A Closer Look

Episode notes:

These episodes make up today's Revive Our Hearts Weekend program:

"The Sweet Spot of Spiritual Transformation"

How to Abide in God's Word

Remember What You Received

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Dannah Gresh: So, I’m not used to it being 2025 yet! Are you? The calendars have changed, but I’m not sure my brain has. Regardless, it’s that time of year again, when at least some of us set goals and try to turn over new leaves. 

Do you wanna hear a list of ridiculous resolutions? Producer Phil just pulled these off the internet. It’s a list of fifty funny New Year’s resolutions. 

• Someone says this year they’re planning to (and I quote) “Become a mystery pineapple giver.” That’s right. They’re going to secretly leave pineapples at neighbors’ doors to “spread tropical cheer all year.” Okay, that’s pretty off the wall, but I wouldn’t mind being a recipient of one of those a pineapples.
• Then there’s the dad who wants to set the world record for pillow fort building. Hmm . . . my husband would love that one. 
• And someone else is setting a goal to develop a championship for (get this!) extreme ironing! I guess they feel like it’s a pressing issue, haha! See what I did there? 
• Another person said she’s resolving to start a movement to rename the days of the week. She says she wants to propose new, funnier names for each day, advocating for their official adoption. I don't even know what to think about that!

I wish I had time for all of them, but I don’t. The kinds of resolutions out there are as unique as each person who makes them, aren’t they?

People have mixed feelings about New Year’s resolutions. I mean, as soon as I said the "r" word, you, my lovely audience, immediately polarized into two very different groups. 

First: the pro-resolution crowd. Your patron saint would probably be Jonathan Edwards, who by the super-mature age of twenty had written out his seventy resolutions that were going to govern his entire life. I mean, these were amazing, God-centered, spiritually-convicting, grand statements of resolve. So, resolutions can be a tool for spiritual maturing—am I right? 

Your own list might include things like shedding a few pounds . . . or shedding a lot of pounds, or reading through the Bible this year, or exercising more, or eating more healthily, or cutting back on social media, or how much coffee you’re drinking. 

But, I recognize that you may be a member of the second group: the anti-resolution crowd. Your strong conviction is, “There is no way I’m going to make a list of silly promises that I know I’m gonna break long before Valentine’s Day! What’s the use?” Your patron saint is maybe King Solomon, who wrote in Ecclesiastes 5:5, “It is better that you should not vow than that you should vow and not pay.” Also a defendable biblical position, I would say.

Regardless of which group you’re in, I think we can all agree on this: 

• We all want our lives to make a difference. 
• Developing good habits is not a bad thing, especially when it comes to our relationship with God. 

I spoke with author and pastor Brian Hedges about this not too long ago. He says that the sweet spot of spiritual transformation is where these three aspects of life converge: 

• One, our identity, that is, who we are positionally, in Christ 
• Two, our desires, or our motivations
• Three, our habits

Let’s listen to Brian Hedges.

Pastor Brian Hedges: Many of your listeners would be familiar with Galatians 2:20 where he says, “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.” 

So Paul in that statement is saying something that is true of every believer, that if we’re in Christ, we’ve been crucified with Him, and the old “I,” the old “me” is dead, no longer lives. We now have a new life, a new identity in Christ. The Christian life in many ways is going back to that foundational reality again and again and again. Because all change flows out of that. It all begins with that.

Dannah: Right. So one reason you might be stuck is because you’ve gotten some spiritual amnesia in terms of who you are, and you need to anchor your identity in Christ. What about desire? What’s that have to do with it?

Pastor Brian: So, desire has to do with the orientation of our hearts—our loves, our desires, our ambitions, the things that we long for. We could say it this way, that in spiritual transformation, first of all, we become who we really are in Christ, we live out of that identity, but we also become what we love. 

If identity has to do with our union with Christ, desire has to do with our devotion to Christ. Just as we need to be rescued from this spiritual amnesia, as you put it, we also need to be rescued again and again from our idolatries. I think it was John Calvin that said the human heart is a factory of idols. Even as believers, we can really get off base where we’re setting our minds and our hearts and our affections on lesser things, on inferior things, on competitors, instead of setting our hearts on Christ.

I think this is one aspect of the Christian life which requires some kind of daily discipline of reminding ourselves of the truth of the gospel. Jesus, in His call to discipleship, says, “If anyone would follow me, let him deny himself and take up his cross. Come after me” (Matt. 16:24 paraphrased).

That’s something we do daily. We deny ourselves daily. We take up our crosses daily. That can sound like a negative thing, but remember what else Jesus says in that same passage. “He who seeks to find his life will lose it, but he who loses his life, for Christ's sake, will find it” (vv. 24–25 paraphrased). So it’s reminding ourselves what we really want. The deepest desires of our hearts are not going to be satisfied in anything less than a thriving relationship with our Creator and our Redeemer.

Dannah: You know, sometimes I really am in a place of being completely devoted to Him, and I’m just floating through life in one direction, pointed to Jesus. But then . . . I don’t know if you’re familiar with Greek mythology and the sirens that cried out to the sailors? It's like this thing is just over there—it could be a cupcake sometimes, just calling me when God has called me to a fast. Or it could be entertainment, the TV, or my screen, scrolling through . . . Things just calling me to numb myself from the troubles of the day. What do we do when we hear those voices?

Pastor Brian: It’s interesting that you mentioned that story from Greek mythology. So there’s a couple of different stories. Maybe you’ve heard these. There is the story of Odysseus and the Sirens. When he and the sailors were venturing into that territory, he essentially has himself chained to the mast of his ship. He had all of his sailors stuffs their ears with wax so that they’re not able to hear the voice of the sirens. But he wants to hear the voice, and so he has himself latched to the mast of the ship and says, “Under no circumstances are you to set me free until we’re out of danger.” 

But there’s another story, a story also of Jason and Orpheus. Jason, when he knew he was going to encounter the sirens, brought onto board the ship Orpheus, who was the greatest musician of the land. Instead of using ropes and chains and trying to constrain people and putting wax in their ears, he just has Orpheus play a more beautiful, powerful song than the song of the sirens. It drowns out their song. 

I think that’s a strategy for how we are to fight against these competing desires. It’s what the old Scottish theologian Thomas Chalmers called the expulsive power of a new affection. We have to want something more. We have to see that there’s something more desirable, something that’s better for us to pursue than all of these lesser things that are calling for our attention. Because I think if we’re honest, we just live in a world that is full of distraction and full of things that are competing constantly for our attention and for our affection. We have to be reminded that there’s something much greater than what the world has to offer.

Dannah: You’ve talked to us about finding that true desire that will satisfy us, the desire for relationship with Jesus. What about habits?

Pastor Brian: Habits have to do with the patterns by which we live our lives. We think of spiritual disciplines, things like time in the Word, time in prayer, time in silence and solitude. But there are many other habits. There are lots of different spiritual disciplines we can use. 

The habits have to do with what we do. This is where the behaviors come in and actually are important. I think we can say it this way: just as identity has to do with our union with Christ, and desire has to do with our devotion to Christ, habits have to do with our imitation of Christ. 

If we look at Jesus and we look at the way Jesus lived His life, what becomes really clear is that His utter devotion to the Father gave His life a certain shape. It meant that He did certain things. We see Him withdrawing from the crowds to spend time in solitude with God. We see Him rising in the morning to pray. We see Scripture just flowing out of Him. Jesus, in His incarnate humanity, had committed the Scriptures, the Old Testament Scriptures, to memory. He meditated extensively on Scripture so that He’s able to pull those Scriptures out at a moment’s notice. It’s those same kinds of spiritual disciplines and habits that we can use to structure our lives, to make obedience to Jesus in living out this transformed life doable in our daily lives. 

Dannah: Some great reminders from Pastor Brian Hedges here at the start of a new year, when a lot of us are trying to form some better habits. It’s all about being intentional, and the new year is a great time for a fresh start. 

Speaking of which, my research in the spiritual development of young girls led me to something that needed a fresh start! In a nationwide survey of moms and girls ages seven-to-twelve, I discovered a frightening fact: tween girls aren’t developing the habit of reading their Bibles! 

So a few years ago we started a podcast for tween girls and their moms . . . or grandmas! It’s called True Girl. It’s our hope that these drive-time truth nuggets launch value-forming conversations that point you and your favorite tween girl toward deeper dives into God’s Word! We have a lot of fun putting these True Girl episodes together. 

And, we’re feeding these girls spiritual meat. For example, here’s just a portion of an episode where Staci Rudolph and I talk about abiding in God’s Word. But before we talk, we'll hear my friend and True Girl teacher, Chizzy Anderson. She’s going to read John 8:31 and 32 for us.

Chizzy Anderson:

So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, "If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples,and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free."

Dannah: Wow! I mean think about that! Jesus made us a pretty big promise when He said that. He was saying you don’t have to feel confused about what you believe. You don’t have to feel imprisoned by bad feelings, instead you can be free. But, did you hear there’s something you have to do to experience that freedom? You’ve got to abide in God’s Words.

Staci Rudolph: I gotta be honest though, Dannah, that sounds great and all, but how? How do you abide in God’s Word. 

Dannah: Well, let’s take a look at the word “abide,” okay? Because that’s kind of a word we don’t use a whole lot, so we need to define it. One definition says it means, “to continue without fading.” Another definition for abide means to “remain stable.” So, to abide means “to continue or to remain.” 

So, to abide in Jesus’ Words, which we find in the Bible, you would spend a lot of time reading the Bible, thinking about it, talking about it, learning about it, your mind stays on it, continues thinking about, remains on the topic of it. It’s like your thoughts are superglued to the truthful words of Jesus. 

Staci: I like that. Superglued to the truth of Jesus. But I gotta know, Dannah, we’re getting vulnerable here, right?

Dannah: Yup. 

Staci: I’ll be the first to admit, sometimes I am actually superglued to my screens and not my Bible. If I’m not careful I can catch myself spending too much time watching YouTube or listening to music videos.

Dannah: Yeah, I get that. I have the same problem. I want to be super clear, okay? It’s not that everything we find in those places is bad, but a lot of times the messages you hear are not truthful. And when they aren’t, that can make us feel confused. It can distract us from staying superglued to the truth of Jesus. 

But if you take time every single day to read the Bible, you’ll start to recognize what is true and what is a lie when you watch Netflix or hear a song. So, that will help you filter your music and stuff, and by that, I mean you’ll know what you should put on your playlist. 

You’ll also know what you should give a big thumbs down to and never listen to again. It’s all about keeping your mind on truth. 

Staci: Okay, I find that I like to abide in God’s Word by listening or singing worship songs. 

Dannah: Yeah, me too. 

Staci: I’ve always just kind of loved music, you know that about me. 

Dannah: Yeah. 

Staci: I learned early on that it was just a good way for me to remember things. It helped me focus on the characteristics of God and learn what His Word was teaching me and kind of put it in my heart. 

Song:

In Christ alone my hope is found,
He is my life, my strength, my song.¹

Dannah: That was a sampling of the True Girl podcast for tween girls cohosted by myself and Staci Rudolph. But that truth about abiding is for you and me, too! I want to add a few thoughts on why it’s important for us to abide.

Some of the last words Jesus spoke to His disciples before He was arrested and crucified were an invitation to abide. Last words are precious words. They’re important words. We choose them carefully when we’re the ones speaking them, and we treasure them whole heartedly when we’re the ones who’ve received them.

Let me read some of our Savior's last words before He was crucified for our sins. Lean in and listen.

John 15:8–11 reads:

As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love. These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.

Why is Jesus inviting them—and us—to abide, to stay to remain in Him? Because he loves you! And if that’s not enough, what is he inviting you to abide in? His love! What an invitation! Jesus is saying, "Stay, stay, stay here in my love."

How is he inviting you to abide? In obedience. “If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love.” How do we learn to do it? By staying so close to the heart of Christ that we learn from Him. Jesus told us He is our example. He said we are to obey. I quote, “As I have kept my father’s commandments and abide in his love.”

One way we abide is to obey what God’s Word teaches. We cannot just be hearers only! We’ve got to do what the Word says! Abiding equals obeying! Jesus did it. So should we.

Does that sound difficult? Is the obedience God is asking of you in your life right now difficult to embrace? If so, let me remind you what the outcome of abiding will be. Jesus said he invites us to abide “so that my joy may be in you and your joy may be full!” If you abide, expect to experience joy!

I remember I time I experienced this kind of joy! I had been fasting as part of my new year’s reset to abide in Christ. I believe it’s a critical and oft ignored Christian discipline, but fasting is not easy for me. Still God’s Word says to do it!

I was doing it. I was obeying the Word. And the end of my fast was approaching, wanted pizza! I was so tempted. The only way I could manage to stick to the fast was to read my Bible and pray. So I locked myself in my room and persevered.

My friend, I want to tell you, during that hard-fought-for obedience, it was about twelve hours, twenty-four hours maybe, the presence of God came so heavily onto my spirit that when the fast was over, I did not want to leave that room. I didn't care about pizza. I just kept reading the Word, weeping, as I sensed the joyful presence of God. Why? Why didn't I want to leave? Because I felt the great joy of being loved! Why did I feel that? Because I abided in Him and obeyed.

Now, I want you to think about a sport that you played in school. Remember playing offense or defense? Offensive, that was making sure the ball got in the intended goal and you scored a point! Defense, that was making sure that your opponent didn't score against you. 

When we abide, we are playing offense. We are moving toward God. But let’s look at defense in our spiritual walk. What can we do so our opponent, Satan, doesn’t attack and score against us. One way to block attacks from the enemy is to be watchful.

In Revelation 3 beginning in verse 1, Jesus was talking. "To the angel of the church at Sardis write: 'The words of him who has the seven spirits of God and the seven stars. "I know your works. You have the reputation of being alive, but you are dead."'"

Those are some strong words, and they get stronger. Listen to verse 2. "Wake up, and strengthen what remains and is about to die, for I have not found your works complete in the sight of my God. Remember, then, what you received and heard. Keep it, and repent. If you will not wake up, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what hour I will come against you."

Nancy was teaching through these strong verses when she received an email from a friend who travels from church to church, preaching and teaching on revival. He shared this email that came from a man in one of the churches. Here’s Nancy reading the email.

Nancy: I am thirty-two years old, and I have known the Lord and "believed" for many years. "Believed" would be the operative word there. Believed but not lived.

It sounds like the people in Sardis doesn’t it? You have a reputation that you are alive but you’re dead. This man said,

I was an extremely stagnant and stubborn "Christian," if you could call me a Christian at all. I was only attending church because my wife (praise God for her influence) had gotten me to attend. I didn’t pray with my wife and family, except the occasional prayer at the very rare family dinner. I didn’t sit with my children and teach them God’s Word.

I felt that I was doing okay in my life because I had comfortable finances, a semi-happy family, and now I was even going to church. Basically, Satan had me right where he wanted me.

He’s got a lot of people right where he wants them. You have a reputation for being alive but you are dead. He goes on to say,

The first time my wife told me that we were having a "Revival" at the church, I basically scoffed and laughed at the word, while making a motion as though I were playing a tambourine and shouting hallelujah. If I had known what I was about to go through, I wouldn’t have done that. After hearing some very hard-to-hear things, I finally found myself saying, "Yes Lord."

As soon as I was willing to be quiet and listen to what God had sent these wonderful people here to say, the flood gates opened and all the conviction I had experienced for the last ten years came back in a powerful way. I listened and did what God asked.

God placed it on my heart to modify many different aspects of my life. . . . He placed it on my heart to remove all music except that which has Christian lyrics. . . . I now pray with my wife. I pray with my family, and we also started a family time that includes reading God’s Word together. I had never done any of this, so it was strange at first, but God guided my wife and me. . . . Thank you for giving me back my family. Thank you for helping give me back to God.

I love the way he says that. Giving me back to God.

I’ll be eternally grateful.

Now Jesus says to the church in Sardis, and He says to us in our churches today, “If you will not wake up, if you will not be watchful, I will come like a thief, and you will not know at what hour I will come against you.”

Jesus says, “I’m coming.” And commentators differ as to if He’s talking about the Second Coming of Christ. Most seem to think that He’s not, though that is the ultimate coming, but that He’s talking about a prior visitation in which He will judge and discipline this church and the people in it.

Regardless, if He’s coming in more immediate judgment and discipline, that final coming will the one where the ultimate books are opened and the record is told and the final judgment will take place.

But Jesus says, “I am coming like a thief.” Now, not to steal but in the sense that as He says, “You will not know at what hour I will come against you.”

A thief doesn’t announce his arrival. A thief doesn’t call ahead and say, “I’ll be there at 3:00 in the morning.” He doesn’t let you know when he’s coming. He catches you by surprise. You don’t know when he’s coming. You can’t predict the timing. He’s coming at an unexpected moment, Jesus is saying.

So that ought to create a sense of urgency. And the people of Sardis knew how important that watchfulness was, how wakefulness was, because years earlier when enemies had scaled their walls and invaded their city it had happened suddenly, unexpectedly, when they weren’t being watchful and they weren’t alert.

In the same way, Jesus is saying if so-called believers in our churches don’t wake up and repent, if they are not vigilant in examining the state of their souls, Christ will come against them when they least expect it in judgment or in chastening in this life or at the end of time.

There are many, many Scriptures that you could cite here that talk about this need for constant spiritual vigilance and watchfulness. Jesus said in Matthew 24, “Stay awake.” Other translations say, “Be alert. Keep watch for you do not know what day your Lord is coming” (v. 42).

The apostle Paul in 1 Thessalonians 5: “So then let us not sleep, as others do, but let us keep awake [be awake, be on the watch], and be sober” (v. 6).

So the call of Jesus to the church then and now and our hearts is, be vigilant. Keep watch over your own heart. Don't drift spiritually. It happens so easily.

Keep watch over the hearts of others—over your children, over others around you. Not in the sense of we are responsible to control them. But be alert, be prayerful, be watchful. Moms, wives, praying for your husbands, praying for your children, your grandchildren, praying for others in your church.

Be alert to the schemes of the evil one. Keep watch for spiritual predators who would try to steal or pervert the gospel of Jesus.

Keep watch for Christ so you won’t get caught off guard when He comes. Be ready. Be watchful. Be waiting. Be awake for Him so that when He comes, you can see Him coming with anticipation and with joy rather than with fear, with dread, or with indifference.

Dannah: Be awake, keep watch. That's Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth.

Friend, we need to grow. We need to abide in Him, and we need be watchful. Don’t let the enemy take what has grown, what God has done while you’ve been abiding in Him.

I hope today has been helpful to you. Watch, abide, and take inventory of where you are. Such valuable things to keep in mind as we walk with God.

One of the best ways I know to help us watch and abide is to be in God’s Word. If you’re not already in a study plan, it is hard to know where to start, isn’t it. Well, I want to suggest something for your fresh start, it’s a study coauthored by Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth and Tim Grissom, called Seeking Him. It has twelve weeks’ worth of Scripture readings and thought-provoking questions to think through. It’s all designed to help you experience the joy of personal revival. It's a great help to get you into the year with a fresh start. 

The Seeking Him workbook is yours with a gift of any amount when you give to Revive Our Hearts. Just go to ReviveOurHearts.com/weekend and click on today’s episode. It’s called “A Closer Look.” You’ll find links there to the Seeking Him study and the videos that go with it.

Next week we’ll talk about what we wear . . . on our hearts. Join me for the next Revive Our Hearts 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.

¹Keith & Kristyn Getty. “In Christ Alone.” In Christ Alone. Getty Music Label, LLC ℗ 2006.

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