Teaching Based on God's Word

Leslie Basham: Have you heard? Revive Our Hearts is turning five.

Mike Easley: Nancy, this is Michael Easley at the Moody Bible Institute. I just want to congratulate you on your 5th anniversary and encourage you to keep on teaching the Word. Thanks for your commitment to the Bible, for your cogent message, and may God richly bless you.

Linda Dillow: Hi Nancy, this is Linda Dillow. I’m calling to wish you and Revive Our Hearts a wonderful 5th anniversary. I pray that God will give many, many more anniversaries because I know you will continue to proclaim Him and to proclaim His truth.

Leslie: This is Revive Our Hearts with Nancy Leigh DeMoss for Thursday, August 31st.

All this week we’ve listened to portions of a conversation that took place when Bob Lepine from FamilyLife Today joined Nancy and friends in reminiscing and celebrating five years of Revive Our Hearts. Let’s continue where we left off yesterday.

Bob Lepine: What is it that women who listen would say is the differentiation between just studying the Bible and what’s happening on Revive Our Hearts?

I’m hearing two things. I’m hearing understanding womanhood, but I’m also hearing pressing toward obedience and not just knowledge.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss : Yes, Bob, I think we have so much content available to us today. Many women are taking advantage of that which is a wonderful thing with the Bible studies and the books and the resources, the training programs. But I tell you, when I open the Word for myself, and then when I open it to teach other people, I really believe this Word is alive. That it is powerful; that it is explosive in our lives; that it is Spirit-breathed, and that it is intended to live in me, to be quickened in me, that it is supposed to transformational.

I study it to get head knowledge, but the head knowledge is supposed to transform my life. It’s like a lion. You let it loose, and it’s powerful, and it’s like dynamite, and it’s . . . You can’t look in this Word rightly and see, as James says, see “your face in mirror,” and see that there are needs, see that it’s dirty, and see that something needs to be changed, and just walk away from it. So when I go to the Word I’m praying, “Lord, change me into the image of Christ whose Word this is, by the power of Your Spirit.”

When I’m speaking to women, I’m appealing to them. I feel very earnest about this. This is why we’ve talked sometimes about me sometimes talking a little bit too fast and little too passionately, because there’s this fire in me that says don’t just hear the Word.

But I pray, and I believe God to anoint the Word, to anoint my lips, to anoint the ears of those who hear so that we cannot just see what it says; we cannot just hear what it says, but it becomes this fire in our belly that is transformational.

It’s not something I can do in someone else’s life. It’s something the Holy Spirit of God does. I’m believing every time I teach the Word, I’m believing God to do this supernatural divine transaction in the lives and the hearts of the hearers. God is speaking, and so I tremble at His Word. I tremble as I teach it because I believe that the Word is empowered by the Spirit. You can’t stay the same.

(phone calls)

Woman: Hi. I’ve been married 33 years and unequally yoked. I just get blessed so much by Nancy. So many times when the radio is on it will be the exact thing that I am learning about in my life or that God is dealing with me on. Nancy, you are very, very open and honest, and you speak the truth in such a loving way. But you don’t mince words, and that is what I really, really appreciate about you. You get right to the core of the issue, and you are so Scriptural that you just know that God’s in it.

Rosalee: My name is Rosalee. From the very first day that Nancy went on the air, I knew God was going to strengthen my heart, my life, my desire to do His will just because of her steadfastness in teaching the Word line upon line, precept upon precept. I was so excited when I heard her for the first time simply because she is a woman that I know spends time in the Word, with the Lord, not just to learn the Word to teach it to others, but that she is living it herself. It encourages me, strengthens me, motivates me on a daily basis to continue to love the Lord my God with all of my heart, soul, mind, and strength.

(In studio)

Holly Elliff: I think one of the distinctives that you’re trying to get at is the fact that Nancy does not just lead women into knowledge, but her heart is to take that knowledge then and apply it to women’s hearts so that they become wise, as Kathy referred to a minute ago, and so that wisdom is knowledge lived out. I think Nancy’s not content with women just having more knowledge. Her heart is to see that knowledge lived out as they become wise women who then turn around and teach someone else how to be wise.

Kathy Helvey: She is very vulnerable when she is teaching and very honest about her own life which then challenges me to be the same with other women and other people and with the Lord. Primarily, to go back and when I’m in the Word to be vulnerable and open to what the Lord has for me. I think that is really key.

Maria Johnson: That goes with what I was going to say. One of the phrases that you say often, Nancy, is, “I’m still learning; I’m still growing.” When I first heard you say that I thought, “What? You’re this author, this teacher, and on the radio.” I think in our culture there’s a subtle pressure to have it all together.

That’s one thing that’s helped me is your being so real in saying, “I’m still learning; I’m still growing.” To hear you say, “In a staff meeting I was this, and I had to go back.” I was thinking, “Wow! She’s still learning. She’s still growing, too. It’s okay not to have it all together but to be learning with an I-N-G and still be in process, still growing." That’s been a comfort to me.

Nancy: I was in the Word this morning, and I’ve been meditating on the Lord’s Prayer. I was in the Doxology of the Lord’s Prayer this morning, “Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever, amen” (Matthew 6:13). That will take you to heights. I was just meditating on that, studying it, and had a great time with the Lord.

Then as I was getting ready to come to this recording session, within minutes, maybe seconds, I found for various . . . I got into e-mail, and that was my downfall. The day starting racing and I found my heart distressed, distraught, frustrated, uneasy, irritated, impatient—all the things, if His is the kingdom and the glory and the power forever, amen; how can you be all these things?

I thought back to a series I taught some time ago about a quiet heart from Psalm 131. God used that series in so many women’s lives. I found myself just being haunted a bit by things I had said to others and having to confess to the Lord, “My heart is not quiet.”

Five minutes ago I was on the Mount of Transfiguration here with Jesus, and now I’m down in this valley acting like these demon-possessed people. I don’t mean that lightly. It was a very sad thing to me, actually. But I’m in pilgrimage and in process with you ladies and with our listeners and our readers and growing together to know that Christ is all we need for every one of those life moments.

Joy: You know, Bob, I remember one example that Nancy had. She had a talk on eleven ways to dress. She went throughout the whole Bible and took scriptures that I would have never related to how to dress. They were godly dressings. It was just wonderful. She doesn’t just take one Scripture. She ties it, weaves it, all through the Bible and just comes out with this beautiful picture of to how to live.

(clip from The Well-Dressed Christian Woman radio series)

Nancy: How many of you remembered to get dressed this morning? Well, it looks like you all did. Well, as far as I can tell, it looks like you did. I mean outwardly you definitely got dressed. What I want us to consider today is did you remember to dress your heart this morning?

We want to look in this series what is means to be a well-dressed Christian woman, a Christian woman whose heart is well-dressed. To introduce that subject, I want to look at a passage in Psalm, chapter 45.

The first article of clothing that we’re to put on is humility. First Peter 5, verse 5 says, “Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another.”

Isaiah 61:10: “I will greatly rejoice in the Lord; my soul shall be joyful in my God, for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation.”

Aren’t you glad that salvation is something that God does for us? We can’t do it for ourselves. I think back to that passage in Genesis chapter 3 where after Adam and Eve sinned they realized that they were naked. They were embarrassed; they were ashamed. So it says, “they sewed for themselves aprons or loin cloths made out of fig leaves” (Genesis 3:7, paraphrased). They did just the best they could, but God knew it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t sufficient.

So in the end of chapter 3 of Genesis, verse 21, the Scriptures says, so “God made for them clothes out of animal skins, and he covered them” (paraphrased). He clothed them. You see, God had to take the life of innocent animals to get their skins to make clothing for Adam and Eve. The first coat was a fur coat. Amazing.

But it’s something that God had to do so that they could be sufficiently clothed. What a picture that is in the Old Testament of the fact that in order to give us salvation, God had to take the life of innocent lamb of God, the Lord Jesus Christ. With His life He clothed us, covering our sinfulness, our shamefulness, our wickedness, our spiritual nakedness. To be clothed with the garments of salvation is to have trusted in the work that Christ has done for us on the cross.

So I ask you this morning, are you clothed with the garment of salvation?

Leslie: We dusted off an archived program to bring you just a taste of what Joy was talking about just before—the fact that Revive Our Hearts is based solidly in God’s Word.

What would you say are the distinguishing features of Revive Our Hearts? Would you e-mail us your answer? Go to www.ReviveOurHearts.com and contact us with what you think sets this program apart. We’d love to hear from you.

While you’re perusing our website, be sure to check out the Revive Our Hearts Anniversary Set. These are five of Nancy’s books packaged together for you to add to your library or share with a friend.

Also, you can find out whether your station will be affected by our move to a half hour length program next week. Isn’t it exciting? Many of you have expressed your enthusiasm, and we appreciate that.

Again, find out how your station’s schedule might be affected at our website.

Tomorrow, we’ll tie a bow around this five year celebration with more phone calls to surprise Nancy and reliving some of the most powerful moments on Revive Our Hearts. I hope you’ll join us.

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

All Scripture is taken from the English Standard Version.

Eddy Howard & Vocal Group. "Happy Birthday." The Best of Eddy Howard. UMG Recordings, Inc., 1996.

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