Markers of Encouragement

Sound: Car starting . . .

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth (on radio): What is slander, exactly? It’s bearing false witness with the intent to harm another person or their reputation.

Dannah Gresh: Kathleen Hildebrand was driving one day when she heard Revive Our Hearts on the radio.

Kathleen Hildebrand: It was about the topic of slander.

Nancy (on radio): Now, slander is a serious matter to God. Exodus 20:16, “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.”

Kathleen: It was just as I was pulling into the parking lot and Nancy said, “I want you to stop—” and I was stopping the car . . .

Nancy (on radio): NAnd if God’s Spirit has brought conviction to your heart . . .

Kathleen: “If you need to repent from any slander . . .”

Nancy (on radio): N. . . conversations or situations, would you just agree with God?

Kathleen: I just broke down in weeping and realized . . . a conversation came to me, just the day before, in our backyard with one of our older sons, that I had slandered someone else’s name.

I knew it. I couldn’t deny that I had slandered. When I went to apologize to my son the next day, I said, “I just learned about this word, ‘slander.’ I know I slandered this person’s name.” 

And he said, “I know, Mom.” 

I said, “Will you forgive me?”

Dannah: The series Kathleen heard was taught by Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth on her book Adorned: Living Out the Beauty of the Gospel Together. Kathleen wanted to learn more, so she ordered the book. After she read it, she told her pastor’s wife . . .

Kathleen: “This is the book we’ve been looking for on biblical womanhood,” because no one talks about biblical womanhood.

So we looked at each other, and we started plotting it out. We created a Bible study around Adorned.

Dannah: Kathleen has done the Adorned study many times since then, and she says it transforms women’s lives.

Kathleen: If it transforms one woman’s life, and then we are in contact with other women, we can trickle over and they see God at work in our lives. You can’t put a dollar figure on that.

Dannah: But the women that Kathleen teaches aren’t the only ones who learn from the studies.

Kathleen: I’ve learned new things every time I do it.

Sophron is chapter eight in the book, and it’s probably my favorite. It’s about self-control—using God’s Word to help us get control of our emotions, our words, our actions.

Dannah: Hey Nancy, do you remember teaching about having a sophron mind?

Nancy: I sure do, and it’s one of the most personally convicting topics I’ve ever taught on. In fact, I’m still asking the Lord to help me have a sophron mind.

Dannah: Well, you know what? So is Kathleen.

Kathleen: Having it on our minds so much more. It just got to be kind of a way of talking, using sophron as an example. Like, “I wasn’t careful there.”

So I started a text ring with our daughters and daughters-in-law so that we can just encourage one another. Then our son Daniel named our text ring between the girls “The Sophron Squad,” because I talked about sophron all the time! And when this conference came up, I got the tickets for our three girls. Our daughter said, “We should make T-shirts, and you can show Nancy we’re part of the Sophron Squad!”

Dannah: Nancy, I can just imagine you being up in the middle of the night studying and preparing to teach on the sophron mind. I bet you had no idea that a group of women would be wearing that phrase on their T-shirts!

Nancy: You’re right! In fact, when I saw Kathleen recently at the Revive ’21 conference, she had that shirt on. It was so fun to see how this concept has become such an important part not only of her own thinking but of her discipleship of younger women. 

Speaking of being up in the middle of the night studying and preparing to teach, that happens to me not infrequently. Sometimes I’m struggling over the messages, feeling like the pieces just aren’t coming together. Then I think of those loaves and fishes that Jesus took. He broke them and blessed them and multiplied them to feed a multitude. Over and over again God takes the little pieces that I have to offer, the little scraps of understanding, and He gives me strength and He speaks through His Word. He blesses those messages, and He uses them to feed women around the world. It never ceases to amaze me that He continues to use those messages in the hearts of women like Kathleen and her family. 

Revive Our Hearts is available to women around the world like Kathleen because listeners like you give and help make it all possible. Maybe you feel like all you can give is a few dollars—your version of loaves and fishes. But I want to assure you that your gift of any size makes a huge contribution to us and to this ministry, especially here during the month of December.

Dannah: That’s right. Every gift matters, and between now and the end of the year, every gift will be doubled. Now, it’s not exactly a miracle like Jesus performed when He multiplied those loaves and fishes, but there is some multiplication involved.

Some friends of Revive Our Hearts are offering to match all donations, dollar for dollar, up to a total of 1.4 million dollars. Wow! Your donation will help us start the new year off on a solid footing. It’s going to enable us to continue ministering to women like members of the sophron squad. So, we’d love to hear from you today. Just visit ReviveOurHearts.com with your donation, or call us at 1–800–569–5959. And don’t forget, your donation will be matched. Thank you so much for giving!

This is the Revive Our Hearts podcast with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, author of Adorned, for December 2, 2021. I’m Dannah Gresh.

Do you ever feel like giving up, throwing in the towel, hanging it all up, quitting? I think we all do at times. Today, Nancy is beginning a series called “We Do Not Give Up.” She recently shared the message you’re about to hear with a group of Revive Our Hearts ministry partners. She shared something that motivates her to not give up. It’s looking back and giving thanks to God for the ways He’s worked in the Revive Our Hearts ministry over the past two decades. Here’s Nancy.

Nancy: Twenty years of ministry together, calling women to be reconciled to God! As I’ve been reflecting on this significant anniversary and what it represents, I’ve thought about Joshua in the Old Testament, and how as he took the children of Israel into the Promised Land, there were battles to wage and impossibilities to face. But as they came to key moments in their journey, they would stop, and they would set up a memorial—stones of remembrance. You say, “It’s just rocks!” These were rocks that told a story.

The point was, don’t just rush on to the next thing, to the next chapter, to the next event. Stop. Set up these stones of remembrance so that in years to come, you and your children can be reminded when you see those stones, “That’s what God did there.” 

He said, “In time your come your children will say, ‘What do those stones mean?’” This is the heap of stones. “What does that mean?” “And you will tell them, ‘God met with us here. God fed us here. God provided water here. God defeated the enemy here. The walls of Jericho came down here. We crossed the Jordan River here.’” (see Joshua 4) Remind yourselves what God has done.

So over the past few months as we have faced this twentieth anniversary, twenty-year marker, I’ve been reminiscing. I’ve been setting up and revisiting stones of remembrance in my own heart by reading some old emails, old notes, journal entries in the different stages and phases of how God has led in this ministry. They’ve been sweet reminders of the history and the legacy that God has entrusted as a ministry, why we do what we do. Sometimes I just need to be reminded of that.

For example, some of these emails reminded me of the long, arduous process that was involved in choosing the name of this ministry. Somebody asked me this past week, “How did you choose the name Revive Our Hearts?” Well, it was a long story; it was months of deliberation. People who know me know that I take months of deliberation about what to have for breakfast. I mean, it’s just a thing about me. But we finally made a decision to call it Revive Our Hearts.

When that decision had been made, I sent an email sharing that with some of our friends and praying partners. I said to them, 

Revive Our Hearts is the watchword that has burned in my heart since I was a young girl, and my joy would be great if God were to use this program to fuel a groundswell of longing in the hearts of His people for a fresh outpouring of His Spirit in our day. 

That name is significant. It’s a stone of remembrance. It’s a prayer. It’s looking to God, it’s asking Him, “Would You quicken? Would You re-awaken? Would You revive our hearts? Not just change our behavior, but revive our hearts. Restore our first love, and then make everything we do be out of the overflow of love for Christ.”

Exactly one week before Revive Our Hearts went on the air for the first time, I was asked to speak at the Western National Religious Broadcasters convention that was held in San Francisco that year. I recently pulled up my speaking notes and I reviewed what I said that day. It just brought back memories. I was quivering. I was shaking. This was such a calling, and I was scared to death about the whole thing. But we knew that God was in it.

I told these friends gathered that day that we were believing God for a movement of His Spirit among women that would bring about true revival and reformation. We called it a counter-revolution to take back the ground that had been given over to wrong and worldly and ungodly and unbiblical philosophies for the past few generations.

Then I came across this journal entry. September 2, 2001 was the night before the very first day of Revive Our Hearts which launched on September 3, 2001. Let me just read to you an excerpt of what I wrote in my journal the night before that first program aired. 

Lord, I stand in awe of all You have done to bring this ministry to fruition, orchestrating all the pieces in a way we never could have done. Your provision has been incredible throughout this launch phase. 

Yet, this calling is so far beyond my natural gifts and abilities. My eyes are on You. Help me to rest in You and to serve You with gladness of heart and in the fullness of Your Spirit. I consecrate myself afresh to You. May I live only for Your approval. 

I ask for wisdom and supernatural enabling sufficient for this task. Sustain me, Lord, by Your Word, Your grace, and Your Spirit. I pray for the mark of Your presence, for Your anointing on our feeble efforts. And, oh Lord, would You be pleased to multiply the seeds we have sown and produce a great harvest of revival and righteousness in the lives of women? How I pray for a movement of Your Spirit that cannot be explained in terms of human effort.

Would You turn Your face toward us, cause it to shine upon us, and turn the hearts of women towards Yourself? And may You be magnified through this ministry.

You see, from day one—from before day one, as we were doing months of recording—our goal was to let the spotlight be on Christ. May we point people to Him. From the outset, our mission was to call women to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ. Those are words that meant a lot to us then, and they’ve come to mean even more as we’ve seen the Lord set women free from bondage, from captivity to bitterness and anger and sinful habits and the shame of their past and guilt and grief, and how God has set captives free. Freedom.

Then fullness. We see so many Christians today and it looks like they’re just enduring Christianity, but not enjoying their inheritance that belongs to them in Christ, the fullness of life in the Spirit. The world needs to see Christians who look like something you’d want to be. Fullness.

Then fruitfulness. Not just freedom and fullness for ourselves, but to be life-givers, to be reproducers, to multiply the gospel in the lives of others.

We’ve been calling women to find those things in Christ. We’ve been calling women to say, “Yes, Lord.” I’ve had this conversation with the Lord many times over the years. My life verse you’ll remember is in Luke 1 when the angel came to Mary and said, “You’re going to have a child. God’s chosen you to use you for a unique, special purpose,” and Mary said, “How can this be?”

The angel says, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, the power of the Most High will overshadow you.” And then Mary’s response—I love it! It’s what I want to be my lifelong response to God. She said, “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to Your word” (v. 36). She said, “Yes, Lord. However You want to use my life, whatever You want to do in me and through me, I am available. Yes, Lord.”

That’s the cry we’ve called women and all of us to be making: “Yes, Lord. Use me in whatever way you want.”

Day after day over these years, we’ve seen the power of the truth, the power of God’s Word, to set people free and transform their lives from the inside out. Many here could give testimony to how that has been true of your life. I surely could, of how the Word of God has been a transforming power in my life over these years.

Now, through all of these years there have been many what we came to call “Red Sea moments.” You come right up to the wall of water, the Red Sea, and the mountains on both sides, and the army of the enemy coming up behind you, and you say, “Help, Lord! We can’t do this!”

Often that Red Sea moment would be the night before a recording session, and I was going to be recording eight or ten or fifteen new programs the next day . . . and it wasn’t coming together. I would cry out to the Lord and sometimes to some precious friends and just say, “Help! I can’t do this.” But God loves to hear us acknowledge our weakness and our need, and He comes like an ambulance racing to the scene of a 911 call. He comes racing to the scene of our need to bring us His grace. You’ve been there. You say, “I can’t do this, Lord.” And He says, “But I can. I have grace for this Red Sea moment.”

I remember a year or two into the ministry, we were facing some significant challenges. We inherited 300-some radio times. This was right before Internet was really giving us a much broader audience. So we inherited those from Gateway To Joy, Elisabeth Elliot’s ministry, but we didn’t inherit the funds to pay for those times. Those were some stretching times. We’ve faced many other stretching times since then, but I remember particularly at that point praying, “Lord, I’m shaking. I know You called me into this, but could you just give me a confirmation? Would You supply an unexpected source of funding just to remind me that You’re the one who’s called us to this, and You’re going to provide for it?”

I think it was the next week when we received a check for 50,000 dollars. At that point we had never had anything quite like this. It was a bequest from a longtime, precious friend, a praying woman in my life, who had died a year earlier, and her estate was just being settled. I had no idea that she had left this for Revive Our Hearts in her will. But the Lord knew when we needed those funds and when I needed the encouragement from heaven that God was our provider.

Well, there have been many such Red Sea moments. Time and time again we’ve come, as you have, right to the edge of major hurdles and obstacles. We couldn’t imagine how we were going to press forward. But again and again and again God came through. He provided what we needed to cross the sea on dry ground. That’s the kind of God who has called us to Himself.

Here’s another marker, and then we’re going to open God’s Word and look at a passage together that’s been encouraging me in this season. 

In 2011 we celebrated our tenth anniversary. I’m big on memorials; I’m big on stones of remembrance. So I was asked that year, “Where would you like to see the ministry ten years from now?”

Here’s what I wrote. 

We want to expand our broadcasting, event-based, Internet, and publishing outreaches to see the following things take place.

Now, those of you who have been with us over these years, see how much growth you can identify over these last ten years in these areas. I said, 

We want to see a grassroots movement of Christian women who reflect the beauty of Christ, are filled with the Spirit, and are committed to live out the implications of the gospel in their homes, churches, workplaces, and communities. I want to see a movement of women who are praying fervently for true revival in the Church. I want to believe God for thousands of local church women’s ministries equipped and resourced to nurture and train godly women using biblical models and principles.

Listen, the discipleship of women doesn’t mostly take place with people listening to someone speak that they never know, will never meet, on some medium that doesn’t have a personal element. That discipleship takes place life to life, there in the life of the local church, and people who do life together and grow together and seek Christ together. So we want to train these women’s ministry leaders to be effective disciplers of women in their churches.

I wanted to see a strong Titus 2 component motivating, mobilizing, and resourcing older women to “teach what is good” to younger women. When we started this ministry, I would have considered myself a younger woman. I’m now the older woman, so this passage is precious to me. But what a beautiful thing it is to see older women passing the baton of faith to younger women, investing in their lives, pouring into them, discipling and nurturing them.

We wanted to see an integrated effort of biblically-grounded female authors and speakers to influence the lives and thinking of Christian women. God has done this through our blogs, through our podcasts, through our True Woman events. I love seeing these younger women who love the Word, who love Christ, who are anointed in the power of the Holy Spirit! When I am in heaven, these are the women (and those they will train) who will be carrying on this ministry into the next generation.

We wanted to see a more active presence in other languages, countries, and cultures. I said, “We particularly hope to see a full-orbed ministry to Spanish-speaking women, both in the U.S. and throughout Latin America.” Have we seen God do this? Amazing! Astonishing. But why should we be astonished? This is what we asked God for.

Then we wanted to see a host of women whose hearts have been revived, actively involved in ministries of mercy and compassion—in local, hands-on efforts and in ways that minister grace to needy and oppressed women around the world.

We’ve watched God give significant gains in each of these areas, and it’s all still unfolding. As Robert and I were talking about this yesterday, he said, “Honey, imagine what the thirtieth anniversary will look like,” as we look back and we see things that we could not have imagined God doing in this next ten-year period.

Well, the proclamation of Christ and His Word is reaching and changing women in every demographic—younger women, older women, married and single women, women in urban settings and rural settings, women of every ethnicity, women some of whom have been in church all their lives but have never personally experienced the wonder of God’s grace and love. They’re churched, they’re religious, but they don’t really know Jesus. 

There are others who have followed siren sound of feminist ideology and have found themselves deceived and in deep bondage. God is reaching them; God is changing their thinking and their lives. God has been reaching women in churches throughout Cuba who are using our discipleship resources. 

God is reaching women in Muslim countries who have never before been told, “God loves you, and you matter to Him as a woman.” I would have never thought our ministry would be effective in something that is as culturally different from the West as the Muslim world is. But we have in the Farsi language, for example, Persian women getting these podcasts in their language. They’re responding, and they’re saying, “Yes, Lord, I want to be His woman.”

God’s using this message and the truth to reach women like this one. She emailed us recently and she said, 

I’m losing my memory. The near-term things are forgotten quickly. Even lifelong memories are being forgotten. This saddens me; it scares me. It’s a very difficult experience. It’s agonizing when I see how my memory loss is affecting my husband and our relationship. 

Then God drew her to a resource from Revive Our Hearts. She read something that I wrote and she quoted it back to me. The question in that resource was, “What are you facing today that you cannot understand and are struggling to endure? You will experience peace as you trust His sovereign reign over this world, including every circumstance of your life.”

She closed by saying this in response: 

I am losing myself, but God will not lose me. God will remember me, and He will bring me into conformity to His precious Son. My hope is fixed, and though I may forget who I am, God will never forget me. I am His child.

It’s the power of the gospel. It’s the power of the truth. 

God’s reaching women like this woman, who texted me just two days ago. She said, 

I’ve been wading through some deep waters and crashing waves over the past year or so. From my husband’s open heart surgery, marriage issues, caring for my mom, navigating difficult sibling relationships, recent possible cancer discovery, extensive dental surgeries, a torn meniscus, the sale of our home, and more—intense stacking of big life issues, wondering, What is God up to? The heat is turned up and the refining process seems to be on. 

She went on to tell about how God is drawing her heart through these crises, through these challenges, to look to Him in a way she has not had to previously. 

These are the women that we’re reaching with hope and help and perspective day after day.

Now, the need for this message and mission was great when we launched twenty years ago, but it’s never been greater than it is today. I don’t have to convince you or give you many examples of how our culture has been swept up in thinking and practices that are diametrically opposed to God’s good, beautiful plan. The world believes that up is down and down is up. 

Your children and your grandchildren’s generations believe that is wrong and unloving to affirm what the Scripture affirms about sin, about salvation, about gender, sexuality, marriage, and family. These are hard days. These are hard times. But not too hard for God. Not too hard for His Word and His truth to penetrate and change the thinking of people that we will never be able to persuade, but God can do it.

I want to invite you to turn with me to the book of 2 Corinthians, chapter 4. In recent months I’ve been soaking in 2 Corinthians. As you know, I’ve been journaling through the Bible, so I parked in 2 Corinthians for the last few months. Throughout that book, Paul sets a paradigm for gospel ministry. But in 2 Corinthians 3 Paul talks about how we are ministers of a new covenant, the ministry of the Spirit who gives life, who transforms life, who brings freedom and glory.

Then he comes to chapter 4, which is where I’d like to have us read most of this passage over these next moments. Let me read verse 1, and then we’ll just unpack this passage together.

Therefore, since we have this ministry because we were shown mercy, we do not give up. (v. 1)

Paul says we have this ministry. What a wonder is the gospel of Christ, and what an incredible privilege and gift it is to be His servants and to point people to Him!

Paul says we have this ministry because we were shown mercy. Ministry is a gift that is not given to those who are more deserving or more spiritual than others, but to those who are utterly undeserving and have received mercy from God. As objects of His mercy, we are called to become instruments of His mercy in others’ lives. So Paul says, “Because we have this ministry and because we were shown mercy, we do not give up.”

I want you to notice that, because this is a bookend phrase at the beginning of this chapter and again at the end of this chapter. “Therefore we do not give up.”

The apostle Paul faced relentless attacks and opposition, but nothing could deter him from carrying out the calling that God had entrusted to him. You and I did not opt in to God’s calling to ministry, and we cannot opt out of this calling if and when we feel tired or discouraged or like giving up. Those who have received mercy—if you’re in Christ, that’s you, that’s me—those of us who have received mercy are to be instruments of mercy in others’ lives. The mercy we have received in salvation also sustains us as we serve the Lord and others.

Now, we’re going to be tempted to give up. We all are tempted at times to give up. I can’t count the number of times through these twenty years, and even twenty years prior to that of vocational ministry, how many times I have felt like throwing in the towel. I am not a natural optimist. I look at the glass more half-empty than half-full, and God has to send His mercy and His grace again and again and again to rescue me from focusing on myself and my weakness and move my eyes to focusing on His strength.

Ministry is hard. Serving others, serving your children, your grandchildren, in your marriage, in your church, in your workplace, it’s hard work being faithful to represent the gospel. There are a lot of reasons for that. 

Paul talks in verse 4 about how Satan has blinded people’s eyes to keep them from seeing the glory of God revealed in Christ. He has deceived them about what is right and true and good. We can’t convince people, we can’t persuade them to believe the gospel unless God removes those blinders. God has to give them eyesight to see the gospel.

So sometimes we get discouraged because people aren’t changing, they aren’t believing, they are not following Christ, they’re not loving Him. We say, “Can’t you see?” The answer is no, they can’t until God opens their eyes. But because God has persevered with us, we persevere on behalf of others. It’s His grace that gives us staying power day after day, year after year.

Think about that person, that family member that you’ve been praying for for years. You don’t see a change. You can’t knock it into them. You can’t force them to want it, but you can keep crying out to God, who is the one who opens blinded eyes and gives sight to the blind and gives life to those who are spiritually dead. Therefore we do not give up.

Dannah: If that sounds like a pep talk to keep you in the battle, that’s exactly how Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth means it to be.

We heard part one of a message she gave to a group of ministry partners recently. She reflected on the last twenty years of ministry with Revive Our Hearts, looking at some of the markers along the way, the stones of remembrance: different ways that God has shown Himself faithful through the years. She’ll finish her message from 2 Corinthians 4 tomorrow on Revive Our Hearts.

But don’t forget, your donation this month to support Revive Our Hearts will be matched dollar for dollar, and you can help us bring the timeless truth of God’s Word to bear in every season. To participate in our year-end matching challenge, just visit ReviveOurHearts.com, or call us at 1–800–569–5959. 

Thanks for listening today! How about we do it again tomorrow? And let’s ask God once again to revive our hearts.

Revive Our Hearts with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth is celebrating twenty years of calling women to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.

All Scripture is taken from the CSB.

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