What Does It Mean to Lay Down Your Life?

Dannah Gresh: Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth says you have a calling.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: 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.

Dannah: This is the Revive Our Hearts podcast with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, author of Surrender: The Heart God Controls, for October 19, 2026. I’m Dannah Gresh.

What does it look like to lay down your life? To follow the earthly example of Christ, who came and died so that we could live?

Nancy’s going to help us explore this question, starting with part of a message called “His Name Is Servant of the Lord.” 

Jesus, the Servant of the Lord

Nancy: I want to start in the Old Testament, Isaiah 42, where this ideal, righteous, faithful servant is first introduced. This is the first "Servant Song" in the book of Isaiah. In the first four verses of this chapter, God speaks about this servant. Then in verses 5–9, He speaks to His servant. In verses 1–4 He talks about this servant. He talks about his identity, his mission, and the way in which he will go about fulfilling that mission.

Let me read Isaiah 42:1–4:

Behold my servant, whom I uphold,
   my chosen, in whom my soul delights;
I have put my Spirit upon him;
   he will bring forth justice to the nations.
He will not cry aloud or lift up his voice,
   or make it heard in the street;
a bruised reed he will not break,
   and a faintly burning wick he will not quench;
   he will faithfully bring forth justice.
He will not grow faint or be discouraged
   till he has established justice in the earth;
   and the coastlands wait for his law.

Now, you’re scratching your head. “What is that all about?” That’s what those Old Testament Jews were doing. But you get to the New Testament and Matthew 12 tells us explicitly that this passage in Isaiah 42 . . . It quotes this passage and says that this is a Messianic prophecy that was fulfilled in Jesus. This passage is talking about Jesus. We don’t know that clearly until we get to the New Testament.

So this passage talks about His identity. “My servant,” God says, “whom I uphold, my chosen in whom my soul delights; I have put my Spirit upon him.” Does that remind you of something you read about in the New Testament? Remember the baptism of Jesus in Matthew 3?

Jesus is baptized by John. He comes up out of the water. The heavens are opened. The Spirit descends upon Him . . . comes to rest on Him like a dove (“I have put my Spirit upon Him”), and a voice from heaven says, what? “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased” (vv. 16–17).

God says, “This is My chosen one in whom My soul delights. I’ve put my Spirit upon Him.” This description of Messiah also describes what Israel, the servant of the Lord, was intended to be. They were intended—not to have this cold, formal relationship with God—but to have a warm, honored position and calling as the servant of the Lord.

They had been chosen for this purpose out of all the other nations of earth—not because they were special, but just because God loved them. And when Israel failed to fulfill her calling, to be the servant of the Lord, God sent another Servant. He sent Jesus to fulfill what Israel had failed to fulfill—the Servant of the Lord.

The Servant’s Identity and Mission

The Servant’s mission, we see in this passage: “He will bring forth justice to the nations . . . he will faithfully bring forth justice . . . he will [establish] justice in the earth” (Isa. 42:3–4). Now, this justice is not just in a limited, legal sense, but it involves proclaiming God’s holy standard and bringing the world into alignment with all of God’s eternal purposes and truth.

This justice is making everything right, and what is right? It’s the standard of God’s holiness. It’s bringing the whole world back into alignment with God and His holiness. How will this Servant of the Lord fulfill His mission? Isaiah 42 tells us that it’s not as the Jews expected the Messiah would act. They thought when He came (by the time you get to the New Testament Roman era) He would act by forceful words and actions.

But this Servant doesn’t come, according to Isaiah 42, with military might or power. Instead, verse 2 tells us this Servant of the Lord, “will not cry aloud or lift up his voice, or make it heard in the street.” He won’t strong-arm others in order to push His agenda. He won’t try to out-yell His opponents.

Does that ever happen sometimes in your family? You get into a dispute, and voices get raised because you want to prove you’re right and the other person is wrong, and the pitch gets higher and higher. Jesus doesn’t do it that way. That’s not how He wins.

You watch some news programs today, and you see just the opposite of what’s described here. You see these talk shows. People are yelling; they’re all talking at the same time; they’re arguing and trying to prove their point, debating. Not so the Servant of the Lord. Scripture tells us He will have a gentle, meek, quiet spirit, which 1 Peter tells us, in God’s sight is very precious.

A Gentle Savior Who Restores the Broken

Listen ladies, when we’re called to have a gentle and quiet spirit, we’re called to be like this Servant of the Lord . . . to be like Jesus. “He will not cry aloud or lift up his voice, or make it heard in the street.” He’s not going to force His way. Verse 3, “a bruised reed he will not break, and a faintly burning wick he will not quench.”

A bruised reed, that’s a fragile plant that’s been hurt. And the Servant of the Lord, Messiah, he won’t break (that word is “to crush, to smash”) these bruised and damaged lives. He’ll deal gently with them. These bruised reeds, these people whose lives have been bruised and damaged—they may seem useless to others. They may seem beyond repair, but this servant of the Lord, this Messiah, He can repair and strengthen those lives—those bruised reeds—and make them useful again.

That’s what the Servant of the Lord will do. “A faintly burning wick he will not quench.” One translation calls that “a smoldering wick.” You know in an oil lamp when there is hardly any oil left and the flame is about to go out, the wick just starts to smoke. There’s no light there. It’s a smoldering wick, a faintly burning wick. This wick is almost burned out. When it’s burned out, it’s not good for anything is it? It can’t shine a light.

So this Messiah, the Servant of the Lord, will come and He’ll find these faintly burning wicks, but He won’t put them out. He won’t quench them. He doesn’t write them off; He doesn’t discard them. He sees worth in them, and He supplies the oil of the Spirit that those faintly burning wicks lack. With that new oil, He fans them into flame and makes them to once again show forth light—He makes them useful.

This is the redeeming Servant of the Lord. You see this fulfilled in the Gospels as you watch Jesus noticing the “least of these,” caring for and gently dealing with those who were considered useless, those who were considered beyond repair. Who does Jesus care for? It’s the blind, the deaf, the lame, the lepers, the marginalized, the demonized, the sexually promiscuous, those whose lives are broken, bruised, faintly burning.

He picks them up and breathes new life into them—the life of His Spirit. He restores their flame. Hallelujah, what a Savior! That’s what the Servant of the Lord does. Do we have any bruised reeds here? Some faintly burning wicks? That’s what He wants to do with your life.

The Servant Who Never Gives Up

Maybe there are bruised reeds in your life, some faintly burning wicks in your family or your sphere of influence. We as His servants—the Servant of the Lord—are to have that same kind of ministry in those lives. Verse 4, “He will not grow faint or be discouraged till he has established justice in the earth.” Now, this is interesting. You have to look up the original translation in Hebrew here.

“He will not grow faint,” that’s the same word used in the previous verse for “faintly burning wick.” He will not grow faint—that word means "to be weak, or despondent, or disheartened." He won’t give up. He won’t give up on others. He won’t give up until God’s purposes have been accomplished. He will not grow faint or be "discouraged." That word is the same word that you see in the previous verse as “bruised,” a bruised reed.

He will not be discouraged. He’ll help discouraged people. He’ll help despondent people, broken people, bruised people, faintly burning people, but He will not give up, He will not grow weary. That flame of the Holy Spirit within Him will keep burning, and He will keep going, even when it’s hard—even when He has to go to the cross and lay down His life as the Servant of the Lord. He will not grow faint or be discouraged until all of God’s purposes have been established by the Servant of the Lord.

This Servant’s mission will be to bring about God’s kingdom purposes throughout the world. In so doing, He will suffer great injustice, but He will do so quietly and willingly. He will not cry out. He will not raise His voice in His own defense. He will seek justice for others, but He will never demand it for Himself. Regardless of what He suffers, He will not allow anything to deter Him from doing what the Father has sent Him to this earth to do.

Dannah: That’s Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth reminding us that Christ came as not just any King—but as the Servant King. You’ll find the full message linked in today’s transcript at ReviveOurHearts.com. Our Savior’s life was one of sacrifice. And still today, He is the friend of bruised and broken people, laboring to make them whole in him. 

And get this. As women, we get to uniquely display this very feature of Christ’s heart. God made us lifegivers, and He invites us to lay down our lives for the flourishing of others. The world will tell you to focus on self-care, to prioritize your well-being first and foremost, but that’s not the example Jesus set for us. Instead, He went against the flow and taught His disciples to do the same. So what does this look like for us? Here’s Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth to make it practical—whatever your age or life circumstance.

Going Against the Flow in Every Season of Life

Nancy: 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 nineties, 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.

Amy Carmichael: A Life Poured Out for Others

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 countercultural 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.

Saying Yes to God Despite Our Inadequacy

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.

A Calling Worth Every Sacrifice

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 countercultural 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: Amen. Such a powerful encouragement from Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth. I wonder, what’s one practical way you might lay down your life this week? This month? This year? It’s a beautiful thing to pray about and dream about. Ask the Lord how He’s inviting you to be a life-giver and a living sacrifice in this season. Ask the people in your world how you might serve them, following the earthly example of Jesus.

We’ve been meditating on Jesus all month long to mark the release of Nancy’s new Advent devotional, Consider Jesus. It’s only been out a month and half, but the feedback has been sweet. One reader named Joy told us, 

I loved this Advent devotional so much I couldn't stop reading—I finished it early! It brought me refreshment during a difficult season, and I'm so thankful for it. I know I'll return to it again. 

Praise the Lord! Our hope is that every reader will experience that same refreshment in Christ. We’d love to send you Consider Jesus when you make a donation of any amount this month. Head on over to ReviveOurHearts.com, or call us at 1-800-569-5959 to give and request yours! 

Also, don’t forget, True Woman registration is in full swing over here! And super early pricing closes soon. This conference is all about what it means to be a true woman—one who swims against the current because she desires the glory of God more than the approval of the world. It’s going to be a time of rich refreshment in the Word and in fellowship with other women, so don’t wait. Take advantage of the lowest pricing today! You can register and find all the information you might need at TrueWoman27.com. 

Well today we talked about Christ’s example of service and sacrifice. We answered the question, “What does it look like to lay down my life?” But here’s the thing. Jesus laid down his life, but then He rose! So tomorrow we’re gonna explore how we join Him in His resurrection. We want to live as women who are truly alive in Christ. So 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.