Response of Surrender

Dannah Gresh: How would finish this sentence? “Living according to God’s Word is like . . .” According to Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, your answer should not include words like “picnic” or “cake.”

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: His calling will involve hardship and suffering and obstacles. I’m just telling you—it’s not a calling to an easy life. We follow in the steps of the Savior, who was willing to lay down His life so that we could live.

Dannah: This is Revive Our Hearts with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, author of Surrender: The Heart God Controls, for Monday, April 28, 2025. I'm Dannah Gresh.

If you’ve listened to Revive Our Hearts for very long, you know Nancy likes to repeat certain phrases— words that help guide her own life and hopefully will help us guide ours. One she has been saying a lot is “Heaven rules!” If you've been to any of our True Woman conferences you're familiar with another one: “Yes, Lord!” That phrase represents a heart attitude of accepting whatever God has for us.

Today we’ll hear about one woman who, in effect, said, “Yes, Lord!” We’re going to listen to a portion of a message Nancy gave in 2008, at the very first True Woman conference. The theme of that event was, “For Such a Time as This,” based on the book of Esther.

If you’re a regular listener of this program, you’ll remember that we recently spent several weeks walking through the book of Esther. It was a rich study that you can review at ReviveOurHearts.com or on the Revive Our Hearts app. Nancy’s message today covers some of those same themes, but it’ll give you different things to think and pray about.

In case you need a refresher, here’s some background of the story. You might remember that Esther was a Jewish young woman who was forcefully taken into the harem of King Xerxes. Scripture seems to indicate he was a capricious, angry tyrant with a drinking problem.

There was a plot by a man named Haman to exterminate the Jewish people. Esther’s relative, Mordecai, encouraged her to talk to the king about it. She knew doing so would be at the risk of her own life. That was when Mordecai delivered his famous message to Esther. We read it in chapter 4:

If you keep silent at this time, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father's house will perish. And who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?

And Esther courageously responded:

“Then I will go to the king, though it is against the law, and if I perish, I perish.” (vv. 15, 16b)

With that context, here’s Nancy, challenging us to respond to the Lord with attitudes like Esther’s.

Nancy: So wait for God to act. Wait on His timing. Remember that you don't win by pushing, nagging, screaming, yelling, badgering, manipulating, whining, shaming. Those things may get you your way in the immediate sense, but they will not win the kingdom of God any victories.

 

We tend to justify that kind of behavior—becoming shrews and getting shrill when the circumstances are dire. Even in our political situation right now, you hear a lot of shrillness; you hear a lot of anger. That should not be coming from God’s people—not in your marriage, not on the national scene, not on the “blogosphere.” There needs to be that gentleness and that meekness of spirit that is power under control, God’s power under control.

Here’s a woman in the most dire of circumstances, confronted literally with the likelihood of death, and you see Esther being remarkably in control of her tongue and her emotions. There’s no hurry, no histrionics, no hysterical outbursts. She’s an incredible picture of self-control because she knows that the kingdom of God is in control. Remember that when you go home. I know I keep saying that, but I know that twenty-four hours from now you’re going to be tempted to forget that I said that, so I want to say it enough that you don’t forget.

Don’t judge the outcome of the battle by the way things look now.

You see, in the here and now, as we saw with Mordecai and Haman, the wicked often flourish and the godly often suffer, but don’t despair when you see that happening. Remember that things are not now as they always will be. In the early scenes of Esther, we saw the wicked partying. We see the righteous mourning as the story unfolds. But by the close of the story, the wicked have been judged, and the righteous are partying. That’s a picture of what is yet to come. Are you ready for that day?

The wicked are riding high now, but one day they will give an account, there will be a final judgment. The righteous suffer now, but one day there will be the triumph of the kingdom of God. The Man coming riding on a white horse will burst through the clouds and will come to take over, and there will be everlasting joy for the people of God. In the end, Psalm 58, verse 11 tells us mankind will say, “Surely there is a reward for the righteous. Surely there is a God who judges on earth.” God writes the final chapter.

And let me say, by the way, we haven’t read the final chapter. Well, we have a glimpse of it, but we haven’t read it yet, but it’s already written. There are no mysteries in heaven. He’s written the final chapter in eternity past, and it is being unfolded in the human drama.

So now is the time. We are believing God for a movement of reformation and revival in the hearts and homes of Christian women all around this world. We have many joining us through the internet today. You’re a part of this as well. We want to give you an opportunity to join with us in saying, “This is what we believe, this is what we affirm, we want to be a part of that counter-cultural revolution to take back the ground that has been given over to the world’s way of thinking for so many years.”

As you think about that counter-cultural revolution, it may seem very possible today while we’re all here cheering for each other, cheering with each other, but when you get back to your work place where everybody thinks you’re nuts for the ways that you believe, because you don’t talk the way they do; you don’t sleep around the way they do; you don’t have the attitudes they do. You talk about the True Woman Manifesto, and you’ll find many Christian women today who either don’t agree with what we’re about to affirm, or who think it’s totally irrelevant, like, “What’s the big deal?”

You say in your heart, “This does matter,” and in your heart you know it’s true, but you feel so alone in that; it seems like such an impossibility. When you feel that way, remember Esther—raised up by God for such a time as this to make a huge difference in her world. A common, ordinary, young woman in the human drama with a lot of difficult things in her background, but God gave her courage and faith. As a result of her surrender and her obedience, one woman in God’s scheme of things, millions of her people were spared from destruction.

So many women today, even Christian women are disoriented. They’re not experiencing freedom and fulfillment and fullness in Christ. We have a lot of truly desperate housewives even within the church, but God has given us in His Word a message of grace and hope for those women. So I believe, in case you didn’t hear me say it yet, that God has brought you into this kingdom—His kingdom—for such a time as this, and that means the willingness to go against the flow.

Teenage gals, that means the willingness to follow Christ and His Word when it seems that all the other girls your age are consumed with beauty and guys and self and sex and having a good time. It means, girls, setting your affection on Christ, guarding your heart, choosing the pathway of purity, becoming a truth-speaker in your generation when all the peer pressure is going in the opposite direction.

Single women, it means going against the flow for you. It means choosing the pathway of contentment, to be willing to be married, willing to be single, whichever God has for you for His glory and the sake of His kingdom. It means while you are single, doing what many of my single women friends are doing—in using that time to serve the Lord without distractions. It means the willingness to be sexually pure, into your twenties and thirties and forties as a single woman, to be a servant of the family of God. There are some of you, I believe, here today, single women, that God may want to use your gifts and your training in vocational Christian ministry, perhaps even taking the gospel to other parts of the world as many single women have done before us.

Married women, it’s a call to go against the flow for you as well. A call to be faithful in a world of broken promises, to love your husband, to pray for him, to build a marriage that glorifies God. It means being faithful in the good times and the hard times. It means saying yes to your high and holy calling of being a helper to your husband, to reverence him, as the Scripture exhorts, to submit to him as a picture of your submission to Christ Himself.

It means to give yourself wholeheartedly to that husband and to say no to emotional or physical intimacy with any man other than your husband. I believe there are women here that God . . . you’ve been going with the flow, you’ve been going with your emotions, you’ve been going with what’s natural, and God is calling you today to break off those wrong attachments and to say yes to faithfulness, even though it means going against the current.

Mothers, going against the flow means to embrace the calling and the gift of being a giver and a nurturer of life. Don’t let the world tell you how many or how few children to have. Let God give you His vision for the impact that your children and your grandchildren could make for His kingdom for generations to come. It means a willingness to do battle for the souls of your children and your grandchildren and saying, “Lord, we’re not going to let the enemy have this next generation. We want them to belong to You.”

Older women, what does it mean for you to go against the flow? It means you choose not to retire spiritually. Don’t settle for a life consumed by golf and bridge and meaningless activity and preoccupation with self. I see some gray hairs in this place, and I’m so thankful for them, and I want to say to you women, younger women need you. They need your counsel, your encouragement, your prayers. They need you to take younger women under your wings and help them to learn how to live lives that please the Lord.

I’m wearing today a necklace that was given to me by a woman I called “Mom Johnson.” I lived with her family when I was a student at the University of Southern California many years ago, and we stayed in touch over the years. She was one of my most faithful prayer partners. I watched her age with grace. I watched her stay in the battle. I watched her stay pursuing Christ in spiritual growth.

At her funeral, I believe, if I recall correctly, she was ninety-two years of age, and she gave this to me when she was in her nineties, found this and sent it to me for a birthday. At her funeral, I met a young mom in her thirties who said, “Mom Johnson has been mentoring me for years”—into her late eighties and early ninties, Mom Johnson was taking women under her wing and encouraging them and discipling them. We need some more Mom Johnsons to take her place.

And just another word to those of you who are my age and older. We are a part now of the generation of seventy-seven million baby boomers. There is so much energy and capacity and opportunity—that is the largest generation we will ever have, because of birth control and not having children, there will never be probably another generation that size of the baby boomers.

So we have this huge force of men and women with an opportunity to invest our lives in His kingdom at that season of life, and I just believe there is a massive women’s movement of true women in those millions of women who are able to capture all kinds of battlefronts for Christ. Something or someone is going to get the attention and the affection of those baby boomers as they move into their latter years, and we need to pray that God will raise up an army of true women of God out of those boomers.

Many of you are familiar with the story and the writings of Amy Carmichael who in 1895 went to India as a twenty-eight-year-old single woman. She stayed for the next fifty-five years without a furlough. When she got there, she discovered that there were children, infants, little girls, young women, who had been taken captive and sold into prostitution in the Hindu temples. Her heart was broken by what she saw, and she said, “Someone has got to do something about this.”

Well, God had brought Amy Carmichael into His kingdom for such a time as this. So one life at a time, she and her little band of coworkers began to rescue those children from the temples in which they were held. It was dangerous work. It was difficult work. They had to withstand the enemies of centuries-entrenched religion and cultural issues. They had to go against the flow.

As we talk about this counter-cultural revolution, I often say to women, “We’ve got to be willing to be salmon, swimming upstream.” What do salmon do? You’ve heard the stories, and you’ve seen the pictures of how they swim upstream. They get bloodied and beat up on the rocks. And why do they do it? To give birth. To give life. They give life, then what do they do? They die. You say, “That doesn’t sound like something I want to be called to.” What a picture that is of the heart of Christ, the heart of Calvary, who swam upstream, bloodied and beaten, to give spiritual life, laying down His life to give us eternal life.

Listen, we may die in the process, but if we die fulfilling the kingdom purposes and will of God for our lives, so be it. If I perish, I perish. I’m going for broke.

That’s what Amy Carmichael did over all those years—risking her life to rescue one little girl, one young woman at a time—working tirelessly to salvage those lives and to expose the works of darkness that had claimed so many children’s lives in India. Each step of the way she was fighting against, pushing against the powers of darkness, but not in her own strength—in the strength and power of God who had sent her there. She endured, and she persevered through all those years through a handful of victories, but also through numerous heartbreaking losses and apparent defeats.

Now the issues are a little bit different in our day, perhaps, though we do have the whole issue of the sex trade, which is a serious issue in our world. The issues around us are no less serious than those of those little girls sold into prostitution in the temple. Women and girls all around us—we live in and among them—are in bondage to guilt and fear and bitterness and anxiety and eating disorders and sinful behaviors and addictions and depression. They need to be rescued from the enemy who has taken them captive. We are called to fight the powers of darkness in the name and the power and the Spirit of the Lord Jesus and to join God in His great rescue operation. We’re called to shine the light in the darkness, to see captives set free, and to see God glorified.

As I was in the process of praying with friends and colleagues about launching the ministry of Revive Our Hearts, I’d asked those on our Board of Directors and Advisory Council for our ministry to pray about that decision. We came to a board meeting, and I was sitting in on a discussion about whether it was time for the ministry to launch what became Revive Our Hearts Radio Ministry. There was an older gentleman—I suppose he would have been in his late seventies, maybe eighties—who was in that group of men. He’s a man of prayer. Some of you know the name of T.W. Hunt. He’s been a Bible teacher and leader for many years.

He was real quiet for the longest time as there was a lot of discussion going on in the room, and then when everybody else had had their say, Brother T.W. spoke up. He said,

I’ve been praying about this. I want to tell you that for many years I have been deeply burdened and concerned in my heart about the widespread, increased corruption among women in our culture, the coarsening of women, the rawness, the vulgarity, the secularism. I’ve been burdened and praying about this for years and what could make a difference, what could address it, what could go against that tide.

As I’ve been praying about the potential of launching Revive Our Hearts, I believe that God has raised up this ministry to be a light and to make a difference and to take on the powers of darkness among women, to turn back the tide of corruption among women.

As I heard those words, on the one hand I was inspired and grateful for help in clarifying the mission, and on the other hand there was within me a real sense of weakness, overwhelming inadequacy, fearfulness. The Lord brought to mind, as He has numerous times over the years, and I share this not to just to tell you my story, but to say whatever God is calling you to, maybe you have feelings of weakness and inadequacy and fear. I assume I’m not the only one who struggles with those things.

The Lord took me back to that passage in Luke chapter 1 where the angel came to Mary and said, “You’re going to have a baby. It’s going to be God’s Son. I know you’re not married. I know you’ve never been intimate with a man, but this is what God is going to do.” Mary asked the obvious question, “How can this be? It’s not humanly, physically possible.” That’s what I was feeling when we talked about launching this ministry with this mission. How can this be? I don’t have the gifts, the skillset, the abilities—no one does. This is a big, big issue—what needs to happen among women today.

The angel said to Mary, and these words have been God’s word to my heart many, many times over the years, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.”

Who’s going to win the battle? God is. Who’s going to fill you with power? God is—His power. “Nothing will be impossible with God,” the angel said. What was Mary’s response? If I have a life verse, this is probably it, Luke 1:38, Mary said simply, in faith and humility and surrender, “I am the Lord’s servant. May it be to me as you have said.” Mary said, “Yes, Lord.” Esther said, “Yes, Lord.” Amy Carmichael said, “Yes, Lord.”

If you were to ask those women today, “Was it worth it? Would you do it again?” Do you have any doubt about what they would say? Millions of Jews spared—the line through which the Messiah was to come preserved. Hundreds and hundreds of little girls in India rescued from Satan’s clutches and given physical and spiritual life. The Savior was born.

His calling on our lives will be difficult at times. Maybe you’re in that hard place right now. His calling will involve hardship and suffering and obstacles. Ladies, I’m just telling you—it’s not a calling to an easy life. It’s not a calling to comfort and convenience and self-fulfillment. It’s a calling to glorify God, with the laying down of your life. It will involve hardship. But we follow in the steps of the Savior, who was willing to lay down His life so that we could live.

When you and I see the face of Christ, and it won’t be long, if we’ve been faithful in fulfilling His calling in our lives, we will say, “Jesus, it was worth it all for You.” In fact, I think most, if not all of us will say, “I wish I’d given Him more.” Would we do it again? Absolutely.

 

I’m asking God to raise up a great host of women, women of courage and faith and compassion and humility and wisdom. Women filled with Jesus for such a time as this. Will you join me in that mission? Will you be a part of that counter-cultural revolution? Will you say, “Yes, Lord. I am Your servant. Take me, use me, spend me. Fulfill all Your holy eternal purposes in and through my life, whatever the cost”?

Oh, Father, how I pray that You’d find here a host of women who would say simply, “Yes, Lord,” for Jesus sake, and the sake of Your great kingdom, amen.

Dannah: I hear those words and I remember back to that year, 2008, when Nancy was praying for a great host of women to rise up. I can see it happening. It's been happening for these many years. Now, we are inviting you to join us. Will you join us in saying, "Yes, Lord"?

Of course, that was Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth at a True Woman conference in 2008, challenging us to respond to the Lord in the same way as women we read about in the Bible like Esther and Mary of Nazareth. Or more recent examples like Amy Carmichael and many others whose lives have proclaimed, “Yes, Lord!” How will you swim against the current in obedience to God? Will you join us?

You see, this isn’t just a call to everybody “out there.” No, this is for you and me—for us here at Revive Our Hearts, and for you, your family, your church. Let’s go first, before we expect others to follow.

If you’d like to listen to more programs about surrender, you can find them at ReviveOurHearts.com. Click on today’s program, and we’ll have a link in the transcript to all the programs on that topic.

I think you’d also find Nancy’s book on surrender to be helpful. It’s called Surrender: The Heart God Controls. Not only does it go more in depth than we’re able to do here, there’s also a study guide in the back of the book. It’ll help you apply what you’ve learned and give you practical guidelines for living a life that’s fully surrendered to God.

That book—and a fun “Yes, Lord” sticker—is our gift to you this month when you make a donation in support of Revive Our Hearts. Do that at ReviveOurHearts.com, or call us at 1-800-569-5959. Ask for Surrender: The Heart God Controls when you give.

Tomorrow we’ll hear from another woman who learned the hard way to say “Yes, Lord.” In the middle of very painful circumstances, she had to choose how she would respond. Please be back for 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.

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