Revive My Heart, Lord!

This episode contains portions from the following programs:

"Preparing Ourselves"

"A Longing for Revival"

"Hope is a Person"

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Dannah Gresh: Imagine for a moment that you’re visiting me on my hobby farm. Goats and horses aside, it’s June and my garden is in bloom. I’m particularly partial to the sight of my pink garden phlox this time of year! Just look at that vibrant color! And the peonies are something the cover of a Bride magazine is made of. And don’t get me started on the colorful zinnias! They’re just happiness on a stem.

But, do me a favor. Do not look over there . . . to the right side of the riding ring. No! I said, “Don’t look!” It’s been a hot minute—or two years—since I faithfully weeded that section. And, well, yep those are trees growing in the middle of all that mess. It’s just a big mess. The weeds have choked out the perennials. (sigh)

Ya know what? Your heart, my heart, our lives can be just like that corner of my garden.

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

Think of that overgrown, neglected corner of my garden as a metaphor, a picture of what your heart can be. It might need some weeding, some replanting, some fertilizing and watering. Today we’re going to hear from Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth . . .

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: Oh Lord, I long for You to send revival. Would you let it begin in me.

Dannah: Anne Ortlund . . .

Anne Ortlund: It's so refreshing; it's like taking a bath to get those sins dealt with. It makes you feel happy that you are in fellowship with the Lord again and with each other.

Dannah: And Pastor Chris Brooks . . . 

Pastor Chris Brooks: Hope is alive because hope is a person who is alive. Because Jesus conquered death, we have hope!

Dannah: And the prayer we want to pray is, “Revive my heart, Lord.” 

You often hear me say Revive Our Hearts, it’s our ministry name afterall. But today I want us to turn it into a personal prayer, “Revive my heart.”

Heart revival is part of the core DNA of what we’re all about. Let’s start with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, who helps us look for symptoms that would indicate we need God to work on us.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: "How can I know if revival is needed in my own life? How can I know if I'm a candidate for revival?"

Let me list some of the ways that I have seen in my own life that are evidences, signs, that I am standing in need of revival.

• We need revival when we do not love Jesus as we once did, when our love for Him has grown cold.
• We need revival when earthly interests and occupations are more important to us than eternal ones.
• And when we have a greater appetite for television and secular books and magazines than we do for the Word of God.
• We need revival when we have little or no desire for prayer, and when we would rather make money than give money.
• We need revival when we know truth in our heads, but we are not practicing it in our lives.
• And when we make little effort to share the Gospel to those who are without Christ.
• We need revival when we have time for sports and recreation and entertainment and hobbies, but not for Bible study and prayer.
• And we need revival when we no longer tremble at the Word of the Lord. The Scripture says that God meets with those who tremble at His Word.
• We need revival when we seldom think thoughts of eternity, when this world has become so much our home that we're really comfortable here and not longing for something ahead.
• We need revival when we're more concerned about our children's education and their athletic activities than we are about the condition of their souls.
• We need revival when we tolerate "little" sins of gossip, a critical spirit, lack of love.
• We need revival when our singing, our worship is half-hearted and lifeless.
• And when our prayers are empty words designed to impress others. We need revival when our prayers lack fervency, when our hearts are cold and our eyes are dry.

And, by the way, I've been in full-time revival ministry for years now. You know you can be out there all the time talking about these things, promoting these things but have a cold heart and dry eyes.

And one of the things I dread is coming to the place where these truths don't freshly touch my own heart. That's the time when I have to come back to the Lord and say, "Lord, I'm talking about all this to other people, but the fact is that I need a fresh move of Your Spirit in my heart, in my life, in revival."

• We need revival when we're content to live with explainable, ordinary Christianity and church services.
• And when we have ceased to weep and mourn and grieve over our own sins and the sins of others.
• We need revival when we're bored with worship. Think about that: to be bored with coming into the presence of God and lifting up His character! Haven't you found yourself there? I know I have.
• We need revival when our lifestyles, music, dress, values, behavior, talk become patterned after the world's.
• And when we don't long for the company and fellowship of God's people.
• We need revival when our giving is measured and calculated rather than extravagant and sacrificial.
• And when we aren't exercising faith and believing God for the impossible.
• We need revival when we're more concerned about what others think about us than what God thinks about us.
• And we need revival when we're unmoved by the fact that 2.5 billion people in this world have never heard the name of Jesus.
• And not only that, we need revival when we're unmoved by the thought of our neighbors, business associates, fellow employees, acquaintances, who are lost and without Christ.
• We need revival when we're blind to the extent of our need and when we don't realize how much we need revival, even though we may be very conscious of how much others around us need revival. I love that old spiritual that says

Oh Lord, it's not my brother, it's not my sister,
It's not the elders, it's not the deacons,
It's not the old folks, it's not those teenagers,
It's not my mother-in-law, it's not my stepchildren,
Lord, it's me
Standing in the need of prayer.

Lord, I need you. My life has grown cold. My love for You has grown dim. I need You to come and revive my heart.

Gypsy Smith was a man who had a heart for revival. He came from poor circumstances, not the kind of person you'd ever expect to be greatly used of God in revival. But God did use him.

And the story is told that when he would go into a town to preach, he would, upon first coming to the town, he would stop on the outskirts of town. And he would get down in the dirt on the street and he would draw a circle in the dirt.

And then he would step inside that circle and he would say, "Oh God, please send a revival to this town and let it begin inside this circle, let it begin in me."

I wonder if you would be willing to let the Holy Spirit draw a circle within your own heart and to say, "Oh, Lord, I long for You to send a revival. I want to see You send a revival in my nation. I want to see You send a revival in my church. Lord, we need it there.

"And Lord, my family, my marriage, my children, we need a revival there too. And I'm asking You for that, but Lord, as I step inside this circle, would You start a revival inside this circle? Would You let it begin in me?" It's me, Oh Lord."

Dannah: Is that your prayer today? Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth has been showing us that before a sweeping revival will ever come to a church or a community or a country or a continent or the world, it has to start in your own heart, my own heart. 

Nancy talked about that with her good friend Anne Ortlund. Ah, I sure loved Anne’s writing and ministry. Hers were some of the first Christian growth books I ever read! Anne is now with the Lord, but like it says about Abel in Hebrews chapter 11, “[S]he, being dead, still speaks.” And what wisdom she shares! 

In this recording, Anne connects this concept of heart revival, heart renewal, to the Word of God. I’d like to read some verses from Psalm 85 so it’s fresh on your heart as you listen to Anne. This psalm is a prayer for revival. Anne connects heart revival to the Word of God. I'd like to read some verses in Psalm 85 so it is fresh on her heart as you listen to Anne. This psalm is a prayer for revival.

Psalm 85, starting in verse 1. I’m reading from the CSB.

Lord, you showed favor to your land;
you restored the fortunes of Jacob.
You forgave your people’s guilt;
you covered all their sin.

You withdrew all your fury;
you turned from your burning anger.
Return to us, God of our salvation,
and abandon your displeasure with us.

What’s he saying? “Lord, it feels like You’re upset with us! I’m so desperate for a touch from You. Are you angry with us?” In fact, he says:

Will you be angry with us forever? [Now, listen to the prayer.] 
Will you not revive us again
so that your people may rejoice in you?
Show us your faithful love, Lord,
and give us your salvation. [And then notice what this psalm writer says he’s going to do.] 
I will listen to what God will say.

Okay, pause for a second. I love that! “I will listen to what God will say.” It makes me ask myself, “Have I made up my mind to really listen to what God will say?” The psalm continues by showing us the fruit, the results of true revival.

Surely the Lord will declare peace
to his people, his faithful ones,
and not let them go back to foolish ways.
His salvation is very near those who fear him,
so that glory may dwell in our land.

Faithful love and truth will join together;
righteousness and peace will embrace.
Truth will spring up from the earth,
and righteousness will look down from heaven.

Isn’t that beautiful? Peace, right living, salvation, faithful love, truth—all of those are the characteristics of a revived heart. 

From some years back, this is Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth in conversation with the late Anne Ortlund.

Nancy: It’s a sad thing to me that the word revival has fallen under such hard times today. Many have a lot of misperceptions about what revival is and associate it with something that’s crazy or wildfire. Then I heard just recently a young woman in full-time Christian ministry who said to me, “I had never heard the word revival until recent years.” She’s a graduate of a Bible college in this country. Now, I can’t say she really hadn’t heard it, but she didn’t remember having heard it.

So I think for a lot of people today, there’s either no concept or a wrong concept of revival, so educate us a bit. When you say revival, and we say revival, what are we really talking about?

Anne Ortlund: I’m glad you used that word. We discovered that renewal was maybe a little newer word for the same thing, so our ministry, our non-profit ministry has been a renewal ministry all through these years. The fact is, when you look at Psalm 85 . . . It’s interesting that she said she hadn’t even heard of the word because it’s right there in Scripture. Psalm 85 is a prayer just for that.

It starts out saying how much You’ve done, Lord, in the past: You showed favor; You restored; You forgave; You covered our sins; You set aside Your wrath, turned from Your fierce anger. All these verbs . . . God had been very busy. Then it says, “Restore us again. Do it again. Do it again. Do it again, Lord.”

Then in verse 6, “Will you not revive us again, that your people may rejoice in You?” (NIV).

We see first that it’s God who does it.

Nancy: Yes.

Anne: Oh, it must be God. It cannot come from anywhere else. We don’t have it in us.

“Will You not revive us again?” In your book Brokenness: The Heart God Revives, you quote the little song that we have quoted, too, sometimes when we speak on Psalm 85: “It’s me, Oh, Lord. It’s not my brother, nor my sister. It’s me, Oh Lord, standing in the need of prayer.” Bad grammar, but good truth.

“Will You not revive us again?” He’d done it before. Our country was born in revival. We think of that time as if they were all godly. Well, the fact is a few years after the pilgrims had landed, there got to be a lot of prostitution and alcoholism and terrible things happening in the colonies.

God brought along George Whitfield and the two Wesley brothers and others who began preaching in America in the colonial days, and a great revival swept the land.One of the preachers said, “I scarcely have time to eat bread. The Word runs like lightening here.”

In a period of 19 years, it went to such a level of spiritual growth that Ben Franklin reported in his papers, “It seems as if the whole world has gone religious. I walk up and down the streets and hear psalms sung out of windows on every street.”

So we say in this age, “Oh Lord, do it again; do it again. We’re so hungry for that.”

Oh, my goodness. Just as Psalm 85:6 says, “Will you not revive us again that Your people may rejoice in You?” It’s so refreshing. It’s like taking a bath to get those sins dealt with. It makes you feel happy that you’re in fellowship with the Lord again and with each other.

Nancy: The burden of this ministry and the burden of my life since I was a young girl has been to see God do it again—hence the name of this program, Revive Our Hearts. It does start with you, with me, with us as individuals, but then we pray that in God’s time and in His way that He would move in an extraordinary way and pour out His Spirit in our land and in the nations in the world.

Dannah: Again, I ask, "Is that your prayer today? 'Revive us! Revive ME!'" We’ll hear from Anne again in a few moments. I just love her heart, her passion for the Lord to revive us. 

We started by noticing the symptoms of a heart in need of revival. Anne Ortlund showed us the role God’s Word plays in bringing about that kind of revival. The result of that kind of heart revival is, among other things, hope. 

You see, when your love for Jesus is renewed, suddenly the difficulties of your life begin to pale in comparison to the treasure of the fact that you have Him!

Pastor Chris Brooks talked about that at a recent Revive conference. He’s in 1 Peter chapter 1. Let’s listen.

Pastor Chris Brooks: Peter then goes into this promise of hope. And what’s strange, from here to the end of the passage, and I’m going to try to move through this as swiftly as I can. You would think, after saying he was in exile and that the ones he was writing to were exiles, that Peter would go into a lament . . . but he doesn’t. He goes into a praise. He begins to praise God for three things, and I think all of these things are instructive to us.

Where does his hope come from? Well, first he praises God that heaven is secure. Look at verses number 3–5 with me, if you will. He says:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope.

There it is! You and I are not just born, because if we were just born, then we would be children of despair. But we have been born again, rescued from despair and birthed into hope. But notice that this hope is not grounded in some shallow optimism. Peter is not writing as a self-help guru. Look at what he says:

Born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

Now, if I was at home, I would tell you that’s worth shouting over. Peter just said that our hope is not grounded in memes or shallowness or some mere optimism or some pep talk. But our hope is grounded in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Hope is alive because hope is a person who is alive. Because Jesus has conquered death, we have hope.

He goes on to say, not only that, but we’ve been born again . . . into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

Here is where hope is found: it is that I have an inheritance in heaven. And why is it kept in heaven? Because you keep all important documents and possessions in special places. God wasn’t going to risk your salvation being stolen, so He kept it in heaven.

We’ve got a safe back at home, and we keep all of our important documents there. God has kept the promise that you will be saved through this, that somehow, some way His salvation is going to be seen. Even when you can’t track Him, ladies, you’ve got to trust Him because He is a Man of His word. He cannot lie. He has kept your salvation in heaven.

But here’s what I love about it: He put a security guard in front of it—a security guard that not even Satan could get through. Who’s the security guard that’s keeping watch over your inheritance? Verse number 5 tells us: 

Who by God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

• God is the security guard over your salvation.
• God is the one keeping watch over your soul.
• God is the protector of our promise.

So what do we do when pain encroaches? We remind ourselves of the Word of God, that I’ve been born again to a living hope. And in those days and weeks and months that followed the passing of our son—the deepest pain I have ever known—it was the Word of God that revived my heart. It was the Word of God that revived my hope.

It was me being reminded that He has given me a promise—a promise that He has not failed on, a promise that will bring about my good and His glory, a promise of salvation in this life, in this situation, and in the life to come, guarded by Him.

Peter praised God that heaven is secure. May we praise God that the most important thing in all of the world—our salvation and our relationship with God—would never be stolen away.

Dannah: Pastor Chris Brooks, speaking a few years ago at a conference sponsored by Revive Our Hearts. The hope we have is grounded in who God is, what He’s done for us, and in His powerful Word.

If you’d like to hear more of the interviews or messages you hear portions of on this program, be sure to go to ReviveOurHearts.com/weekend, and Tammy, my friend and coworker, has graciously included links related to each episode. 

God’s Word is wonderful. That’s our theme this whole month at Revive Our Hearts. As a thank you for your donation of any amount in support of Revive Our Hearts, we’d love to send you a 5x7 print of a poem on God’s Word, written by Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, as well as a book by Pastor Colin Smith called Fly through the Bible. It’s a great way for your heart to be revived as you recapture the wonder related to the Scriptures. For more information about those resources, or to make a donation, visit ReviveOurHearts.com/wonderful. 

Today I’ve been encouraging you to pray, “Revive my Heart, Lord! Come into the neglected garden of my heart and start pulling up weeds and turning over the hardened soil. Do what You need to do to give me life and make me fruitful for You!” 

Personal revival is key before we’re ever going to see God work in corporate, wide-scale, sweeping revival. And that is what we’ll look at next week on Revive Our Hearts Weekend. I hope you’ll join us for that.

Thanks for listening! I’m Dannah Gresh. To close our time today, let’s be led in prayer by praying along with Anne Ortlund. She prayed more than a decade ago. And may we all cry out, “Revive my heart, Lord!” Let’s pray.

Anne: Oh dear heavenly Father, Abba Father, Lord, You’ve given us that Gethsemane name for You, so holy that it’s not translatable. You are our Abba, which means, “not my will but Thine be done.” And as Jesus went to the cross when He called You Abba, so Your precious Word in Romans 8 says that You’ve given us the Spirit of adoption whereby we, too, are allowed to cry Abba, that You are the one to whom we give our allegiance, that You are our true Father who deserves our obedience.

Yet, Lord, we’ve turned from You. We’ve been rebellious. We’ve wanted to go our own way instead of following as Your dear children. And, Lord, You know we’re not talking about evangelism and people getting saved, although that’s a wonderful thing, and people get saved as they look on and see revival.

We’re talking, Lord, about re-life, life again. The first love that we knew when we first accepted You, and then time went along and we got away from You, Lord. We got dull, and we gratified our own wishes more. We’ve lived for self, and we’ve been a mess, Lord. We’ve offended others; we’ve offended ourselves, and we’ve offended You.

Dear Father, we just . . . well, in the old days, they beat their breasts, and that’s the way we feel. We’re just hungry to come back to You, Father, and to say, “I want to be the way I first was when I was saved. I want to love You with all my heart, and You alone.”

Lord, we need You. We must have You or we’ll go to Heaven ashamed and embarrassed and with the smell of fire on our clothes, barely making it in. First Corinthians says that some Christians will go that way. Lord, we don’t want to be that kind.

We pray that You will cleanse us now and give us time to live on this earth when we can make up the years that the locust ate away. May our hearts live for eternal things and not for temporal earthly things that are all going to burn and don’t mean a thing.

Lord, put our eyes on You again. We’re sorry for the way we’ve been. We repent, and we say to You again, “Lord, we do love You. Revive us again right now, that we may rejoice in You.”

In Jesus’ dear name we pray and for His glory and His sake, amen.

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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