3 Women of the Bible Who Said "Yes, Lord!"

This episode contains portions from the following programs:

"Have You Prayed About It?"

"An End to the Waiting"

"A Different Kind of Water"

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Dannah Gresh: What can God do with a surrendered heart? According to the lives of Hannah, Anna, and the woman at the well—literally anything. 

He can open a barren womb.
He can radically bless a woman’s faithfulness.
He can save the one girl everyone thought was unsavable—and use her testimony to draw others, too.

When a woman says “Yes, Lord!” God does miraculous and merciful work. That’s what we’re going to see today. I hope that, by the end of our time together, you’ll feel a fresh desire to surrender your story to the Lord. He is always, always working for His glory and your joy!

I’m your host, Dannah Gresh, and you’re listening to Revive Our Hearts Weekend. This episode is gonna be a little different than usual. That’s because we’ll be spending lots of time with my dear friend, Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth! She’s done some really great teaching on women of the Bible who said “Yes, Lord” and lived lives surrendered to Him. That’s the teaching we’ll dive into together.

Have you ever had an unfulfilled desire that ached so deeply all you could do was cry before the Lord? If so, you’ve got a friend in Hannah from the book of Samuel. For years, she longed for a baby boy—but she was barren. Instead of carrying a child in her arms, she carried the weight of hateful taunts from Penninah, her husband’s second wife. 

To be clear: we believe Hannah’s husband was outside of God’s will in having two wives. Scripture teaches covenant faithfulness and monogamy. Undoubtedly, that was part of where Hannahs pain came from.

She undoubtedly was confused and wondered, Why, God? Why would you give Peninnah children and not me? Am I less worthy? These questions drove her to the temple, where she prayed honestly before the Lord, surrendering the desires of her heart. We’ll pick up in that part of Hannah’s story, 1 Samuel 1:10–11. Here’s Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth. 

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth:

[Hannah] was deeply distressed [she was in bitterness of soul] and prayed to the Lord and wept bitterly. And she vowed a vow and said, “O Lord of hosts, if you will indeed look on the affliction of your servant and remember me and not forget your servant, but will give to your servant a son, then I will give him to the Lord all the days of his life, and no razor shall touch his head.”

First let’s look at her prayer. Through the years of waiting and unfulfilled longing and praying and provocation from this rival wife, Hannah had come to know God in a way that she probably would never have known Him otherwise.

Don’t forget that. Through your suffering, through your adversity, through that person who provokes you year after year, you can come to know God in a way that you might not otherwise ever have come to know Him.

She had come to be burdened about the things that burdened His heart, and we’re going to see that in her vow. But let’s look at her prayer.

First of all she says, “O Lord of hosts.” She acknowledges God for who He is, and she uses a name for God that means “Lord of hosts.” That name in the Hebrew language is Jehovah Sabaoth—the Lord of hosts.

If you’ll back up to verse 3, you’ll see another reference to the Lord of hosts. It says Elkanah her husband used to go up year after year “to worship and to sacrifice to the LORD of hosts at Shiloh.”

That reference to the Lord of hosts, Jehovah Sabaoth, in verse 3 and then again in verse 11—those are the first references in the Bible to the Lord of hosts, the first time we see Jehovah Sabaoth. God had revealed Himself to this couple in a way that others had not known the Lord, because each name of God tells us something about the character and the heart and the ways of God.

The Lord of hosts—this is the name that speaks of His universal, sovereign command over all. The hosts are the armies of Israel. Those armies were few, and they were ill equipped compared with those of their enemies. But God was their leader; and through God, the armies of Israel could be victorious. He was the Lord of hosts.

But the hosts could also speak of the heavenly hosts: the sun, the moon, the stars. God is the Lord of those heavenly hosts, and God is the Lord of the angelic hosts, the holy angels and the fallen angels and Satan himself. All the hosts of earth and heaven and hell—God is the Lord of all those hosts. He is their Commander. He is their Ruler. He is the Commander-in-chief.

So Hannah prays to the Lord of hosts as her husband has taught her to worship Jehovah Sabaoth. “You are the Lord who commands everything. Everything in heaven and earth is under Your control.”

She comes to the Lord in worship, in reverence, in submission, in recognition that He is God, that He is sovereign, that He is in control, and that He has all power. He’s the Lord of hosts. He’s the commander of all the armies of heaven and earth. As a result, He was the only One who could do anything about her affliction. He had closed her womb. He’s the Lord of hosts.

She went to the One who could do something about her problem. First, she acknowledges God for who He is, the sovereign Lord and commander of all the hosts.

Then she acknowledges herself for who she is. She does not exalt herself. She exalts God, and she sees herself in her proper place. What does she call herself? “I am your servant. You are the Lord of hosts. I am your servant.”

Ladies, that’s the proper posture for prayer. It’s the proper posture for all of life. “You are the Lord of hosts. I bow before You as Your servant.”

Notice also that she doesn’t demand in her prayer. My guess is that she had been through some of those kinds of conversations with the Lord previously. We’ve had some of those kinds of conversations. But you don’t come as a servant to the Lord of hosts and make a demand.

He’s God; you don’t tell Him what to do. What does she do? She appeals. She pleads. She knows that He is God, and she is not.

She says, “Lord of hosts, if you will indeed look upon the affliction of your servant and remember me and do not forget your servant.” She pleads with God. She appeals to Him. She’s in earnest about this, but she recognizes who He is and who she is.

Then notice that her petition is specific. “Lord . . . if you will . . . [please] give to your servant a son.” She’s specific. She tells God the desire of her heart: a son.

I think about that song that says, “Oh, what needless pain we bear, all because we do not carry everything to God in prayer.” We whine about it. We groan about it. We moan about it. We complain about it. We tell everybody else about it.

The screensaver on my laptop says, “Pray about it.” I want to work on it. I want to change it. I want to fix it. I want to call somebody about it. But my computer reminds me, “Pray about it.”

Tell God your requests. Be specific. Remember, He’s God. It’s His choice as to what He does about your requests. But tell Him your requests.

She’s specific. She realizes that children are a gift from God, as is every good and perfect gift. So she goes to the One who dispenses gifts. She goes to the One who is able to fulfill her heart’s desire.

What’s on your heart today? Have you prayed about it? That means He’s able to fulfill your request, but that also means it’s His choice as to whether and when He fulfills your request.

Have you come to Him in submission, surrender, worship, and reverence as the Lord of hosts, and said, “Lord, I am Your servant; I plead with You; I appeal to You; would You grant the desire of my heart?” Then tell Him what that desire is, and leave it there.

Dannah: Amen. That’s Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth encouraging us to bring it all to the Lord in prayer. We’ll hear more from Nancy in a moment. But first I want to ask you, what desire is weighing heavy on your heart today? Is it the desire for a husband? A baby? A job or some other provision? Maybe it's the salvation of a family member or healing for someone you love. 

Whatever the case, Hannah’s story gives you permission to bring that desire to the Lord of Hosts honestly. You can cry if you need to. You can tell Him how you really feel. Psalm 62:8 says, “Trust in him at all times, you people; pour out your hearts before him.” 

Well, we’ve just heard about Hannah with an “H.” And next up, we’re talking about Anna, A-N-N-A. You know, it’s kind of fitting that these women’s names are similar, because the themes of their stories are, too. Both were deeply longing for a child, just in unique ways. Nancy’s back to tell us about Anna, and she begins by continuing in this theme of longing and waiting on the Lord.

Nancy: I think of some women I know who have waited for years for God to bring them a mate and wanting so to be a wife and a mom; they have waited and waited. Maybe you’ve waited to own a home or to have a different kind of home. Maybe it’s something that you really wanted along the line of the salvation of a loved one, somebody that you’ve prayed for; you’ve longed for God to touch their life.

Maybe it’s the restoration of a broken marriage, yours or a relative’s or a friend’s. Maybe a son or daughter who’s been far from God or a grandchild and you’ve waited and longed for God to do it. And people around you, people who know you well, know that you have been waiting, know that you have been longing, know that this has been a desire on your heart.

How did they know? Because if it’s a deep desire in your heart, it’s something you talk about. It may not be something you can talk about to everyone, depending on what it is. But chances are, if you’ve had this deep-down longing for a long period of time, an unfulfilled desire, you’ve probably shared it with others.

You might have asked them to pray. And from time to time they would say, “How’s it going?” as I email my friend periodically who’s waiting for an adoptive child. “Any news yet on adoption?” So it becomes a subject of conversation.

And then, maybe, in some of these situations, the day came when God answered your prayer. God fulfilled your longing, what you had been praying for, what you had been waiting for. It happened!

You got pregnant after years of infertility. The adoption came through. God brought a husband into your life. That just happened to a friend of mine who’s been waiting for years and God just brought, out of the blue so it seems, providentially, a godly man into her life; and she is just ecstatic. Maybe the Lord provided the home you were waiting for or the Lord saved that loved one or brought that child back to Himself.

What happened next? You said, “Praise the Lord!” You got on the phone. You called your mother. You called your best friend. You called your small group. “Guess what God did?” You told them the incredible news. You sent out an email. You couldn’t wait to share the good news with the people who had been waiting and praying along with you.

Well, that’s exactly what we see that happens to Anna who we’ve been looking at in the Gospel of Luke chapter 2. Let me read again the verses that relate to her and then we want to look at the last verse about her life. Luke 2:36–37:

And there was a prophetess, Anna, the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was advanced in years, having lived with her husband seven years from when she was a virgin, and then as a widow until she was eighty-four. She did not depart from the temple, worshiping with fasting and prayer night and day.

We’ve said a lot about the character of this woman, the heart of this woman, the focus, the preoccupation of this woman.

Verse 38: “Coming up at that very hour.” If you’ve not been with us, let me reset where we are. We’re in the temple. Mary and Joseph have brought the newborn child Jesus to dedicate Him, to present Him to the Lord. Simeon has come up and has recognized that this is the long-awaited consolation of Israel. He has sung or prayed, spoken a hymn of praise. He’s spoken words of prophecy about what will happen with this child’s life.

Then Anna comes up, led by the Spirit of God at that very moment. She sees the same thing that Simeon’s eyes have been opened to see—Christ! We’ve said earlier in this series that the Holy Spirit is the One that had to show them that this was Christ. This baby, I don’t believe, looked any different than any other baby.

Coming up at that very hour [what did she do?] she began to give thanks to God and to speak of him [to speak of Christ] to all who were waiting [as she had been all these years, to all who were waiting] for the redemption of Jerusalem. (v. 38)

The redemption of Jerusalem was here. The Redeemer was here!

So what does Anna do when she sees Christ? What is her response? Well, we see a vertical response, and we see a horizontal response. The vertical response came first, and that’s a response of worship. She began to give thanks to God. Gratitude.

That word "to give thanks" is a long compound Greek word that I can’t pronounce that means “to acknowledge fully; to celebrate fully in praise with thanksgiving.” It’s a celebrative term. She began to give thanks to God. It was just the natural, irrepressible expression of a heart that had been waiting and longing, just as if you were waiting all those years to have a child or to have a husband or to see someone that you love come to Christ.

And when it happens nobody has to say, “Okay, now thank God.” They don’t have to script it for you. It comes out.

And when Anna saw physically, visibly, there this child who was the fulfillment of all her hopes and dreams and fasting and prayer, the thing she had been focused on and longing for for all these years, what could she do except give thanks to God? She’d been praying. She’d been asking God.

That’s what Paul says in Philippians. Tell God your requests and don’t forget to thank Him for His answers. She’d been asking God and now she says, “Lord, You have been faithful to do that which I’ve asked You to do. Thank You! Thank You! Thank You!”

Dannah: Anna’s deepest longing was to see the Messiah—Jesus—with her own eyes. She waited steadfastly and God granted this desire of her heart! I imagine Anna’s life as a prophetess was characterized by steadfastness—a thread of “yes, Lords” that sustained her all the way to the first coming of Christ. May our lives resemble hers. May we say “yes, Lord” until Christ comes again or calls us home.

Well, the last woman of the Bible we’re looking at today isn’t named, but you might know her as the woman at the well. Here's Nancy once again.

Nancy: Now, Jesus introduces this concept of a different kind of water. He's asked her for water to drink—that's physical water, natural water from that well—and now He's saying, "I have a kind of water I want to give you. If you'll ask me for it, I'll give it to you as a gift. It's living water."

Now, as the story unfolds here, we're going to see that this woman is kind of confused because she doesn't understand immediately the difference between this physical water at the well and the living water that Jesus is offering to her. So she says in verse 11,

"Sir, you have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep. Where then do you get that living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as well as his sons and his livestock?" (vv. 11–12)

She's still thinking very literally (by the way, the One she was talking to is greater than Jacob). She had that right, but she didn't know how right she was. Jesus' answer is in verse 13; notice now the comparison between the two kinds of water.

"Everyone who drinks of this water [i.e. at this well] will thirst again."

The proof of that was here was the woman back at the well thirsty again needing more water; that was obvious.

"But whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. [It will satisfy him forever.] But the water that I shall give him, [i.e. living water] will become in him a fountain of water, springing up [literally leaping up] into everlasting life." (v. 14)

Now what's the comparison here between the two different kinds of water?

Well, Jesus is saying the water that the world offers you, this natural water, will give you temporary relief, but you'll have to keep coming back for more because it won't last. And so the things that this world offers to satisfy the thirst of our hearts are only temporary. Yes, they satisfy for a moment, but we have to keep going back to get more. Jesus is saying, "I'm giving you a kind of water that will give you permanent release, permanent blessing and joy." The water of the world, the things the world offers, they don't last. But Jesus says, "If you drink this water you will never thirst again. You will have eternal life."

"It's a water," He says, "that I give to you." Three times in this passage He says, "The Father gives this, I give this." We have to receive it from Christ. There is no other source.

Now, this woman was physically thirsty, that's why she came to the well in the first place. But Jesus wants this woman to see that she has a deeper thirst—that her greatest need is not her physical thirst, that it's a deeper level of thirst. As we go into this passage over the next few days, we're going to see that this woman was emotionally thirsty. She had looked to the world to provide solutions, to provide water to quench her emotional thirst. But the world's solutions had not lasted. We're going to see that she was also spiritually thirsty. There was a spiritual thirst deep within her that nothing in this world, not even religion, had been able to satisfy.

Now, the woman doesn't understand all this yet; she just knows that here's an incredible offer. She's thinking, Wow, I wouldn't have to come to this well again; I wouldn't have to keep doing all this hard work. We're going to see that this woman was a woman who was socially rejected. "I won't have to come out in this public place again if I get this living water."

So it's no surprise when she says in verse 15 to Jesus:

"Sir, give me this water, that I may not thirst, nor come here to draw."

Now, wouldn't you think that Jesus' very next statement, (He's told this woman, "You ought to ask, I have this incredible water to give you." And now she says, "I want it.") wouldn't you think that His next statement would be, "Here it is, you can have it." But you notice, Jesus doesn't give her the water right away. I think that's because she wasn't ready to receive it yet. She had to go a little further in her relationship with Him and in her understanding of herself before she would be ready to receive that water.

And so we see in verse 16 that Jesus probes further. Rather than saying, "Here's the water." He says to her: "Go, call your husband, and come back." Jesus has gone to one of the most painful parts of this woman's life.

You see, Jesus wanted her to not run from her problems, not avoid them but to run head-on into those problems, to face the truth about her life, and to allow her problems to cause her to become a true worshiper of God.

He wasn't just wanting to satisfy her. God is looking for worshipers; He's looking for people who say, "No matter what the needs in my life, no matter how hungry, no matter how thirsty I am, I worship You, God, as my only source of life and supply." This was an issue of worship; it was an issue of surrender. She was going to have to meet God, if she wanted this living water, she was going to have to come in truth.

And if you and I are ever going to have living water, the water that truly and lastingly and deeply satisfies, we're going to have to be willing to let Him come into every single part of our lives—not only the part that everyone else can see and that we're open to talk with others about but the parts of our lives that are hidden and secret.

The parts of our past that we're ashamed of, that we don't want anybody to know about, Jesus is saying, "You want living water? Let's bring your life out into the open. Let's take a look at the truth about where you've been and what you've done and who you are." He says, "If you want living water, that's a step we're going to have to take."

Dannah: The woman at the well said “yes, Lord” to living water. And we’re invited to do the same. Sometimes surrender really is this simple. It’s saying, “Here I am, Lord. Search me and know me. Take all that is dead in me and revive me. Be living water to me! Fill me increasingly with yourself.”

Maybe take some time this weekend to pray something like that, and then just sit with the Lord for a moment. Open your Bible and let Him refresh your soul. Then show up to worship with your local church and let Him fill you there, too! 

We’d also love to get our latest women of the Bible study into your hands. It’s titled Devoted, and it takes you deeper into the lives of the women you heard about today, along with several others. Our hope is that studying their stories of surrender will inspire you to say “yes, Lord,” even in the hardest, most unexpected circumstances. God was faithful to these women. Surely He’ll be faithful to you, too. We’ll send you a copy of Devoted as our thanks when you donate any amount this month. To do that, visit ReviveOurHearts.com, or call us at 1-800-569-5959. 

Next weekend is for the listener in transition—whether that’s a changing life season, a move across the country, or some other new thing! Change can be disorienting, but it’s also a special opportunity to reorient your life around Jesus. We’ll look to him together next weekend.

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.