Becoming Women Who Depend on the Lord

This episode contains portions from the following programs:

"Admit Your Need"

"Dependent on His Strength"

"The Gracious Cycle"

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Dannah Gresh: What comes to mind when you hear the word “dependent?”

Does it make your stomach twist and turn? Do you feel defensive, maybe even angry? Or . . . do you think, Yeah, I am dependent, and you know what? That’s okay. In fact, it’s really good.

I’m your host, Dannah Gresh. You’re listening to Revive Our Hearts Weekend.

Discomfort is our natural response to the idea of dependence, isn’t it? Maybe we think it threatens our autonomy, makes us small, or leaves us vulnerable when those we depend on fail. 

But in Christ, we see all these fears flipped upside down. We find that autonomy is overrated when we can belong to such a good Savior. We discover that our smallness is an opportunity to magnify His glory. And we learn that we’re never vulnerable in the hands of a God who cannot fail us. 

What if we befriended our weakness instead of pushing it away? 

Today, we’re exploring the beauty of becoming women who depend on God. I hope that by the end of this half hour, you’ll breathe a sigh of relief. That’s our goal today. Because we’re gonna see that we were never made to hold all the things together. We’re not meant to be strong in and of ourselves. Instead, we can collapse into the arms of a Savior who is always strong on our behalf. I’m excited. Let’s dive in.

First up, we’re revisiting a conversation I had with two of my precious sisters in ministry, Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth and Mary Kassian. We were chatting about Mary’s book, The Right Kind of Strong.

Mary Kassian: We’ve been unpacking the passage from 2 Timothy 3 about weak women.

That was not a good thing. Paul did not say, “Oh, women are weak and women should be weak and all women are weak.” It’s not a compliment! He, in this passage, is saying, “These weak women were diminished. They were less than they should have been!”

Dannah: And in saying that, wasn’t he saying, “Rise up and be strong!”

Mary: Absolutely!

Nancy: So let’s go back to that passage, and I want to pick up on something that, Mary, you close your book with—The Right Kind of Strong: The Surprisingly Simple Habits of a Spiritually Strong Woman. I hope by now that everybody who’s been a part of this whole series is saying, “Yes! I want to rise up; I want to be that kind of strong woman.”

But the one we’re talking about today, this seventh surprisingly simple habit, is kind of an oxymoron. It’s not what you would think about what it means to be strong. But let’s just back up a moment and get the context. 

Paul says to Timothy, who’s the pastor of this church in Ephesus: 

[There] are those who creep into households and capture weak women, [these women are] burdened with sins, [they’re] led astray by various passions, [they’re] always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth (2 Tim. 3:6–7).

Now, we’ve talked about a lot of those. You’ve talked about them in your book and just explained them in such a beautiful and helpful way. But as we come to that seventh surprising habit, what is the bad habit we need to put off and the right habit we need to put on?

Mary: These women considered themselves to be strong women. These were women who lived in a very pro-woman culture at the time.

Nancy: They probably felt a little like you did when your brother called you weak, when Paul calls them weak. “You want to fight about this!?”

Mary: Exactly. I’m sure they weren’t happy about that! If a pastor or a blogger called me out for being a weak woman, I think I’d get my hackles up a little bit still to this day, because I don’t want to be weak.

Nancy: And they didn’t think that they were. They thought they were strong.

Mary: They didn’t think that they were weak, but here’s the paradox. I think that in order to be a strong woman, ultimately, we need to rely on God. A weak woman really thinks that she’s strong, but a strong woman understands that she is weak and in need of a Savior.

Nancy: Say that again, Mary. That is so powerful and such a good distinction. So it depends how you’re using the word “weak,” right?

Mary: It does, but the Bible redraws the boundaries. It changes the definition of what is actually weak and what is actually strong.”

Nancy: So, the bad kind of weak woman, the kind Paul is talking about here in 2 Timothy, she tries to act strong.

Mary: She thinks that she’s strong, but a truly strong woman recognizes that she’s weak and in need of a Savior. She looks to Christ for strength.

Nancy: And when we say we need to be weak, in a sense, that’s not something the world thinks very highly of. So we say, “You need to be weak and recognize that you’re not self-sufficient.” They say weak means, “insecure,” “feeble,” “frail,” “vulnerable.” And we say, “There’s a kind of weakness that really is strength.”

Mary: There is, and Paul talks about that. He says, “When I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Cor. 12:10). When I am fully dependent on Jesus, when I understand and admit my need, and I admit my need for Jesus and admit my weakness, that’s when His strength can shine through me.” 

I think we want to give women permission here to feel that they are strong and that God is giving them strength, and that they are strong women. 

Nancy: But they’re not strong in and of themselves.

Mary: Exactly. Even when I’m working out of my strength, even when I’m doing what comes very easily to me because it’s in my gifting, it’s in my personality, even then I need to recognize that everything I am, everything I have, everything I do is because of Jesus.

Nancy: Apart from Him, we have nothing, we are nothing, we don’t have anything to offer. We are nothing apart from Him. We are weak.

Mary: The amazing thing about this message is that you can be a strong woman whether you feel like a strong woman or not. You can be a strong woman even when you feel weak. In fact, Christ’s power and His strength is put on display most dramatically through our weaknesses.

Nancy: It’s interesting, when Revive Our Hearts started back in 2001, I had been teaching women. I had been doing women’s conferences, writing books. And then this opportunity became available to be the successor ministry to Elisabeth Elliot’s Gateway to Joy. First of all, those were huge shoes to fill! Nobody could fill them, and I knew I certainly couldn’t.

I was now being given the responsibility for coming up with programming, Bible teaching, for two-hundred-and-sixty days a year. I just had this overwhelming sense of my own weakness! In fact, that was an answer to prayer, because years ago I began to pray (and I prayed it many times over the years):

Lord, don’t let me ever get to the place where I can do what You’ve called me to do without feeling my desperate need for You! 

That is a prayer that God has been very faithful to answer! So this ministry started, and I now had this responsibility, and I felt so needy . . . so inadequate!

People look at a public communicator, a public person, and they think, Oh, she’s strong. She is talented. She’s good at this. And I’m thinking, If people only knew! That old Twila Paris song, “The Warrior Is a Child”—that is my song. And I remember thinking so many times in those early years (and it’s a sense I don’t really ever want to get over) when I would go into a recording session . . . I still feel a sense when I get up at a major conference or I start to write a book . . . I feel so overwhelmed sometimes.

Mary: Just inadequate.

Nancy: I feel inadequate by the bigness of the task and the limitations I have in my own life, which is not anywhere near where I know it needs to be or I want it to be. I’m so much in process. Well, the Lord gave me a really sweet gift in the early days, maybe the first eighteen months of the Revive Our Hearts program.

Every day—I want to say virtually without exception—when I would wake up in the morning, my first conscious thought I had (And it was a hard year! We were recording like three-hundred new programs, and I was writing a number of books that year, and I just felt perpetually out over my skis.) was that little line from the child’s song “Jesus Loves Me.” It was just this line, “They are weak, but He is strong.”

The melody would come to my mind as I would be coming out of sleep and into consciousness: “They are weak, but He is strong.” I just want to say what a gift it was, and is, to know that when I go do whatever God has called me to do now. I am weak, but He is strong.

Dannah: The right kind of strong. That’s what we want to be, isn’t it? 

I had such a good time discussing the book by Mary Kassian The Right Kind of Strong, along with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth.

In fact, the three of us chatted so much that we actually ended up with a whole podcast series on the topic of true strength. You can find that in the transcript of today’s episode, along with information about Mary’s book The Right Kind of Strong at ReviveOurHearts.com/weekend. Select today’s episode. 

This is Revive Our Hearts Weekend, and I’m Dannah Gresh.

Now, maybe you’ve read Proverbs chapter 31 a time or two over the years. If so, you’ll recognize the phrase, “She clothes herself with strength.” It sounds like a lovely concept, but we don’t always slow down and consider what this really means, or what it should look like in our daily lives. Nancy’s gonna help us get practical as she shares a little about the Proverbs 31 woman.

Nancy: She's a busy woman. She's an active woman. She's a diligent woman. And she's probably at times, undoubtedly, a tired woman.

And so we see a very practical verse, 17:

She girds herself with strength
And strengthens her arms.

If you're following along in the New International Version, it says "She sets about her work vigorously; her arms are strong for her tasks." Or the Amplified Version is helpful here, "She girds herself with strength [spiritual, mental, and physical fitness for her God-given task] and she makes her arms strong and firm."

Now that word "gird." "She girds herself with strength." That word means "to equip or prepare for action." She does what she has to do to be equipped and fit to do what God has called her to do.

And at different seasons of your life, that may look different. It's not always the same requirement for each season of life. But this woman does what she needs to do to be strong, to be equipped, to be girded up, prepared for action.

And we see a woman, not just in this verse but throughout this chapter, who works with energy and enthusiasm. She's not a woman who's dragging around. Now that makes you think maybe this is superwoman, this woman does not exist, there is no such woman; but God has provided His grace to strengthen us to do His will. Whatever I need to do the will of God wholeheartedly and cheerfully and willingly in any season of my life, God can give me the grace and the strength to do that. But I have to cooperate with Him in appropriating that strength and that grace.

I want to be a woman who works with energy and with enthusiasm. Now I'm not always that. You see me when I'm teaching and prepared and on the platform. But what you don't see are the behind-the-scenes times, sometimes very late at night, sometimes early in the morning, the long days, the long hours, when I am feeling very weary, under the pressure, under the gun of all that is required to do what God has called me to do.

Then this verse challenges me that I need to be taking some practical steps to strengthen myself to be fit physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually to do the will of God, whatever that requires.

It means I need physical strength. As long as God gives health, I need to be maximizing what He has given me physically to be developing a greater endurance, greater capacity for endurance. Now I am not a person who naturally is real interested in things related to nutrition and exercise, that's not one of the things that I have a lot of focus on in my life. But I need a little bit more focus.

My dad used to remind us that as Paul said to Timothy "bodily exercise profits little." But, he would say, "It does profit a little." There is no need on any of these things to go to excess or extremes or to have this become your god. But physical exercise, I'm finding the older I get, is important. I'm finding the older I get, the more important it is what I eat. I've found that I could live on fast food when I was in my twenties. But when I hit thirty, I couldn't keep living that way and have the strength to do what God had called me to do. So I need to take care of this temple that the Holy Spirit lives in that God has given me.

Some practical ways, if you find yourself just not having the energy to do the will of God, to be a mom, to keep up with those kids, to do whatever God has called you to do, I just say practically, watch your sugar intake. I found myself recently just almost on addiction to sugar. I had let things go and just took about a thirty-day period recently and said, "I'm just going to stay off the sugar." Through most of that period of time, there were a couple of exceptions, but I can't tell you how much better I started to feel quickly (after I got rid of the headaches from getting off the sugar). It was just a practical thing that I found myself having more strength and energy to do the will of God. That means that eating has to do with our ability to glorify God.

Physical exercise. I find that when I am getting moderate physical exercise that I have greater stamina, I have greater physical energy, greater capacity for serving God and others, I don't get tired so easily. We know medically and physically that physical exercise helps with dealing with emotional well-being and depression.

I'm not saying that if you are depressed if you take a walk that all of a sudden you won't be depressed. But physical exercise is one important ingredient in dealing with depression. Particularly, if you are a wife and mom, you want to have emotional strength and reserves to give to your family. If you are always living on the edge of depression, it may that some simple steps . . . Now, it may not seem simple to get up and take a walk. But taking some steps of obedience, hard as they may seem, may help to lift your spirits and make you more fit to serve your family.

When I have some moderate physical exercise on a consistent basis, it just improves my overall outlook on all of life. I find that when my body is disciplined, that I am more likely to be disciplined in other areas of my life. When I let this area of physical discipline go, you know what goes next? My tongue, I start wasting time, my temperament, my reactions, everything else seems to get out of control when I let my body go.

Now, this is not something that comes easily for me. I've found myself, particularly in the last couple of years, thinking, I just don't have time. I just can't fit this in. God has been gracious to put some people around me who care not just for my soul but who care for me as a person. I had a woman call me recently and she said, "I want to challenge you" (and she is a friend, a praying friend) "I think you need to go back to walking." I had put that aside for some period of time. She said, "I need to get to walking again, could we hold each other accountable?" We've emailed to each other and reported to each other. I did get my three walks in last week. The third one, I promise you, I would have not gotten in had I not known that she was going to ask how it was going.

I'm so thankful for friends like that who will help me gird myself for action, to be strengthened physically. The goal here is not to have a model's body. The goal is not to be a body builder or fit the world's picture of thin, tanned, and toned. The goal is "whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all to the glory of God" ( 1 Cor. 10:31).

I want my life to bring glory to God. I've asked God to let me serve Him with strength until I'm eighty-five years old. God may not give me that many years, He may give me more years than that, but that's just something that has been a desire of my heart. That's how many years God gave Caleb to serve Him back in Joshua 14. I said, "Lord, would you just let me serve you with strength until I'm eighty-five years old?"

I want to do what I need to do with this body to have it fit enough to fulfill the purpose for which God has put me here on this earth so that I don't have to be sluggish and always exhausted.

There are seasons of life. I'm looking at some mothers who are at a season of life where you are going to be tired. There's no sin in that, but as God gives you opportunity and as He speaks to your heart, look for ways even physically to be fit for the task God has given you.

Dannah: Such an honest, helpful word from Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth. I think she brought out an important distinction here. She affirmed that we do depend on the Lord for strength, but that doesn’t look like just sitting on our sofas and saying, “Well, I guess I’m weak, so I’ll let God take over from here.” No, we are not weak in the Lord! Truly strong women know that dependence on God and hard work go hand in hand. He invites us to participate in his strength and to do meaningful kingdom work in the process.

Maybe, like Nancy, that looks like asking a friend to hold you accountable to exercise. Maybe it means collecting some healthier recipes to prepare—recipes that will better nourish your body for the work God is calling you to. Maybe take a few minutes today to ask God, “How can I live more faithfully in your strength?” This differs from woman to woman and season to season. But God’s strength is the constant.

Now, I bet a lot of us could agree—we need God’s strength to be faithful in our spiritual disciplines. Habits like praying and reading the Word. I got to sit down with my friend Kristen Wetherell not too long ago to talk about that. Kristen is a pastor’s wife, mother, and the author of numerous books, including Help for the Hungry Soul. Here’s a piece of our conversation.

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You mentioned that we try to fit things into our God-shaped hole that don’t satisfy because they don’t fit there. What are some examples of things that maybe you’ve used to try to satisfy your heart?

Kristen Wetherell: I think I’m quick to turn to people rather than The Person—I’m so quick! That’s not necessarily all bad, because I am surrounded by amazing people—people who love the Lord, people who will point me to the Lord. And thankfully, a lot of the time they do.

But my very first response is not to turn to prayer and talk to my Father. It’s to pick up my phone and try to find an “out” for my situation or a solution for what I’m walking through in a friend or in my husband. Like I said, that’s not a bad thing. These are good friends and spouses and family members, church family. They’re good gifts!

Dannah: I think sometimes it’s whether or not it’s the first thing. Sometimes I’m picking up my phone saying, “People! Please pray about” this, that, or the other thing, and I haven’t even prayed yet! I haven’t talked to the Lord. I haven’t said, “God, do you see what’s going on?” And so, sometimes, even those good things,when we turn to them as the first thing, they start to be a competitor with God. Right?

Kristen: Yes, that’s right. The word “competitor” is a great word. Because in our struggle with weariness . . . A lot of us struggle with a sense of purpose and finding/rooting our purpose and our identity in Christ.

For myself, I think I try and fill that God-shaped hole with praise from people. So I can turn to people for help, but I can also turn to them for honor. I can also turn to them for praise and affirmation. And that will never satisfy me, because the more I get, the more I want! So, am I turning to the Lord for that? Am I looking to Christ to be that Rock, that Solid Rock that fills that God-shaped hole, that won’t change? There’s a big difference between the two!

Dannah: So, how do we redirect ourselves from those counterfeits—sometimes good things, but they don’t belong in our God-shaped hole? How do we redirect?

Kristen: Well, we need God’s mind to fill our own minds. We need God’s will and His priorities to fill our own hearts. And so, where do we get that? How do we get that? It’s a work of the Holy Spirit.

It’s not something that I can conjure up, or that anyone else on their own can do for me. It’s a work of the Holy Spirit that primarily comes through the Word of God—which is such a gift to me! Because, how else would I know who He is?

How else would I know the full, perfect revelation of God? How else would I know unless He had given me it in the form of this book that we call the Bible? It’s such a beautiful gift. When you think about it that way, it’s something that I can touch with my fingers and something that I can see with my eyes, and yet it’s a spiritual thing. It’s the God of all creation speaking to me, speaking to us. It’s such a gift!

Dannah: I imagine there is someone listening right now who says, “Uh, I have grown weary in my Bible reading. That’s making me weary!” What would you say to her about that?

Kristen: I would say that that is also me in certain seasons. I have found that weariness—another word for it may be dryness, spiritual dryness—tends to be a bit cyclical. So I’ve been there, and then at times I come back there.

If this is you and you’re listening, then I would encourage you that perhaps the lack of hunger and the weariness might be God’s way of reminding you how much you need Him. Because, I can’t cause within my own heart any love for the Lord unless He stirs it up within me.

I can’t change this weariness that I sometimes feel about opening my Bible on my own. And so, it is really a ripe opportunity to freshly turn to the Lord and tell Him what you’re feeling. 

Dannah: Honestly.

Kristen: Honestly, yes, thank you. And say, “Lord, my heart’s not in the right place. I don’t even want to do this right now. So, please, would You help me? Please, would You show me something in what I’m about to read that would stir up more and more of a hunger?”

And then, secondly I would say, we just keep coming. We just keep coming, and we trust that the promise that God gives us about His Word doing His work in our hearts is greater than what we may or not be feeling at any given moment. It’s worth holding on to. It’s worth taking God at His word. So, we’re honest, and we just keep coming.

Dannah: I think, too, when we come that we have to come with the right mindset. Many times when I look back on seasons of dryness, I was faithful in my Bible reading. I was faithful in my prayer time, my quiet time, but I was dry because I was going for the wrong motivation. I was looking at my Bible through the lens of me, instead of the lens of Jesus.

How can focusing on Jesus in the reading of God’s Word change the way we have an appetite for the presence of Christ through the pages of Scripture?

Kristen: I’m so glad that you brought this up! Yes, that’s me. My first inclination is to check today’s reading off the reading plan: “Check!”

Dannah: A little Type A, maybe? (laughter)

Kristen: Yes . . . and then to feel really great about myself because I did it! I imagine that’s some of the listeners, too.

But you know, Dannah, like you mentioned, if we’re just coming to check off a box, if we’re just coming to glean some information, if we’re coming even to simply try and solve a singular problem that we’re going through, we’re missing the point. That’s because the whole entire Bible is one big story, and the entire story is about Jesus! 

The whole entire Bible is one big story about Jesus. 

God has given us this story in order to draw us into it in order that we would know this Jesus and walk with Him. That we would not think about Him and His truth and His gospel as ideas or theory, but to take hold of His hand as a Person and say, “Lord, I need You! My whole life is bound up in Yours!”

You know, if you’ve trusted in Christ, your whole life is bound up in His. You are one with Him. And so, our greatest privilege is to get to know Him and to walk with Him, and then to be in the process, transformed into His likeness.

But we can’t see Him with our eyes right now. It’s a walk of faith. We walk by faith, not by sight, and so this is hard for forgetful people.

Dannah: As you’re talking, a Scripture verse is just like screaming out at me! Because you’re saying we can’t do it ourselves . . . I mean, even spending time in the Word of God. We can’t have a desire for that outside of the Holy Spirit.

At the same time, we can set the stage for the Holy Spirit to fan that desire, to give us that desire and that appetite. I’m thinking of Hebrews 12:1–2 which says, “We lay aside every weight, and the sin which clings so closely to us and we run with endurance the race that is set before us,looking to Jesus . . .” (paraphrased) some versions say, the “author and perfecter of our faith.” It goes on to talk about, “the joy set before him, he endured the cross, despising the shame, and he is now seated at the right hand of the throne of God.” (paraphrased)

But, fixing your eyes on Jesus, looking to Jesus . . . He is the Author and Perfecter of our faith! He writes the faith in us; we can’t do it! We can position ourselves for Him to do the writing. We can say, “Look, Lord, my day today is an empty slate. Will You show up? I’m fixing my eyes on You; I’m steadying my gaze on You. Will You write faith onto my heart?” 

When you talk about coming back again and again, we’re not going to have a perfected faith until we see Him face to face, right?

Kristen: Right. 

Dannah: But He can do even that! He can perfect what is not perfect in us. So, it really does rely on Him!So many times we’re making that reading the Bible time about us—like you said, “crossing it off.”

Kristen: That’s right. I love how Peter talks about this dual, simultaneous reality. It’s this work of the Spirit and yet our human responsibility to open the Word. Peter talks about this as if we are newborn infants longing for the pure spiritual milk, that by it we may grow up into salvation! (see 1 Peter 2:2). 

If you’ve ever been around a newborn baby, all they want is the milk. They’re just hungry! They’re growing. If they don’t get the milk, they wither, and they don’t grow. And yet, a baby doesn’t produce the milk it needs to survive.

And yet, if a baby doesn’t put him or herself in a position to receive the milk, what’s it all for? They’re not going to receive it. And so, similarly, are we putting ourselves in the position? Are we making the choice to open God’s Word and to say, “Okay, Lord, now You do what only You can do through this Word”? It’s both/and.

Dannah: Amen. Kristen Wetherell encouraging you to rely on the Lord. I hope that sigh of relief we talked about earlier is coming on right about now. You don’t have to do it all on your own, sister. Actually, the Lord wants to give you his strength for all of it. I’m so glad his power is perfected in our weakness. Aren’t you?

We’d love for you to continue soaking in this truth. That’s why we’re offering Nancy’s devotional, Dwell: 30 Days with God in the Psalms. Through reflections on thirty Psalms, Nancy gives you a fresh vision of the God who’s strong on your behalf. In times of sorrow, joy, and everything in between, he is faithful. 

To give and receive your copy of Dwell, visit ReviveOurHearts.com/donate. 

Next weekend, we’re taking today’s conversation even deeper. We’re not only dependent on the Lord, but we find complete satisfaction in him. How exactly do we do that? Come back and find out!

In the meantime, I hope you’ll wish all the dads in your life a happy Father’s Day! Whether he’s your own dad, a spiritual father in your life, or your husband—the father of your children, this weekend is an opportunity to bless him with your words.

Thanks for listening. 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.