Keeping Your Heart above the Headlines

This episode contains portions from the following programs:

"Lift Up Your Eyes"

"Ultimate Hope for Today's Headlines"

"What Time Is It?, Day 1"

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Dannah Gresh: Has this ever happened to you? 

You’re having a great day. I mean, the weather’s perfect, the flowers are blooming, the birds are singing, maybe you're singing! Then . . . you get on social media . . . or you turn on the news . . . or you pick up the newspaper . . . (Yeah, in case you’ve never heard of one of those, newspapers are like a way of getting news, only it’s on paper. There’s also some great coupons, but I digress). 

Anyway, suddenly you’re reminded of wars and natural disasters and politicians and another shooting. And, of course, how traumatized everyone is by all of it. And what happens to the gloriously joyful day you were having? 

Those headlines can be a real downer. If you’re not careful, your heart starts feeling heavy, weighed down.

Today we’re going to look at ways to keep your heart above the headlines. Because we do need a whole therapy session full of truth and some good news!

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

You know, right after Hurricane Helene, I was so saddened by all the headlines. I mean, what happened is devastating. But it was such a burden to me that the stories of resilience and good news weren’t getting much press.

• The story of the dad who walked thirty miles through the night through hurricane debris to get to his daughter’s wedding.
• The sweet little boy who called out to Jesus in the storm.
• The civilians who showed up as first responders.

These are the people living with their hearts above the headlines. And you, my friend, you can live there too! We don’t have to be sucked under by all the hopelessness!

Today, Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth and I want to point you to some individuals in the Bible who kept their own hearts above the headlines of their day. Let’s start with Joshua. He was the new leader of the Israelites, the captain of the army. He and his army had just crossed over the Jordan River into the Promised Land. And their first task: to conquer the imposing, well-fortified city of Jericho.

Here’s Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, teaching from Joshua chapter 5. 

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: Joshua has got to be wondering, “How are we going to take this city? God has said every place that the sole of your foot shall tread upon I have given to you. Now go in and take possession. But how are we supposed to do this?”

So I suppose he was surveying the scene. I think it’s likely that he was out meditating and praying, which is what God had told him to do in Joshua, chapter 1. “Meditate on the law of the Lord day and night, and as you do you will be successful and you will prosper in whatever you do” (v. 8 paraphrased).

So I think it’s likely he was asking God, “What are we supposed to do? We need direction. So, “When Joshua was by Jericho, he lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, a man was standing before him with his drawn sword in his hand” (v. 13). 

When it says he lifted up his eyes, that suggests that apparently he had been looking down and when he looks up, he sees what is going to turn out to be—I shouldn’t say what, I should say who—the one who is going to turn out to be God’s provision for this impossible situation. Isn’t it true that when we lift up our eyes, we find God’s provision. We’re going to see that God’s provision is God Himself. But I’m getting ahead of the story.

Verse 13. This phrase was interesting to me: “He lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold.” I went to my online concordance and found that that line is found six times in the Old Testament, speaking of different people. “He lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold.” It’s found six times just like that in the Old Testament. Four of those times are a situation, including this one, that when the person looked up, what he beheld was a supernatural manifestation or type of Christ.

“He lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold.” It happened twice with Abraham—once in Genesis chapter 18, when he had three angel visitors, one of whom was a preincarnate appearance of Christ in human form that came to tell him about the impending destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.

Once was again with Abraham in Genesis chapter 22, when he had been told by God to sacrifice his son Isaac. He lifted up his knife to slay his son in obedience to God’s word and at that moment God spoke to him. God told him, “Don’t slay your son because now I know that you love Me and will obey Me, that you believe Me” (Gen. 22:12 paraphrased). Then it says, “Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, behind him was a ram, caught in a thicket by his horns” (Gen. 22:13).

You remember the story how he offered up the ram in the place of his son. He lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, there was a substitute. There was a manifestation of God, a picture of Christ, the sinless lamb of God, who would be our substitute and would die in our place. He lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold.

There’s another time that phrase is used in the life of Daniel—in Daniel chapter 10. You read how Christ appeared to Daniel after 21 days of intense spiritual searching in a terrifying, transforming experience as Daniel lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, there was one who, we know as we put it into the context of Scripture, was Christ Himself.

So in this situation, back in Joshua 5, Joshua lifts up his eyes and he sees a man. Now we’ll talk more in a moment about who that man was, but as I was meditating on this phrase, “He looked up,” the picture that came to my mind was years ago when I was visiting the Brooklyn Tabernacle on one of their Tuesday evening prayer meetings.

They were singing a song that was new to me. I think Steve Green had been there the week before and he had taught them this little chorus: “You have been good. You have been good.” It just repeats itself over and over again. “You have been good to me.”

Pastor Cymbala, at one point as the people were singing this chorus over and over again, said, “I wonder how many of you in this service are currently out of work. You need a job; you’ve tried to get a job; you can’t get one, and you need God to provide a job for you.” He asked if those people would come forward so that they could be prayed for.

I was sitting very close to the front in that service and I just remember this flood of people who swarmed down to the front altar area there, people who were out of work and needed a job. I don’t know if it was a hundred or two hundred. It was a lot of them.

All the while the congregation is singing, “You have been good.” And then I remember Pastor Cymbala interrupting the singing for a moment and looking down at these people standing at the front of the auditorium before him, and he said, “Why are you looking down? Look up! God is in charge! God is in control! I want you to sing this song again and I want you to sing it with your head lifted high and your eyes lifted up.” Those people lifted up their eyes, lifted up their heads to the Lord and sang, “You have been good. You have been good. You have been good.”

Lift up your eyes, and when you do, in your point of extremity or need or impossibility, what will you see? Well, the passage comes to mind that you remember from Psalm 121, verses 1–2:

I lift up my eyes to the hills.
From where does my help come?
My help comes from the LORD,
who made heaven and earth.

Listen, as long as you’re looking down at your circumstances or your fears or the world around you, you’re going to miss seeing the Lord, your helper.

He will not let your foot be moved;
he who keeps you will not slumber.
Behold, he who keeps Israel
will neither slumber nor sleep.
The LORD is your keeper;
the LORD is your shade on your right hand.
The sun shall not strike you by day,
nor the moon by night.
The LORD will keep you from all evil;
he will keep your life.
The LORD will keep
your going out and your coming in
from this time forth and forevermore. (Psalm 121:3–8).

How do you get those precious promises? I lift up my eyes. Lift up your eyes.

Dannah: Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth has been showing you that one way to keep your heart above the headlines is to “lift up your eyes,” like Joshua did. You might need to literally look up or away from a screen. Imagine that! Certainly you need to do it in a figurative sense, too. Fix your attention on Jesus. He’ll keep you. He’ll protect you. He’ll watch over you . . . as He did for Joshua, and as He did for the three Hebrew young men who refused to bow down to a statue.

I’m talking about Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. They were sure living in terrible times: Babylon. The very name is used today to symbolize corruption and evil-doing in general. I want to share a portion of a message I gave on these three brave men! I was actually teaching through the book of Habakkuk, but I used Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego as an illustration. 

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What we’re learning from Habakkuk is this: the righteous person who lives by faith, in those times of trouble, in those times of pain, they dig down deep to figure out what really matters! And when you do, you find you still have something to sing about . . . when you have Jesus! And Habakkuk does that, he models that.

I’d like to actually pop over to the book of Daniel where the things Habakkuk is seeing will come to happen, have come to pass. I want to look at a very familiar Bible story; you’ve heard it since you were a small girl. It’s the story of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego and their fiery furnace.

You’ll recall with me that Nebuchadnezzar, that proud king, has built a golden statue, and he wants to be worshipped. He wants all of the people, including Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego—who have another God to worship, our One, True God—to bow down and worship that idol. And they don’t!

And so, we find that Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego are facing death, and a horrific, evil death at that. What do they say when the king asks them, gives them one last chance to recant their faith in the God of Israel, the God of Judah, and to worship Him? We find it recorded in Daniel 3, verses 16–18. It says that:

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego answered and said to the king, "O Nebuchadnezzar, we have no need to answer you in this matter. If this be so, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of your hand, O king. But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up.”

Now, when I looked at that, I had to ask myself, Did those men sing Habakkuk’s song? Because if you put those verses from Habakkuk 3:17-18, where Habakkuk says, “Everything’s falling apart, yet I will rejoice in the God of my salvation and Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego are looking death in the face, and they’re saying, “Our God will deliver us, but if not . . .” I just wondered, Did they sing the song that Habakkuk wrote? And, did singing that prepare them for this moment of faithfulness? They were able to endure through their hardship with joy, with contentment, with peace! 

This is what I find so beautiful, because going back to what Jesus said, that in this world we will have trouble, but we won’t have to endure it alone (see John 16:33). That’s where we find the joy! We will not have to endure it alone.

What does Habakkuk say he’s rejoicing in? “The God of my salvation.” He’s rejoicing in God. He’s not rejoicing that the war might not happen. He’s not rejoicing that the captivity and the exile won’t come. He’s not rejoicing that the famine is not going to happen. He’s rejoicing that God will be with him in that.

We don’t find joy in things; we find joy in a Person. It’s not our bank account, not the stability of this very broken world, the false stability, not food, none of those things. We find our joy in Jesus, and He is with us in every hardship, in every pain, in every trial—including the fiery furnace that Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego found themselves in.

“Then King Nebuchadnezzar was astonished and rose up in haste” (Dan. 3:24). He’s talking about that moment when he looks into the fiery furnace and he’s watching to see Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego go up in flames. Think about how horrific that is! Why would you watch that?

He [Nebuchadnezzar] declared to his counselors, "Did we not cast three men bound into the fire?" They answered and said to the king, "True, O king." He answered and said, "But I see four men unbound [they had put them in shackles when they went into that furnace], walking in the midst of the fire, and they are not hurt; and the appearance of the fourth is like a son of the gods." (Dan. 3:24–25)

Does that give you chills? It gives me such comfort to know that whatever fiery furnace that I have to go through in my life, Jesus is going to be there with me in it. I can’t help but notice these two things: first of all, Jesus is there with them. Many scholars believe that that “son of the gods,” that what Nebuchadnezzar saw was Jesus in there with them.

The second thing is that their bonds were burned up. We so want to be delivered from our exile and our captivity the easy way. We just want Jesus to unlock these chains and set us free. But many times He delivers us through the fire, not from it. We see that in this passage.

With my mind fresh in the pages of Habakkuk, I couldn’t help but wonder, Is the way I’m singing through my trials and my trouble passing on a baton of faith to my children, to my grandchildren, to my great-grandchildren, to my spiritual children?

If they’re my “Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego” years down the road, will they have learned something from my life that prepares them for their fiery trial? There’s such a sweet promise. In fact, I have this in my index cards, and I hope that it’s one that my children know to be true of me, that I believe this about the Lord. It’s a promise of God I carry closely to my heart.

It’s in Isaiah 43:1–24:

But now thus says the Lord, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: "Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you. . . . Because you are precious in My [sight] and honored, and I love you.”

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You’re listening to Revive Our Hearts Weekend. I’m Dannah Gresh. That verse I was sharing there is circled in my Bible. Again, it’s Isaiah 43:1–2. I not only circled it in my Bible, I have hearts all around it, like a 7th-grade girl! I just think it’s so amazing that God took time to write the words, “I love you!” 

Remembering that He loves you and is with you in the fire, in the flame, in the flood is another powerful way to keep our hearts above the headlines. 

There’s another way. And I’m going to have Nancy share it with us. It has to do with being alert. Awake. Not woke, mind you. Spiritually awake! And walking wisely. Here’s Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth once again.

Nancy: We need a wake-up call.

That's what the apostle says in Ephesians 5:17–18, "Therefore [because the days are evil] do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is. And do not get drunk with wine . . ."

Don't give yourself over to excess. Don't fall into the spirit of our age, which says, "Live and party and celebrate; eat, drink and be merry. Today we live, tomorrow we die, so what? Que será será."

He says, "Don't be like that, for that is a foolish way of living!"

"[Don't get drunk] for that is debauchery, but be filled with the [Holy] Spirit." Now, who would have thought that, when the days are evil, the solution would be what the Holy Spirit inspired the apostle Paul to say in Ephesians chapter 5?

"When the days are evil," he says, "Look carefully how you walk. Don't be unwise. Be wise; don't be foolish. Understand what the will of the Lord is. Make the best use of your time. Don't be drunk with wine, but be filled with the Spirit."

Do you know what God's antidote is for "such a time as this?" What does God say? He doesn't say, "Go march in the streets; go campaign; go elect somebody different . . ." (though I think, as citizens of this country, we have a responsibility to vote responsibly for those who fear the Lord and will honor His way). Ultimately, the key in "such a time as this" is for the people of God to be filled with the Spirit of God, to have wisdom and understanding, to live wisely, to live out the gospel in the context of where God has placed us—in our homes, our neighborhoods, our schools, our churches—to pray to be wise, to be understanding, to be filled with the Holy Spirit of God.

So what time is it? Even in these evil days, it's time to trust the Lord. That's what Scripture tells us. It's not a time to be afraid. It's not a time to cower in fear. It's not a time to barricade ourselves in our little holy fortresses.

It's a time to be confident in the Lord. Psalm 31 illustrates this. The Psalmist, in this passage, was surrounded by enemies who were setting out to destroy him. He says in verse 14, "But I trust in you, O Lord." It's not a time to be fearful. It's a time to trust in the Lord, to be confident in Him.

"I say, 'You are my God.'" Even in these evil days, even in these times when the enemies of God are threatening the people of God and the ways of God. "I trust in you, O Lord; I say, 'You are my God' (vv. 14–15). My times are in your hand. Now, that's a safe place to be. That's a great place to be!

Our times are not in the hand of fate. Our times are not in the hands of government bureaucrats or elected officials or the courts or pollsters or social architects and engineers. Our times are not in the hands of those who despise Christ and His gospel.

Our times are not in our own hands, try as we might to control our own lives. Our times are in His hand. He's got the whole world in His hand! And aren't you glad our times—this whole world—it's all in His hand?

Dannah: Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth is cluing us in. That's the secret to keeping our hearts above the headlines. It’s trusting in the fact that our times are in God’s hand. He’s not surprised by anything going on in the news . . . including the little election we have going on this week here in the good ol’ U.S. of A.

Another way you could say that our times are in God’s hand is the title of Nancy’s book, Heaven Rules. She goes chapter-by-chapter through the book of Daniel, helping us see that God’s completely in control. We’ll send you a copy of Heaven Rules by Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth as a thank-you for your gift of any size to Revive Our Hearts. Just request it when you give. You can make a donation by going to ReviveOurHearts.com/Donate. 

To hear more of any of the messages you heard today, just go to ReviveOurHearts.com/weekend, and click on today’s episode. It’s called “Keeping Your Heart above the Headlines.”

And, if you’re a citizen of the United States, don’t neglect to vote by Tuesday, if you haven’t already. 

And hey, don’t let the headlines get you down. Remember what we heard today. Lift up your eyes, like Joshua. Remember that God loves you and is with you even in the most difficult circumstances, like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego learned. And you need to stay awake and trust that your times, our times, are in God’s hand. 

Thanks for listening today. Join me next weekend. We’ll explore what to do when the bottom drops out and hope seems lost. Even then, it’s vital to remember—there is hope!

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.

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