I could change metaphors, who had carried the torch and had championed getting this message to the hearts of the women in Brazil. But the river that started in her heart continued to flow in the lives of a handful of Brazilian women that she had discipled and and shared this vision with. 

They said, “We've got to pick this up. We've got to take this message.” They had been looking to Cindy. Now they're looking upward and saying, “Lord, we're available. Use us. Do what You want. And that message has been spreading.

One of those women, Denise Deal. Where are you? Back here. She is with us, and she's a part of the leadership team of the Brazilian Ministry. I'm not even going to try and say it, because I'll butcher it. But we're so thankful. 

I've been with them. They want to see Brazil—hundreds of millions of people—reached with this message. That river is starting to get deeper. They are now podcasting the daily half-hour program every day in Portuguese, and the river is deepening. We pray that one day that will be a deep and mighty river in a country that is so dark, so needy of the message of the gospel. 

We're seeing a similar trickle in other parts of the world—many European countries, South Africa, Vietnam, Cambodia, Ukraine, Russia, and on and on. We're believing the Lord for these “tributaries,” these parts of the river, these waters to become a great, deep river of the work of God, flowing throughout the whole world . . . everywhere in the world.

Dannah: Once you know what to look for, you can’t help noticing the things God is doing. Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth has been talking about some of the ways we’re seeing that river growing deeper and wider through Revive Our Hearts. That’s part one of a message she gave to a group of Revive Our Hearts ministry partners last fall. 

Our theme for the month of May is “Let the River Flow,” based on that passage from Ezekiel chapter 47. 

Someone who knows a little about rivers is Martin Jones. Martin is the esteemed executive director of Revive Our Hearts.

Martin Jones: My wife, Helen, and I love to spend time in nature. It’s one of our favorite places to be. A morning cup of coffee on the back deck or a hike in the mountains is even better. The beauty of God’s creation is just something to behold. 

Oftentimes in our hikes we’ve seen rivers—many of them. Sometimes it’s a small stream, easy to step over. Sometimes they’re so big and powerful it just can’t be stopped. 

Dannah: Martin was there when Nancy spoke about Ezekiel’s vision of the river of God’s Spirit flowing from the temple into the desert, bringing healing and vitality everywhere it goes. 

Martin: As the Spirit of God comes to us, we experience abundant fruitfulness from the life-giving water that only He provides. So how about in the life of this ministry? Because of your partnership, the Word and the work of God through Revive Our Hearts is making an impact, maybe starting as a trickle, but flowing all around the world, advancing, and giving life to all it touches. It’s the work of His Holy Spirit. 

Dannah: If you’ve ever given to support Revive Our Hearts, you’re a part of helping the river of the Spirit reach hearts, both near and far. Recently we heard from a listener in Michigan named Brenda. She’s letting the river flow through her life. Here’s what she said:

Brenda Vos: I have been so blessed by Revive Our Hearts. I was prompted to get a group of ladies together to study the hospitality study, You’re Welcome Here. I had a sign-up sheet out at church, and there were about thirteen ladies signed up, which I was happy about. I thought that was a good size for my living room. 

Well, on the last day of sign-ups, that number jumped up to twenty-two ladies. (Which is typical for our church that people sign up on the last day.). So anyway, I am going to have twenty-two ladies in my home, and I’m very excited to start the study with the ladies. Thank you again for the way you have blessed me and my walk with the Lord. 

Dannah: Isn’t that great? Thank you Brenda. And thank you if you’ve given to Revive Our Hearts. You’re helping living water reach Brenda and those twenty-two ladies meeting in her living room, and many more like them. 

Our executive director, Martin Jones, has some exciting news to share about how the Revive Our Hearts portion of the river of God is growing deeper and stronger.

Martin: We sense He’s leading us to take some even bigger steps of faith. We’re not standing still. We’re moving forward, pressing into new opportunities as we enter into a six-year initiative we’re calling The Wonder of the Word. These efforts are stretching us beyond what we’ve ever done before, making it possible to impact our generation and generations to come around the world.

Dannah: Between now and the year 2030, we’re working to encourage you to fall in love with God’s Word—to behold the wonder, to experience the freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness of Christ as you read and study the Bible with Nancy. 

Nancy: It’s definitely something God is doing, not something we cooked up in some strategy meeting. Women across the world have been raising their hands, coming to us, asking to translate Revive Our Hearts materials into their languages. 

Martin: We never could have imagined how the God of the universe would use this ministry—a river, the power of the Spirit of God, giving life to everything He touches. Thank you for standing with us through prayer, through financial support, and may the Spirit be a never ending spring of living water in your own life. 

Dannah: Today’s the first of May, and we’re asking the Lord to provide $810,000 this month to cover our normal expenses. Anything we receive above that amount will be applied to that Wonder of the Word initiative Martin and Nancy were just talking about. 

Well, you can be a part! To make a donation, go to ReviveOurHearts.com, or call us at 1-800-569-5959.

When you make a donation, we’ll thank you by giving you the opportunity to receive our set of Scripture cards. They’re “50 Promises to Live By.” Ask about the Scripture card set when you contact us at ReviveOurHearts.com or 1-800-569-5959.

Tomorrow Nancy will share more observations about that river from Ezekiel chapter 47. I hope you’ll make plans to listen to Revive Our Hearts.

This program is a listener-supported production of Revive Our Hearts in Niles, Michigan, calling women to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.

All Scripture is taken from the ESV.

*Offers available only during the broadcast of the podcast season.