Saying “Yes, Lord” to Singleness

Dannah Gresh: Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth says being single or married falls under God’s sovereignty.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: There’s such freedom in trusting God to write your story. That doesn’t mean you don’t have hard times or places—whether married or single—but to trust God with that.

I wasn’t married until I was fifty-seven. Now, a woman in her early twenties who’s wanting to trust God is thinking, Oh, if I trust God, I might be fifty-seven and not married! And how horrific would that be?! I’m saying if that’s what God maps out for you, it will not be miserable. It will be a joy!

Dannah: This is the Revive Our Hearts podcast with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, coauthor of You Can Trust God to Write Your Story, for August 30, 2021. I’m Dannah Gresh.

This is a special week here on Revive Our Hearts. That’s because Friday, September 3, is the twentieth anniversary of our on-air ministry! Woo-hoo!! Yes, celebrate with us! We are going to spend this week taking some time to reflect on God’s faithfulness over the last two decades. 

To do that, Nancy sat down with Bob Lepine in the studio to go over some of the ways we’ve seen the Lord at work. Bob has been a strong ally of Revive Our Hearts from the earliest days. You may recognize him from his many years cohosting FamilyLife Today.

Remember what God told the Israelites to do in the book of Joshua when they crossed the Jordan River on dry ground into the Promised Land? He instructed them to pull out twelve large stones and pile them up on the river bank. 

He had them make a memorial so they could always look back and remember what God had done for them. Bob Lepine says reviewing the milestones we’ve experienced at Revive Our Hearts is kind of like setting up those rocks.

Bob Lepine: I have been thinking about anniversaries and about birthdays, and I’ve also been thinking about stones on the other side of the riverbed inside the land of promise. I’ve just been thinking about why God wants us to mark out times and moments to say, “Let’s pause here for a minute, and let’s remember the goodness of God.”

In the midst of what you’re facing today, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by your circumstances and everything when you can pause and remember, “God has been faithful and He’s been good. We are where we are because He led us here!”

Nancy: It was important for their corporate memory, as the children of Israel, and it was important for the next generation. Long after that generation was gone, there would be a next generation who would be asking questions: “What do these things mean? Tell us what happened here. Remind us what God has done.”

Bob: So at some level, the twentieth anniversary of Revive Our Hearts going on radio is just an arbitrary date, right? At another level, it’s a marker we can look to and say, “Something was happening that we didn’t fully understand.” 

We didn’t have the vision or the insight to know what God was doing, and I think a lot of that has to go back to, really, before I even knew you. It goes back to the preparation God had done in your heart for so many years, the family you were raised in, the desire to be surrendered to the Lord for His service. 

That happened unusually early for you. There’s a letter that you have framed that’s sitting on a tabletop in your home. How old were you when you wrote that letter?

Nancy: About seven. It was telling my parents that God had called me to be a missionary for Him. I used the word “missionary” probably a dozen times in that letter, and I misspelled it every time! But it was a passionate sense of wanting to serve the Lord.

Interestingly, through those childhood experiences of coming to know Jesus and knowing that in some way I would be serving the Lord in ministry, there was never a sense of, “I’m going to build a ministry,” or “I’m going to start something,” or “I’m going to be an author,” or “I’m going to be a speaker.” I never had that.

My life verse has been Luke 1:38, where Mary of Nazareth said to the angel who came to tell her she was going to be the mother of the Messiah, “I am the Lord’s servant. Let it be to me as you have said.” There was this sense that I wanted to know and follow God’s calling, whatever that might look like, and to make myself available to serve.

Bob: Your passions for who God is and what He is doing were being formed in the midst of that, and those passions included a passion for revival. 

Nancy: Yes. 

Bob: When we think of revival, we tend to think of tents and crusades, but your passion here was for people to live revived lives, living out a wholly committed life to Jesus.

You had seen that happen in people’s lives, and there was just such an excitement in you whenever that happened. And that was core to what God was doing in your heart.

Nancy: And that was a passion, really, that God put in my heart when I was probably twelve or thirteen years old, long before I got out of school and started serving in ministry. I would read the book of Acts. I would read—I know this sounds strange for an adolescent—but I loved reading biographies and Christian history. 

I would see seasons when God had moved in extraordinary ways in the past, to rekindle a flame of love for Him in the hearts of His people, and to make His people a vibrant witness to the world that would bring about a harvest of righteousness, an awakening, in a whole culture or country or part of the world because of the work He had done in His people. 

And my heart was captured! I began to think, Lord, You’ve done this before, but we’re not seeing this happen right now, at least in my part of the world. But I know You could do it again! Would you? So I began to read about this. It was a longing placed in my heart . . . so that was the revival piece.

Let me go back. Before that was a love for the Word and studying the Word and reading the Word and having a Word-centered, gospel-centered, Christ-centered life. I loved these things! I believed, and still to this day believe, in the power of the Word sent forth in the power of the Holy Spirit, the power of the gospel, the power of Jesus to change lives! 

So that’s been a core marker in my life since the time I can remember. As I got into my twenties and into my thirties, God began to shape a heart for seeing biblical womanhood—what it meant from His perspective that He had created man and woman, male and female.

What were the differences? What were the similarities? What did that mean? Those are things that I grappled with and have grappled with a lot. I had a passion for ministry, and as a young woman, it kind of felt like if God had made me a man, I might be able to do more to serve Him. 

But as I got into my twenties and thirties and was ministering to women about their hearts with God, their walks with God . . . As I was living in the Word and began to see unfold before me the beauty of what we have in Genesis 1 and 2, that is a thread that goes all the way through the Scripture and how our male and femaleness is not a chance thing. It’s not arbitrary. It was a good, wise design of our Creator that is intended to help reflect the character of God and the gospel of Christ in our world.

As I began to see that God intended for the flourishing of both men and women as they would operate in complementary ways to know God and to make Him known, that was a beautiful flowering in my own heart!

Dannah: In January of 2008, Nancy reflected on how that flowering in her heart happened.

Nancy: When I was twenty-one years old, I was serving on the staff of a large local church, serving in the children’s ministries area. One day the pastor of that church came and asked if I would be willing to launch the women’s division for a new ministry that he was starting.

Part of my responsibility would involve doing women’s seminars called The Battle for the Family: The Woman’s Role. Well, I would not have said this to him, but the truth was at that point I wasn’t even sure I liked women. Honestly! 

I could not imagine giving my life to serving women. You say, “That seems kind of strange.” But the Lord led and directed that this was what I was to do. I agreed to serve as he had asked. And so as I got into my twenties and into my thirties, I sought to do what I had been asked to do, and that is to serve women, to minister to the spiritual needs of women. 

In the course of doing those conferences and seminars and talking with women, I encountered many women who had been deeply wounded by men and were struggling with deep-seated resentments and fears and reservations when it came to their relationships with men. 

Then I found other women who had little or no framework for what it means to be a Christian woman, from a biblical perspective. So as I ministered to women—hurting women, confused women, disoriented women—I found myself looking to the Scriptures for wisdom, which is the place to look for wisdom. That’s where you get wisdom. 

Wisdom comes from the Lord. I was asking God to help me help these women. I began to look for answers to tough life issues related to our womanhood. As I did, God began to give me a deeper understanding of what it means to be a woman versus a man; why God created us as women, and what it means to relate to men in godly and healthy ways. I began to discover in God’s Word ways that we could glorify God as women. I have to tell you that this has been an incredibly liberating journey for me!

It didn’t happen overnight. But over a period of years God began to set me free to love Him as a woman with my whole heart, soul, mind, strength, and to serve and glorify Him as a woman.

Dannah: That’s our host, Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, from a few years back, explaining how she’s grown in her understanding and appreciation of her own gender. Here she is, in conversation with Bob Lepine once again.

Nancy: God was doing all of that, sowing seeds, preparing me, preparing a way for what became Revive Our Hearts. Even as we’re talking about it and as we look back in retrospect, it’s a beautiful thing to see how God was preparing each of our lives! 

Your story is different than mine. Anybody listening to this conversation, their story is different yet. God doesn’t make mistakes; He is ordering our lives. He is sovereignly and providentially putting influences into our paths.

Bob: We read in Ephesians 2:10 that there are works that He prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. And that’s what you’re talking about. The providence of God in our lives is God directing us on the paths that He has prepared beforehand. Certainly, we can choose to kick against that or to respond with a surrendered life to that.

Part of this plan of God was the unusual chapter that included a long period of singleness. A lot of singles grieve profoundly.

Nancy: Yes, and I understand that.

Bob: You didn’t?

Nancy: I did not. I don’t want to say that there was never a moment of that, but I’m not saying that [my experience] is the norm. I think the norm is that this is a hard thing, and it’s a sacrifice. It’s offering up to God my unfulfilled longings as a sacrifice. I feel that for many women who have served on our staff over the years, this is a surrender for them.

Dannah: Just before Nancy married Robert Wolgemuth in November of 2015, she recorded a series titled “Thoughts for My Single Sisters . . . Before I Become a ‘Mrs.’”

Nancy: You see, when we're little girls, we think what we would like the script of our lives to be like. And that's why little girls raised on Disney and Disney princesses, for so many the longing is for marriage, and a certain kind of marriage, and a certain kind of romantic relationship, and certain dreams.

But for you, the dreams may have been different. You had this vision for your life. You had this script you hoped it would follow. And maybe from the time you were a little girl, it was off-script. It didn't unfold the way you hoped it would or thought it would. Maybe you thought you'd get married and have six children, and you got married and found out you couldn't have any children.

It's the maybes. It's the you-thoughts. It's the we-thoughts. It's, "I had this script for my life. I thought my kids were going to turn out this way. I thought my marriage was going to turn out this way. I thought my health would turn out this way."

But it's turned out really to be different than anything you ever dreamed. And I want to say: God is good, and He can be trusted to write your story. He can be trusted to write the script for your life. And whatever God writes for your life and for mine—looking back, looking forward—the script God writes, the story God is writing is a good story. It's a beautiful one!

Romans 12:2 tells us, "The will of God is good and acceptable and perfect." I've often said (it's been attributed to me, but it's not original with me, and I don't know who said it originally): "The will of God is exactly what I would choose if I knew what God knows." I love the quote!

The will of God is good. God can be trusted. You can trust God to write the story for your life.

Joy comes not from writing our own story or having the story go as we would have scripted it. Joy comes from saying, "Yes, Lord," to whatever story He writes for our lives!

Psalm 84:11 tells us: "The LORD God is a sun and shield; the Lord will give grace and glory; no good thing will he withhold from those who walk uprightly.” (KJV) And let me say, by the way, nobody can walk uprightly apart from Christ, who is our righteousness, right? That's not saying, "If you don't have a husband, therefore, you must not be a good enough person."

That's not what it's saying at all. It's saying, "Those whose faith is in Christ—who lean on Him, who look to Him, who count on Him for their righteousness—God will not withhold one good or needful thing from you.” 

And in the meantime, He will be to you a sun and a shield. He will be your warmth. He will be your protection. He will be your covering. He will be your energy. He will give grace, and He will give glory.

The woman who longs to be married, who has this unfulfilled longing for marriage, is not relegated to spend her life in misery, in despair, being discouraged, being downcast. She has a sun. She has a shield. She has grace. She has glory. And she has the assurance that not one good or needful thing will God withhold from her life.

Now, in 1 Corinthians chapter 7, the apostle Paul talks about this whole issue of marriage and singleness, and a few other related things. He says that both marriage and singleness are a gift, both are a calling, both have blessings and benefits, and both have challenges.

Marriage and singleness are both a calling from God. "Let each person lead the life that the Lord has assigned to him and to which God has called him . . . In whatever condition each was called, there let him remain with God." (see 1 Cor. 7:17, 24)

Marriage and singleness, in their time and in their place as God unfolds the story, as God unfolds the script, they are a calling. They are, if I can say it, an assignment from the Lord. Now, not an assignment in the sense . . . Robert doesn't want to hear me say, "I've been assigned by God to marry you." (laughter)

He'd like to know that I love him and that I really do want to marry him—and I do. But there's another sense in which I realize that my love for him is in response to an assignment and a calling I've received from the Lord. And my heart is to say, “Yes, Lord!” My heart was to say, “Yes, Lord,” as a single woman; my heart is to say, “Yes, Lord,” as a married woman. It’s a calling.

Human nature, our tendency, is to want a different calling than the one we have! It’s to want to be in a different place, in a different pasture, in a different field, in a different condition than the place the Lord has assigned to us.

And so the exhortation Paul gives in 1 Corinthians 7 is to remain where God has placed you—until God changes your calling. And if He does, then you go with joy and contentment into that new calling!

Dannah: That was Nancy Leigh DeMoss speaking to our single listeners just before she became Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth. If you would like to hear more of that series from 2015, visit ReviveOurHearts.com, and you’ll find a link in the transcript of today’s episode.

As we heard earlier, Nancy has always wanted to have the kind of attitude Mary of Nazareth demonstrated. Basically she said, “Yes, Lord!” to God’s plan for her life. And as Nancy told Bob Lepine, that demeanor produced joy in her even though she wasn’t married.

Nancy: It was not a hard thing for me to surrender. That’s not the norm, and I think that feeling that sense of unfulfilled longing, there’s nothing sinful in that. That’s much more normal than what I experienced.

But in my case, I think God used the fact that it wasn’t a hard issue to surrender to make it possible for me to serve Him as a single woman undistracted for the first fifty-seven years of my life. That said, I also was really intentional about doing things that would help make me more relational, that would be a protection in my life.

I was intentional about spending time with families—integrating my life into the life of families—and that helped a lot with loneliness. I was intentional about having good and godly men in and aroundministry as it developed—and women as well—to provide counsel and wisdom and input. Companionship from those women or from couples has been a sweet thing.

I think there’s such freedom—especially for women who are going to be more the responders than the initiators when it comes to marriage. I’ve said this to my single friends and to my married friends as well, who are women in particular, there’s such freedom in trusting God to write your story!

That doesn’t mean you don’t have hard times or places, whether married or single, but to trust God that until I was fifty-seven . . . Now, a woman in her early twenties who’s wanting to trust God, and she’s thinking, Oh, if I trust God I might be fifty-seven and not married! And how horrific would that be?! I’m saying if that’s what God maps out for you, it will not be miserable. It will be a joy! 

But also trust Him that if and when it’s time for marriage—whether that’s in your twenties or in your fifties (as it was for me)—that’s a good and beautiful gift! You and I were talking just a little bit ago in a meeting about this from Ecclesiastes 3:1: “To everything there is a time and a season,” and God really can be trusted. 

And for all the married women who are in a hard season—either because of physical health issues or job issues or marriage struggles, relational challenges, extended family challenges—there are hard parts about marriage and family. I just want to say, “I can trust God in His providence, whatever season He puts me in.”

When I married Robert, who is older than I am by a number of years, I realized that marrying as late as we did, actuarially (is that the word?) . . .

Bob: Yes, there are tables that say . . .

Nancy: There are tables that say there is a likelihood that I will be a widow at some point. I’m not looking forward to that, but I’m not there right now. I’m here right now, and there is grace for this moment. As you look to the future, there is hope, because you know that God is the One writing the story!

Dannah: Nancy’s desire has always been to say, “Yes, Lord,” to whatever God has for her. For many years, it meant receiving the gift of singleness. And in the last five-and-a-half years, it’s meant receiving the gift of marriage. 

Nancy cowrote a book with her husband Robert called You Can Trust God to Write Your Story. They share more details of their own courtship and marriage in that book, and also the stories of others who’ve had to learn to trust God in their individual circumstances. 

We’d love to get a copy into your hands. It’s our way of thanking you for your donation in support of Revive Our Hearts right now.To give, visit ReviveOurHearts.com, or call us at 1–800–569–5959. Ask about the book You Can Trust God to Write Your Story when you contact us. 

Nancy continues her conversation with Bob Lepine all this week here on Revive Our Hearts, and we’re going to continue celebrating twenty years of saying, “Yes, Lord!” on the air. Revive Our Hearts has ministered to many listeners over the years, listeners like Tammy, who called to wish Nancy and Revive Our Hearts a happy birthday. She’s been a regular listener since 2004.

Tammy: Day by day I could just feel my heart motivations really shift from something that was just really legalistic, and really learning what grace looked like. I had been operating on a belief that, if I was a really good girl, then my life wouldn't have suffering in it . . . and of course it did. I had the assumption that I must have done something wrong and God was punishing me. 

Listening to you just really helped to shape my focus that there are good things about suffering and I can learn and I can grow, and that truly just was such a huge blessing to me, because we were going through a lot of really challenging times. 

Dannah: Tammy says listening to Revive Our Hearts also helped shape her understanding of what it means to be a woman.

Tammy: Listening to you just gave me such a solid foundation from God's Word about what biblical womanhood really is. And that has helped me so much as I reach out now to women all the time. Truly, 2004 and 2005 were life changing! 

Those years really set my life on a new course for my life and for my ministry, so thank you so much. Happy birthday! 

Dannah: Thank you, Tammy! We’d love to hear from you, too! If you’d like to call and leave your testimony, our call-in number is 269–697–6161. Let us know how the Lord has used Revive Our Hearts in your life!

Have you ever felt utterly helpless and unable to do what God is asking you to do? Tomorrow Nancy shares about a season in her life where she felt intense neediness and dependence on the Lord. I hope you’ll join us for Revive Our Hearts!

Celebrating twenty years of saying, “Yes, Lord!” Revive Our Hearts with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth calls you to freedom, fullness and fruitfulness in Christ.