Facing the Future Without Fear

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: Here in the United States, and in many parts of the world, 2016 has been a year marked by struggle and division. As we near the end of the year and we look to the year ahead, do you find yourself being tempted to be fearful about the future?

I’m Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, and today we’ll talk about how you can look at the future with joy! This is Revive Our Hearts for Friday, November 18, 2016.

Not long ago my husband, Robert, and I met with a group of women for a Q and A time. One of the women asked about fear and the future. We’ll hear that conversation in a few minutes. 

But first, in the room that day there was a sweet young woman named Miranda who was interning at Revive Our Hearts at the time. She asked how you can know whether you’re leaning entirely on the Lord.

That’s an important question, because if we’re not leaning entirely on Him, then, inevitably, we’ll start leaning on something or someone else.

Miranda: I was thinking, just within the past few weeks, one of the questions the Lord has brought to my mind is: “Is Christ enough for me? And do I live like He is?” I think, married or single, that’s a question that will repeatedly come back . . . that people will just come back to.

So I would love to hear both of you just share: How do I remind myself that Christ is enough for me? Is that a place that I get to, or is it something that we have to remind ourselves of every day, walking with the Lord?

Robert Wolgemuth: By reminding yourself that Christ is enough—that’s what you do. You say, “Father in heaven, You’re enough! Right now I don’t feel like that. Right now, this problem seems overwhelming, unsurpassable, but You’re enough.”

It’s so interesting how quickly we respond to what we say about ourselves. That’s why the Scripture makes it so clear: “As we think, so are we.” So, you say—sometimes out loud (don’t be afraid of that)—“Lord Jesus, You’re enough.” Hear yourself say that.

Your brain often precedes your heart—that’s Romans 12—it’s the renewing of your mind; that’s where you go first. You have more control over that; it’s less fickle than your heart. So that’s what you do.

And then, you do the things you know you need to do to get there. It’s habits. It’s, “Lord, I don’t feel like spending time with You today, but I don’t feel like eating lunch either. I know if I don’t eat I’m going to die . . . so, here we go.” You do the right thing, time after time, and your heart will follow that.

You just tell yourself. That may sound silly or not spiritual. You may think you need to go outside and let an angel come and whisper in your ear—whatever. No, just tell yourself, say, “This is where I am right now.”

The Psalms are filled with candor, transparency. “Slay my enemies!” That’s a real prayer to pray, isn’t it? But that came from the psalmist’s heart. You tell Him, you remind God that’s He’s enough. It doesn’t look like it; it doesn’t feel like it.

People are telling me He’s not enough but, “Between me and You, Father, I’m going to tell You: You’re enough. End of sentence!”

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: And that’s something I often talk about. When I say “counseling your heart according to truth,” you tell your heart what you know is true, even when your emotions are screaming otherwise.

Our innate drive is to want to be self-sufficient . . . starting at about age—what?—three days or something? From the time children can talk we hear, “No, let me do this.” “I can do this!” “Me do this!” We don’t want to have to have help!

We want to be able to control and figure things out, and to be enough, ourselves—whether it’s to please God, or to walk with God, or to be a good wife—we’re bent to want to be able to keep laws and fulfill the law and get the benefits of fulfilling the law . . . by ourselves.

Well, we know we can’t. God creates circumstances in our lives that make us realize how much we need Him and that we can’t do it without Him. Often, over the years, in the week or so leading up to a conference, I pray: “Lord, would you create in the women who are going to be here circumstances this week that will make them desperate for You; that will make them realize how much they need you, so when they come to the conference, it’s not going to take the first twenty-four hours for them to realize that they need you.”

“Would you create circumstances"—they could be big things; they could be little things.  I’m not going to tell God how to do that, but I ask Him to do that. Now, I tell the women that when we come to the conference. And I tell them, “Don’t blame me for what went wrong in your week! I didn’t ask God to give you a flat tire . . . or whatever.” But those circumstances press us and make us desperate and give us a sense of our need. This is why I often say, “Anything that makes us need God is”—what?—“a blessing.” Anything that makes us realize we can’t do this on our own.

God keeps me “out over my skis” all the time! I mean, I made good grades in school. There are a lot of things I can do well. I love to read. I love to study. If you keep me on the right subject, there are a lot of things I can do.

But God keeps me in a place where I am out beyond my ability. The deadlines, the projects, the demands are just more than I can handle. Well, I don’t like being there, but it’s a sweet thing.

And Miranda, in relation to your question, this is no less a challenge as I’ve gotten older. God keeps creating circumstances—because I keep wanting to be able to do it on my own. He keeps creating circumstances that make me realize I can’t.

I can’t be a good Christian, I can’t be a good wife, I can’t lead this ministry, I can’t be a Bible teacher, I can’t minister to these needs of my own or others, I can’t deal with my personal disciplines, I can’t get victory over this or that . . . by myself.

Apart from Him, I can do nothing. So I come to the place where I thank Him (or should) for the things that remind me that I need Him. Anything that makes me cry out and say, “Lord, help!” is a gift. It’s a good thing.

The children of Israel learned this over and over in the wilderness—no bread, no food, no water. What was the point of it? Was God trying to starve His people? Well, that’s what the people thought. It’s what they accused God of. “You’re trying to kill us! Take us back to Egypt! You’ve brought us out in this wilderness to kill us!”

And God said, “No. I’ve brought you out here. Deuteronomy 8:3: “He caused them to hunger, that He might humble them, that He might teach them that man does not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” 

God wanted these people to know. If they had all the bread and the meat and the water and the variety in the menu and all the stuff that they wanted—and that they craved—would they ever have cried out to God?

And would we ever cry out to God if we didn’t have things that were distasteful or weren’t to our liking? Those negative things, those hard things, those anything-that-makes-me-need-God-is-a-blessing.

It gets me to cry out, “I need Thee every hour. Every hour I need Thee. Oh, bless me now my Savior: I come to Thee!” I want to be singing that 'til I get to heaven, because I do need Him every hour, every moment.

I don’t want to ever get to the place where I’m so spiritually mature or developed or seasoned or experienced that I think, I can coast! because then I’m in a really dangerous place. So I think it’s an everyday journey . . . and a good one.

Another question? These are good. Thank you! This is fun. I preach to myself on these days.

Woman: Hi. The verse that says, “She is clothed with strength and dignity and she laughs without fear of the future,” from Proverbs 31:25, that verse just keeps speaking into my heart. I just wondered if you had any words to say on that verse.

Nancy: We actually have a whole series—it’s not a long one—that I did on this verse. I don’t know how long it was, but a few days at least.

I’ll tell when I gave it. I had lived in Little Rock, Arkansas for a number of years, recording radio. I had developed a lot of deep relationships there. Then the time came when it was better for our ministry that we would record here.

So our team encouraged me to move back here. I had been there for eight years, and it was really hard. I love our team here, but I had some really deep relationships there, and it was a time of transition and grieving for me.

The Lord took me to this verse over a period of weeks or months leading up to that transition. In my last recording in Little Rock, I actually used this text, because God had been speaking to me from it.

Often what I teach are things which God has been speaking to me about first. In this context, Proverbs 31:21 says she’s not afraid. Here’s a woman who has a lot of skills and a lot of disciplines.

She’s organizing, she’s administering, she’s being creative—she’s talented, with a lot of different domestic skills and skills that keep a home running. A lot of them are very practical skills: making sure that her family is fed and clothed and that the home runs smoothly.

So you look at all these and it kind of looks like a Pinterest board or something. But then you look at the heart of this woman which is what results in her doing all those things. Verse 20: “She opens her hands to the poor; she reaches out her hands to the needy.”

In what she’s doing with her hands—her hands play prominently in this whole passage, she’s working hard with her hands, she’s doing things with her hands)—it’s in order to minister to the needs of others: her family first—her husband and children—and then the poor around her.

But then, verse 21, she is not afraid. She’s not afraid of snow for her household, for all her household are clothed in scarlet. Again, this was part of this series where I developed it further.

She has made provision through diligence and organization and practical common sense. She’s made provision so she doesn’t have to worry that when the cold winter winds blow that her household won’t be prepared for this.

Because she has thought ahead, she’s made provision, she doesn’t have to be afraid. So that’s talking about the future—how she looks to the future. And then we get to verse 25 that you referenced: “strength and dignity are her clothing.”

Now, the passage has been talking about the clothing she makes for others, the clothing she wears herself. Some of it’s just practical. She makes sure the kids have clothes, right?

But then it talks about the most important clothing of all. It’s the clothing of her heart. Strength and dignity are her clothing. And the reason for that, we find at the end of the chapter, is that she fears the Lord. She’s a woman whose life is so centered in God . . .

Yes, she’s making provision for her family for practical needs, for domestic needs, for care of her household, but her heart is girded with strength and with dignity. She’s not a woman who every circumstance that comes into her life it mows her down or causes her to “tank” emotionally.

We all have meltdowns, right? Well, I can’t speak for you. I know that there are times when I have a meltdown. When I’m very tired or very pressed or stressed or there’s a lot going on, I just kind of reach the breaking point. The tears flow; I just feel overwhelmed. We all have those days, and I’m sure this woman did, too. (Actually, this probably isn’t one woman—it’s probably a composite picture of the strengths of a biblical and godly woman who fears the Lord.)

But what I love is that because she fears the Lord, she’s got strength. She’s got emotional strength; she’s got relational strength; she’s got dignity. The picture that comes to mind when I’m talking about this woman is Mary of Nazareth at the cross.

The disciples have run away—they’re terrified! But Mary is standing at the cross. Now, there couldn’t be anybody who was hurting more deeply than she was, but she’s not crumpled in a heap on the ground, sobbing uncontrollably (now, I’m supplying a little bit to the text—we don’t know—she probably was crying). But you get the impression that she was a woman of strength and dignity—not because she was strong herself, not because her circumstances were easy. What could be harder than what she was going through, watching this happen to her Son?

But there’s a confidence in the Lord and a confident trust in His sovereignty, in His love, in His wisdom, in His plan. The fact that He’s writing my story can give me in the midst of uncertainty, in a world of uncertainty, confidence.

I think women who don’t really know their God and whose lives are not grounded and rooted in the Word of God and the ways of God are going to be melting down all the time.

But the woman who fears the Lord (not in a sense of cowering fear, but in the sense of reverence and awe and trust—reverential fear of the Lord) . . . It’s not like she doesn’t feel any of this or it doesn’t affect her. It's not like she’s just hard, surface, and nothing touches her.

I don’t think it’s that. I think godly women are touched deeply with what’s happening in this world, with what’s happening in their families. When they’ve got a child who’s a prodigal, they feel this deeply, but it doesn’t control their lives. It doesn’t cause them to run and cower in fear of the circumstances, because they have strong confidence in the Lord.

I’m just kind of maybe filling in some brush strokes of what we see in this woman. Strength and dignity are her clothing. It really doesn’t matter. In this case, it appears she’s a woman of some means (she’s clothed in purple garments and things that would have cost more), but she could be a woman who’s clothed very simply. She could be a woman who only has one outfit, with a family that has just bare minimums, but still she’s clothed with strength and dignity. I’ve known some poor women like that. They didn’t have much of this world’s goods at all, but they were women who were clothed in strength and dignity because of an inner strength they get from knowing the Lord.

And as a result, the second half of that verse: “She laughs at the time to come . . .” Different translations put this differently, but the concept is that, as she faces the future, it’s not something that overwhelms her.

Now, it may be overwhelming. There are a lot of hard things that are going to happen in this world before this is all said and done, but we need to be prepared to be women who fear the Lord, who are clothed in strength and dignity, and who can “smile at the future” (I think one translation says is that way). We know, “He’s got the whole world in His hands.” It’s not up to me to fix it; it’s not up to me to change it; it’s not up to me to solve every problem or fix my kids’ lives or fix my husband’s issues . . . or even fix my own issues.

There’s a trust in the Lord that I’m in His hands—I am in Christ, He is in me, and I can trust Him. I fear Him. I honor Him. I reverence Him, and so I can smile when I think about the unknowns of the future—or the knowns of the future—that could be terrifying for some.

This is what Peter talks about in 1 Peter 3:5, “The holy women of old who hoped in God . . .” This is what made them strong. This is what gave them dignity. This is what made them able to smile at the future. This is how they adorned themselves—by submitting to their own husbands. That’s scary.

Even if you have a godly husband, submitting to him is scary sometimes. Sometimes he’ll make mistakes, and sometimes he won’t see things right. Sometimes we don’t things right, too. But, they hope in God, and that’s why they’re able to submit to their own husbands, “. . . as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord. And you are her children, if you do good and do not fear anything that is frightening” (1 Peter 3:6). I love that! There are a lot of things out there that are frightening . . . just the unknown—that’s frightening!

What’s going to happen to your children and your grandchildren growing up in this world? How are they going to make it? How are they going to survive the attacks against our Christian faith!?

If you stop and let those things be your focus, your fixed point of reference, you will not be a woman of strength and dignity who smiles at the future. You will be a woman who dreads the future, a woman who is perpetually emotionally distraught.

But if you know your God, then you will not have to be afraid of anything that is frightening. I think that’s the kind of woman that’s being described there in Proverbs 31.

I get strengthened—and you will, too—by talking about the things you know are true, even when you don’t feel them to be true, by counseling your heart according to truth.

We are at the end of a recording day here. I am really tired. I had a short night. I had a lot of projects going on—but God energizes my body, soul, and spirit—and He will yours, too. You don’t have to be a Bible teacher to do this. But, just as you stake your claim, take your ground, stand firm on what you to know to be true. . . as you verbalize these things to yourself and to others in the course of conversations throughout the day . . .

My husband is so good at this. Sometimes when I’m feeling fretful or stressed by how much there is to do . . . It’s not that he doesn’t care or that he doesn’t listen or that he minimizes it all. He’s sweet about saying, “I know this is hard.” But he’s really good, too, about reminding me (without being preachy) about what we know is true: “We know that God is faithful. We know that you’re God’s servant, you’re His child, you’re called to serve Him. We know that He’s taken you through this a thousand times before. We know that He’s not going to fail you.”

Sometimes I don’t really want to hear that. But it’s exactly I need to hear! It’s exactly what I need to say to him when he’s discouraged. We remind each other of the promises of God, the faithfulness of God, the covenant-keeping love of God. Then we’re strengthened to walk through whatever it is.

Thank You for these women who are hungry to know You, to hear Your voice, to walk with You. We are together, Lord. We all have things in our lives that make us desperate for You, that make us realize how much we need You. We say “thank you” for those things.

I know that just, even with the number of women in this room, there have got to be some who have some really deep, hurting places—for a lot of different possible reasons. I pray that You would extend the helping, healing hand of Jesus into their hearts, into their home, into their circumstances.

I pray that You would assure them of Your promises, of Your love. I pray, Lord, that we would be women of strength and dignity—women who can smile at the future. I pray we would be women who are not afraid but who stand tall and firm and direct and confident in You—not in ourselves, not proud, but humble; not standing alone, but standing “leaning on the everlasting arms.” I think of that passage in the Song of Solomon that says, “Who is this coming out of the wilderness, leaning upon her beloved?” Well, that’s us. We’re only strong as long as we’re leaning.

Lord, we give You thanks. We honor You. We love You. We bless You. You’re the great God and King—Ruler of the universe—yet you care for us, and we give You thanks. In Jesus’ name, amen.

Now, earlier this year, when I recorded that Q and A time with a group of women, we were living in times that felt extremely uncertain. And since that time, our world has grown even more chaotic and uncertain.

And that’s why, during days like these when so much seems to be shifting under our feet, I’m so thankful for a ministry like Revive Our Hearts where we can gather together and fix our eyes on Christ and focus on those eternal unchanging truths of God’s Word that will ground our hearts in truth and enable us to face the future without fear.

This ministry with its various outreaches of getting women into the Word of God, would not exist without the prayer support and the financial support of women who are benefitting from the ministry . . . listeners like you, who get a lot out of this program and want to be a part of getting this message out to the lives of other women.

So when you donate any amount to Revive Our Hearts today, we’d like to send you a special gift. It’s the 2017 Revive Our Hearts wall calendar. I have to tell you (I know I’m biased perhaps), but this year’s calendar is exceptionally beautiful.

The quotes on the calendar are taken from my new book called Adorned: Living Out the Beauty of the Gospel Together. The book isn’t out yet—it will be out in February—but you can get some sneak preview quotes from the book when you get this calendar.

I think you’ll love the design, but most of all, I think your heart will be encouraged as you read the truth that’s based on God’s Word. So if you’d like to make a gift to deepen and expand the ministry of Revive Our Hearts in these uncertain times, you can give us a call at 1–800–569–5959, or you can make your donation online at ReviveOurHearts.com.

When you send your gift, be sure and ask for a copy of the Adorned calendar. We’ll send one calendar per household for your donation of any amount*.

In the middle of divisive, tumultuous times, such as those that we’re facing today, one thing we can be sure will lift our hearts—that is, to give thanks. As we look ahead to the Thanksgiving celebrations we’ll be having next week, I know that many who are listening to my voice right now find themselves in some fearful, difficult situations.

In fact, I’m facing a difficult situation in my extended family right now. I just don’t know the outcome, but I know that He does. That’s why I want to be lifting up a heart of thanks, even in this challenging time.

Next week, we’re going to talk about the power of offering thanksgiving to the Lord—a sacrifice of thanksgiving—even when it’s hard. So, please be back for Revive Our Hearts.

Revive Our Hearts with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth is an outreach of Life Action Ministries.

All Scripture is paraphrased.

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