Saying, “Yes, Your Majesty!”

Dannah Gresh: As she faces the uncertainties of terminal cancer, Colleen Chao has hope.

Colleen Chao: I’m living with a lot of unanswered questions, but that is exactly where I go deeper with Jesus. It presses me into Him. It helps me experience His love. It helps me understand that He is infinitely better than long a life! He’s infinitely better than a beautiful, healthy body.

Dannah: This is the Revive Our Hearts podcast with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, author of Heaven Rules, for October 30, 2024. I’m Dannah Gresh.

All week, we’ve been hearing Nancy teach from the book of Daniel on the theme of “Heaven rules.” It has been so rich! If you missed those programs, be sure to listen to them at ReviveOurHearts.com or on the Revive Our Hearts app.

But maybe you aren’t sure how these truths apply to your life. How do you put them into practice? Glad you asked, because Nancy’s back today with eight takeaways from the book of Daniel. Here’s Nancy.

Nancy: So here’s the question: do we really believe that Heaven rules? Do we live as if earth rules or Heaven rules? Do we live as if mankind rules or God rules? How will our lives be different if we truly believe that Heaven rules?

I want to give you several takeaways to ponder. This list could be much longer, but here are some ways that our lives will be different if we truly believe that Heaven rules:

1. If we believe Heaven rules, we will seek to have clean hearts.

We will resolve, as Daniel and his friends did, to live as holy people of a holy God (Daniel chapter 1) rather than assimilating into, fitting into, the culture around us. We will cheerfully obey God’s Word. We will confess our sins; we will forgive those who sin against us. We’ll have clean hearts.

2. If we believe Heaven rules, we will have clear heads—sound minds, sound thinking—about ourselves, about our world, about our God, about how to live as His children in this world and in the culture around us.

Nebuchadnezzar was proud. He wanted to be his own most high god, and he ended up losing his mind. Those who acknowledge Heaven’s rule over their lives will be humble. They will have a right view of God and of others and of themselves. They will be able to think clearly and wisely in confusing times. 

3. If we believe Heaven rules, we will remain calm when our world is chaotic and unhinged and spinning out of control—as it is today and as it was in Daniel’s day, or so it seemed.

Whether it’s in our personal world that’s going crazy or the larger world and culture around us, we won’t panic. We won’t despair when it looks like the enemies of God are winning, when hard things happen, when our freedoms are threatened, or our comforts are removed.

Daniel worked for some angry, violent kings and at times his life was threatened. But He didn’t panic; he didn’t stage a protest; he didn’t plot a coup to overthrow the government, because he understood that Heaven rules. And so in the face of danger (and I believe much greater danger is going to come in our times than we’ve already seen), he was resolute. He was calm. He was fearless. He prayed. Daniel chapter 2 tells us “he responded with tact and discretion” (2:14). 

Oh, you can tell who believes that Heaven rules by who goes crazy and who’s calm in times of trouble. Rather than living with perpetual outrage against the culture or the people around us who wound us and disappoint us, we will be people of hope. We will see every crisis as an opportunity for the powerlessness of the gods of this world to be exposed and the power and the greatness of our God to be displayed! We’ll be calm.

4. If we believe Heaven rules, we will be confident in God’s control, His timing, and in the ultimate outcome.

We won’t feel that we need to control or manipulate the people or the circumstances around us. I love that old hymn “This Is My Father’s World”:

This is my Father's world,
O let me ne'er forget,
That though the wrong seems oft so strong, [say it with me]
God is the ruler yet.

Be confident in God’s control.

5. If we believe Heaven rules, we will be people of courage.

Yes, there will be unrest, conflict, and distress in this world, as there was in Daniel’s world. But Daniel 11:32 tells us that those “who know their God” will not give way to fear. They “will be strong, and they will take action.” There will be times when they are overcome by their enemies, but even that, God will use to purify and refine and bless them. 

If we believe Heaven rules, we’ll have courage to stand for Christ. We’ll have courage—teenagers, women in the secular marketplace, women living in families with unbelieving family members—to swim upstream against cultural trends and demands that are contrary to God. We won’t give in to pressure or compromise or conform. We won’t give in to pressure to bow to the gods of this world. We’ll be people of courage.

6. If we believe Heaven rules, we will communicate with God.

That’s a “c” word. I needed a “c” for saying, “We will be praying people!” as Daniel was. Rather than ranting about the evil influences and influencers in our day . . . (And I’ve seen some of you do it on social media. I know who you are!—I don’t really know who you are, but I’ve seen a lot of Christians doing it.)

Listen, if we believe Heaven rules, rather than ranting about all that evil around us, we will intercede for those people, those rulers, those negative evil influencers. We will believe that God can change the hearts of the most proud, ungodly leaders, as He changed Nebuchadnezzar’s heart in Daniel’s day. We’ll be praying people.

7. If we believe that Heaven rules, we will be content to wait patiently for God to work and to move, content to serve faithfully wherever He has placed us in the meantime.

We don’t have to be restless and striving and chafing, because we know the end of the story, and we know it’s all good!

8. If we believe that Heaven rules, we will crown Christ as King and Lord of every area of our lives.

Did you see that moment when Queen Elizabeth’s coffin was passing by Buckingham Palace and all the people from the staff who had served with her for all those years were lined up outside the palace? As the hearse with the coffin passed by her loving subjects, what did they do? They bowed; the women curtsied. We will bow before Him. “Yes, Your Majesty! I'll worship You and crown You Christ, the King of every area of my life."

God’s going to speak to all of us in different ways through His Word, through His servants. When He puts His finger on something in your heart—I don’t care if you’re the woman in her eighties or you’re the youngest teenager here or somebody in-between—will you say, “Yes, Lord!”? Will you let Him change you? Will you surrender to Him? Will you bow before Him? Will you say, “Yes, Lord; yes, Your Majesty!”?

Dannah: I hope you’ll take some time to think about the questions Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth just asked. There are no more important ones to consider!

Colleen Chao is a beautiful example of what it means to believe that Heaven rules. She was diagnosed with terminal cancer in 2021, but through the pain, grief, and uncertainty of every day, she continues to live out her trust in God, all with a big smile on her face.

Colleen was single until she was in her thirties, when she met her husband, Eddie. Their son, Jeremy, was still very young when Colleen was first diagnosed with cancer. She describes the day when she received the second cancer diagnosis, when she was told there was nothing doctors could do.

Colleen: The timeline was a pretty striking moment, to sit there and listen to a doctor say, “This is the time that the statistics say you have left,” but God has my days already numbered, so it’s not like the doctor holds something over me.

So with the second diagnosis I came home, my parents had been watching Jeremy, had Jeremy over. They brought him to the house. I met up with Eddie first; I wanted to see Eddie. Then we came home, and I walked in. We just had a sweet little exchange. I heard what he had done that day.

Then I said, “Bud, do you want to hear what I just found out?” 

He said, “Yes.”

So I told him what the doctors had said, that it’s stage four, and I gave him the timeline. I said, “What a gift that God’s given me the gift of some more time with you.”

We chatted a little, and then he walked out of the room, and I heard him weeping.

Jeremy: It was very hard. Stage four cancer is very tough, and I was really sad.

Colleen: Waiting so long for marriage, and then to have a child later, has been part of this grieving process, part of what I’ve had to wrestle through. When most of my friends have kids who’ve moved out of the house, or they’ve raised their child fully, and to deal with this stark reality that probably, at this point it looks like I will not be able to see the task of motherhood through as we commonly think it’s going to look—to get our kids off to college or married and independent.

I’ve had to deeply grieve that reality. I wrestled with the Lord for a couple of weeks over that in the beginning. To be faced with this terminal diagnosis and go, “But I don’t get to finish my motherhood task!” I’m going to be interrupted midstream. To just think I’m going to stop at some point, and he’s going to continue without that mom’s influence, it’s wrecked me like almost nothing else. I’ve never felt pain quite like this.

Jeremy’s story requires that I go before the task is finished, and there’s going to be glory in that.

Part of the heaviest grieving has come over my husband and son and what lies ahead for them, because I know my suffering will come to an end, but theirs will continue. My heart hurts, and I have to trust God in a new way with the dearest people in my life. To know that I won’t be able to speak tenderly into their lives. I won’t be able to love on them like I get to now when they grieve. That’s where they’re going to find more of God. That’s where He’s going to step in.

You know, I’m dispensable. I have to come to grips with the fact that God doesn’t need me to do His work. He graciously, joyfully chooses to use me until He calls me home. 

 

But my heart is heavy for what lies ahead for Jeremy and Eddie. There are some things I cannot think on. I just don’t let myself. I’ll start to go there, and I’m like, I don’t have grace to think about that particular aspect that could wreck me if I let it. There are some things I’ve almost treated as sin, almost like a temptation. I have to turn away from that temptation to go there with certain things that are to come.

At the same time, I am very convicted that God is going to step in in extraordinary ways. If you think about this, thousands of people are praying for our family right now. My prayers alone—that’s part of my privilege as a wife and a mom, to pray. That’s the calling as a wife and mom. You pray for your husband, you pray for your children. When my prayers end, what in the world . . .? We have this huge army of people praying for our family! So God’s already showing that He’s going to provide; He’s going to be there for my boys. 

But that one has been excruciatingly painful for me—and I can be a control freak—so just to say, “I don’t have any control. I can’t do anything about that.” I have to trust them to God.

Paul talks so much about carrying around the death of Jesus in our bodies so that His life could be manifest. That truth is everything, as a mom letting go. In so many Scriptures, death brings life. He who is going to hold onto his life is going to lose it, and he who loses his life is going to gain it. 

To know the reality for my son is that somehow in my death, which seems to be nearer than we would have thought, that that would manifest the life of Jesus. So that Scripture has been so good and powerful.

Then the Psalms. I mean, I just love the Psalms. I’ve lived in the Psalms for so many years. I’ve been over and over reading and listening to Psalm 34 and on, about ten chapters, and just the delight in God and the life that He gives, and the desires of our hearts that He fulfills. He’s not going to squander what He’s called me to give up. 

Dannah: Is Colleen’s story as convicting to you as it is to me? Sometimes I complain when my day gets sidetracked, yet Colleen is so trusting even as she anticipates leaving behind her husband and son. And let me say, she would be the first to tell you, that she doesn’t do it perfectly, either. But still, I’m inspired to follow her example.

If you want to hear more from Colleen, be sure to check out the video that our team made, or listen to the podcast series called “The Crushing of Colleen.” We’ll put links to both of those in the transcript of today’s program. You can find that at ReviveOurHearts.com.

And if today’s program has been meaningful to you, would you pray about making a donation to help us continue spreading this message? Without people like you who support what we do, we couldn’t produce these programs, create other resources, or host conferences for women all around the world.

When you make a gift this week, we want to say "thank you" by sending you a copy of Nancy’s book Heaven Rules: Take Courage. Take Comfort. Our God Is in Control. It’s chock full of stories like Colleen’s and solid teaching from the book of Daniel. To give, go to ReviveOurHearts.com, or call us at 1-800-569-5959. And when you contact us with your gift, ask for the book Heaven Rules.

I hope you’ll be back with us tomorrow! Mary Kassian will continue talking about “Heaven Rules,” and you won’t want to miss it.

Now, after Nancy gave the message we’ve been hearing for the last few days, she invited Colleen to join her on stage. After everyone in the room watched part of the video I mentioned, Nancy had a question for Colleen.

Nancy: Colleen, as we think about Heaven’s rule, what does that mean in your life right now while you’re going through terminal cancer and a lot of human weakness and pain? What does Heaven’s rule mean for you right now?

Colleen: I’ve told you this. I love that this has been on your heart, because it’s been such a ministry to me, everything that you’ve written and spoken about it [Heaven rules]. And Heaven rules means that this suffering matters, it infinitely matters, because this is where I find more of Jesus.

This is where I go to greater depths of His love, and that gives me something to pour out to others. It also means that this suffering doesn’t have the final word, God does. He gets the final word in this!

He is transforming every pain, every grief, every loss, every long sleepless night. He’s transforming that into beauty. It makes me think of what the apostle Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 4:17, where he says that this is “light and momentary affliction.” 

Facing death, in the great scheme of eternity, is light and momentary. It does not feel like that most of the time! But that’s the reality of it. He’s transforming all of these things into something so good and so beautiful. So much joy and reward is ahead that Paul calls it “absolutely incomparable”!

I firmly believe that we need resurrected bodies because we can’t handle the goodness that’s coming to us! We’re going to have new bodies to bear all the goodness and all the pleasure that God has stored up for us!

So with my finite mind, I’m dealing with these infinite realities. I’m living in a lot of mystery. I’m living with a lot of unanswered questions, but that is exactly where I go deeper with Jesus. It presses me into Him. It helps me experience His love. It helps me understand that He is infinitely better than long life! He’s infinitely better than a beautiful, healthy body.

He’s infinitely better than being alive to watch my son—my joy!—grow up. He’s infinitely better than getting to live a long life and grow old with my husband. These are things that are so precious to us here, but Christ is so much better, and I’m living in the reality of that.

It makes me think, too, of how Paul says, “We always carry the death of Jesus in our bod[ies] so that the life of Jesus may also be displayed in our bod[ies]” (2 Cor. 4:2). That’s why I just celebrate so much what Nancy is teaching. The beautiful book she’s written on this, Heaven Rules, this is our hope, that God always changes death into life! 

Nancy: Amen! Thank you. (applause) Just take the hand or touch the shoulder of somebody next to you, and let’s just pray for our sister.

Oh Lord, how we thank You for the beauty of what You’re doing in and through this woman’s life—cancer is not king and cancer does not get the final word. But Christ is King, and You are ruling and reigning and making something deeply beautiful and eternal out of this pain, out of the suffering. 

Thank You that this precious woman would take these days away from her husband and her son whom she loves so dearly; that she would take the time to write this book and another one she is working on. I just don’t see her giving up or sitting down or saying, “I stop. I quit!” But she’s being faithful all the way to the finish line. 

So in this journey, in the mystery, would You give her joy? Would You strengthen her and sustain her? Would You satisfy her deeply with Your steadfast love? Thank You for how she is using this journey to point us to Christ, who is our ultimate end and comfort and hope in life and in death. We pray in Jesus’ name, amen! 

Dannah: Amen. And to close our time in prayer for our country, let’s pray now with Kimberly Wagner. 

Kimberly Wagner: Father, great and almighty God, I confess that we are a wicked and corrupt people. We deserve Your judgment, I acknowledge that, not Your mercy. We need You to rend the heavens and come down, that the mountains might quake at Your presence and bring a powerful work of redemption and revival!

O Father, let us tremble at Your presence, O Holy God, and return to You. Give us grace to love You more deeply, to honor You with our lives, to live in devotion to Your Word. Most of all, we desire for You to be seen and known and be glorified in us and through us individually and as a nation! 

I ask all of this, Lord Jesus, in Your name, which is above every name. And at Your name one day every knee will bow and every tongue will confess, Lord Jesus, that You and You alone are God! (see Phil. 2:10–11). It’s in Your name I pray, amen.

This program is a listener-supported production of Revive Our Hearts in Niles, Michigan, calling women to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.

All Scripture is taken from the CSB.

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