Community—Be a Part

Today's episode contains portions from the following programs:

"One Another"

"Sarah, Meet Mercy"

"The Grange Fair Parade"

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Dannah Gresh: Imagine you’re scrubbing dishes. You’ve got suds up to your elbows when God’s Spirit suddenly pierces your heart with the idea that you (yes, YOU!) have a message the young women in your church need to hear. It happened to Mercy as she listened to Susan Hunt’s voice stream through a speaker in her kitchen. 

Mercy: She said, “Older women, you need to invest into younger women’s lives, and younger women, you need to reach out to older women with more life experience so that they can help you and encourage you and equip you to live for God’s glory.”

Dannah: When Mercy heard those words, suddenly the dirty dishes didn’t matter so much. It was like God struck a match in her heart. Soon that little spark turned into a blazing bonfire in the lives of women in her church. 

Welcome to Revive Our Hearts Weekend, I’m Dannah Gresh. 

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth says you need the Body and the Body needs you. She’s talking about the Body of Christ, of course. That description for God’s people comes from a letter the apostle Paul wrote to followers of Jesus in the city of Corinth. 

Here’s something the apostle Paul and Nancy agree on: you need the church and the church needs you. 

Here’s Nancy. 

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: It's not just you and God. You can't be a lone-ranger Christian and be the Christian God intended you to be.

If the foot should say, 'Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,' that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear should say, 'Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,' that would not make it any less a part of the body (1 Cor. 12:15–16).

I mean, just imagine one part of your body saying, "Because I'm not some other part, therefore I'm not a part of this body." I mean, it's foolishness; it's ludicrous. The body is one. It has many members; they all have their part. They all have their function. They look different. They act differently. They have different gifts, but they're all necessary. 

My hand can't just say, "I'm separating from this body" and then go off and do its own thing and have a hand just wandering around there. It's useless without the rest of the body. You can't separate yourself from the body. Let me say it again. You can't separate yourself from the body. Like it or not, if you are in Christ, you are a member of His body. Every part is different, but all belong to the same body.

Verse 17, 1 Corinthians 12: "If the whole body were an eye . . ." Well, just imagine it. One great big eye rolling around, and it considers itself the whole body. ". . . where would be the sense of hearing? Or if the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell?" The ear can't function by itself; the eye can't function by itself. The body needs all its members.

It wouldn't work if we were all the same. Remember that. When you start to go crazy over the differences of people in your church and you think, If they weren't just so weird or so different . . . You need them to be different. If they were all like you or all like me; well, I don't even want to think about that. It wouldn't be a body.

Verse 18: "But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose." That's what the Scripture says. God arranged the members; God put those members into your body, each one of them, as He chose. "If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts but one body" (vv. 19–20).

If God arranged the members in the body and placed them in different local churches as He has chosen, as He has directed and led, can I suggest that it's not enough to tolerate the other people in your church in the body of Christ? You need to thank God for them. You need to learn to embrace them, to value them, to appreciate them.

Verse 21: "The eye cannot say to the hand, 'I have no need of you,' nor again the head to the feet, 'I have no need of you.'" Isn't' that how we often function? I mean, what's that part needed for? Who needs that person? We wouldn't say that, but don't we sometimes feel that? They're just in the way. We need each other. We're strange and flawed and needy as we are. We need each other.

Every member of the body is essential. No part is indispensable. If you aren't there, it makes a difference to the whole. You can't say, "It doesn't need me." It can't say, "We don't need you." If you're not there, if one part is missing, if I didn't have this hand, my whole body would have problems. You don't realize it till you miss a part. Sometimes you just take them for granted, and isn't that the way it often is in the body of Christ? We don't miss each other until we realize there's some function missing here.

We don't always know what the function is. There are parts of our body that I don't exactly know what they do or how they work or why they're needed. I mean, some of those parts that you can't see and don't talk about a lot. I mean, what's the pancreas, the spleen? Some of you know what all those parts do, but I really don't. But I assume if God put it in the body, there's a reason for it; there's a need for it.

We can't have members or parts of the body saying, "I'm not needed." If you're not there, it makes a difference. Even if it is the weaker parts, the less gifted, the less prominent. The Scripture says to those we give special care, special attention. We need each part.

And so as we think about the church, I want to make two points here. Number one: you need the body. And number two: the rest of the body needs you. First, you need the body. You cannot function alone without the body of Christ. You are not complete without the other members. You need the spiritual gifts that God has given to others that you don't have. You need those gifts working in your life if you're going to become like Christ.

You need the Spiritual nourishment and encouragement and accountability and counsel and insight and practical help and comfort in your life that the rest of the members of the body can supply. You say, "But they don't supply it." You're right. We don't do it the way we should, but that doesn't mean we give up on it.

It means we get in there and we pray and we serve and we ask God to make the body more like what it ought to be. We don't just discard it because it's not working perfectly or it's not always working as it should. You need the body; I need the body. We need each other.

But the rest of the body needs you. Not only do you need them, but they need you. The rest of the body cannot be complete or healthy without you. You may think, What's the difference if I pull out? What's the difference if I'm not regular in my church? What's the difference if I come and go? Who cares? Especially in some of these bigger churches you can get so lost through the crowds. Who cares? What does it matter?

It does matter. If you're not plugged in, it cannot be complete without you. It can't be healthy. It needs your spiritual gifts. It needs the function God designed you to have in the body. A friend said to me recently, "One of my concerns is that our parent's generation has retired and pulled out of the church in so many cases." I think some of those older people are thinking, We're just not needed anymore. Can I say—and you decide if you're older or not—you are needed. We need your wisdom. We need your experience. We need your example. The rest of the body needs you, and you need the body.

Dwight L. Moody was visiting with a prominent Chicago citizen one cold winter night when the subject of church membership and involvement came up. This man said to Moody, "I think I can be just as good of a Christian outside the church as I can be inside it." The story is told that without saying anything, Moody walked over to the fireplace, and he removed one burning piece of wood and just placed it on the hearth all by itself. Then the two men sat together and watched as the fire went out on that piece of wood; the embers died out. The fact is you cannot survive. You cannot keep a hot heart and a fervent passion all by yourself.

Dannah: Wow. What a powerful word picture. If your heart for Jesus and your love for His people was an ember, what would it look like today? White hot with passion to live like He has called you to live? Lukewarm as your love for the church is fading? Or would it be cold to the touch? With no fire inside of you to love God and love others?

I’m sobered by those questions. Aren’t you? Let’s fire each other up to passionately pursue Jesus together.

Remember how I told you that a woman named Mercy was doing the dishes in her kitchen when she heard Susan Hunt say something that turned up the heat on her passion for ministry. I want you to hear the rest of the story. Here’s Mercy again. 

Mercy: When I was older, I just became hungrier and thirstier, and I surrendered my life fully to the Lord when I was reading through Titus.

I came across Titus 2, and it said, “Older women . . . train the younger women,” and it said, “love your husband, love your children, be chaste, pure . . .” and then all the way to where it said, “. . . so that the Word of God will not be blasphemed.” (2:3–5 paraphrased)

And I just thought, Oh, my goodness! Well, Lord, I do not want to blaspheme You, so show me how to do this. I went back to Titus 2 where it had said, “Older woman train the younger woman.” I said, “Okay, so there it is. I need to ask an older woman to learn from.” 

I just wanted to learn as much as possible, so I entered into a relationship with a woman. She said, “Yes.” I didn’t think she would; I was so nervous to ask! But I learned more from her than I did when I was walking through things trying to figure it out on my own. 

She was so filled with grace and love, and so she just modeled that to me!

Susan Hunt reading Psalm 145: “One generation shall commend your works to [the next generation], and shall declare your mighty acts.” This generational principle is repeated throughout the Old Testament and is echoed in Paul’s letter when he says that older women are to teach the younger women.

Mercy: And so, I was doing dishes one day, I heard Susan Hunt speaking on the radio through Revive Our Hearts. And she said, “Older women, you need to invest into younger women’s lives, and younger women, you need to reach out to older women with more life experience so that they can help you and encourage you and equip you to live for God’s glory.”

Susan: The local church is where we know each others’ stories. It’s where we hear sound doctrine, so we learn how to rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep. It’s where we are knit together in love.

Mercy: And I said, “Yes! That’s it! I need to learn more!” So I went on the Internet; it led me to the Adorned conference through Revive Our Hearts, where I got to hear Susan Hunt’s whole message where she spoke about, “Don’t give up that modeling career” (so cute!), and I was left in tears.

That message burned inside my chest and something came alive. I just said, “This is it!” So I reached out to my pastor’s wife, who’s a really close, great friend, and she just walked me through it. I said, “Hey! I want to have a Bible study.”

And she was like, “Oh.” She’s very reserved and balanced—the very opposite of me! She said, “What would that look like?” 

I said, “I dunno, but it’s about women sharing life with younger women and encouraging them and equipping them to live for God’s glory.” And there’s this book called Adorned Nancy DeMoss [Wolgemuth] wrote it. It’s so awesome, so it’s going to be great!” 

She said, “Oh, how long is that going to run for?” 

I said, “I don’t know; it could go on forever!”

And then she said, “Okay, well there should be a start time and a stop time so women know what to expect.” She just walked me through how to have a Bible study. It was the scariest thing I have ever done!

All these older women came, silver-haired saints, and what happened was amazing! The older women came alive! That was the calling that the Lord gave me, because when I saw the veil lift and when I saw God’s plan, they got it! I was like, “I want to do this for the rest of my life!”

Dannah: As Mercy prayed for God to use her, a young woman named Sarah walked into church. Sarah didn’t know God, but she was hungry for Him. Sarah was a part of the small group of women Mercy was assembling at their church. They even met through the outbreak of Covid. 

Mercy: And so from that moment on, every single week, we had a bonfire, and we gathered together. At the very end we would pray. We would just tap into what everyone’s prayer request was. We’d pray for the country, and we’d pray for the situation in our community, and how to reach into people’s homes to be able to share the love of God. We prayed about continuing to gather together, even though the world was saying, “Separate, isolate!” The Lord just bonded Sarah and I from that moment on.

Dannah: God totally captured Sarah’s heart, and she committed her life to Jesus and started looking for ways to serve Him. Today she’s pouring her life into the junior high students at Mercy’s church. (Well, I guess it’s now Sarah’s church too.) 

What started with a longing inside Mercy’s heart has grown into a ministry that God is using to reach many generations of women. Isn’t that beautiful?

Mercy: You have us older women, and then silver-haired saints, and we’re sharing life. I’m sharing life with Sarah. These junior highers just want someone a little closer to their age to glean from, and the Lord created that in and through Sarah because she said “yes” to God.

Susan Hunt said that on Wednesdays she just prays for the women of the nation to rise up and grab hold of God’s plan. It wasn’t until recently that I realized that she prayed for me! I was one of those women that the Lord raised up.

And knowing this plan, I can now look back and see my mom didn’t have anyone that came alongside her and showed her how to love her husband and children well either. And so, the Lord redeems our failures and He restores our circumstances. My mom has a wonderful passion for the Lord now.

I just want to say, “Invest, say ‘yes’ to the Lord.” He’s placing opportunities in front of you, but if you see God’s plan, you’ll start to see those opportunities. “Oh, here’s an opportunity! Yes, I will partner with You to display Your love to her.”

Dannah: You have to hear the entire story of Mercy and Sarah. It will leave you relishing the goodness of our God and His care for His daughters. Go to ReviveOurHearts.com/weekend, and we’ll have a link for you there.

Laura Booz is one of my dearest friends. In fact, we live near each other and that means we both love the Grange Fair Parade. 

What? You’ve never heard of it?

Well, it doesn’t exactly make the global news. But here in Central Pennsylvania it’s pretty exciting. 

Laura says that one year that parade gave her a picture of how we’re called to live as followers of Jesus. Laura shared this story in an episode of her podcast Expect Something Beautiful. Here’s Laura.

Laura Booz: We’ve been living out here in the country for eleven years. Way back when we moved here, my husband and I really wanted to find a way that we could connect with the community—a way that we could give back and be a blessing here. 

So, we put our heads together and we thoughtmaybe we could create a website. Since it is a real community website, I'm not going to give you the real name. For the purpose of our story let's call it SmallTownFamily.com.

Back when we launched SmallTownFamily.com, we wanted it to be a place where we could put things on there like announcements and encouragement to people. Next, we had to let the community know where to find us online. So, we came up with this plan that would only work out here in the country. 

First, we printed out a flier and hung it on the bulletin board right outside the bathroom at the gas station. Then we printed out a giant vinyl sign and asked a local farmer to hang it on the side of his hay wagon. And finally, we reserved our spot in the Grange Fair Parade.

Today’s story illustrates that you are important to God’s family. 

If you came to our town and visited the Grange Fair, let me give you an idea about what you would see, hear, smell. The 4-H kids would be showing their animals. You'd walk past massive cows, and maybe the equine center and see the draft horse competition. You'd smell all kinds of delicious foods. You'd have to choose between one fried food or another. If you were with me, you'd get in line for the apple dumplings. Maybe we'd find a seat on a bench and listen to whoever was playing in the square. We'd stroll in and out of the vendors, because you could buy anything at the Grange Fair—from a couch to a purse to a hairbow. You could get a toilet seat or a little matchbox car. Everything is for sale at the Grange Fair.

Everybody goes. Everybody enjoys the food and the music. And everybody brings their lawn chairs out for the parade.

A couple days before the parade, my sister called and said, “Hey we want to come visit you guys.” 

And I said, “Well there’s just a hitch. You see, we’re going to be in this parade, but maybe you guys could find a shady spot and just cheer us on.” 

And she said, “No way. We are going to be in the parade with you.”

Here’s what we did. We dressed our one-year-old in a little chicken suit, and we sat him in a red wagon and stuffed hay all around him. Then we printed out a banner on the side of the wagon that said, “SmallTownFamily.com.” We ordered business cards to hand out to people along the way. 

When my brother-in-law looked at our plan, he said, “Well, now wait a minute, what if I brought my guitar? I could strum along and maybe even come up with a little ditty for your website.” It didn’t take him long to come up with this, SmallTownFamily.com mmmhmm SmallTownFamily.com. We knew the second we heard it that it was a winner. I mean, try to get that out of your head; it’s going to stick.

And my sister said, “You know, I did bring my hula hoop. Could I just hula hoop along with you? That might spice things up.”

So, we found ourselves strolling along that parade route, pulling a wagon with a little baby chicken, getting a song stuck in everybody’s head, and my sister hula hooping every step of the way. 

At one point along the two-and-half-mile route, we were stuck in a standstill, and she’s still hula hooping with all she’s got. And somebody called out to her, “Are you thirsty?” 

And so, without skipping a beat, she reached out, grabbed that brand-new bottle of water, turned the cap, drank from the bottle of water, and kept going the whole time.

Now, when you get to the grandstand, that’s when you want to pull out all the stops, because on one side the crowds are sitting in the bleachers, and on the other side, the judges are sitting on the grandstand.

 We waved at all the people, and I handed out a couple business cards. We strolled past the grandstand, and that’s when I looked around and realized my sister wasn’t with us. I looked back over my shoulder, and I realized she was still center stage, right in front of the judges. She was down on her knees with her arm raised up high, the hula hoop going round and round around her wrist and then she brought it down around her waist and the crowd went wild. It was such a fun parade. 

I’ve got to tell you . . . a couple days later, guess what? We got something in the mail. We got an envelope from the Grange Fair Parade Committee. And inside was a check for $100 for us to take our next step in our endeavor. And you know, we got that $100 because of my sister and my brother-in-law. They made us infinitely better than we ever would have been without them. 

And the thing that strikes me is: This was not their town. This was not their website. It wasn’t their project or their parade, and yet, they were in it with us. They made us better than we would have ever been without them. To me, it’s such a great picture of how we are to be living as Christians, to come alongside people and make their lives richer and fuller and more fruitful than they ever would have been without us. 

For the remainder of our time together today, I want you to ask the Lord to bring someone to your mind who needs you with them. Maybe they need you to be with them in their parade, or maybe they need you to be with them in their sorrow. Maybe they just need you to link arms and say, “Hey, I’ll be your friend.” Think about that person as I read this amazing passage from Romans 12 about how we are to live with one another. 

Here it is, Romans 12:9–21: 

Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good. Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor. Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality. 

Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Never be wise in your own sight. Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. 

If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” To the contrary, “if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.” Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. (ESV)

Dannah: While Laura Booz was reading from Romans 12, did God bring someone to mind who might need you in her life? Why don’t you jot her name down or type it into your phone. Pray for her, and maybe send her a note or text. Maybe God will use you in an extraordinary way . . . you never know.

We’ve got a beautiful gift you can give as a way to share Christ’s love: the 2023 Revive Our Hearts calendar. Filled with stunning photos taken by our own Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, along with quotes and verses selected to help you focus on the fact that Heaven rules all year long, this calendar is a great way to let someone know they’re on your heart. 

You can request your copy of the Heaven Rules calendar, available exclusively from Revive Our Hearts, by calling 1-800-569-5959. Or go to ReviveOurHearts.com/weekend and click on today’s episode.

Thanks for listening today. Thanks to our team. For Revive Our Hearts Weekend, I’m Dannah Gresh.

Revive Our Hearts is calling women to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.