Ordinary Women, Extraordinary God, Part 3

This episode contains portions from the following programs:

"God Is at Work in the Portuguese-Speaking World"

"Heaven Rules Your Children's Future"

"God Brought Afghanistan to Her"

----------------------

Dannah Gresh: Do you feel extraordinary? Honestly, most days I don’t. I feel pretty ordinary. Maybe you do, too. But good news! . . . God does His best work with ordinary people. He tells us His power is perfected in weakness. And over the past several weekends, we’ve seen this! God uses ordinary women for extraordinary purposes. That’s just the kind of God He is. 

I’m your host Dannah Gresh. You’re listening to Revive Our Hearts Weekend. We’re about to listen to the final three stories of this little weekend series we've been in. Each woman we’re learning about today is connected to Revive Our Hearts in some way—whether as a staff member or someone who’s benefited from our resources. I’m excited to tell you more!

First up, we’ve got Cindy Rast from Brazil. She lived there because her husband taught at Pan-American Christian Academy in Sao Paulo, and she faithfully led other English-speaking women in Bible studies. 

Cindy Rast: At the beginning of 2012, one of my friends, Prisca said, “Please lead us in another study. It’s been too long. Let’s do a study together.” I was really busy, and I thought, Lord, I really don’t have time for this. What would You want us to do?I think it was right then that True Woman 101 was coming out.

Dannah: True Woman 101 is a workbook written by Mary Kassian and Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth. Cindy was willing to give the study a try because she had been listening to Nancy’s teaching on Revive Our Hearts for about a year.

Cindy: So the four of us began studying True Woman. After the first week, we'd done our lesson, we'd watched the video. We got onto our knees. No one said a word at the end of the study. We got onto our knees and just started confessing. The Holy Spirit was so present. He showed us, "You've got this all wrong. You have bought into the lies of this world and the culture. You have been deceived. You are women who know the Word. You are women who are serving. But you have been deceived. Confess."

There was such sweet repentance that day. The Lord began to work in our hearts over the next few weeks. He brought about transformation. That was four years ago. Transformation that's produced amazing fruit. He has humbled us. He has broken us. And then it began replicating. We just saw the Holy Spirit work in ways that I've never seen Him work before. He'd just bring women.

So over the course of the next couple of years, I don't know how many studies I led, but it was quite a few. It was never me going and seeking these women. The Lord brought these women to me. I can say in every situation the woman's life has been transformed and renewed by the power of the Word through this study and through understanding who they were created and designed to be as women.

These were all English speaking women. We had people from Switzerland and the United States and Brazilians that spoke English and Portuguese. But I thought, The women of Brazil, they need to hear this. They don't have this accessible to them. I said to my husband over the course of several months, "Oh, this needs to be in Portuguese." But I thought, Who am I?

Dannah: So at this point Cindy was thinking, We need Revive Our Hearts materials translated into Portuguese! But she wasn’t thinking she was the one who was supposed to do that work!

Cindy: What can I do? My Portuguese isn't even that good. How can I do this?

I just kind of pushed it aside and left it there. But I prayed. And I thought, Who am I? What do You want me to do? But I knew that there was such a burning desire. And He said, "I want obedience. I want obedience."

Then I argued with Him. I said, "But who am I? I'm Cindy Rast. I don't speak very well. I don't even speak this language very well. How can I do such a great thing? How can I do this?" And then, it was so interesting. I had a piece of paper there and a pen. He just started bringing to my mind three different publishers that I know personally.

My father-in-law is the CEO, the director of COMEV which is an evangelical film maker—they produce films and audio visuals in Portuguese in Brazil. I have a connection at Trans World Radio. And all of a sudden, as I started to list these things, He said, "Okay!"

So I said, "Okay. Yes, Lord!"

Dannah: God did answer Cindy’s prayers. He connected Cindy with a publisher. He provided the funds. And the Portuguese version of the True Woman 101 workbook became a reality!

Cindy’s investment in translating True Woman 101 is still bearing fruit, but Cindy wasn’t able to fully see her vision for a True Woman movement in Brazil.

Not long after that interview aired, Cindy was diagnosed with a brain tumor. After a four-year battle with cancer, she went home to be with the Lord in December of 2019.This is Cindy’s daughter, Grace, speaking at Cindy’s memorial service.

Grace: She has left a mighty legacy, and for that I am eternally grateful and humbled!

Dannah: She has left a mighty legacy, indeed. Today, Revive Our Hearts continues to impact women in Brazil because Cindy built a team of women to carry on her work. The truth about biblical womanhood is still spreading in this country, transforming women and their families for the glory of God.

I love the way Revive Our Hearts equips women to embrace God’s plan for them. It’s one of the most beautiful things about this ministry! I think you’ll see that in our next story.

In Daniel chapter 7, we read, “My spirit was deeply distressed within me” (v. 15). And in the next chapter, Daniel says, “I was overcome and lay sick for days” (v. 27). And then in chapter 10 he tells us, “No strength was left in me. My face grew deathly pale. Anguish overwhelms me, and I am powerless” (v. 8).

All because Daniel heard news about what was coming in the future. We all know what that’s like, don’t we? In a moment, one piece of challenging news can affect our whole future.

Michelle Leach experienced just that. At the time, she had one little girl named Charlotte, and another baby on the way. Here she is to tell her story.

Michelle Leach: We were having another girl, but there were also some things that they noticed on the ultrasound. They said that they found a major heart defect as well as a couple of other abnormalities that encouraged them to have us seek better care, more specialized care.

So we started with the fetal heart program. We didn’t know much, other than a heart defect, which would most likely require surgery when she was born. So we had a lot of scans throughout the rest of my pregnancy. We probably had echocardiograms of the baby’s heart and very detailed ultrasounds. And as the scans were progressing, they were continually finding all of these abnormalities about our daughter, Blair.

That was the hardest part, that season of unknown, just crying out to the Lord that He would spare our child from having any serious issues. I didn’t know it until this point in my life, but that was one of my biggest fears—having a child that had genetic complications, severe cognitive, physical disabilities. That just sounded like a death sentence to me at the time.

So for the remainder of my pregnancy, we continued to have the scans. She was looking healthy otherwise. And so I finally delivered her where they have a special delivery unit for high-risk babies. When they handed her to me and I looked at her face, I knew. I knew that there was a problem.

In that moment, I truly had feelings of not wanting my own daughter. And so part of my testimony is having compassion on women who do not want their child and pursue abortion. And though we knew that that was not the Lord’s will, being the Giver of life, I knew those emotions that might motivate someone to pursue those options.

That was a very hard moment when she was born, but that was part of the grieving process for us. And so, I feel like that moment is forever ingrained in my mind, seeing her for the first time.

From that point on, the Lord really began using Blair to just pull a lot of sin to the surface of my heart—sin that had always been there. And so in His grace, just allowing me to see it, allowing me to see the way that I maybe idolized having this perfect family. Sin in the way that I feared having a child that had disabilities. The ways I was trying to control what my little world was around me.

The Lord really began using Blair to just pull a lot of sin to the surface of my heart.

Practically caring for Blair is, I have to tell friends, “It feels like caring for a child that has the stomach bug every day of her life.”

For the first two years of her life, she was able to take a bottle, but it was very stressful. She was never able to nurse. Developmentally, she was not able to eat and breathe at the same time. So we had to work really hard to get her to take a bottle, but she had trouble latching. It would take hours to get her to latch and to take the amount she needed. And then she would throw it all up. And it was this constant cycle. It felt like insanity—doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results.

It was stressful for myself and my husband. We were the only ones that could feed her. So we felt like we couldn’t get a break. She was not gaining weight, so there was very heavy stress on her getting what she needed and keeping it down.

She went through a brief period where she, during feeds, would stop breathing, and she would turn very blue. We had to call the ambulance a couple of times. This went on for close to two years.

We finally made the decision to have a g-tube inserted. So now all of her feeds go right through her stomach. She doesn’t take anything by mouth. That has been a huge blessing to us but also to Blair. She was noticeably less stressed. When she wasn’t having to drink from a bottle, she was a happier girl.

We see things like that along the way as the Lord’s provision and wisdom and discernment of how to care for her. There has a been a lot of trial and error with Blair because she can’t communicate in certain ways. She can’t tell us how she’s feeling or what’s upsetting her. There’s a lot of trying to figure her out.

So, we’ve come a long way with the help of the Lord just giving us wisdom to know how to best care for her and surrounding us with people that have helped us do that.

And now, with Blair, praise God, she is really thriving. She’s very medically stable right now. The Lord has provided for us in so many different ways, with just family and therapists that love her and have become part of our family, it feels like at times.

And He’s given us faith to have more kids. I look at Blair, and I was saying to my mom the other day, “I can’t picture my life without her.” A daughter that I thought I never could fully love the way that I loved my other children, I can truly say that she is a gift from God, and I love her.

And so, the Lord has really used Blair in a mighty way in my life.

Dannah: Praise God for Michelle Leach’s testimony, and for His hand in sweet little Blair’s life. His hand is over every child in the womb. He sees every sacrifice a mother makes. And He cares deeply for His people—here and across the globe.

As we listen to one more story today, you’ll get a special window into God’s heart for the nations. I hope you’ll also begin to develop a vision for how you might reach the lost with the hope of Christ’s sacrificial love for them.

This story begins when a listener named Brooke Keeney and her husband decided their last child had outgrown their baby bed. They hoped to give it to a family in need.

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.

I’d been praying for ways for our family to serve and to love and kind of get outside of our bubble that we’re in. We’re in Christian school. We’re at church. We read the Bible at home. But I really wanted our family to serve and to be grateful and thankful for the things God had given us and to share that with our neighbors.

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.

We saw the Body of Christ come around to help and to love and to serve the refugees in our community and to treat them with value and dignity as people created in the image of God not just, like, a bothersome addendum to our community but to really show them, “You are loved. You do have value. And God does have a purpose for you being here.”

Dannah: What a beautiful ministry God had given Brooke already. When the U.S. pulled out of Afghanistan in 2021, this story became even more remarkable.

Brooke: Because we had developed relationships with our refugee friends, they had grown to trust us and to love us, so they started calling us. I have a specific memory.

I was at our parent’s house, and one of our friends (and I won’t share her name), but she called me in a panic.

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.”

So my Afghan friend called me, and she said, “Miss Brooke, Miss Brooke, you have to come. They’ve dropped six families in our apartment, and they don’t have anything.”

And I said, “You don’t have anything? What do you mean?”

“They don’t have anything.”

The United States was so overwhelmed with the Afghan refugees coming and getting moved off of the military bases, they were dropping them in cities that were not ready for them. The government system just literally failed. They were dropping families in apartments late at night with nothing—no food, no beds—no nothing.

So there were these six families, and I said, “Okay. Aboard. What do you want us to do?”

So it literally started with six families. I texted six friends, and I said, “I need you’all. Who can take one family?” And I said, “These are their kids. These are their clothes sizes. This is the food they need.”

So we just went family by family. So six families, it just kept growing and growing and growing. They all came to different military bases in the U.S., and they’d get vetted and processed and vaccinated, and all the things—I don’t even know all the different checklists they had to go through. Then they would just put them in this city and that city. We’d just keep hearing about people.

Then once you’ve built trust with a couple of families, then when a new family would arrive, they would say, “Oh, the Christians will help you.”

So you almost kind of started developing this, like, rapport with the families when they couldn’t get a hold of their case worker. One time I got a text. It was, like, “Hello, Ma'am. We heard that you were helping all homeless and all refugees in Houston.”

I just started laughing. We weren’t helping all refugees, but it was just in his broken English and the text, “Hello, Ma'am, could you visit us? We heard you and your husband will help all refugees and homeless people.”

We’re not an organization. We’re just a body of believers and families and churches that just started rallying around. People would ask, “What organization are you with?”

And I’m, like, “We’re followers of Jesus the Messiah, and we’re coming here to serve you in His name. We love you, and we’re glad that you’re here. I don’t have a business card. I’m not with a 501C3. We’re just a regular family that just loves Jesus and loves you guys, and we want to welcome you to our country. We’re so sorry and sad for all the sorrow that you’ve had in your whole life, but we are glad that you’re here and can pray for you.”

A man that we visited, he had lost both of his legs. He was a bomb defuser. He worked with the U.S. military. He said, “One day I was just going through. And I went click-click-click, and I defused this one, defused this one, defused this one. And I sat back, and I heard another click, and I knew I missed one.”

He was very matter of fact. He lost both of his legs. He’s a father. He had three or four kids. I mean, my jaw was just dropping because he just had joy and peace while he was sharing this story. And finally he said, “Okay, I’ve told you some of my story. Can you tell me some of yours?”

So I was, like, “Help me” just praying, like, “What should we share? What should we share?” And so the lady that was with me said, “Well, we’re followers of Jesus the Messiah. And in our holy book, the Bible, in the New Testament, God tells us that we’re to love God with all our hearts, and we’re also to love our neighbor as ourselves. And so you are our neighbor because you’ve come to our city. And so we’ve come here to love you in the name of Jesus.”

And the man sat back, and he said, “This is a very good teaching. I like this Jesus.”

And so we said, “Yes! Yes! He is more than a good teacher.”

And just these little seeds that we’re just hoping to bring forth fruit at God’s time.

I’ve listened to Revive Our Hearts, like, forever. It was like a lifeline for me when my kids were little. I just had it on. It came on at 9:30 on the radio, and I was always . . . It was just wonderful. One day heard on the radio that they had a Farsi ministry.

So Farsi is very close to Afghan Persia, which they speak Dari They speak multiple languages, but a lot of the people speak. And I said, “Wow! Wouldn’t it be awesome if one day we were using Bible studies in their native language?”

So I have a friend of mine that works with Revive Our Hearts. I said, “Hey, any chance there’s Bible study material with Revive Our Hearts in Farsi?”

“Well, there is!”

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.

You can’t give out of what you don’t have. So, any work that we have done with refugees has literally come out of years and years of prayer and surrender and my own personal time in the Word of God. That has birthed it.

And now, this is a wonderful opportunity to serve and to share God’s truth that I’ve learned over the years and put as a foundation in our family. It’s, like, “Wow!” Now we have literally unreached people groups living in our country. A place where there were no known believers, and they’re living down the street from us. God has it for such a time as this that He’s just bringing the nations to our country.

So, yes, I’m really thankful for how Revive Our Hearts encourages you to stay in the Word, connected to God. And the rest of everything flows out from that.

Dannah: What a story! This ordinary woman—along with the ordinary church members around her—trusted in God. And He did extraordinary work through them! These refugees from Afghanistan saw Christ’s heart on display. 

I wonder—do the lost in our cities see Christ in us? Do they know our churches as the place to go for mercy and help? 

I think this is an exciting thing to dream about: How can we be the aroma of Christ to the nations right here at our doorstep? I hope you’ll consider this as you gather with your local body of believers this weekend. 

You know, the women we’ve learned about over the past several weekends have put biblical womanhood on display. Around here, we call that True Womanhood. It’s one of our favorite things to talk about on Revive Our Hearts. And earlier this month, we released a brand-new True Woman resource. It’s called What Is a Woman? and it’s written by Mary Kassian, my dear friend and one of the leading voices on biblical womanhood today. 

If you want to glorify God like the ordinary women you’ve been hearing about, then you’ve got to know what it means to be a woman. Mary Kassian gives you a phrase by phrase definition in this book. It’s saturated in Scripture, but it’s also deeply practical. 

We’d love to send you this resource when you donate any amount to support Revive Our Hearts before the end of July. To do that, visit ReviveOurHearts.com, or call us at 1-800-569-5959. Be sure to request your copy of What Is a Woman? when you do.

Next weekend, we’re talking about girlhood! And how to point little hearts to Jesus. If you’re a girl mom, a grandma, a big sister, a Sunday school teacher, or a mentor to a little girl in your community, you’re gonna want to be here for that. 

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.

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