3 Ingredients of a Revived Heart

This episode contains portions from the following programs:

"The Personal Devotional Life" 

"Repentance"

"Returning to Joy"

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Dannah Gresh: Hey there! Come join me in the kitchen. I’m working on a little baking project. Mocha chocolate chip banana muffins. It’s a mouthful to say . . . and to enjoy! (See what I did there?) Oh yeah, I’ve already mixed in the smashed bananas. Now adding a tablespoon of instant coffee granules, and a teaspoon of vanilla. Perfect. Time to mix in the chocolate chips! 

You know, while I scoop these out, I was thinking, do you know what’s so incredible about mocha chocolate chip banana muffins (and most cooking, haha)? They go into the oven looking like ingredient soup, but when that timer goes off, they come out transformed!

I’m your host Dannah Gresh. You’re in the Revive Our Hearts kitchen today on the weekend program!

While that’s in the oven, I wanna talk about some even better ingredients—the ingredients of a revived heart. Add these to your life and watch them transform you. First ingredient: time in the Word, then add in as much repentance as needed, be prepared to add in a splash of joy as needed—these are just a few of the ingredients God uses to make us new. 

Let’s start with time in the Word. Personal revival begins with an open Bible. To tell you about that, we’ve got the lovely Dámaris Carbaugh. Dámaris is a singer. She and her husband, Rod, live in Brooklyn, New York. And let me tell you, this friend of mine is passionate about spending time in God’s Word because she’s watched it totally transform her life. She shared about that at the Revive '19 conference, and I can’t wait for you to hear her story. 

Dámaris Carbaugh: Don’t you read, sometimes, biographies of people that had like an amazing walk with God and it makes you jealous in a good way? You know who makes me jealous? Enoch. What is up with Enoch? “Oh, he journaled!” There wasn’t even a Bible! (laughter)

But we’ve been saying the importance of the Bible, so when I was telling this to my husband I was saying, “The Bible is the only thing that will start showing you how far you are and how near you need to be. The Bible is the only way that you’ll understand how your mind is off, how your mind needs to be renewed. The Bible is what tells us that there is a Holy Spirit, that there’s a Father. The Bible tells us all these things.” 

And then I’m telling my husband, “And Enoch didn’t even have a Bible!” 

And so my husband says, “Well, what are you trying to say?” 

And I’m like, “What am I trying to say?”

You see, of all the speakers, I’m the one abnormally born! (laughter) But let me tell you what I mean: it’s the Bible that tells us about Enoch. Enoch walked in such close fellowship, walked, walked . . . that God took him! God took him. [deep sigh] Oh, my goodness, what did he do? I have no idea! I’m serious. There was no synagogue. What did he do?

Well, the Bible tells us in the New Testament that he actually prophesied about the judgment that was coming (see Jude 1:14). So there was a little fire in him, too. “He’s coming to judge!” Oh, my word. But there must have been something about him. There must have been something about this man that loved God in such a way that God said, “Come on!”

It’s the Word of God that has given me a desire to know: what in the world was Enoch like? It’s the Word of God. Here’s a verse that I want to point you to: Hebrews 4, verse 12. Here’s the verse (some of you know this well): “For the word of God is alive and powerful.” Before I even finish, your personal devotional life totally depends on you being able to spend time with His Word—a lot! I want to say every day. But I will tell you that there are some Sundays that I get up early, get ready for church, choir rehearsal, church happens.

We read the Scriptures on the PowerPoint, and we look and we open up our Bibles in the service. But there are times when Sunday is actually a day I may not read, in the sense of the way I normally read. 

But what you need more than anything else, if you want to have victory in your life, if you want to know Jesus Christ really well, if you want to please Him, you will never be able to do that unless you become a person that loves the Word of God! Because, look what the Word of God does: it is alive and powerful. It is sharper than the sharpest two-edged sword, cutting between soul and spirit, between joint and marrow. [Now listen carefully here.] It exposes [don’t miss this!] our innermost thoughts and desires. 

Don’t miss that! It exposes your thoughts and desires. Sometimes the greatest revelation you need is to understand the condition of your heart! Can you say “amen”? Your thoughts, your desires, He knows them! And when you’re ready to let truth, His truth—Christ, the Spirit of truth, the Holy Spirit—expose your truth. 

Sometimes the greatest revelation you need is to understand the condition of your heart.

You come to Him, holding nothing back, He will receive you, and He will give you all that you need to be completely devoted to Him!

The Word of God healed me many years ago. I was insanely jealous! “Insanely” is putting it mildly! I was just married and my husband worked for a Christian television network. Everybody that worked in that place looked like they were ready for primetime! Do you know what that means? They all looked beautiful! All the ladies there looked beautiful to me, and I was very insecure. I got very jealous, and if you were pretty, I did not like you! 

I want to tell you something. It got so bad, my mind got so crazy that I scared myself, and I took myself to a Christian biblical counselor. I sat down, and I told her that I was very jealous and that my husband couldn’t look at anything too long. If he looked at this microphone here: “She’s little! She’s just hiding in there!” That’s how I felt!

I mean just, “What’s he . . .?” It was unbelievable! I would have dreams that my husband was unfaithful to me, and I’d wake up from the dream and go, “Gr-r-r-r-r!” Crazy! So I went to see this counselor, and I’d sit down and I tell her everything. I talk, talk, talk, talk, talk. And when I was done, she’d said, “Are you done?” 

And I said, “Um, I think so.” 

Do you know what she very sweetly said (I always want to repeat this, because she didn’t say it with a mean spirit)? Do you know what the first words out of her mouth were? “Dámaris . . .” (That’s my name, by the way, Dámaris; not Demetrius, not Dionysius the Areopagite. It’s Dámaris.)

She said, “Dámaris, I rebuke you!” In Spanish it’s: “¡Yo te reprendo!” (laughter) Oh my goodness! But she said it in such a sober way. I don’t know how to tell you this, only God can “hit” you with love! 

She said this to me: “It is obvious you are not a woman of the Word.” And I wasn’t. And she said, “Here’s what I’m going to tell you to do: you and your husband are going to start reading the Bible together. You choose how much, how little, you choose what.” She didn’t even give us where to go. “You two decide. Sit down, start reading the Bible together, and your husband will close in prayer.” 

God healed my mind as I began to “eat” the Word of God! (applause) Do you want to have a wonderful, personal devotional life? You need to love His Word. And you need to let His Word show you what’s wrong.

God’s Word is still changing me . . . and it’s still changing you. It’s showing us every day to seek Him.

Dannah: Damaris Carbaugh on the power of Scripture to revive our hearts. What a crucial ingredient for personal revival! If that story doesn’t make you wanna stop everything and open your Bible, I don’t know what will. You can listen to this entire message from Dámaris. We’re linking it for you in today’s transcript at ReviveOurHearts.com/weekend. I hope you will! The whole thing is powerful.

Now, let me go check on our baked goods. Okay, looking good so far! Transformation is happening! The ingredients are doing their thing!

Now, another ingredient that does transforming work in our hearts is repentance. In fact, we can’t experience personal revival without it. Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth is gonna take us to Scripture and show us why it’s so important. Let’s listen. 

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: I think about John the Baptist, who comes on the scene at the beginning of the New Testament; he’s preparing the way for the coming of Christ. Now, this isn’t to say that repentance isn’t found in the Old Testament. It is—over and over and over again. The term you’ll often see is “return.” I just finished Isaiah, I’m into Jeremiah in my quiet time, and over and over again God says to His people: “Return! Return! Turn away from idols, turn to Me!”

That’s an Old Testament concept (and New Testament as well) of repentance. But then we come to the New Testament and we have this prophet, John the Baptist. He’s making the people ready to experience the coming of Christ here to this earth. And so Matthew 3:1 tells us that, “In those days John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness of Judea.”

And what was his message? He said, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (v. 2). And you think, Well, John gave that message. Of course Jesus was getting ready to come. But then we can move on to some other message when Jesus comes, right? Well, the first message Jesus gave, when He came here to earth, is the exact same message!

Matthew chapter 4 (one chapter later), verse 17: “From that time Jesus began to preach, saying [this is Jesus’ first earthly message; what did He say?], ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.’” Now, John and Jesus were both talking about the same thing. This is a new kingdom, a whole new system, a new way of doing things, a new set of values. 

And He was saying that being a part of this kingdom requires that you turn away from your own kingdom, from the kingdom of this world, from the kingdom of man, the kingdom of self, the kingdom of this earth. You’ve been going one direction, you’ve been living for one kingdom—it’s your own kingdom—but there’s a new kingdom coming!

And when you become a part of that kingdom you have a new heart, new desires, a new lifestyle, a new agenda. And in order to repent, you have to admit that the agenda you’ve been living for all along is wrong. So you have turn around from the way you’ve been going and embrace the new kingdom agenda. 

This is what it is to become a Christian and this is what it is to live as a Christian. We are the subjects of a new kingdom! We have a new citizenship. We have a new Ruler for our lives. We have a new Lord. We have a new life . . . because Jesus has come. As we embrace Him, we’re saying we’re turning from going our own way, we’re turning from the idols of our hearts, we’re turning from our own superficial temporal values to embrace the kingdom of Christ. 

He is the reigning King. He is the Ruler. He is the Lord, and we turn to Him. That’s repentance! You think, Well, did that message continue through the New Testament? Yes it did!

After His resurrection, before He returned to heaven, Jesus appeared to His disciples. So here He is, one of His last times speaking to His disciples here on earth, Luke 24:45–48 tells us (this is the last chapter of the book of Luke): 

Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, and said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead [that had just happened . . . and here’s what’s coming next] and that repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things.” 

So Jesus came preaching the gospel of repentance. Before He went back to heaven He said, “Here’s what you’ve got to keep doing after I leave. Keep proclaiming the gospel of repentance!” We think of repentance as bad news. Repentance is actually incredibly good news, because it places us under the care and the protection and the providence and the Lordship of Jesus Christ.

And as part of His kingdom, we have access to the glories and the blessings and the fruit and the mercies of that kingdom. But we can’t be part of that kingdom without living in repentance. But Jesus didn’t stop there. When He went back to heaven, we find that Jesus’ last word to the church in the Scripture was not (as some people might guess) the Great Commission.

He did give this: “Go into all the world; make disciples”(see Matt. 28:19; Mark 16:15). We see that before He went to heaven. He said that to His disciples. But Jesus’ last recorded message in Scripture to His people . . . what was that message? It was, “Repent!” And where do you find that? The last book of the Bible, Revelation chapters 2 and 3.

Remember the letters to the seven churches? In five of those seven letters Jesus called them to repent. As He’s doing His assessment of the churches, He didn’t say to them, “You need to improve your preaching,” or “You need a stronger worship program,” or “You need to be more committed to missions,” or “You need to do more to reach out to your community,” or “You need to do a better job of reaching young people.” He told them, “You need to repent!

Now, these churches had many positive qualities for which He commended them. But He didn’t overlook the things for which they needed to repent. And He was specific: different churches in different places had different issues. Some were doctrinal issues, some were personal purity issues. He told them, “This is what I see going on in your church, and you need to repent.”

Now, what was it meant to repent? Many of you know that there is a Greek word that is associated with repentance; it’s the word metanoia—meta “to change;” noia “the mind.” It’s a change of thinking that results in a change of heart and life. It’s a change in thinking about ourselves, about our sin, about God. It’s such a change that we get to the place where we hate what God hates, and we love what God loves. This means that, in time, we come to hate things we used to love, and we come to love things that we never had much affection for before!

It is a change from the inside out; it’s an internal change and it’s an external change. It affects every part of us. It’s an about-face. It’s a decisive, definite change of direction, a complete reversal of attitudes and values that we once had. It’s turning away from those and turning toward God.

For over twenty years, the people of Romania suffered under the iron-fisted Communist rule of Nicolae Ceaușescu. He was one of the most repressive, corrupt dictators of the twentieth century. And Christians were especially targeted by this regime and were subjected to intense intimidation and relentless harassment.

Evangelical believers, in particular, were ridiculed. They were referred to as “repenters.” It wasn’t a compliment . . . “Oh, those repenters!” All different denominations, but evangelical, Bible-believing Christians, they were called “the repenters.” It was a term of derision.

The pastor of one of the largest evangelical churches in the country had prayed for years for revival, and he was convinced that revival must begin among God’s people. He explained to his people that unbelievers weren’t the only ones who needed to repent. 

At one point he got before his people in that church—Second Baptist Church of Oradea, Romania—and he said, “It’s time for the repenters to repent!” He didn’t just leave it there; he didn’t just talk in generalities. He was straightforward and specific in calling out sins that he believed were hindering the church, in that day, from experiencing true revival.

If I were to name for you what some of those sins were, you might say, “Oh, seriously?! Those don’t seem like that big a deal to us.” 

He said, “These are a big deal.” 

And the repenters, under the conviction of God’s Spirit, began to repent! They began to take holiness seriously; they turned from everything they knew to be displeasing to God.

And when they did—when the repenters repented—God sent revival! Revival spread throughout that surrounding area and ultimately throughout the entire country. And there are those who believe that this work of the Spirit in the hearts of God’s people was one of the factors that ultimately led to the overthrow of the Ceaușescu regime in 1989.

I was in Romania before and I was in Romania after the overthrow, the downfall of Communism there, and I can tell you there was a world of difference! And it was, many would say, the repentance of the repenters that paved the way for God to come and set that nation free from the shackles of Communism.

Jesus said to the church of Laodicea in Revelation 3:19, “ Be zealous and repent.” Be zealous and repent! There’s nothing half-hearted about that, is there? “Zealous” is “to desire eagerly.” We are to repent zealously—to be intentional, to be serious about our repentance. 

Now, let me tell you, the more seriously you take sin, the more seriously you deal with it in humility, honesty, and repentance, the greater will be the joy of personal revival that you experience on the resurrection side of the cross!

So you say, “This feels so heavy! This seems so narrow, this seems so hard!” I know it seems hard. It is hard, because sin makes our lives hard! But it’s not the repentance that’s making your life hard; it’s the sin you’re holding on to. So the deeper you go into humility, honesty, and repentance, the deeper and the richer and the sweeter will be your experience and your joy of personal revival.

Dannah: Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth encouraging you to make repentance a main ingredient in your life. Let me ask you, are you a repenter? Is your heart attitude toward God one of humility? Are you teachable and eager to become more like Christ? Now, even as I’m saying that, I have a hunch the Holy Spirit is working in your heart, as He is in mine. 

What He’s dealing with me about will probably be different than what He’s dealing with you about. Listen to the Holy Spirit. Open the Word. As you do, ask God to show you where change is needed, where you need an extra tablespoon or two of repentance in your heart. He’ll be faithful to transform you as you run to him.

Okay, one last ingredient for today. It’s a sweet one—kind of like vanilla or powdered sugar. That delightful finishing touch. I’m talking about joy! I think you’ll find that a revived heart contains a generous amount. 

That’s what my sweet friend, Colleen Chao, would tell you. She’s been navigating terminal cancer for several years now—and it hasn’t stolen her joy. Colleen is wife to Eddie, mom to Jeremy, and author of On Our Way Home: Reflections on Heaven in the Face of Death. I had the privilege of talking with her about the kind of joy that circumstances can’t shake. Let’s listen to part of that conversation.

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Dannah: You have some of the most infectious laughter of anyone I’ve ever known. You have a gorgeous smile. And it’s not different from the first day I met you a few years ago, when you were already in the battle. And here you are, still smiling.

What would you say to someone who’s in a place of suffering, and they’ve lost their smile? They’ve lost their joy? Where would they go? What’s their first step?

Colleen Chao: Well, actually, I write about that in Fiercely Tender, because there was a season in my life where I didn’t even notice it, but I’d stopped laughing. I want to say this was about nine, ten years ago. Life was so heavy. This was even before cancer. But it doesn’t have to be cancer, right? We all face stuff that can just wear us to the end of ourselves.

At that point, it was just chronic illness for myself or my son, financial upheaval, loss of job, a flooded apartment—all the things. I had just lost my joy. So I get it. I’m not always joyful now. There’s lots of grumpiness and ugliness that comes out of me. Even last night, and I had to apologize to my husband this morning. I’m, “Thank you for being patient with me.”

Dannah: I had the same conversation with my husband this morning. (laughter) When I sat down with my time with the Lord this morning, I said, “Hello, Jesus. It’s me, your grumpy daughter.” (laughter)

Colleen: Well, we’re good company this morning. Yes. It’s real. But what I started praying for many years ago was that God would give me joy. I remember an older woman who was just so sweet in my life. She said, “How would you want me to pray for you?” 

And I said, “Pray for joy.” This was probably sixteen years ago. It was just something the Spirit put on my heart to pray for, to want, knowing what was going to come.

I would say to that person who is feeling a lack of joy, to ask God for what you don’t have. He is so happy and willing to give us the things that we don’t have. That’s where He loves to meet us.

I have this little habit during the night—I pray through A-B-C Scriptures. The first one is, “Ask, and it will be give to you. Seek, and you will find. Knock, and the door will be opened to you.”

And that’s not a name it-and claim it. That’s not health and wealth. That’s a, “God, You say Your will is ____” and fill in the blank what Scripture says.

That we would trust Him.

That we would love Him.

That we would love others.

The things that He says clearly in His Word that He wants us to live, He says ask for it. And so I’ve boldly asked for those things.

Then I think of Psalm (I want to say 34. I’m going to look it up as I say it), but, “Those who look to Him are radiant. Their faces will never be covered in shame.”

I think just that constant looking at Christ, going to Him again and again and again, no matter our condition, no matter where we’re at. Yes, it’s Psalm 34:5, “Those who look to Him are radiant with joy. Their faces will never be ashamed.”

We look at God, and He is the epitome of joy. He’s the most, andI want to say it’s Psalm 45 that says, “Jesus is the most radiant of all His companions.”

Dannah: I’m mindful of how much of what you’re talking about is an invitation to honesty.

Colleen: Oh, yes.

Dannah: To not fake it through joy. To not say the right words or smile when you don’t feel like it, but to go honestly before God and admit, “This is where I am.”

Colleen: Yes.

Dannah: I feel like sometimes, as Christian women, we don’t think we have that permission. We do feel like we have to say when someone says, “How are you?”

“Oh, I’m okay,.” or “I’m fine.”

Colleen: Yes.

Dannah: We’re not fine. We’re suffering.

Colleen: Yes. I’m glad you bring that up because I think it’s easy to see the fruit of a lot of years of asking God for something and seeing Him give it in abundance, but the raw and real moments . . . I get joy being around people. Sometimes I communicate an energy that my body really doesn’t have because people bring me joy.

But if I get with those people, and they ask good questions, I can get raw and real and say, “Just last week I was . . . I mean, a couple of weeks ago I was hiding behind my recliner from my husband and son just because I was done.”

And it was the most ridiculous thing. I had hurt my finger, and I was just like, “It’s one more pain. It’s one more physical pain, and it was just the straw that broke the camel’s back. I was, like, “I don’t want to hurt in one more way.” I hid behind my recliner like a small, sad child, and I wept, and I got angry at God.

So those moments highlight the fact that God can return us to joy, and it makes the joy more significant and meaningful that we walk through the yucky, awful, ugly moments, and we’re reminded of what we are apart from Christ.

Without Him, I’m a total train wreck. If I am not in the Word for two days, no one wants to be around me. 

Dannah: Yes. Same. I get it.

And I think, too, in the suffering and in the stretching, He’s trying to get us to be honest with ourselves. Not just with Him, but honest with ourselves.

Colleen: Yes.

Dannah: This morning I was in Genesis where Jacob wrestled with God. And the man who is God or a representation of God man asked, “What’s your name?”

Now, He knows what is his name. And the name Jacob, of course, we understand when we study the Scriptures, means deceiver. I’m the deceiver. And so he says, “Deceiver.” And then the man says, “Your name will no longer be deceiver, but Israel because you have struggled with God and have overcome.”

And so I think God was just trying to say, “Hey, Jacob, can we be honest? Like, you don’t really need to be honest with Me. It’s yourself you need to be honest with.”

Colleen: Yes.

Dannah: In my suffering, so many times I have played the perfect-picture Christian woman. And not being perfect picture doesn’t mean that I throw tantrums or I’m unkind or I hurt people. But there are appropriate places where you say to the people closest to you and to the Lord, “I don’t like where I am. Here’s how I’m struggling with it. I’m grumpy today. I’m deceptive today. Angry today.”

And in that place, that’s where God can say, “Awww, okay. I just needed you to see the truth, and now I can start to set your heart free.”

Colleen: Yes.

Dannah: We’ve got to be honest. Right?

Colleen: We really do.

Dannah: Colleen Chao on navigating painful circumstances with joy. Talk about a woman with a revived heart! To hear more from Colleen, visit ReviveOurHearts.com/weekend, and click on today’s program. If you search her name in the search bar, you’ll find lots of powerful encouragement like you just heard. We just love her!

Now, I smell something delicious. I think maybe our muffins are almost done.

[Oven dings]

Haha, perfect timing! Let’s take a look. 

Mmm, how perfect. I can’t wait to dig in. 

I think while I’m enjoying, I’ll take some time to do an ingredient inventory on my heart. Maybe you need to grab a sweet treat, sit down with your Bible, and do the same.

To help you do that, we’ve created the Refresh: 30 Days of Personal Revival Journaling Set. It contains Scripture meditation cards and a journal to go along with those—allowing you to slow down, reflect, and do that ingredient inventory with the Lord. We’ll send you the Refresh Journaling Set when you make a donation of any amount to support Revive Our Hearts. To give and request yours, visit ReviveOurHearts.com/donate. 

Next weekend, we’re talking some more about transformation. More specifically, we’re going to get super practical about how God renews our minds. I hope you’ll be back for that.

Thanks for listening today. I’m Dannah Gresh. We’ll see you next time, for Revive Our Hearts Weekend.

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

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