Marriages are Being Healed

Leslie Basham: One of the joys of working at Revive Our Hearts is getting to know our listeners.

I was listening yesterday to Nancy DeMoss as I was driving around in my car. I often listen to her.

Dear Miss DeMoss, I just wanted you to know that God has used this ministry in so many ways.

Dear Nancy, I cannot truly share with you how God has used your Bible studies to revive my heart.

(man) Nancy, just a short thank you for boldly going where no one has dared to go on the radio before.

Words will never be able to express what your ministry tool has done for me, my husband, and my marriage.

Leslie: It’s Monday, May 14, and this is Revive Our Hearts with Nancy Leigh DeMoss. Revive Our Hearts exists to help women find freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ. Listeners are coming from all kinds of backgrounds so that process looks different for different people.

Dear Nancy, I want to thank you so much for your radio broadcast.

Leslie: It’s such a privilege to walk with our listeners as God works in their lives.

. . . to help or encourage me at just the right time. You see, I’ve been going through a huge . . .

Leslie: We’ve heard from women all around the world in all seasons of life, and the letters they write come through the office of a very special lady, Sarah Krause. She came to visit at a Revive Our Hearts taping session not long ago, and Nancy had a chance to talk with her.

Nancy: As soon as you talk, they’re going to know where you’re from, but just go ahead and tell us.

Sarah Krause: Well, I’m from Lincoln, Nebraska. [Laughter] Actually, no, I’m from Texas. We’re Texans—transplanted Texans.

Nancy: Who now live in Lincoln, Nebraska.

Sarah: Who now live in Lincoln, Nebraska.

Nancy: You are married to Franklin. Tell us a little bit about your family.

Sarah: I’ve been married for 32 years in December, and we have two sons, 26 and 27; and they are both married and chose godly, beautiful little brides. We have one grandson who will be a year old next month. Then our other son and his wife are expecting our second grandchild.

Nancy: And you don’t enjoy them at all [laugh].

Sarah: Oh, I know now why they call grandchildren “grand” children. [Laughter] They are just a delight.

Nancy: How did you get involved with Revive Our Hearts?

Sarah: Well, my husband and I were both raised in pastor’s homes, and we’ve known the Lord for a long time. The Lord has refined our faith and refined our walk with Him over the last few years. We were going through a time of transition and looking for what the Lord would have us to do and just where He would place us and place our lives at that time.

On ChristianCareerCenter.com, Back to the Bible had a job opening for a correspondent with Revive Our Hearts. When I read it, I thought, “That’s me. That’s me.” It’s what I felt like the Lord had prepared me for over the years. I could see myself doing correspondence, giving people hope, giving people direction.

I’m not a trained counselor, but I love the Lord God and feel like that’s the answer—that the Lord Jesus is the answer for everything in life. So I felt like that would be a great place for me to serve the Lord, to get to tell people about Him.

Nancy: Can you remember when you first saw that opening? What it was that made you think that it was the job you would be interested in?

Sarah: I think probably where it said “biblical correspondent.” I don’t know, in my early 30s, the Lord had placed a hunger and thirst in my heart and maybe it was just that I really realized where my hunger and thirst really was and that was in the Word of God. So I’ve been an avid student over 20 years of His Word.

I taught Bible in a Christian school for 5th and 6th graders for 12 years. I just guess I thought, “Oh, to be able to spend a day in God’s Word and tell people what it said and how it would relate to their life.” I just thought there couldn’t be any greater job. To be real honest, I think I have the best job at Revive Our Hearts. Every day I tell the Lord at the end of the day, “In case I forgot to tell You today, thank You, thank You, thank You!” It’s just a delight. I absolutely love it. So thank you, Nancy.

Nancy: Well, you are a delight and the Lord has used Sarah in a really wonderful way to connect more directly and personally with a lot of people’s lives than what we do on the radio. People will hear the radio or they read one of my books, but then they have a question or a concern or God’s doing something in their life that they want to share with someone. Sarah becomes, in some cases, like their best friend, even though they’ve never met her. But as she gives thoughtful, prayerful responses to those emails and letters, it really becomes a ministry to those individual lives.

Sarah, you see letters and particularly emails from all over.

Sarah: Absolutely. We hear from everywhere around the world. We hear from England, Canada, Mexico, China, Turkey, Kenya, South Africa—just all over the world.

Nancy: Thankfully, you’ve not had to translate those.

Sarah: Exactly.

Nancy: They come in English.

Sarah: Exactly. There’s a couple that we get that are in another language, and some of the Revive Our Hearts staff know who to contact to have it translated so that we can answer them back.

Nancy: By means of the Internet, it’s amazing how people are connecting with the ministry  and then responding to it from all over the world.

Sarah: Exactly. Many times they want books. They want materials. Because we have the Internet and the website, we can say we can’t send you the books because often they don’t get there, but we can connect them to all the downloads, all of the past topics, all of the information on the Internet.

So it’s just right there—answers to their questions, to their needs. We find that women’s needs are the same all around the world. It’s just so interesting. It’s just like an American woman would be writing.

Nancy: So let’s talk about what some of those needs are that you sense and you see as people are writing in to the ministry.

Sarah: The 30-day challenge for husbands.

Nancy: For those who aren’t familiar with that, just give us a nutshell explanation.

Sarah: It’s a commitment to a challenge that for 30 days . . .

Nancy: They will not say anything negative about their husband, to their husband, or to anyone else about their husband. 

I was just writing to let you know that I am currently taking the challenge that you had for wives to encourage their husbands.

The 30-day challenge couldn’t have come at a better time. Just yesterday . . .

Sarah: We hear testimony after testimony of people who’s marriages literally have been restored.

Since beginning this 30-day husband appreciation, not only has my husband been blessed, it has blessed me as well.

Nancy: It is so important, by the way, that you not use a challenge like this to manipulate your husband but that you use it as an opportunity to give and to be a blessing.

Words will never be able to express what your ministry tool has done for me, my husband, and my marriage. I’m a 27-year-old newlywed . . .

Nancy: The second part of the challenge is that every day for the next 30 days, they need to commit to say something positive, affirming, encouraging about their husband, to their husband, and to someone else about their husband. So I tell women you can say something to your children, to your mother, to his mother, to your boss. Say something about your husband and say something to your husband that expresses what you appreciate about him.

A lot of women have taken that challenge seriously.

Sarah: I think what it does even though it’s in a husband and wife relationship, when we begin to look at the positives and look at the things—the blessings—what is good, what’s encouraging, that it is not only needed in that relationship, but it becomes a lifestyle. It’s very, very needed.

I read today’s transcript and decided that this was God’s answer to my prayer. I felt almost angry that God had sent this message to me, and I did not want to participate in the challenge.

In fact, on the first day, when you told us to tell your husband thank you for making me your wife, I thought that was pretty silly and I almost didn’t do it. But then the Holy Spirit just kept nudging me.

Sarah: Marriages not only have been helped, but people's love, commitment, and loyalty have been rekindled. So it’s great.

My love for my husband has grown, and his love has grown for me as well.

It has blessed us in many ways you will never know. More importantly, it has put me on the right road for a successful marriage, a successful life.

So I told him, “Honey, thank you for making me your wife. I am glad that I am your wife forever.” My husband looked at me and said, “You’ll never know just how much that means to me,” although I think that I do.

Nancy: You’re going to see the power of this simple, little thing called encouragement and how, if you’re a married woman, encouragement can build and strengthen the most important relationship in your life.

My husband had to fly out of town tonight, but as he was leaving, I told him about something he did that I appreciated. I didn’t get much of a response, so I couldn’t bring myself to say the words of the Day 1 email reminder. However, just now as I was ready to turn off my computer and go to bed, I sent him an email telling him that I was glad he had chosen me to marry many years ago. He bounced back immediately with this reply: “I love you too and am still, as always, glad I married you.” This is from a man who had barely spoken to me in four weeks. Thank you so much for the ministry you provide.

So this won’t end for me in 30 days. I pray that the Lord will enable me to continue to walk in love and encouragement toward my husband for a lifetime. Thank you.

Thank you for allowing me to encourage my husband. I will continue to do the challenge and hopefully be a better blessing to my husband for the rest of our lives.

Nancy: Say words of encouragement to your husband and then take time to say it to someone else about him. You say, “What’ll happen in 30 days? Will my husband change like all these husbands changed that you were just reading about?” Well, I can’t guarantee you that, but I can guarantee you that you will change, that you will begin to see your husband through fresh eyes of love, devotion, and reverence. That really will make a difference in your heart and in your marriage.

I’m still in shock at this miracle.

Sarah: Lies Women Believe. We continue to hear from the book testimonies of peoples’ lives that have been changed. Just this week we had two testimonies of people—Nancy, I think you’ve already gotten to see those. One was a 28-year-old woman, and she has just had her life completely turned around. She was on some anti-depressant medication. She felt like she needed it. She was reading Lies Women Believe and got very angry with Nancy Leigh DeMoss and said how could she condemn me, a woman who’s been a Christian since six years of age.

Nancy: One of the lies that many of us believe about God is that God is not really enough. Now, like many of the other lies we’ve been discussing, most of us would never say out loud, “God is not enough to meet my needs,” but the way we live reveals what we really believe.

Then we feel that we need God’s Word plus ____. We need our Bible and what it has to offer us, but we also need these six best sellers from our Christian bookstore, or we also need this tape or this message or this conference or this counselor or this therapy or this medication. We need God plus ____.

Sarah: Then she began to realize that it truly was a medication that she was allowing to take the place of the Lord Jesus Christ in her life on a daily basis. So she went to her sister. She said her sister always tells her things she wants to hear, and so her sister did that, played that role. She went to her husband who doesn’t always tell her what she wants to hear, and he played his role.

Then she was beginning to see the truth of the lie that she had believed. It was something else that could take the place that only Christ could fill. She went to church on Sunday and her pastor started a preaching series about how there is an Enemy and he’s real and how we use other things in our life to take the place of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Now, no one but God could have put all those circumstances together in  place, and she ended the letter apologizing to Nancy. Isn’t that so sweet? Her being so angry with her at one point, which really led her to the truth.

Then another lady this very week said that she had had a troubled past. She had finally found the Lord, but had made very inappropriate choices which had hurt her, hurt her family, hurt her church, hurt her community, and she felt like she had been rejected by the community. She had been put out of her home by her husband, had been sent to a mental hospital. Then she says, “I don’t tell you all those things to make it sound like I’m blaming anyone else.”

But God had brought her to the place through Lies Women Believe that she had believed lies. She had taken that book on her way to their lake home after her husband had asked her to leave. As she read it, she said for months it put her on her face before the Lord every day, every night. She’s come to the truth, and she wants to get her life straight.

Dear Nancy, I cannot truly share with you how God has used your Bible studies to revive my heart. You have literally saved my life through your ministry to women—first in Lies Women Believe and now in Seeking Him.

I came from a troubled childhood, made many devastating choices, but then I found the Lord. Then I was in a terrible accident in Honduras, suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, became involved in sin to cover my pain, attempted suicide, taken to a mental hospital, then released, and then put out of my home by my husband.

Nancy: She began to dwell in this lie; she began to believe it because she did not know how to counter the lie with the truth.

Lies Women Believe has helped me to understand my Enemy and how he managed to tempt, deceive, and destroy the inheritance I had received from my Father. That study has also led me to fall on my face daily before the Lord for many months. I have learned so much through your work, Nancy.

Nancy: First Peter chapter 2 tells us that Jesus was rejected by men. He was lied to about His worth, but He refused to believe something that wasn’t true. Instead, the Scripture says He was chosen by God, rejected by men but chosen by God; and therefore, Peter says, He was precious. He knew that He was God’s beloved, chosen Son. He chose to believe the Truth.

I am now seeking Him with all my heart and in response to my pleas to know Him and love Him in ways that are pleasing to Him and Him alone, I’m again being led by a study of yours. You are where you are supposed to be, doing exactly what God has called you to do. Of course, God does all the work, but He has used you to help me through this dark time in my life. Thank you, Nancy.

Sarah: Any of us who have walked in those places where we’ve had to come to terms with our own sin, with the lies that we’ve believed, we realize it’s not Nancy DeMoss, it’s not Revive Our Hearts, it’s not books. They are only vessels that the Lord uses to help us to see truth and give us an understanding of who Christ can be in our life.

So she thanks you, Nancy, and thanks the Lord for giving her a place to start new from and to know truth. Even out of all the hurt and all the pain, you can tell by the email that there is such great victory. There is such great hope that even the past can be healed and she can look forward to new life in Christ knowing the truth and the truth will set you free.

Nancy: Does it amaze you, Sarah, as it does me sometimes how open people are in sharing with us some of their situations and what they’re going through and even their failures and needs?

Sarah: It astounds me. It really does. I'm not just amazed; it just astounds me. I think why that is is because of the Word of God, because it’s the basis of Revive Our Hearts, because it’s the basis of what you do, of what you teach. There’s a sense that there are people out there that are part of the body of Christ that would care, that would understand, that would accept me for who I am even if I couldn’t tell any of the world around me.

There is somebody there that knows that this is not who I am. This is not the choices that I would have made for my life, but this is the place I have found myself now. Because I find myself at this place, there’s got to be somebody out there that knows the Word of God that will love me. So that’s the joy of what we do.

There are four of us on the correspondence team, and every one of us say that the delight of our life is to be able to read one of those letters that seem so hopeless and to say we don’t know the answer, but we know who does. To be able to give them a piece of Scripture, a piece of truth that gives them an understanding of how God views them, that there is hope, that there is always a chance to start again.

It’s just God really. It’s really just God’s blessings on Revive Our Hearts. Revive Our Hearts helps people to know those very things. I think if any of us in this room gave a testimony of what it’s been in our own life, that there have been those places where we didn’t have understanding, where we didn’t really know what truth was in a certain situation. What I should do; what I shouldn’t do.

It’s that drawing of the Spirit of God. So I think Revive Our Hearts is simply a vessel that God said I’m going to be able to use those people who have a heart for God, who have a heart for women around the nation, around the world, who care deeply about the individual person. We see that.

I know for us the correspondence that comes from the people that lead us. We didn’t have to manufacture that. We didn’t have to come up with things to say. We’ve all been discipled under Nancy’s teaching daily. We listen to the programs.

When we hear about forgiveness, when we hear about brokenness, when we hear about surrender, when we hear about truth, it just becomes a part of what the Lord has worked in our hearts. People have given us the freedom and the ability to have that work involved in an individual’s life.

So because of that, we’re able to give that out, and it’s just an incredible thing that God has allowed us the very privilege of being involved in somebody else’s life.

Leslie: We’ve been hearing from Sarah Krause who, more than almost anybody, is seeing firsthand what God is doing through Revive Our Hearts. He’s using Nancy and Sarah in that process. He’s also been using thousands of unsung women who believe in the ministry of Revive Our Hearts enough to support the ministry financially. If you’ve given in the past, thank you. The women Sarah interacts with will forever be changed thanks in part to your contribution.

When you donate in the month of May, we’ll say thank you by sending the updated Revive Our Hearts tote bag. Colossians 3:12 is printed on the side, which says we need to put on compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. When you’re carrying this bag around this summer and people ask you about it, you can explain why those qualities are so important, and you can let them know about Revive Our Hearts, too.

The tote bag is yours when you make a donation of any amount to Revive Our Hearts. Donate on line at ReviveOurHearts.com, or call 1-800-569-5959.

Sarah has had to answer letters to some women in excruciatingly tough marriage situations. Find out how she does it when she returns tomorrow. Now again, here’s Nancy.

Nancy: I just wanted to take a moment to share with you that today is a very special day for me personally. It was 44 years ago today that I knelt beside my bed as a four-year-old little girl and trusted my life to Jesus Christ as my Savior and Lord. So today is my spiritual birthday. I always take time each year to celebrate that special day to thank the Lord for His incredible redemption and for the mercy and grace that He has shown me through all of my life.

As a little girl, I didn’t know a lot of theology, and there’s so much more about the Lord Jesus that I’ve come to know and appreciate over all these years, but I am so thankful that God was gracious in His mercy to find me as a little girl, to draw me to Himself, to grant me the gift of repentance and faith, to make me His child, and then to give me the privilege of serving Him in this ministry and in the furtherance of His kingdom.

So today I just want to say thank you, Lord. You are a great lover and friend and savior. My prayer for each of you who listen to Revive Our Hearts is that you will experience the joy and the freedom and the fullness and the fruitfulness that come from having that personal relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ.

Revive Our Hearts with Nancy Leigh DeMoss is an outreach of Life Action Ministries.