There Is No Flaw in You

This program contains portions from the following episodes:

"Freedom from a Performance Trap"

"Song of Solomon, Day 12"

"Focusing on Your Spouse's Strengths"

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Dannah Gresh:  From a young age, Liza Chitwood wanted to please God.

Liza Chitwood: I was raised in a godly Christian home—solid, solid Christian home. I was home schooled. I came to know Christ, genuinely, I believe, at the age of six.

My mom and dad were very intentional to pour into us. We had morning devotions around the breakfast table, and we were in church every time the doors opened. I was involved in youth group. I was a small group leader at camp. 

Dannah: Liza was doing a lot of good things. But her love for God started to be replaced with a desire to perform for God.

Liza: I’m a bit of an achiever myself, that’s just the way God has wired me, so everything that came across my path, I wanted to do it to the max. So when I was following Jesus, I wanted to do that to the max. So I really did throw in, in those years. Everything that I was told to do, I did it, and then some.

I would go to bed with a distinct feeling of His, maybe low-grade, displeasure in me. I knew in my head that He loved me, but I didn’t know personally that He loved me. So that would create this desperation for Him to love me more, to notice me.

I was frantically doing all of the things that I knew to do, but instead of producing more joy and more peace and a closer walk with the Lord, it just kind of produced less connection rather than more connection with Jesus. I didn’t feel like my roots were going down deeper. It just felt like I was doing more and more and more on the surface, but I wasn’t going any deeper with the Lord.

Dannah: Do you ever feel that way? Like you have to earn God’s love? Like He’s displeased with you? Like you have to perform to earn His favor?

I think we all struggle with that. I know I do. And I suspect it’s probably to a degree that I don’t actually understand how bad the problem really is.

Can you identify?

Here’s the verse we’re going to focus on as a remedy. Song of Solomon 4:7. “You are altogether beautiful, my love; there is no flaw in you.” In fact, the title of this episode is “No Flaw in You.” If that makes you think "Yeah, right!" don’t stop listening.

Over the next twenty minutes or so, I pray an amazing truth is going to blossom in your heart—God loves you!

We’re about to hear how God used Song of Solomon 4:7 to speak to Liza about His amazing love. We’ll also hear Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth reflect on this verse. And Gary and Lisa Thomas will help us apply Song of Solomon 4 to our relationships with others. Getting the picture? We’re gonna soak in this chapter until we believe God loves us!

This is Revive Our Hearts Weekend. I’m Dannah Gresh.

Let’s jump back to Liza’s story about trying to perform for God. Liza talked with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth on a series from Revive Our Hearts called “An Overflowing Love.”

Nancy: And while you were in college, you heard about what was the first True Woman conference—True Woman ’08 in Schaumburg, Illinois. 

Liza: For the first conference, we gathered a group from church, and we came up to Chicago. I just remember thinking through this, this was not self-help. This was the gospel. This was the kind of thing that changes hearts, that changes the roots, that produces real, lasting change.

Something in my heart connected to that, was hungry for that, knew that that was where the answer lay.

Nancy: You heard a message there that made a particular impression on you.

Liza: Yes, I did. I remember John Piper speaking.

Nancy: It was the opening message at the first True Woman conference.

Liza: It was. He spoke on the glory and the worthiness of Christ. 

John Piper: God's ultimate purpose for the universe, and your life, is to display the glory of Christ.

Liza: That’s what I heard—the beauty of Christ. And, oh, my soul was thirsty for that.

Nancy: So you responded after that conference and contacted our ministry.

Liza: I did.

Dannah: Liza became a graphic designer for Life Action Ministries, the parent organization to Revive Our Hearts.

Liza: Now that I was in full-time ministry, there was an extra measure of weight on my life because now my 9 to 5 also needed to bear the fruits of Christ. And, again, that was just a heavy weight to me because I felt the weight of it and dearly wanted to please Him and show Him to the world. But it felt like I was failing over and over and over.

Nancy: It felt like an impossible burden, just a humongous effort and trying and not succeeding. Is that how you would describe it?

Liza: Yes, Nancy. I was trying so hard. And I think that’s maybe how people would describe me during that season of life, “She is just trying really hard.” I was putting all of my effort into it.

But at that point, I didn’t know to put all of my effort into knowing Jesus. I was just putting all of my effort into the things, into the things I felt like He required of me.

Liza: I started just showing signs of burnout and stress, and I kind of started shriveling up on the outside as well. People could see that all was not well.

At that point in my life, when I’m just shriveling up on the outside, I did know that performance was kind of an idol for me.

Dannah: Something drastic needed to be done. Liza quit all her commitments, all her volunteering. She stopped trying to perform. She knew she needed to slow down just to spend time with Jesus.

Liza: So I decided to sit on a park bench in the evenings with just my Bible and journal. And people, knowing my frantic pace, would say, “Liza, what are you going to do with all that time?”

And I would say “I have no idea, but I don’t know what else to do.”

But this was my desperation, my brokenness before the Lord, just asking Him to come.

So, that very first night on the park bench—I’ll never forget it—Jesus met me there. He just came, and, instead of giving me a list of rules and better ways I could please Him and better priorities, He just came and told me that He loved me. He said, “Liza, I am not perpetually disappointed with you. I am perpetually pleased with you because of Jesus. And you already have an A on the test, so you can just go and enjoy Me.”

He spoke to me deeply from the Song of Solomon in those nights, especially in the Song of Solomon 4:7. There He said, “You are altogether beautiful, my love. There is no flaw in you.”

And as He unpacked that and just said, “Because of Jesus, when I look at you, there is no flaw in you.”

He just spoke that in a way that I understood, and I started to believe it deep in my heart that Jesus loved me.

And, Nancy, we never moved past that in the time on the bench. We never moved on.

Nancy: So it wasn’t just one evening you were doing that?

Liza: No. It’s like He didn’t have anything else to tell me except that He loved me and accepted me. And that thrilled my heart. Oh, that was like water to a thirsty soul. And I’ve never gotten over that. It changed me from the inside out.

Nancy: I’m thinking of another part of the Song of Solomon. Earlier, in chapter 3, where the bride in this story loses the sense of her groom’s presence, and she says, “On my bed by night, I sought him whom my soul loves.”

She knew she had a relationship with him, but she wanted his nearness, and she couldn’t sense it. She said, “I sought him but found him naught.” And that, to me, kind of describes where you were those months leading up to the months that you then spent on the park bench.

She said, “I will arise now and go about the city. I will seek him whom my soul loves. I sought him but found him naught.”

So she goes, and she tries something different, and she still doesn’t find him. And then some of the people around her misunderstand her, and they—it looks weird to them what she’s doing. But she says, “Scarcely had I passed them when I found him whom my soul loves. I held him, and would not let him go.”

And I think of that when I hear you tell your story of how you weren’t looking for more religion, for more lists, for more to do, but for Christ.

Liza: Yes.

Nancy: And to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge.

Liza: Yes.

Nancy: And when you went and waited quietly and got quiet enough to really hear Him, that’s what He assured you of—not just from the Song of Solomon, but from other places in the Scripture.

Liza: That’s so true. And now, looking back, I see that dryness as Him drawing me, and I see it as such a gift. While in the middle of it, it felt so heavy, but now I see it as Him calling me in and saying, “I want to know you, and I want you to know Me and the depths of My love.”

And that’s really the reason for the dryness and the reason for the drought, to draw me closer to Him. So now on the other side of it, I see it as such a gift, as a good God wooing me towards Him instead of Him, from heaven, saying, “You’re not doing enough; you’re not doing enough.”

I have a completely different perspective on Him now than I did, and I’m so grateful to have come to that place of brokenness and to the park bench to really know Him like that.

And, Nancy, He used another Scripture. In 1 John 4:10, He said, “In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.”

In that truth in that verse, oh, what joy it was to hear that love isn’t me loving Him first. “This is love, Liza, not that you have loved Me well or have hung onto Me well or gripped Me tight. It’s that I have loved you and held onto you, and My grip on you is tighter than your grip on Me will ever be.”

And so, I think, in that season, I did let go. I understood the gospel, I think, maybe for the first time, in true faith, just letting go of my own worth and my own deeds before Him. And just accepting who He was and what He did on the cross for myself was really what was happening in that moment.

Nancy: And what a beautiful thing to come to the point of realizing that you don’t do these good things in order to get Him to love you.

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The Lord Jesus wants you to believe and receive the love He has for you. He wants you to know that you are beautiful to Him; that He delights in you. That's because of your relationship with Him.

Dannah: Let’s go back to that verse that so affected Liza that first night on the park bench, Song of Solomon 4:7. “You are all fair, my love, and there is no spot in you” (NKJV). Nancy taught that verse in a series on the Revive Our Hearts podcast. The series was called “How to Fall and Stay in Love with Jesus.”

Nancy: It’s our relationship with Him that makes us beautiful; that makes us lovely. It’s not on our own, but He wants you to know that because you are in Him, you are beautiful! And He loves you . . . He loves you . . . He loves you.

In Song of Solomon 4:1, the bridegroom starts with a general statement about his bride’s beauty, and how he views her. He says, “Behold you are fair, my love! Behold you are fair!” He’s going to repeat this thought two more times in this chapter. In verse 7, he says, “You are all fair, my love, and there is no spot in you.”

In verse 10 he says, “How fair is your love, my sister, my spouse!” You’ve got to admit that there’s no question about how he feels about her, there’s no doubt about his love.

We saw in chapter 1 that this bride does not see herself as beautiful or lovable or worthy of his love. Remember, she was just a plain, ordinary country girl whose skin had been darkened and toughened by doing menial labor on her family farm out in the hot sun.

That’s how she saw herself, and that’s how she was. But her bridegroom sees her through eyes of love—His love. And everything he sees in her is a reflection of his grace, his love. Like the moon that has no light of its own and only reflects the light of the sun, so this bride has no beauty of her own. It’s his beauty that he is seeing reflected in her.

And it’s the same with us. God is conforming us to the image of Son. How do we know when that process is complete? When He can look at us and see reflected in us the image of His Son—His Spirit, His heart, His responses, His values—that’s what delights Him and gives our lives beauty.

He said, “You are fair my love! Behold you are fair!” That’s the general statement. And then he goes on to describe in more detail what he sees in her. He highlights seven things about this woman’s physical appearance that he finds particularly beautiful.

Some of these concepts—if you’ve read through the passage, you know what I’m talking about—they seem strange to our western ears. A passage like this can be a little uncomfortable to read or discuss in a public setting, and I’ll grant you that it’s intimate language.

But I just want to remind us that’s there’s nothing coarse or inappropriate or immodest here. The way the Scripture treats even physical beauty, and sexual love, is totally appropriate and holy. It’s tender; it’s beautiful, and it’s in striking contrast to the way the world talks about and treats physical beauty and sexuality.

And that’s why, I think, this world needs a good dose of seeing sexuality, even at a human level, from God’s perspective, His point of view. So, let me read this passage, and then we’ll go back and look at some of the parts of it. He says, in verse 1,

You have dove’s eyes behind your veil. Your hair is like a flock of goats, going down from Mount Gilead. Your teeth are like a flock of shorn sheep which have come up from the washing, every one of which bears twins, and none is barren among them.

Your lips are like a strand of scarlet, and your mouth [or your speech] is lovely. Your temples behind your veil are like a piece of pomegranate. Your neck is like the tower of David, built for an armory, on which hang a thousand bucklers, all shields of mighty men.

Your two breasts are like two fawns, twins of a gazelle, which feed among the lilies. Until the day breaks and the shadows flee away, I will go my way to the mountain of myrrh and to the hill of frankincense. [And then once more, verse 7], You are all fair, my love, and there is no spot in you. (vv. 1–7)

Now first, a couple of just general observations: It’s clear that he sees his bride as being lovely and desirable. I think it’s true that every woman, or virtually every woman, has a longing to be sought after, to be desired. That is a longing that we can experience more fully in Christ than we ever can experience in a human relationship.

Human marriage is powerful; it’s beautiful; it’s precious; it’s something to be cherished, and it is a place where a woman can be sought after, desired, and a man can see his bride as lovely, desirable. But the best human marriage doesn’t hold a candle to what can be true in Christ’s relationship with His Church. 

Dannah: That’s Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, from a series on the Song of Solomon called “How to Fall and Stay in Love with Jesus.” Nancy’s been showing us how God can love us so completely, no matter what we do, no matter how marked by sin we are.

When we come to faith in Christ, God sees Jesus in us. So, like the bridegroom in Song of Solomon, God can say, “There is no flaw in you.”

When our guest Liza Chitwood grasped the truth of that verse, it transformed her life. She stopped trying to serve others out of an attempt to win God’s favor. Instead, she realized how loved she was. And it made her want to love others.

Liza: His love had touched a place of my heart that came alive. And, as I was going about my normal life, I could tell something had changed, and it was in how I saw people.

Nancy: The Lord gave you new eyes for what was going on around you, and it was really God giving you the ability to see people with His eyes.

Liza: Yes, that’s so true. It almost did feel like somebody else’s heart beating inside my own, that I could feel what somebody else was feeling, because this hadn’t been my experience for so long.

I distinctly remember the first time I cried about suffering that wasn’t my own, and that was immediately followed with, “I think this is Your heart for people.” And in those moments, in those days, I was saying, “Lord, this is Your heart for people, and now I am also so drawn to the suffering and broken people. I know that You use my hands and feet in order to be Your love to them like You have been to me. And so, if there are any specific people You would want me to go love, be my hands and feet. I would love to do that.”

So I think I surrendered all in those moments.

Dannah: Once Liza grasped how much God loved her, she gained a whole new love for other people. She was able to see them the way God saw them.

Gary and Lisa Thomas apply this principle to marriage. They are co-authors of Devotions for a Sacred Marriage: A Year of Weekly Devotions for Couples. They realize how easy it is for us to focus on our spouses’ flaws.

But just like God sees beauty in us, we can choose to focus on the beauty of our spouses. Here’s Lisa Thomas.

Lisa Thomas: I think that Solomon says this in the Song of Songs when he says, “My dove, my perfect one, the only one.” It brings out that same thing. Obviously, she is not perfect, and there are many women. But him saying, “My perfect one, my only one,” is that same Adam and Eve mentality there.

Nancy: So, Gary, when Lisa has that attitude towards you, what does that do for you as a husband?

Gary Thomas: Well, it makes me aspire to be the man she thinks I am.

Nancy: That’s funny. Robert often says, “I want to be half the man you think I am.”

Gary: When they encourage you, you like that affirmation. And so it’s like, “Well, then, how can I be more of that?” Encouragement really can be the seedbed of growth; whereas, I think, taking each other for granted is a seedbed for discouragement.

There’s this neurological trick where, if you’re not actively thinking (and we do this with God as well as with each other) every blessing just becomes “what is.” We just accept it as the status quo. So every frustration, then, becomes a point, not realizing the fact that . . .

We know over the course of the world, if we have $10 in our pocket, and we have a house to go home to and clothes, we are better off than the vast majority of the world’s population. But we’re not thankful to God because He doesn’t answer one prayer that we want Him to answer.

I’ve seen some wives married to just tremendous men. In fact, one that Lisa and I just met, was a couple where he had been everything. He was this superstar when they got married. He had literally been a professional football player, a quarterback. He played shortstop on the baseball team. He had been in a band as a guitar player. He was wealthy. He was now a pastor. He’s spiritually alive, a solid pastor.

And what was hard for him when they got married, he said, “I felt like for my whole life: My mom’s cheering me on. The cheerleaders are cheering me on. The fans are cheering me on. Then I would come home, and I would hear, ‘Boo! Boo!’”

She was horrified because she just thought every guy prayed for and with his wife; every guy provided financially really well; every guy came home to his wife and didn’t embarrass his wife and didn’t belittle his wife. Until she realized, “I accepted I had this great guy I’m married to, but instead of it being a great guy, it’s, ‘Okay, this is how guys are supposed to be. So could I get him to do a little bit more?’”

And we all do that.

Nancy: It’s defeating and discouraging.

Gary: If we’re not pursuing cherishing, I think.

Nancy: And yet we’re talking to some right now who, their husband maybe really isn’t a great guy. Maybe they feel ignored or belittled or taken for granted. And they’re going, “Yes, I wish I was married to that guy!” So there’s the comparison again.

What can help take a marriage where there’s toxic, there’s distrust, there’s hurt, there’s years piled up of taking each other for granted and not being kind to each other. How do you change the dance step, because it’s not going to be fixed overnight? What’s a step that can help start to change the tune in that marriage?

Lisa: You can only work on your side of it, unilaterally. But it can change the tone, I think. One is meditating on the truth of Philippians 4:8 and choosing to think on the things that are true and right and all those qualities about your spouse.

Thankfulness—there has to be something you can thank God for in your spouse each day, even if, like you said, there’s a lot of disappointment.

Gary: One thing that I did in 2016 that helped increase that level of cherishing, was I got a daily journal that has a page for each day. (I stole this from another wife—there was a wife that came up with the idea—and I thought it was a great idea.) I just wrote down something every day, specific to that day, that Lisa did or something that she was. Mostly it was just thanking her for, “You did this. . .” She didn’t know I was doing it.

So, literally, every day, the first thing I did, before I had my quiet times, before I went to work, I’m opening up this red book: “Okay, Lord, remind me of what Lisa did yesterday that I can record in this book.” And what that did was it changed the way I thought about her and then it changed the rest of the day because after 1 or 200 days, you can’t keep writing the same things, so I’m literally scanning her, because I know in the morning before I can get started with my day, I’ve got to write something down. So I’m looking for the good things.

If it’s not the best of days, that just goes off. You’re not going to write it down. You don’t even think about it. So it trained me to think Philippians 4:8.

Nancy: And did you give her the journal?

Gary: It was her Christmas present.

Nancy: Awww . . .

Gary: I went ahead and did some other things.

Nancy: Okay, you guys who are listening, don’t tell my husband this. We’ll keep it our secret. But I think I’m going to do that this year, but please don’t tell him, because that’s going to be a surprise for him. Okay?

Lisa: (Laughing) It was really sweet. My daughter said, “Whoa, I thought people only did this kind of thing on a Hallmark movie, Dad.”

Gary: And at the end of that, Nancy, I don’t know if I prayed for God to change Lisa one time in 2016 because when you have a written record of 250 great things that she is and has done, it just seems a little bit picky to say, “Oh, God, can You change this one little thing?”

So it was really just practice of learning to cherish the woman I already have.

Dannah: That’s Gary and Lisa Thomas, co-authors of Devotions for a Sacred Marriage: A Year of Weekly Devotions for Couples. They were talking with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth about the way we can focus on our spouse's strengths rather than their weaknesses.

I hope you’ll listen to that entire conversation, along with the one with Liza Chitwood, by visiting ReviveOurHearts.com/weekend. Click on today’s program, “There Is No Flaw in You.” You’ll find a link there.

Now, if you’ve been struck in a new way by God’s love for you, or maybe you’re intrigued and want to know more, here’s my suggestion. Get a copy of a booklet by Nancy called, “How to Fall and Stay in Love with Jesus.” Then use that booklet to help you study as you listen to Nancy teach through the Song of Solomon.

For links to both the book and Nancy’s teaching series “How to Fall and Stay in Love with Jesus,” visit Revive Our Hearts.com/weekend and click on this episode. 

That’s also where you’ll find past episodes of this program, Revive Our Hearts Weekend. You can binge all weekend long, and then I'll see you next week. I’m Dannah Gresh.

Revive Our Hearts Weekend wants to call you to greater freedom, fullness and fruitfulness in Christ.

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