The Word Came for You

Dannah Gresh: Gretchen Saffles wants you to know God’s Word is more than ink on a page. It’s a person—a person who came for you.

Gretchen Saffles: Maybe you're in a season of deep grief and longing. Maybe you lost a loved one this year. Maybe you received a life-changing diagnosis, and the way you knew life is completely different now, and you're barely hanging on by a thread, wondering, is there really hope? The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.

Dannah: Now in our 25th year of ministry, this is the Revive Our Hearts podcast with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, for January 20, 2026. I’m Dannah Gresh.

Nancy: Do you ever feel the tug of things luring you away from time in God's Word? I know I do. In fact, I think I feel that tug every single day of my life. And so has my friend Gretchen Saffles.

Dannah: I think we all have, Nancy. Yesterday, we began listening to her True Woman message called "Word before World."

Nancy: I'll tell you, it was both convicting and refreshing. I can’t wait for you to hear the rest of that message today. Let’s listen.

Gretchen: John also describes Jesus in John chapter 1 as being the light that conquers the darkness.

Now, I love to garden. Any other gardeners here? Yep, there's a lot of us here. Can you grow a plant in complete pitch-black darkness? No. There is no . . . I looked it up. There are low-light plants, so we can get into all of that stuff. But every plant needs light to grow and to survive. And most plants . . . I like flowers. Vegetables are so fussy. But flowers, they forge right through all the times I neglect them. And, they need the light. They need the light in order to grow and to flourish.

We too need the light. We need the Son of Jesus Christ to shine on the soil of our hearts, and He does that when we are in His Word. We need the heat of His Word to burn away the sin in us, the waywardness in us, to draw us back as the Good Shepherd.

Well, I live in the South, and we get a lot of big, torrential rainstorms in the summer. It's so humid down there, and there's always a time where we'll get just one of those that, like, comes down out of nowhere. And I'll go back and check on my garden after, and pretty much everything's just, like, flopped over—just laying flat on the ground.

And I love watching the days after the storm, though, when the sun comes out, because even those flowers have literally—they've just, like, I give up. They just fell over because of all of that rain. What they end up doing is they crane their necks toward the sun. And so even though their bodies may be kind of laying down from that storm, they literally will—it’s like the side will just become kind of curved, and they'll turn up to find the light.

That's what we need to do: to turn our hearts, to crane our necks, to fix our eyes on His Word. Because Jesus, He is the sun. We're only like the moon. The moon doesn't give off its own light. What the moon does at night is it reflects the light of the sun.

We are not the sun. Our pastor is not the sun. Our favorite author is not the sun. Nancy's not the sun. Jesus is the sun. Our calling is merely to reflect Him, to bask in the light of His goodness, His glory, and His grace.

John actually talks about this whenever he goes into verses 6–13, because it may seem a little bit out of place. All of a sudden, he starts talking about this man who is sent from God, and his name was John.

You're like, “Man, there's so many Johns.” This is John the Baptist. So John—the disciple is talking about John the Baptist—and he's saying that this man came to bear witness about the light. He was not the light.

John the Baptist wasn't the Savior. He even says that in the following chapters in the book of John. He says, “Look to Him. He came before me. He must increase; I must decrease.” John was not the Son. Christ is the Son.

We are just like the moon. Are you reflecting Him? Are you looking at Him and craning your neck? You may be walking through a storm in your life. I mean, I would be shocked if everybody in here was like, “Nope, life is just so easy right now. I just—just so great.” There's always something, isn't there? You come out of one thing, and there's just something else—that's life. Life in a fallen world.

And yet we can be like those flowers, who crane our necks to see the sun. Jesus is the light of this world. He gives us life because His Word has power to save. Only God's Word can break the strongholds that are in our lives—the sin that festers in the darkness behind closed doors.

Maybe there's something that you're holding right now. Maybe there's some sort of sin pattern or addiction that you have not told anybody about, and you walk around just like Adam and Eve, with that shame, feeling like you're covered up in fig leaves.

I want to remind you that God has given us hope. He traded Adam and Eve for those little flimsy fig leaves that, when you pull a leaf off of its branch, it dies, right? I mean, those fig leaves—they were going to crumble real soon. But God has given us an enduring covering in His Son, who lived a perfect and spotless life—one that we could never live. I mean, never, ever live.

And then He died a death in our place so that we could have life in Him. He’s not in the grave anymore. We don't serve a God that has a tombstone that we can go visit. I've been to the empty grave. He's not there anymore. Just like those angels, they were saying, “Come and see. He's not here. He's not here anymore. He is risen.” We have a risen Savior.

It is only God's Word. It is only His Son who conquered the darkness of sin with the light of the gospel. When the light of the Eternal Word shines on your heart, the darkness has to flee. It can't stay. I've never turned on a light and the darkness stayed. It's impossible. You turn it on, and you see all the things, right—all the things you didn't want to see in that junk drawer that you just keep putting everything in. When you open that, it’s all there still. The light of the gospel burns away everything that is of us, and it reveals our need for Jesus.

So John, he goes on, and we're going to read John chapter 1, verses 14–18. This is our last little passage.

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John bore witness about him and cried out, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks before me, because he was before me.’”) For from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God; God the only Son, who was at the Father's side, he has made him known.

This is astounding. If you were to look at all the other religions, there is no other God who came to rescue His people. Our God sent His Son to become flesh. He experienced everything that we experience, and yet He was without sin. He never sinned. Can you imagine? And yet now He is our Great High Priest, who can sympathize with our weakness. He can help us. He can provide a way out. He is full of grace and truth.

I don't know where you are today, but Christ hasn't run out of grace. He's not up there going like, “Man, I just really ran out yesterday. Man, sorry, you're out of luck.” No. Out of His abundance, we have received grace and truth.

Paul writes in Colossians 1:19–20, “For in him all the fullness of God”—not like a little bit, He was fully God and fully man—“was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself . . .” Here's those two words again, y'all know what they are—“all things.” Can y'all say it? All things. Not some things, right? All things—"making peace by the blood of the cross." We have received from His fullness, not His lack. We're the ones who have lack. He's the one who has all the fullness.

Over the years, my family loves to go to North Georgia. We live in Georgia, and go apple picking. It's like my favorite day of the year. I'm not sure if it's everybody else's in my family. They're like, “Oh, gotta get, like, tons of apples.” But I love it. It's so fun.

And one year, when we went, we neglected to check, like, where the gas was. So we drove out there. And these apple orchards—they're not, like, by the city or anything. You drive way out there. And when we got there, we'd had a fun day apple picking. And when we left, we realized, “Wow, you know, this is like really low, and we've got a long way to drive.”

So as we were driving, it just seems like when it gets to that point, it's like, jump, like, "Tricked ya. Now I'm really like, nothing there." And I freaked out, so I turned the radio off. Not sure if that takes gas, but it made me feel better. Turned the radio off, turned the air off, was like, “Nobody breathe. We cannot run out of gas.”

So I'm driving and trying to coast on, like, the little hills. I do not know how we made it, but I have a picture of the gas gauge, and it literally is like zero when we pull into the gas station that we finally arrived at. So it didn't fully run out, probably, right? There was, like, no more. I never forgot how it felt to run on empty. It was not fun.

But I know that a lot of us today, we're running on empty. Like I mentioned earlier, there's a lot of women's ministry leaders in here. Maybe you coordinate the groups in your church. Whatever it is, we all have some place where we're serving. Maybe it's in children's ministry. Maybe it's just—like I said—not just this is so important—with the children around you in your home or at your work or in the ministry where you serve, and we're running on empty.

You're constantly pouring out, giving to others, meeting with them, encouraging them, and it feels like you've got no time to come and just sit at the feet of Jesus, and you're running on empty.

Or maybe you are a mom with young kids, or you're in school, and there's so many things going on. You've got all of these activities you've got to do, and it seems like every time you try to open God's Word, it's like, your phone dings, someone calls, there's a meeting, somebody interrupts you, and you feel discouraged. And you're just running on empty. You're here, just kind of at that very end of the gas gauge.

Maybe you're in a season of deep grief and longing. Maybe you lost a loved one this year. Maybe you received a life-changing diagnosis, and the way you knew life is completely different now, and you're barely hanging on by a thread, wondering, Is there really hope?

The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. The Word was nailed to a cross in our place and suffered for us. The Word has walked on this earth in a human body. He understands, and He conquered. It is through Him that we can stand in the gospel. We can know His truth, that even when everything's falling apart, when it's like you don't even know what to hold on to anymore, His Word really does hold us together.

In Isaiah 55, the prophet reminds us to come. He says, “Come, everyone who thirsts. I come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat!” You don't have to—you don't have to have it all together. No, that's exactly how He wants you to come: without money and without price.

Then he says, “Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy?” We have the Word of life.

And down a few more verses, in verses 10–11, he says,

For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.

I know there are days where I open my Bible, and have you ever done a Bible reading plan? You're inevitably going to get to Leviticus, and you're going to get to Chronicles. And when I read on those days, there's a lot of times where I don't walk away like, “I just feel so comforted.”

But this Word is still life. God is still accomplishing when you're reading that genealogy, because God is purposeful in every little thing. He's a designer, He's a writer, He's a creator. Even those genealogies, there's gems to be mined there. Even when you're in the book of Leviticus and you're reading about all the sacrifices—oh my goodness gracious—the gospel is there.

Come to Him, all of us who are empty. Bring Him your empty cup, because He will fill it up.

The Bible is not some old, antiquated, out-of-date book. You're going to see that all over social media, all these places. This is the only book that you really do need, the very opposite. Open it. Treasure it. We don't have to coast through this life running on empty. We can bring our empty cups to Him and fill them up.

So I want you to, if you've got a Bible—even if you're using your phone, the Word of God is on your phone and it speaks—hold it up for me for a second. I want you to say after me, “This is the Word of God.”

This is the Word of God, sisters. This is the Word of God—the Word that came before the world, that created the world. The Word that gives us wisdom for this life. The Word that shines in the darkness. The darkness flees. He overcomes it. The Word that makes our dead hearts beat again. The Word that revives our weary souls. The Word that never changes, but it always changes us.

This Word does not lead us to a life of legalism and checking off reading the Bible; it leads us to a life of joy and delight.

George Mueller was a Christian evangelist in the 1800s, who became known for founding orphanages all over England. He ended up ministering to and taking care of over 10,000 orphans, and he had quite the prayer life, if you've ever read any biography about him.

Well, obviously he was a very busy man, ministering, pouring out for these children. But he wrote one day these words. He said, “I saw more clearly than ever the first great and primary business to which I ought to attend every day was to have my soul happy in the Lord.”

The first thing to be concerned about was not how much I might serve the Lord, how I might glorify the Lord, but how I might get my soul into a happy state and how my inner man might be nourished.

“I saw that the most important thing I had to do was to give myself to the reading of the Word and to meditation on it, that thus my heart might be comforted, warned, reproved, instructed.”

Is your soul happy in the Lord? Is your soul seeking joy in Christ? My question for you is this: do you know Jesus? Have you encountered the Word made flesh?

I know we're at a women's conference, but I know there could be women in here who have never truly come to know Christ as their Lord and Savior, and if you have never believed in His name, I pray that today would be that day.

I know I'm here to talk. All of the Revive Our Hearts staff is here to talk. You may even be here with friends. Make today that day. And if you are a believer walking with the Lord, maybe you feel like I did in 2018, and like I so often feel even today. Like it's so easy to turn on the news or to turn to all of these other words without first coming to the Word and basking in the light of the Son of God.

I pray that today we will know that it's by grace we read the Word. God's not up there looking at you, going, “Man, you didn't do it today.” No, He's inviting us: come. Come right where you are. Come and bring your empty cup to Him.

And here's the deal: you're not always going to get it right. I know I don't love hearing that, but we're not. There's going to be days where we wake up and pick up our phone instead. There's going to be seasons where suffering just zaps it out of us. But keep coming back to His Word.

So I want to end by telling you a story that just blew my mind. It's about two women who knew God's Word, and they decided to put the Word before the world, and their lives made a difference that actually impacts us today. And I'll tell you how.

The first woman was named Lilias Trotter. She was born in the late 1800s, and from an early age, everybody knew she was artistically gifted, amazing at drawing and painting. She had the opportunity to study under a great painting master, but she realized that if she was going to live a life that is focused, she wanted to go on mission.

And the beautiful thing is that even as a missionary to unreached people groups, she still created beautiful art. You can look it up if you've never seen some of Lilias Trotter's art. And she also continued to write. She was a well-known writer.

Well, in about 1901, she wrote a pamphlet called Focused that became printed—keep that away in your brain. Around the same time, another woman was born whose name was Helen Lemmel. She was born into a ministry family that eventually immigrated to the United States.

Helen was also artistically gifted. She was a writer. Over the years, she developed a deep love for writing and music. She eventually wrote over 500 hymns.

Well, in 1922—it's a long gap in between—Helen read a little pamphlet named Focused that Lilias Trotter wrote. This was in a season of deep sight suffering. Helen eventually got married and then began to lose her eyesight due to a disease. Her husband left her. She still wrote hymns about her faith and her hope in Jesus.

Well, she read those words written by Lilias Trotter, and they say: “So then turn your eyes upon Him, look full into His face, and you will find that the things of earth will acquire a strange new dimness.”

Does that sound familiar? Helen recorded her response to Lilius's words, saying, “I stood still, and singing in my soul and spirit was the chorus, and no one conscious moment of putting word to word to make rhyme or note to note to make melody. The verses were written the same week after the usual manner of composition, but nonetheless dictated by the Holy Spirit.”

“Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus,” written by a woman who had lost her eyesight, by a woman who had suffered, inspired by the life of another woman who had surrendered so many things to follow the Lord and to go to another country to share her faith with people who had never heard the good news of the gospel.

These words point us to a Person. This Word points us to a Person, and His name is Jesus Christ.

So I want you to hear these words again in light of what we've just learned in John chapter 1 about who Jesus is, because Helen writes:

Oh soul, are you weary and troubled?
No light in the darkness you see?
There is light. Look to the Savior,
And life more abundant and free.

[Will you sing the chorus with me?]

Turn your eyes upon Jesus.
Look full in His wonderful face,
And the things of earth will grow strangely dim
In the light of His glory and grace.

Well, Helen actually wrote a third stanza to that, and it's at the bottom of your notes page. We sang it last night, and I'd always known about “Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus,” but it's this third stanza that really caught my eye, because it says:

His Word will not fail you; He promised.
Believe Him, and all will be well.
Then go to a world that is dying
His perfect salvation to tell.

Let's pray:

Father, we turn our eyes upon Jesus, the Author and Perfecter of our faith. We know that Your Word is true. Your Word is eternal. It is powerful. It is full of grace and truth.

So God, we thank You for filling our empty cups today with Your Word that points us to Your Son, Jesus—our hope, our peace, our joy, and our salvation. In the name of Jesus, I pray, amen.

Nancy: Amen. That’s Gretchen Saffles inviting you to turn your eyes upon Jesus by opening His Word. 

Gretchen asked the women at her breakout session an important question, and now I want to ask you: Do you know Jesus? Have you encountered the Word made flesh? If you haven’t come to know Christ as Lord and Savior, I’m praying with Gretchen that today would be the day for you. To learn more about the gospel Jesus Christ and what it means to have a saving relationship with Him, I want to invite you to visit ReviveOurHearts.com/GoodNews. 

And if you have come to know Jesus, my prayer is that your love for him would increase daily as you seek to put the Word over the world. Dannah?

Dannah: I’m with you, Nancy. That’s my hope for all of us. If you’re eager to dig into your Bible this January but you’re not sure where to start—join us! We’re reading through the Bible together with women all over the world. And even though we started January first, you can easily hop right in today! Just visit ReviveOurHearts.com/Bible2026. That’s where you’ll find all the information you need to get started.

Also, reminder! Gretchen has written a whole book on today’s topic. It’s called Word before World: 100 Devotions to Put Jesus First. Be sure to check out this gorgeous book at the link in today’s transcript. 

As you put the Word before the world this year, we’d love to send some helpful resources your way. When you make a donation of any amount, you can get the lovely In His Presence Scripture Card Set, along with a printed copy of the 2026 Bible reading plan. And, when you donate $50 or more, we’ll also send you the Behold the Wonder Bible Reading Journal, accompanied by an assortment of highlighters, pens, and sticky notes. 

Visit ReviveOurHearts.com, or call us at 1-800-569-5959. All of these resources are thoughtfully designed to complement your Bible study rhythms. We hope you enjoy them! 

Have you ever felt like you’re carrying about a burden of shame? Well tomorrow, our own Portia Collins will encourage you to not be defined by it. 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.

All Scripture is taken from the ESV.

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