Loving the Lost

This episode contains portions from the following programs:

"Share What Jesus Is Doing in Your Life"

"Sarah, Meet Mercy"

"God Brought Afghanistan to Her"

"God Is at Work in the Next Generation"

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Dannah Gresh: A young woman named Sarah was living in Ohio. She had just gotten out of an unhealthy dating relationship.

Sarah: I had a boyfriend at one point that I broke up with because of emotional abuse, physical abuse, psychological abuse. A few months following, he decided to take his life. A lot of people within the community were attacking me and saying, “This is your fault.”

I was like, “I’m not wanted here; I want to get out.” So, that was hard.

Dannah: Sarah tried to escape one painful relationship by getting into another one. She started dating a man who was divorced with children. She thought they should move to Minnesota so this man could be closer to his kids. But she also thought that moving would help her escape the pain of her past relationship.

Sarah: I was running away from things in Ohio, trauma, things that had happened. I just wanted to get out so that was my way, like, “Let’s go!”

Nancy: Sarah and her boyfriend got engaged and moved to Minnesota, but the new relationship in the new location didn’t make Sarah’s life any better.

Sarah: I wasn’t happy in life. I thought this was going to make me happy, and it got worse.

I just said, “God, if You’re real, You need to reveal Yourself to me, because I just can’t do this anymore!”

Dannah: Do you realize, there are people all around you going through that kind of pain? Maybe they’re crying out to a God they don’t really know, and you could show them the hope you’ve discovered in Jesus.

We’re about to hear Bible teaching and stories that will give us a greater heart for hurting people who need the truth of the gospel.

This is Revive Our Hearts Weekend. I’m Dannah Gresh. Here’s our focus today: loving the lost. We’ll explore that theme by hearing three stories and Bible teaching from Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth.

Was your heart broken when you heard Sarah’s story? Even if your answer is yes, you still might feel intimidated to reach out to people like her.

Maybe you feel like, "I wouldn’t know what to say.  I might get something wrong. That’s my pastor’s job."

Well, Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth says God does want to use you to love lost people, and you can start with one simple step.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: Number one, ask God to give you His heart for the lost. Just start there. Say, "Lord, I would like to have Your heart for those who are lost." To help you with that, think about where your life would be without Christ and consider the eternal future of those who live around you—in your neighborhood, in your workplace—what their eternal future would look like without Christ. And then beyond them, think about the glory of God and how God deserves to be worshiped, how He deserves to have first place in their lives. 

Dannah: A woman named Mercy did this. She didn’t know how to invest in the next generation. She hadn’t really seen it modeled in her family, but she asked for help.

Mercy: I came across Titus 2, and it said, “Older women . . . train the younger women....so that the Word of God will not be blasphemed.” 

And I just thought, Oh, my goodness! Well, Lord, I do not want to blaspheme You, so show me how to do this.

Susan Hunt reading Psalm 145: “One generation shall commend your works to [the next generation], and shall declare your mighty acts.”

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.”

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!” 

Dannah: God had given Mercy a deeper desire to invest in the next generation—women who didn’t know the Lord and women who needed to be discipled. So when Mercy met visitors at her church, she was eager to share out of a full heart.

Mercy: My father-in-law came over and said, “Mercy, there is a couple here, and the young man is from near where you grew up.” 

So I said, “Okay, Let’s meet them.” 

So we started talking about similar things in that area, and then it was as if the Lord physically turned my gaze upon Sarah. 

I said, “You’re new here, who are you? Tell me about yourself.”

I love God so much, and what He did was, He showed me His love for Sarah in that moment. All I could do was say “yes” to partnering with Him to display that love to her in any way that I could. And so my prayer was, “Lord, show me how to love her.”

Sarah: I was like, “Who . . . is . . . this . . .” (laughter)

Dannah: The visitor in church that day was Sarah, the young lady we heard about at the beginning of the program.

Mercy: She was like a little girl, it was like I saw a little girl, even though she was a grown woman. It was like this little girl was standing there in a foreign land, and she didn’t know anyone. Through questions I found out that she had no family here, that she had moved here from Ohio.

I remember moving to central Minnesota and having no family here. I remember having no sisters in Christ at all. And so, it was just seeing a “little girl” hungry and wanting to know her Father. Wow! Like, “I get to be a part of that!?” I kept asking Him how to love her.

Sarah: And, from that moment on, a beautiful relationship developed. She continued to seek after me and get to know who I was. She just poured God’s love, grace, and mercy into my life. Over the next year-and-a-half, she loved me into God’s arms!

Dannah: I want to be involved in stories like that! I know you do too. Let’s pause and take the advice we heard from Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth earlier. It’s the first step Mercy took as well: ask God to give you a heart for the lost.

Lord, I do ask, would You fill my heart with a love for the lost, a desire for the lost? And my sister who is listening, would You fill her heart too. God give us an obedient heart to create space in our lives, margin in our lives, so we are at the ready to meet with those lost hearts and disciple them to know who You are and to find Your perfect peace. In Jesus' name, amen.

This is Revive Our Hearts Weekend, and we are exploring ways to love lost people. Now that we’ve prayed that prayer, Nancy has a piece of follow-up advice.

Nancy: Then number two, cultivate relationships with non-believers. As I’ve said, so many of us live in this Christian bubble and have so little contact with non-believers. For salt to be effective, it has to get out of the shaker. It has to come in contact with the food. Many of us have way too little contact in any kind of meaningful conversation or meaningful way with those who don't know Christ. Now don't get overwhelmed by that, just think of the place you frequent—the grocery store, the dry-cleaners, the place where your kids go to school. If we're living as Christians when we're out doing life, then we're going to be in a position to engage with people, to show an interest in them, to be friendly, to pay attention to them, and to cultivate relationships with them. 

Dannah: Brooke Keeney developed the kinds of purposeful relationships Nancy’s been describing. It all started when Brooke and her family realized they had no need for a baby bed they’d been storing.  

Brooke Keeney: We decided to donate that through a ministry at our church. And one of the things they do is they help refugee families in the Houston area.

When my husband brought it there, he said, “Can anyone use this little bed?”

A lady there said, “Yes, we have a refugee family that’s from Afghanistan, and they have four little kids, and the two-year-old needs a bed.”

And so my husband said, “I know my wife’s going to be all over that. She loves refugees and missions and wants our family to serve more, so we’ll go and deliver it to the refugee family.”

The area where they were living in Houston is not nice. They’re small apartments. I think they were a family of six—the mom and the dad, and then they had four little kids. If I remember correctly, it was a one-bedroom apartment. So the parents and two of the kids slept all in one bed, and then we brought the little toddler bed, and I think the other ones slept on the floor. There definitely was not enough room for six people.

So we started, “If you meet one refugee family, you meet another, and another.” So we, along with Houston’s First Baptist, just started having teas for the women. They would come, and we would do a craft and have tea and then there would be some sort of small gospel presentation or a truth from God’s Word that was presented.

We started building relationships with refugee families over a span of about four years.

Dannah: Then in 2001, the U.S. military pulled out of Afghanistan. The relationships Brooke had formed took on a whole new resonance.  One of Brooke’s Afghan friends called her.

Brooke: And she said, “The Taliban is coming! The Taliban is coming! My family is there! My family is there! They’re going door to door! They’re going door to door! You have to get them out!”

And so, a lot of times, the refugees, because I’m an American, they automatically assume I have some sort of authority or connection to the State Department, or I could just get on a plane and bring them over.

I told her, I said, “I’m just me. I don’t have any authority or jurisdiction.”

And I just sensed the Lord being, like, “But wait. I have direct access to the King of kings who can deliver you from anything.”

And so I told her, “I told you this many times, my friend. You have got to call on Jesus. I know that’s not what you believe in your heart, but I’ve shared that with you, and that is the hope for your family. That’s your rescue. That’s your way out.”

She’s not a believer, but I said, “We’re praying for you.” I shared with her a story from the Bible where I said God can blind their eyes. When Peter was going out of the jail, they didn’t see him. I said, “I’m just going to pray that over your family.”

And then fast forward a year later, her family has now gotten out. I think they’re in Abu Dhabi waiting to get resettled in Germany. I was like, “God answered your prayer! Why didn’t you tell me that? A whole year has gone by. We’ve been praying for your family to be delivered. God did that for you.”

She’s still not a believer, but we’re just sharing with her, “God is involved. He sees your family. He sees you, and He cares about you. You’re not just a random refugee living in some yucky apartment in Houston. You’re a person of infinite worth to the God who created you.”

Dannah: I wish we had time to tell more stories about how God is using the body of Christ among Afghan refugees in Houston. You can hear more for yourself by looking up the episode, “God Brought Afghanistan to Her.” You can hear that at ReviveOurHearts.com/weekend.

Our theme today is loving the lost.  I want to add one more thing about Brooke’s work among refugees. If you have supported the ministry of Revive Our Hearts, you’ve helped play a role in Houston.

Brooke: I’ve listened to Revive Our Hearts, like, forever.  One day I heard on the radio that they had a Farsi ministry.

Seeking Him has been translated into Farsi. And so Revive Our Hearts, generously gave, we have at my friend’s house in Houston, a box of like twenty-five Seeking Him in Farsi.

I don’t know who’s going to use that. I don’t know when the Lord will open a door for that. But it is just so neat to see a ministry that I started listening to when I had itty bitty babies and was drowning in that stage of life. Those foundations set our family up to be able to do this now.

Dannah: I’m so grateful we can play a small role to encourage women who are loving the lost in Houston. I’m so glad the Lord is multiplying that kind of ministry in places around the world. To be part of what Revive Our Hearts is doing, visit ReviveOurHearts.com.  When you giving a gift of any amount, we’ll say thanks by sending you a booklet by our friend Erin Davis.  It’s called Uncommon Compassion. It will help you better understand how Jesus loved the people around Him during his earthly ministry.  A

This is Revive Our Hearts Weekend. I’m Dannah Gresh. Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth has given us two steps about how to love the lost.  First, ask the Lord to give you a compassionate heart. Secondly, just start to form relationships.  

Nancy: And then number three, ask God for opportunities to engage people on spiritual matters. Just ask Him for opportunities and ask Him to help you to be alert, sensitive, and ready when those opportunities present themselves.

Dannah: Let me illustrate that idea by telling you about a Revive Our Hearts listener named Jena Parker. She serves college students at Kansas University.

Jena: I feel like just a very normal girl from the middle of Kansas. That God would even use my life to impact others, I think is really cool! I remember praying, “God, I know I have this one life and I just want You to use it in some way.” And then seeing things work before your eyes!

You read these verses in the Bible. I was like, “Yeah, okay, I want to be a ‘Paul’ that impacts a ‘Timothy’ and have those types of relationships.” And then seeing it actually happen before my eyes, that is so humbling and overwhelming at the same time.

Another word I would use to describe it is it just is very addicting, like, “Wow, how could I want to be doing anything else than getting to help other people come to know the Lord, and not just them to get a taste and see that the Lord is good, but they get a hunger for God, and that they would want to pass it on and pass it on and pass it on.”

Dannah: Jena started forming relationships with young women on campus—the kinds of relationships we’ve been talking about earlier in the program. One of the students Jena started hanging out was Hayley Ryan.

Haley: So I grew up in Lawrence, Kansas, went to KU and came into college not wanting to grow in my faith really at all. I’m very thankful for my parents. They’re wonderful, and they’re following Jesus. But coming to college, I was ready to do the college life.

In high school I had been dabbling in living apart from God and just doing what I wanted to do, so in college I just wanted to do that even more. The second semester of my freshman year I was really experiencing a lot of the consequences from my own sin and choices. I was just feeling really broken and empty in my sin and not really knowing what to do.

Around that time, God crossed my path with a woman named Jena. I immediately knew something was different about her life.

Jena: I met Haley in February of 2015. I was actually going to hang out with another girl in her sorority and it ended up that she invited Haley to come. That’s where I met her for the first time.

Haley: She had this joy and this peace and contentment and fulfillment about her life that I did not have. I could not figure out what was different. She started sharing with me about Jesus, and it made sense that Jesus really was personal and would change a person if you were in a relationship with Him.

Jena: She was really curious and really searching for, “There’s got to be something more to life than what I’m living for.”

Haley: Over a span of a couple weeks, Jena started reading the Bible with me. Genuinely, she just cared for me and listened to me as I was going through a lot of really hard times, experiencing the brokenness from my own choices. 

Jena: We started meeting pretty regularly after that, and she had a lot of questions about faith and God, and, “How does that work in my life after all I’ve done in my past? Could God ever forgive me? I don’t feel good enough ever to come to the Lord.”

I was getting to help her to get into the Bible and listen and just process some different things that she was wrestling through. I believe it was a couple months later, in May, when she gave her life to the Lord.

It’s been such a joy to invest in her and to watch her grow and help her grow since then!

Dannah: Now Hayley is sharing her faith with others on campus. To hear about the multiplication happening among college students in the Midwest, check out the Revive Our Hearts episode, "God Is at Work in the Next Generation." To hear that, visit ReviveOurHearts.com/weekend, and click on this program; we’ll have the link there.

Let’s review what we heard today:

1. Ask God to give you a greater heart for the lost.

2. Be intentional about developing relationships with people who don’t know Jesus.

3. Be watching and listening for opportunities to share the hope you’ve found in Jesus.

I hope we’ll take one of these steps.  Would you let me know how it’s going? Visit ReviveOurHearts.com, scroll to the end of the page and click on “Contact Us.”  

You have called us out of darkest night
Into Your glorious light.
That we may sing the wonders of
The risen Christ.
May our every breath retell the grace
That broke into our strife.
With boundless love and deepest joy
With endless life.

May the peoples praise You.
Let the nations be glad.
All Your blessing comes
That we may praise
May praise the Name of Jesus.

All the earth is Yours and all within
Each harvest is Your own.
And from Your hand we give to You
To make Christ known.
May the seeds of mercy grow in us
For those who have not heard.
May songs of praise build lives of grace
To spread Your Word.

May the peoples praise You.
Let the nations be glad.
All Your blessing comes
That we may praise
May praise the Name of Jesus.

This our holy privilege to declare
Your praises and Your name.
To every nation, tribe, and tongue
Your church proclaims.

May the peoples praise You.
Let the nations be glad.
All Your blessing comes
That we may praise
May praise the Name of Jesus.¹

Next week you will hear amazing stories about God’s love for the fatherless. You’ll be reminded of the wonder that He has adopted you into his family. That’s 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.

¹ “May the Peoples Praise You,” Keith and Kristyn Getty, Facing a Task Unfinished (Deluxe Edition) ℗ 2016 Getty Music Label, LLC.

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