Pursuing a Bride

Dannah Gresh: Picture a traditional wedding: The bride walks down the aisle to the groom who is waiting at the front of the church.

When Nancy Leigh DeMoss and Robert Wolgemuth were planning their wedding, he wanted to make a change to that tradition.

Robert Wolgemuth: I want you to stop halfway down the aisle, and I’m going to come get you. I don’t want to wait. I don’t want to stand there and say, “Okay, I’m going to be here passively waiting for you to make it to the altar. I’m going to come get you.”

Dannah: This is Revive Our Hearts with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, author of Lies Women Believe, for Wednesday, August 17, 2022. I'm Dannah Gresh.

Okay, this month at Revive Our Hearts is “Lies People Believe” month, and of course we want to focus not just on understanding the lies, but on the Truth that sets us free. It’s so crucial in this day, when it’s so common to think truth is relative, or that the most important thing is being true to yourself, whatever you make that out to be.

Nancy, your book Lies Women Believe and the Truth That Sets Them Free has sold over a million copies. Today we’re going to talk about your husband Robert’s book, Lies Men Believe and the Truth That Sets Them Free. I gotta say: This is the book that my husband told me needed to be written starting in about 2008. That’s why I brought him with me today.  

Nancy: Welcome, Bob.

Bob Gresh: It’s good to be here.

Nancy: Is this your first time on Revive Our Hearts?

Bob: It is my first time. It’s my first time even in the studio.

Nancy: Wow! You guys have been longtime friends of mine and of my sweet husband. So we’re going to have a conversation with Robert today, who wrote this book—more about that in a moment. But we asked Bob if you could join us, too. Because we’re talking about Lies Men Believe, we figured we needed some more men around here.

Bob: It’s good to be the husband of Dannah. I get all kinds of opportunities.

Dannah: Bob kept saying to me, “Somebody needs to write Lies Men Believe, but who would that be? Who could possibly come beside Nancy and write that?

Nancy: People asked us about this for years. “When are you going to have a male counterpart to Lies Women Believe?

And I’m going, “Well, I’m sure not going to write that book!”

Dannah: And then along came Robert. (laughter)

Nancy: Along came Robert.

Hi, Honey.

Robert: Hi, Nancy. Isn’t it fun to be here with you? . . . always!

Nancy: It is.

And over the years we’ve talked about different men possibly writing this book, and just, for whatever reasons, it didn’t happen. And then you and I were dating.

Robert: We were dating. We were out shopping.

Nancy: You actually started reading Lies Women Believe.

Robert: . . . to get to know you.

Nancy: And I was reading one of your books that you had written on the family years ago to get to know you.

Robert: That’s right.

Nancy: But we didn’t know that we were reading each other’s books.

Robert: We didn’t know that. How convenient to read a book that your prospective fiancée wrote. And so, page after page I’m saying, “This is an amazing woman!”

Nancy: And I’m saying as I’m reading your book, “This is an amazing man!”

So author meets author.

Robert: Oh, that’s right.

Nancy: In fact, as we were dating, you would talk about the women who came to our conferences and who listened to Revive Our Hearts and who read my books, you would say, “What about their husbands?”

Robert: Yes.

So Charlie’s home watching TV, maybe watching the kids, and his wife comes home from a True Woman conference, and she’s filled with all kinds of great information. Some of it will work better if he’s up to speed. Right? So she walks in the door, and he—whatever—gets up, kisses her, to welcome her home—but she’s filled with all kinds of new, exciting information. Who’s going to tell him what she just learned?

So we were at dinner at an Italian restaurant in Orlando, Florida, and I said, “Somebody needs to write something that the men can read that gives them an idea of what you’re telling them at True Woman, what you’re broadcasting day after day on Revive Our Hearts.”

Nancy, I think you said, “Well somebody needs to write that book.” And I put my hand in the air . . . and the server came over and said, “Yes, can I help you?” (laughter)

I said, “No, no, I was just answering a question that my friend, this beautiful woman sitting here, just asked.” And I felt at that moment—I don’t remember ever thinking about it before, but you’re right. A man had to write this book.

And so at that moment, while dating, I thought, Wouldn’t it be awesome to write a book that’s the companion, the counterpart to Lies Women Believe? And now Lies Young Women Believe, and now Lies Girls Believe. All of that.

So what a privilege to be able to have authored this book. I’m so thrilled.

Nancy: So it’s a family of Lies books that has grown. And, Dannah, you and I have been involved in this for years. And Bob had been a part of the unfolding of these different Lies books. And now to have Robert as part of this family—and the four of us are actually good friends.

Dannah: Yes.

Robert: Right.

Nancy: So we’ve developed a lot of the thinking behind the Lies concept, and, more importantly, the truth that sets people free.

Bob and Dannah, you were both involved with us in some of what this book was going to look like and feel like.

Dannah: And what Robert said a few moments ago, I think is important. You said you were reading Lies Women Believe so you could understand Nancy.

Robert: Right.

Dannah: But just because she’s the author, that doesn’t mean you’re the only man that can get understanding about women by reading that.

Robert: That’s so true.

Dannah: We have heard from many women who have read Lies Women Believe whose husbands read the book and said, “Okay.”

Nancy: Yes, they said, “It helped me better understand my wife, helped me better encourage her, bless her, serve her.”

So you say, “Why are we talking about Lies Men Believe on this program for women?” It’s because we think not only are men going to love reading this book—your husband, father, brother, son, friend, whatever—but also because I’m encouraging women to read this.

Robert, as I’ve read what you’ve written in this book, I’ve said, “This is really helpful for me to better understand how God made men, how you guys are wired, and how I can love and encourage and bless you as my husband.”

Robert: It’s just like my reading Lies Women Believe spawns questions like: “Is that really true? Is that the way you feel? Is that the way you look at this subject?” And you’re able to say, “Yes, that’s it.” So, talk about a discussion starter. It really is exactly that.

My hope and dream and prayer is that women will look over their husband’s shoulder, or maybe read it first, or maybe buy their own copy, and it would give them a better look as to exactly how their husbands think and feel.

Dannah: Yes. This is why we have invited our husbands—both of them—to this table today to discuss this book with women because we want to invite you to go get your husband right now. (laughter)

Nancy: We think it would be a great conversation for couples to listen to together.

Dannah: Yes. This would be a good broadcast for you to listen to together. So men are invited to Revive Our Hearts today and for the next few days.

Robert: Come on you guys.

Dannah: Robert, you have some big shoes to fill. This Lies Women Believe book has really outperformed anyone’s expectations.

Robert: It’s like a million copies.

Dannah: A million copies!

Robert: And growing.

Dannah: The E.C.P.A. gave it the platinum award. That’s representing one million women whose lives were changed by words printed on the pages of a book.

Robert: Right. That’s stunning.

Dannah: Nancy, can we revisit the fact that these women started out, basically with emotions that were evidence that there was maybe a lie deep beneath the surface?

Nancy: Well, it’s interesting when you look at the Table of Contents of either of these books, there are forty lies in different categories, like: lies women believe about themselves, about God, about sin. There are the same similar categories in the men’s book. And one of the things I’ve heard from many women as they looked at the Table of Contents and read those lies is that they thought, I don’t believe those lies.

I think a lot of us would say just when presented with this, “I don’t think I believe this.” We don’t consciously believe something like God isn’t really good. But as we got down beneath the surface to how we feel, how we react, how we respond to circumstances that are beyond our control . . . We just kind of dig down a little beneath the surface and we find out, and many of these women came back and said, “As I read this book, I realized, I really have been believing a lot of things that aren’t true. I didn’t know it.”

So I think that’s one of the things God has done with this book is to use it as an eye opener. And I think the same thing is going to happen with Lies Men Believe.

Dannah: Now, you would say, then, that the emotions a woman feels, and the way she acts are better evidence of whether she believes one of the lies in the book than what she really thinks in her head.

Bob: Well, one of the things that blew me away in the book was the concept of orthopraxy—which would be a great trivia question.

Robert: It would. (laughter)

Bob: And it was amazing to me to read that, and I think that’s what we’re talking about. Right, Robert?

Dannah: What is orthopraxy?

Robert: Orthopraxy is putting thinking and feeling together. That impacts how you act, what you actually do with information that comes in. I had fun with that word in the book. “Orthopraxy Rocks,” I think, is the name of that little section.

So that’s really true. You and I process stuff, and that all goes in to how we act, what we actually do—thinking, feeling, doing.

Bob: So to Nancy’s point: I could read the lies and think, I don’t think that. But I feel that way . . . and that is my actual core belief.

Robert: That’s right.

Nancy: Or I act is if that’s what I really believe. I mean, none of us claim to be atheists, but how many of us in a trying situation live as if there really were no God because we’re overwhelmed with fear.

I think for us as women, a lot of times—and you can’t broad brush this—but a lot of times the pathway for these lies can be through our emotions, how we feel. And I think, Robert, as you unpacked this book, it seems like the pathway for men was more through the way they think.

Robert: Yes. And conscious decisions that a man makes—to disobey God, to disobey what he knows to be truth . . . Let’s visit the Garden of Eden. In fact, the cover of the book has an apple with two bites, which was fun. You, Dannah and Bob, helped us with this design.

Nancy: Because the women’s book only has one bite.

Robert: One bite—that’s right. So, like, “Who took the second bite?”

What you have is a person—in this case, a man, Adam. He knows because God told him about the fruit. God has spoken to Adam about the tree and the fruit. So whatever Eve knew about it, she got it from Adam. He knew for sure what God’s law was. He knew what it would look like if he were disobedient.

But somehow, and I think this is a really important thing for a man to understand—in fact, for his wife to embrace as well. He will make a decision to do something that’s wrong, and in the back of his mind, he’ll say, “I’ll figure it out. I’ll work it out. I’ll cross that bridge when I get there. Someday I’ll be able to fix this problem that I’m creating right now.”

In fact, not long ago I sat with a man who had really messed up his life in a dramatic sort of way, and not once did he reveal to me that he didn’t know what he was doing when he did what he did. You would think, Well, why didn’t you just say ‘no’? Because a man thinks to himself, I’ll figure it out.

In fact, I tell the story when Nancy and I were dating. Here’s a fifty-seven-year-old woman—let that sink in for a second—who’s lived single, and now this man is coming into her life, and she’s putting things together. Nancy’s a very thoughtful and smart person. And so she’s thinking, Okay, so what is the kitchen sink going to look like? What is the bathroom sink going to look like? So what about morning and evening? She’s an evening person—let’s call it a night person.

Dannah: Yes, that’s right.

Robert: And I’m a morning person—a pre-dawn morning person.

Dannah: Let me define that just a little. When you wake up, that’s not morning. That’s still night. (laughter)

Robert: Can we change the subject? (laughter)

Dannah: It’s like early, early, early.

Robert: But we had to figure that out.

Nancy: And I’m saying, “How’s this going to work?”

And Robert would routinely say, “We’ll figure that out.”

Robert: We’ll figure that out.

Nancy: And I’m going, “But how’s it going to work?”

Robert: Now, in some ways, there’s no way that you can know until you’re there. And so I have to say that, “We’ll figure it out.”

Bob: Did you figure it out?

Robert: Yes. In some cases.

Nancy: We’re figuring it out.

Robert: In every marriage there are perpetual things that you visit every week of your entire married life. Right? They don’t go away. They’re just there.

So, as recently as last night, I was out of town. I called my bride, and she loves to FaceTime.

Nancy: Can I tell what time it was, Honey?

Robert: Here, I’ll show you . . . no.

Dannah: Yes, you should.

Robert: Somebody’s going to post on Instagram: “This guy is a total geek nerd!”

Nancy: You had had a long day.

Robert: I’d had a long day.

Nancy: But it was, like, 8 p.m.

Robert: It was like that—Eastern time. I was pretending that I was in London, and I was really tired—eight hours, seven hours ahead.

Nancy: There was no point in FaceTiming because you couldn’t open your eyes. (laughter)

Robert: Wait a minute—this has become a rope. What’s wrong with this conversation?

Nancy: But your heart was all there. In fact, I said, “There’s something I want to tell you, but you’re so sleepy.”

And you said, “I’ll wake up!” Because you wanted to hear.

Robert: I did. That’s what I said.

So that’s something you keep working out, because I’m not going to become a night person, generally. Now, Nancy will affirm the fact that there have been many times in the last three years that I have stayed up really late with friends or whatever. But I said when we were dating, “We’ll work this out,” and I think that was a good thing.

But, if I’m doing something that I know I shouldn’t do, and I use that excuse, “We’ll work it out. I’ll work it out. Someday I’ll be able to figure this thing out. I’ll cross that bridge when I get there.” I could get in really dead-serious trouble.

And so I look at the lives of men—and I don’t stand in judgment. I’m a sinner saved by grace. But I see the lives of men, prominent men, pastors, whomever, Christian leaders, who completely trash their lives . . . and you know they knew what they were doing.

So the first part of the message of Lies Men Believe is, to men, I want them to nod as they’re reading and say, “You know what? That’s true. I wasn’t deceived about this situation.”

Nancy: Which is what the apostle Paul says in 1 Timothy chapter 2, “Adam was created first, and then Eve, and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor.” They both became transgressors, but she believed a lie.

Dannah: She believed a lie. Emotionally she was falling into that pit.

Nancy: But the man did it with his eyes wide open.  And yet, Satan is a liar, and he deceives men and women.

Robert: Right.

Dannah: Can I say that that was hard for me to read as a wife and as a woman? I needed you to quote that Scripture in 1 Timothy. And also, you brought in the life and testimony of the apostle Paul, which is very important for me because you say that he faced the same battle that Adam faced in the Garden. Which was, according to Romans 7 . . .

Robert: In some ways, Romans 7 is a comforting chapter in the Bible because I identify with this guy, who’s the apostle Paul, for goodness sake! He’s saying, “The things I know that I should do, I don’t do. The things that I ought to do, I don’t do.” Then he puts the credit where it’s due: “It’s sin that lives in me.” Right?

But the consciousness of a man’s sin is systemic to who we are. I think it’s so helpful, it will be helpful for a wife, for a woman in the guy’s life, to read this and understand it. She won’t necessarily, and she doesn’t need to say, “Okay, and so just keep going, keep doing stupid things.”

But knowing that the slip that her husband makes is conscious. And the end game is: He thinks that it’s going to work out. And the truth is that many, many times, a wife has to step in and help him understand the consequences of that decision that he made consciously.

Bob: You know, Robert, that was the first time I had ever heard that play on Adam and Eve, and I’ve heard a lot of stories about Adam and Eve. It’s the go-to thing. I was kind of blown away by it, too, because I didn’t really realize the extent to which men like me just do things, knowing it’s sin.

I always looked at Adam as being passive. But maybe he wasn’t passive. Maybe he was like you said: He knew what he was doing and thought, We’ll work this out.

It always seemed like, “Well, if Eve hadn’t done that, Adam wouldn’t have sinned.” But perhaps it was equal, and Adam was just . . . he knew it was wrong. He did it anyway.

Dannah: Do you believe that Adam was right there, standing next to her, and overheard the conversation that the serpent and Eve had?

Robert: I do. Now, timeframes are hard to unpack sometimes in biblical accounts, but I think the sequence of the conversation makes it appear so. And scholars, I would say, by and large, agree that Adam wasn’t far away from that conversation when Eve was deceived by the serpent.

In fact, it’s interesting. It reminds me of Luke 15. A coin got lost because of someone else’s carelessness. A sheep got lost because it wandered off. But a boy, a young man, went to his father, and to his face said, “See ya. I’m gone.” It was very intentional. There was nothing deceptive about it at all.

And you have to believe that a young boy growing up in that kind of home would have realized that he was breaking the rules, even though he was the second son and wasn’t going to get as much as his older brother for the inheritance. He knew good and well that he was doing something foolish.

I think what this could spark for men is a recognition that—this is really important—where they are is their doing.

Nancy: It’s interesting when you get to the book of Romans, speaking of the apostle Paul. He places the responsibility squarely on Adam, even though it was the woman who took the fruit first. So there’s the accountability there, as the federal head of that home, and yet, the whole point there in Romans is—because this could be kind of discouraging for women and men— “Where sin did abound, grace did much more abound.”

Robert: That’s right.

Nancy: So whether it’s “lies women believe” or it’s “lies men believe,” whether it’s through deception or through just putting off the consequences, it all takes us back to the truth: who Christ is who sets us free and delivers us from the bondage of that sin and then death.

Robert: Over the years I have had the joy of teaching Sunday school for almost fifty years. So as a lay person, I was a pastor to folks, and I had many conversations with men. What was interesting is, as I would experience those conversations and now as I look back on them, rarely when confronted with the truth of a man’s sin, did he immediately confess it.

Not only does a man consciously step into that thing, but he consciously denies it. In almost every case, it takes more than one conversation nose to nose with a guy that says, “You know what? I know what you’ve been up to. I’ve heard from people who were eyewitnesses. Now, tell me again: What happened? What did you do? Now, that sounds like I’m sitting in judgment. I’m not. I’m doing my best to be accountable.” That’s a scary word for a lot of guys.

Dannah: So we have the opportunity to look at Genesis 3, and we’re kind of by written word, witnesses to this interaction between Adam and Eve and the serpent. Robert, why didn’t the man say anything? Why didn’t he do anything?

Robert: Oh, man. Because, I think, passivity is the overriding greatest . . . I don’t know if it’s a sin. It surely is a bad excuse for men living like they do. Again, no soapbox, I promise. But I think in a day and age when you can be entertained with what’s in the palm of your hand, you don’t have to initiate anything. You can be a passive person. You don’t have to act.

My ancestry were all farmers. Well, a farmer isn’t going to sit around and get anything done. Those guys were busy early morning till late at night. They weren’t tempted to be passive, in that kind of sense, in a career sort of sense.

But passivity, I think, was Adam’s first mistake.

In fact, when Nancy and I got married . . . Can I tell this story?

Nancy: Sure.

Robert: We were planning our wedding, and I said, “You know what, Honey?” Her brother Mark, who’s been a friend for a long time, brought her halfway down the aisle. Nancy’s daddy stepped into heaven in 1979 when Nancy was just twenty-one years old, so her daddy couldn’t walk her down the aisle. I said, “You know what? I want you to stop.” Wow, it’s still fresh, Honey. It’s precious. “I want you to stop halfway down the aisle, and I’m going to come get you. I don’t want to wait. I don’t want to stand there and say, ‘Okay, I’m going to be here passively waiting for you to make it to the altar. I’m going to come get you.’”

And that, in many ways is a metaphor.

Nancy: What a picture of Christ.

Dannah: Wow, that’s beautiful.

Robert: We love Him . . . why? Because He stepped down.

So my hope is that this book is a cup of coffee between a reader and me. I look him in the eye, and I say, “Your wife needs you to step out. Your wife wants you to step out. Your wife wants you to take leadership.”

We live in the day, sadly, when guys misunderstand that or the stereotype of that is incredibly unfortunate. But most women love loving servant leadership that is yet humble, confident—those two words together: shepherding.

And so I would say to a guy across a cup of coffee, “Don’t be afraid to step out. Don’t be afraid.”

Not long ago I was in a conversation with a man who is really struggling with this in his marriage and his temptation is to just be passive. His temptation is to not speak up. I said to him, “Ask your wife one on one if she misses your participation in conversations with your kids. Ask her if she wonders what you’re thinking when you don’t open your heart to her. Ask her.” And I think you guys know what she’s going to say. Right?

Nancy: Yes, Honey. I think there’s no doubt that all of us as women would say, “That is what we want, and we’d be so thankful to have that kind of loving leadership and input into our lives.”

I love your tender heart. I’m so thankful for that.

Dannah, I think so many men and women listening today are going to want to have a copy of Lies Men Believe. We want to make it available to men and/or women who’d like to dig into it.

Bob: I want to say, after reading the book, I wanted my wife to read the book. And after reading your book, I’m going to read Lies Women Believe because it just totally makes sense for us to understand each other. It was really enlightening to me reading through and thinking, Yes, I want Dannah to know this, and I have a feeling she doesn’t.

Dannah: If you’d like to get a copy of Lies Men Believe and the Truth That Sets Them Free for yourself, for your husband, for your father, your son, or even a coworker, we would love to give it to you as a thank-you gift when you make a donation in any amount today to Revive Our Hearts. You can do that by calling 1-800-569-5959.

You can also make your gift online at ReviveOurHearts.com. Just be sure to make a note that you would like, as your thank-you gift, a copy of Robert’s book, Lies Men Believe. And look for more information about how you could receive the other Lies books as well.

Nancy: We’re going to pick up this conversation again tomorrow with Bob and Dannah and Robert and myself, and, again, be sure and invite your husband, if you’re a woman listening, to join us for that conversation right here on Revive Our Hearts.

Revive Our Hearts with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth is calling you to true freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.

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