Three Graces of Remembrance

This episode contains portions from the following programs:

"A Godly Legacy"

"Is It Okay to Question God?"

"Remember When"

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Dannah Gresh: Welcome to Revive Our Hearts Weekend, friend, and happy Memorial Day Weekend! I’m your host, Dannah Gresh. 

This morning I was getting ready for this time in the studio as well as, I'm going to fly out right after I'm here with you . . . and . . . I couldn't find my phone. Do you know what panic set in when I couldn't find my phone when I'm getting ready to leave town for three days? I could not for the life of me remember where I had put it.

I looked in the bedroom. I looked in bathroom. I looked outside. I looked in my car. I looked in the laundry room. I looked in the refridgerator. And finally . . . I remembered, "I think I know where I put it!" And I went and it was right there where I put it on the sofa by the fireplace. What joy! What relief!

Do you know what else I forgot this morning? Breakfast! If you hear my stomach growling, you know why!

Sometimes remembering is hard, but it's also a means of grace for us—a way God fuels us with the courage and help we need to live the Christian life. Today we’re looking at three ways this is true. And our first grace of remembrance is all about legacy. We can learn so much from the lives of faithful saints gone before us. So the first thing we’re gonna do today is remember them. 

And you know what? This Memorial Day Weekend is a wonderful opportunity to practice this kind of remembering. Let’s be sure to praise God for the men and women who have made the ultimate sacrifice while fighting for the good of our nation. What an immense legacy they’ve left!
 

You know, legacy is a weighty, beautiful thing. It’s built on battlefields, but it’s also built in homes, in families, and in quiet lives well lived. Some friends of Revive Our Hearts, Beverly Lewis, Summer Wallace, and Wanda Boss, took some time to remember their mothers and reflect on the legacy they left. Let’s listen and learn from these faithful ladies. 

Beverly Lewis: My name is Beverly Lewis. In September I moved to Fayetteville to take care of my elderly parents. What a pleasure and how neat that is. You don’t realize what parents do until you’re doing it yourself.

A sweet little thing my mama said just last week. She said, “You’re over here taking care of me. I’m the parent; you’re the child. I’m supposed to be taking care of you.”

I’m just like, “No mom. This is what I want to do. It’s my turn.”

But she can’t even remember some of the things she used to do. I’m the baby of five. She can’t remember that she cooked. I said, “I baked a casserole, and I’m going to bring it over.” And she said, “What’s a casserole?”

I’m talking about a woman who cooked for not only five children, but spouses. There are twelve grandkids. There are eight great-grandkids. She did all of that for all those years and doesn’t even remember doing it.

But when we were selling their things from her home we found a doll, my last doll. She wrote on the box, “This is Beverly’s last and prettiest doll.” My mom had stayed up night after night making clothes for that doll. She always did it for the girls anyway and sometimes shirts for the boys. But she had a red velvet cape with a hood that had fur, pink fur to match her pink hair.

I’m thinking the nights that she stayed up and the mornings that she got up early. I don’t think I ever saw my mother in pajamas. She was always up and dressed and had breakfast. We did not go to school without oatmeal.

I don’t remember dad being there. He was working two jobs. He was a bread man, so he was gone in the morning by three. I know she got up and cooked breakfast for him.

She used to tell me when I had morning sickness—I had all day sickness, not just morning sickness—she’d say, “I can remember holding a rag over my face so I wouldn’t throw up when I was pregnant, but I’d cook for your daddy anyway.”

I’m thinking, You talk about sacrifice. I’m thinking, Why would you want to cook when you’re about to throw up? But she would. It didn’t even cross her mind not to is the thing. So I’m very grateful that she did that, and I’m able to take care of her now.

Summer Wallace: My name is Summer Wallace. I really find this opportunity to praise my mom just a gift from the Lord because I have been found lately (really most of my life) criticizing her in my thoughts and outwardly too. So I’m really very grateful for this opportunity to praise her.

My mom is wonderful with her hands. There is nothing that she can’t do, nothing that she can’t do with her hands. I really admire that in her. There are two stories that have come to my mind during this time.

One was when I was a little girl and it was during the time when everyone was getting those huge antebellum dollhouses. I wanted one so bad. I’m the baby of three. That was one thing I didn’t have. I cried and whined and screamed and begged and pleaded, all of that, and had no clue that my mom was working on making one.

She cross-stitches. She was cross-stitching five rugs for me and a hall rug and little pillows to go on furniture for my dollhouse. She would do that when she wasn’t working on the actual house.

Christmas morning came, and we walked in to see our things. There sat this beautiful baby blue with white shutters dollhouse. It was huge. It was so beautiful.

I didn’t find out until a long time after that that she had to put every one of those little pieces together, glued them one-by-one, and all the work that went into it.

But that night, that Christmas Eve night, she went to the shed to get it out at about midnight. Well, they had locked the shed, and she couldn’t get in. Well, she finally got a window up and crawled through. This is my mom and my dad doing this in my neighbor’s shed. They tried to fit it through the window, and it wouldn’t fit through the window.

So my dad unhinged the door of this shed. They had to take the door off to get the dollhouse out. It was just crazy. It was a stressful event for my mom, but she did it for me so that I could have that. It meant a lot to her. And she smiled, and she didn’t tell me all of that. I never knew any of that.

The second thing that came to my mind was when I was a senior in college, and I got my own private room. I really wanted it to be pretty. I didn’t have money to buy anything. So my mom came up and surprised me and brought just material and scraps. To be honest, I was ungrateful. I was like, “What is all this? I want a pretty room, Mom. I want people to come in here and just feel like a lady and feel good.”

I had to go and do a concert that night, and part of me was angry because she didn’t go do that with me. I wanted her to hear me sing. I was a music major.

I came back, and when I came back, I walked into a beautiful room. She had decorated it and made curtains out of what I thought was scrap material. They were beautiful. She had tied them up so beautiful with what I thought was scraps of little ribbons. It was beautiful. She re-covered my couch and my rocking chair.

It was beautiful. It was a haven. It ended up being a haven for many girls that year. They would always say, “Your room is so beautiful.” And I would have to say, “You need to call my mom and thank her because she did this.”

Anyway, she is just so giving, and she is just so wonderful with her hands. So I just want to praise my mother for those things.

Wanda Boss: My name is Wanda Boss. My mother just passed away in January. But this Scripture, the 16th verse of Proverbs 31: “She considers a field and buys it. With her profits she plants a vineyard.”

My father passed away when I was six, and my mother bought a piece of property at a little town near where we lived. She raised a garden. On this piece of property there was an apple tree; there was a grapevine; there was a peach tree, and there were nuts, a pecan tree. She took all of these, and we’d make jelly. We’d make juices. We made all kinds of things.

She raised a garden around our house. It was a very small lot, but she raised a garden. The garden almost took up the whole yard, but she sold it in this café that we had. She bought a café as well. We ran the café. It was in my family; there were eight. I was the youngest girl. I was the seventh girl, and I had a brother that was thirteen months old, and my father died.

So she ran this café, and she raised the garden and sold vegetable plate lunches. We always had plenty to eat, and we always had love in the family. We always had more than even our neighbors had. We didn’t realize it at the time; we complained and grumbled, but she did such a wonderful job.

And she did like her mother had done. She pieced quilts and took all the scraps and made some of the most beautiful quilts. We still, every one of us, have probably fifteen to twenty quilts in our closets that my mother made. And the neighbors—all of those have quilts.

She canned for everybody in the family. I mean it’s like everybody’s pantry was full by the end of summer. It was just amazing how her time multiplied. I mean, even when she was in the hospital before she died, she told us, “I can still do more than any of y’all put together.” And that was the truth.

It still just amazes me how she did this. Not only did she do all of this, God was absolutely number one in her life. She was just like the other lady. She got up every morning, but she stayed there throughout the day. She kept her Bible opened wherever she was. When she’d have the time to sit down, she would sit down with her Bible.

It was years later when I really recognized how important this was. I still have that picture of my mother sitting reading her Bible. A lot of times she would sit behind the counter in the café, and there would be three other ladies that would come up. These ladies, two of them, did not go to church at that time.

But she would sit there and talk to them. Those ladies have all been very involved in church lately in their later years. But she would sit there and talk with them throughout the day when she was not busy in the café.

The heritage that I have and the legacy that my mother left is just beyond my comprehension. If I could just do a small part of what my mother did would be my dream right now.

Dannah: I just love these stories! I think they demonstrate something really sweet and encouraging for us. So often, a wonderful legacy isn’t made up of grand gestures. It's made up of handmade doll clothes, jam jars, and Bibles open behind café counters. The whole idea of legacy doesn’t have to be intimidating for us. It can be oh so simple. If the coming generations remember us for little kindnesses and faithful acts of love, well then, we’ve succeeded, friend. That’s the stuff of a life well lived.

These moms were able to leave this kind of a legacy because they knew God. I bet they enjoyed our second grace of remembrance pretty regularly—the grace of remembering God’s character. 

Not too long ago, I recorded a series based on my Habakkuk Bible study. And let me tell you, Habakkuk was a man who really needed to remember his God. He was witnessing so much injustice! And honestly, it seemed like God was silent, like He didn’t see or care. 

Have you ever felt like that? I know I have. 

But remembering was a means of grace in Habakkuk’s story as he questioned and wrestled with God, and it can be in your story too. Let’s listen to see how wrestling and remembering played out in Habakkuk’s life.

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Now, let’s remember Habakkuk’s name. Habakkuk used questions to talk to God, and in doing so, he lived up to his name. Habakkuk is an Akkadian word that means either “wrestler” or “embracer.” Which one was it? Well, we’re going to take a look and find out that I think maybe it was both. I think maybe he wrestled at times, and I think maybe he embraced at times. And that’s very significant.

If you’re taking notes, I invite you to write the word “wrestler,” and then right under it, write Habakkuk 1:1–4. Those were some of the verses we looked at in our first session.

Let me just look at verse 4 for a moment. It’s almost smack talk. Like, this is not the kind of respect you should bring to the God of the universe. He says, “So the law is paralyzed and justice never goes forth, for the wicked surround the righteous. So justice goes forth perverted.”

Habakkuk looks at God and says, “Your law is paralyzed.”

Wow! What audacity to speak to the Lord this way.

Now, there is some level of respect. He begins with, “O Lord.” But then that’s it. He lets loose. He’s wrestling with God. It’s very accusatory. It’s combative. His heart is wrestling.

Now, we come to a place in the book of Habakkuk where I believe there is a progression in the way he’s questioning God. He still has questions. He’s still asking them, but he’s doing it with a different posture. Maybe it’s the sobering news that God has just told him, “I have seen what’s going on in your world, and I do have a plan. It’s going to get worse before it gets better.”

Maybe he’s been sobered up and reminded that God is God. Or maybe it’s the fact that he’s maturing. Maybe he’s spent some time with the Lord and thought about this. We don’t know the time frame between those first few verses and the ones I’m about to read, but we do see that there’s a shift in his posture and the way he’s handling his questions with God.

Let me read Habakkuk 1, verses 12 and 13. (This is the second time Habakkuk asks God some hard questions.) 

Are you not from everlasting, O LORD my God, my Holy One? We shall not die. O LORD, you have ordained them as a judgment, [speaking of the Chaldeans who will come up against His people—You have ordained them as a judgment] and you, O Rock, have established them for reproof.

You who are of purer eyes than to see evil and cannot look at wrong,why do you idly look at traitors [you see, he’s still got some hard questions] and are silent when the wicked swallows up the man more righteous than he?

Yep, Habakkuk is still asking questions, but do you hear how they’re now embedded with new respect? They’re embedded with truth. Let me point to just a few of the things that I see here.

First of all, he begins with “Are You not from everlasting? O Lord, are You not from everlasting?” He affirms what he already knows to be true. Now, he’s kind of probably asking, “Are You really everlasting?” But he knows that he’s learned that. He knows that he’s learned that God is everlasting, and he is depositing that into his question. I think that matters.

And the second thing we see that he says, “O LORD,” twice. Now, when he said that, he was using the covenant name of God, Yahweh. Now, faithful Jews could not think of the word covenant without thinking of faithfulness. They were somewhat synonymous to them. And so, in using that covenant name, he is declaring God to be faithful. He’s standing on that because he knows that is true.

Another thing we see is he says, “My God, my Holy One.” How precious that is. He’s getting closer, isn’t he? He’s becoming more intimate in the way that he talks with God. He’s remembering, “You’re mine.”

There is a sweetness in these questions that wasn’t in the first set. He’s not a distant God. He’s a personal one. Habakkuk is standing on that because he knows that is true.

And he calls God, “The Rock,” meaning He won’t be moved. He knows that God is strong. He knows that that is true.

What we see Habakkuk doing in these second set of questions that he wasn’t doing quite as vigorously in the first set is he is embedding his questions with what he already knows to be true about God.

I think it’s so important when we’re in hard times and the spiritual amnesia is likely to set in, that we go to God honestly. We go to God boldly. We go to God openly with our questions. Listen: He already knows what’s in your heart. He already knows your thoughts, what’s in your mind. You might as well speak them to Him. But could we do it by standing on what we already know to be true about God?

Dannah: Oh yes, friend. We can! We can ask all our questions in a way that honors God by choosing to remember in the process. We can remember that God is everlasting. Isn’t that incredible?! He has always been and will always be. We can remember that he is Yahweh, the faithful God. We can remember that He is our God. We can remember that He won’t be moved. He’s unshakeable. See what a glorious grace it is to remember! When we reflect on who God is, we’re filled with courage. 

Our third and final grace of remembrance today is remembering God’s faithfulness to us. Reflecting on His past faithfulness in our lives. Five years after the founding of Revive Our Hearts, Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth recorded an episode reflecting on those early days and rejoicing in the faithfulness of God to this ministry. And in the nearly twenty years since then, His faithfulness has only increased. Let’s listen to those reflections from Nancy now. She was talking with Bob Lepine, who’s been a strong supporter of Revive Our Hearts since the beginning.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: In those early days, there was that very unusual sense of God’s presence. I remember an early series we did on revival. I did a session on the presence of God as an earmark characteristic of revival.

I just remember after that session finished (we typically would have moved on to the next session because we record a lot of different programs in one day), there was just this strong sense that we couldn’t move on because God’s presence that we were talking about in revivals of the past was so manifest and present in that room.

Some of you were there. And Bob, I remember you got up and read some Scripture, and we said, “We can’t just move on past this – we need a selah – we need to stop and respond to this awesome presence of God.” I still remember as many women got on their knees and began to pray, to cry out to God for revival, to recognize His presence in that place.

I was listening and watching and trying to sense what God was doing. I remember having just this strong sense that this is what Revive Our Hearts is for. This is what this is about.

What was happening in that little room, with the cinder block walls and the hard floor, with women crying out to God, were women experiencing the presence of God and pleading with Him to revive their hearts and homes and churches.

I thought, This is a little picture of what one day I believe God will be doing in homes and vans and workplaces and churches and communities as women whose hearts have been revived come together, not only to experience God’s presence, but to cry out to Him for revival on the behalf of others.

It just gave me a vision of (in a little microcosm there) what one day I was believing that God would do in a widespread way. And now over these last several years, it’s been a privilege to meet and talk with many women whose hearts have been revived. They have been transformed in the way they view God and their marriage and their children. Their whole worldview has changed.

They love Christ. They’re committed to serving Him and growing spiritually, and we’ve seen that multiplied. But I still live for the day, as we’ve talked about it on the program, for when the glory of the Lord will cover the earth as the waters cover the sea. At that moment, sitting in that room at Summit Church was just a little glimpse, a glimpse of His glory, a glimpse of what we’re still believing God to do in a much broader sense.

Dannah: Wow, what an incredible thing to look back now and see how God has done this! He was faithful to Revive Our Hearts in its first five years of ministry, and His faithfulness has only increased since then. Like Nancy said, God’s glory will cover the earth as the waters cover the sea, and He’s been so faithful to use Revive Our Hearts in this expansive work. His glory is flowing through the river of Revive Our Hearts, reaching women all over the world with the message of freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ. Remembering His past faithfulness to this ministry makes me excited to continue watching Him work in the years to come! 

This month, we’re wrapping up another ministry year, and this means we’re looking forward to what the Lord is going to do through Revive Our Hearts in the months and years ahead. Right now, this looks like preparing for our Wonder of the Word initiative, a six-year plan for global and generational impact. That’s right! Nancy is preparing now to walk us through an overview of the entire Bible. We are thrilled to see the new and beautiful ways this initiative reaches women with the transforming power of God's beautiful Word.

In order to be well-equipped to begin this work, we need to raise $810,000 this month. We are so grateful to all those who have already given. Thank you so much for your generosity! If you haven’t given yet, but you would like to join us in this work, you can donate by visiting ReviveOurHearts.com. When you do, ask for the 50 Promises to Live By Scripture card set. We’d love to send that to you as a thank-you gift.

Well next weekend, we want to talk about the very opposite of pride here at Revive Our Hearts, because Scripture invites us to be humble people instead. I hope you’ll join us!

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.

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