A Thirsty Heart

Dannah Gresh: In the 1980s, Nancy Stafford looked like a complete success as a model and actress.

Nancy Stafford: I got a show called St. Elsewhere. I did that for three seasons. Then I guest-starred on every other show in the mid-eighties: Riptide, Remington Steele, Who’s the Boss?, Hunter, all these shows.

Dannah: But Nancy discovered this success didn’t satisfy.

Nancy: I still didn’t feel good about myself. 

This is the Revive Our Hearts podcast with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, co-author of Seeking Him, for May 26, 2023. I’m Dannah Gresh.

As we prepare programs for Revive Our Hearts, we aim to make them timeless. I pray you’ll discover that about today’s program. It’s one of the early programs Nancy recorded for Revive Our Hearts. But the truth Nancy talks about never goes out of style. See if you agree. Here’s Nancy in the classic series, “Satisfying Our Thirst.”

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: Everyone has a thirsty heart. It's not only true that the song says that, but it is true in life. We all have a thirsty heart. It's true that we are all thirsty. The problem is that we have tried to satisfy our thirst in all the wrong places. The thirst is not wrong, the thirst is God-created. God made us thirsty so we would be thirsty for Him. The problem is that when we try to satisfy our thirst in people or things or places apart from God. God has so designed the universe that anytime we try to satisfy our thirst anywhere other than Him we will be disappointed. That's what we're going to look at this week.

Now in the Book of Jeremiah chapter 2, verse 13 God says that His people Israel have committed two evils. These two evils, these two great sins, really summarize not only the sins of the Israelites in their day, but I believe they summarize our sins today.

God said to His people, "You've committed two great evils. First of all, my people have forsaken Me. I am the fountain of living waters, and they have forsaken me." God has said, "I made My people and I wanted to satisfy them with Myself. I wanted to meet their needs. I am the source of their supply, of everything they need, but they've turned their back on Me."

They've said, "God isn't enough. God can't satisfy. What He gives us isn't enough. We need something more."

God says, "This is a great evil, to forsake God, to forget that He is the fountain of living waters." But God says, "My people have committed another great evil. Not only have they forsaken me, but they have settled for substitutes. They have hewn for themselves cisterns, but they're broken cisterns. They're cracked pots and they cannot hold water."

What is God saying? "Not only have My people refused to let Me meet their needs, but they've turned to other places and things and people to meet their needs."

You know what the Bible calls that? Idolatry. Idolatry! You say, "We're not idol worshippers. We don't make creatures and bow down to them."

But God says, "This is the essence of idolatry, looking to something or someone other than God Himself to meet the deepest needs of our heart." God says, "This isn't just a little problem. This isn't just a weakness you have." God says, "This is a great evil."

It's been a very important thing in my own life for me to come to identify. When I look at people or things or experiences other than God to satisfy the deepest longings and thirsts of my heart, I actually become an idolater. And this is a great evil that needs to be repented of in my own life.

Now we saw that the woman at the well had a thirst at three levels. She had a physical thirst, she had an emotional thirst, and she had a spiritual thirst. And we said that we have thirsts at the same three levels. Let us look briefly at how the woman at Samaria, the woman at the well, tried to meet her thirst in each of these three levels. How did she seek fulfillment in each of these levels of thirsts? We want to also look today at how we seek to find fulfillment in each of these levels.

Now first the physical thirst is obvious. The woman came to the well looking for water because there was a physical need, a physical thirst. And you and I have physical needs and longings and we try to get those needs met through physical things. It may be food, water, creature comforts, our surroundings. We have this self-protective instinct that says, "I'm going to get my needs met. And if they are physical needs, I'll find a way to get my physical needs met."

Now we saw that the woman had secondly an emotional thirst. How had this woman tried to satisfy her emotional thirst? What did she do? What did she look to, to satisfy her emotional thirst? She looked to men and marriage and relationships, one after the other. When one didn't satisfy, can't you imagine that she was just hoping and longing that maybe the next one would be the right one? What do we do as women? We are particularly prone to try and satisfy our emotional thirsts through relationships. How many of you before you were married thought that when you were married your emotional longings would be satisfied? Can I see some hands? Many hands in here.

Now, how long were you married before you discovered that that man as wonderful as he was could not satisfy your deep emotional longings? I mean, we women can't understand ourselves. I don't know how we can think men can understand us. So you'd been married a day or maybe a week before you discovered until you discovered this man couldn't meet your emotional longings and needs. So the day came when you were feeling a little disappointed with how marriage had not completely satisfied you and you thought, I know what we'll do, let's have a baby. That baby will satisfy my emotional longings and thirsts.

And you held that precious little baby in your arms and you said, "Now I will get my thirsts satisfied"—until that baby began to wail and you realized that that baby had no intent of satisfying your thirsts. That baby was thirsty. That baby came into the world thinking that you were there to satisfy its thirst.

So that baby didn't satisfy. And you said, "I know what we'll do, we'll have another baby. This one will be different." Well, you discovered sooner or later that children as precious as they are, as much as they are a gift from God, are selfish and that they cannot satisfy the deepest longings of your heart.

So you said, "Let's have grandchildren." They, I am told, are really wonderful. Some of you would be happy to show us some pictures of those precious grandchildren. But there comes that time that you would like to send them back to where they came from. And you realize that even those precious grandchildren cannot satisfy the deepest emotional needs and longings of your heart.

But isn't it like us to keep trying to find satisfaction in relationships. This is one of the major areas of idolatry in my own life. God has shown me in recent years that I have looked to people, friendships, companionships to meet emotional needs in my life. Emotional needs that people cannot meet, that only God can meet.

When I begin to look to a man, a woman, an adult, a parent, a child, a friend to meet the deepest needs of my heart, to meet my emotional thirst, I become an idolater. I have forsaken God, the Fountain of Living Waters, who wants to be to me my great need meeter. I've instead made for myself this cracked pot, to try and hold water, to try and satisfy my thirst. But it doesn't satisfy. Everything in this world leaks. It's all broken, and none of it can deeply satisfy.

 

Now we seek satisfaction for our emotional thirsts, not just through relationships but in some other ways. One way I have often tried to get my own thirsts satisfied is through acceptance. We look for our emotional needs to be met through social status, through activities, through busyness, through noise.

Some of us walk into the house; we turn on the television, we jump in the car; we turn on the radio. We're trying to fill the empty places of our hearts. Some of us do it through, well in fact, I hardly know a woman who doesn't use these twin idols at times, shopping and food. Anyone ever found yourself using shopping or food to satisfy thirsts that are emotional? Eating not because we are hungry physically, but because we have a longing inside that we're trying to fill.

Women have shared with me how romance novels have become for them a well that they run to to try and get their emotional thirsts satisfied. Why is that? It's because there is no man in real life who is this great, strong, velvet-covered, rock of Gibraltar. So where do we look to find that kind of man? So many women escape from the real world of real people, real marriage, real children and they run to this escape world, this dream world of soap operas, trying to fill the emptiness, trying to mask the pain and the longing that we all feel—medicating the pain, anesthetizing the hurt. Some of us are doing that even with medication, some psychotropic drugs, trying to escape the emptiness and the pain.

Women have written notes to me like this one, "I'm thirsty; I've been filling my loneliness with friends, TV and shopping."
Another says, "I've looked for satisfaction in my career rather than fulfillment in Jesus."
Another woman says, "I'm filling my heart with business and noise."
This woman says, "I've been looking to my husband to meet all my need."
And this woman said, "I've been looking to the wrong wells for love and approval. God showed me," she said, "that I often looked to my mom for approval of my parenting. As a result when she is around, I am much harder on my six-year-old son."

Trying to get our emotional thirsts satisfied.

Now in terms of our spiritual thirsts, we perhaps may find ourselves doing what the woman at the well did. How did she try to find fulfillment? Through religion, hrough religious experiences, through religious rituals, through spiritual leaders. Don't we often turn to conferences and books and seminars and radio programs, counselors, trying to fill the empty places of our hearts?

The fact is, everything and everyone that we turn to, other than God Himself is inadequate to meet the deepest needs and longings of our hearts because God has put eternity in our hearts. Jesus said, "Whoever drinks this water, this water out of these broken cisterns, will thirst again." You have to keep coming back for more because it never fully satisfies.

All these things are temporal. They are fleeting; they are fading. They change. They can be taken away. They will all disappoint.

We want to look at God's provision, the Fountain of Living Waters where we can find the water that truly lasts and satisfies. I think it is important that we start by acknowledging where we have looked to things and people other than God to satisfy the deepest needs and longings of our hearts.

Do you have an idol? Is there a well that you've been looking to other than God to fill the deepest needs and longings of your heart? What do you run to? Where do you try to find refuge? Where do you try to find comfort? Where do you try to find fullness? God says that it is is a great evil that we would run to anything or anyone other them Him. So how do you get free? The starting place is repentance, agreeing with God. I have looked for things and people other than God to satisfy the thirsts of my heart and now I repent. I return to Him, the Fountain of Living Waters.

Dannah: That’s Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth in a timeless message, first aired on Revive Our Hearts in 2002.

That question—what idols tempt your heart?—is just as relevant in 2023 as it was when Nancy recorded. Today Nancy pointed out that nothing satisfies except Jesus, including outward success. We’re about to hear from a woman who knows that first hand.

In 1976, Nancy Stafford was Miss Florida in the Miss America pageant. She’s since starred in television programs and TV movies. But inwardly, she was just like the woman at the well, looking for satisfaction in the wrong places.

Let’s join the two Nancys—DeMoss Wolgemuth and Stafford.

Nancy Stafford: We grew up in a wonderful, loving Christian home. I remember at eight years old I had this tender relationship with the Lord. I remember at eight years old sitting in church singing hymns and feeling this sort of warm blanket of God’s love descend. I would weep in the presence of the Lord and just love to be with Him.

But even though I had this tender and intimate relationship with the Lord, I had a lot of insecurities in my life. I think it started for me because I was physically rejected and ridiculed. I was this gangly, gawky, unattractive kid, and I was teased an awful lot. 

It started with a particular incident when I was five years old, in a ballet class. This was a place that I just succeeded and I loved, and I was totally non-self-conscious. I would go there expressing myself. And one day, the teacher turned to the mothers in the back and said, “The girls are doing beautifully, except for that little Stafford girl. She’s the most clumsy, awkward child I’ve ever seen.”

Nancy: And you heard this.

Nancy Stafford: I heard it, and it devastated me. That was the day I think a lie lodged in my little heart that said, “You’re ugly, you’re clumsy, who do you think you are? You don’t have any value and worth. Nobody wants you.”

So by the time I got into high school, I was even having problems at church. I felt like even the folks in church, who should be understanding me and accepting me for who I was, told me that I wasn’t really quite enough. It hurt my feelings, and I didn't know how to talk to anyone about it.

So when I went off to college I thought, It's just me and God. I can do this by myself. I don't need church. I don't need people. I don't need this hypocrisy thing. Unfortunately, like too many kids, I couldn't do it by myself.

I went five hundred miles away to the University of Florida. Little by little, my relationship with the Lord eroded. The tough part for me was, I was a good kid. I always wanted to do what was right, in my heart.

Nancy: And did you stay a “good kid?”

Nancy Stafford: For the first few years of college, I did.

Nancy: So outwardly, you’re doing all the right things, but really, you’re far from the Lord.

Nancy Stafford: All the right things but still feeling very insecure, still battling a lot of insecurities. This whole time, though, on the outside, I started to blossom.

Nancy: So people would not have known what was going on in the inside.

Nancy Stafford: No, it was very well concealed and very shrouded as most of our feelings are.

I ended up finishing college, graduated, and the boys started talking to me. I was popular by that point. I got involved in the Miss America pageant, then I started getting drafted into doing commercials and modeling, irony of ironies.

Nancy: So by this time, this gangly, gawky girl had matured. Were you still feeling ugly?

Nancy Stafford: Inside. My self-perception was still that gangly, gawky girl. I didn’t think I was ugly so much, but I didn’t think I had very much to offer. I didn’t think I was very valuable. And it played out, also, in how I conducted my relationships.

I found that I would go from boyfriend to boyfriend to boyfriend looking for somebody to make me feel valuable and make me feel worthwhile.

Nancy: . . . looking for acceptance.

Nancy Stafford: Yes. So when I got drafted, sort of, by an agent, to do some modeling and some commercials, I thought, This is great! 

I was still a kind, good, and moral person, but I started finding love everywhere I could. I was not promiscuous, but I would grab onto and stay in relationships that were not good, not healthy, simply because, “This person loves me. This person wants to be with me. This makes me feel good for a little while.”

So I started doing all these commercials and modeling. I was very successful. I moved to New York to pursue acting . . . to see if I could do that next thing called acting. I was there for about six months. Then I got a phone call from Ilene Ford, who asked me to come and join her agency to do modeling.

My very first audition in the acting world was for a soap opera, which I got. I did one-hundred-and-fifty national commercials in two-and-a-half years, tons and tons of print work. I was at the top of my game.

Nancy: Were you fulfilled?

Nancy Stafford: No, I still didn’t feel good about myself. 

Then began a series of events that began to shatter my world. I began to hunger after a spiritual life again, but, to tell you the truth, I didn't want Christianity. I thought, Been there. Done that. There were these hypocritical things that had happened in the church. I didn't want that. People in church were supposed to be like God, and these people aren't. So I began a search, a spiritual search.

I'm a student. I'm a voracious reader. I began a search that brought me through Buddism, Hinduism, Rosicrucianism, Theosophy and metaphysics and the whole New Age gamut. I studied for years. I found it fascinating. I found it intellectual stimulating.

I have to say, I had no peace in my life. I had no joy. I found that it did not change the way I lived my life in any way. It didn't change the way I treated other people. It certainly didn't change the way I felt about myself. I still didn't think I was worth very much on the inside.

But this whole time, God kept blessing my career. I got a show called St. Elsewhere. I did that for three seasons. Then I guest-starred on every other show in the mid-eighties: Riptide, Remington Steele, Who’s the Boss?, Hunter, all these shows, and I’m on my eclectic search.

I’ve got my Bible on my nightstand every night. I’m reading it, right there next to the Koran, and the Baka Bakhita, and the Course in Miracles. I’m mixing it up.

Nancy: And did you think you were finding truth?

Nancy Stafford: I did. I thought I was seriously finding truth. I’m mixing it up. I’m on this eclectic spiritual search. I was booked to do a show called Magnum P.I., with Tom Selleck. I was heading off to Honolulu. I stopped by my mailbox on my way to the airport, and a book—this book that I’d seen on television, that looked fascinating to me—had arrived in my mailbox. I’d ordered it.

The book was called The Power for Living.

Nancy: And here’s where I need to insert something. I do want to hear the end of your story. But this book is the book that was produced, first, back in the mid-eighties, by our family, the DeMoss family, after my dad went to be with the Lord back in the late seventies.

He left most of his income designated to be used for reaching people for Christ. He gave direction for that and what was to be done with it. One of the things my dad, my mother, and our family did was to develop this book called The Power for Living.

Nancy Stafford: Little did I know, God had made an appointment with me through your precious family's book. I began to read this book. 

Story by story, maybe one-page stories, it’s people’s encounters with God, people’s testimonies of coming to faith in Christ. And they were people I could relate to—politicians, famous people, people who I thought, Well, these people are cool, these are my peers. I’m in the industry. I can relate to these people. This isn’t just somebody whose life I can’t relate to.

And the amazing thing, Nancy, that’s about to happen . . . from the moment I open that small book, I feel like the Holy Spirit entered that room with me. For three days I had an encounter with God like I’ve never experienced to this day. Because as I read the stories of these people’s encounters with God, a pain that I didn’t even know I had started to well up in the deepest place of me.

It was a physical pain. I felt like I was going to die, because they were describing the thing I so desperately wanted . . . and needed. I began to see my life, for the first time in years, as it really was. Though it looked to everybody else that I had it all, suddenly, even the way I’d deceived myself became clear, and I saw how absolutely destitute I was.

I began to cry out to God and say, “Lord, I thought I knew You. I thought I was on a track to You. I read these people’s stories, and I realize I don’t know You at all. I used to know You. Show me who I am, show me who You are. Help me find You.” As I cried out to Him, He began to answer me.

He began to show me three things in those three days. First of all, He showed me what He thought of me, how much He loved me.

Nancy: In spite of the fact . . .

Nancy Stafford: Yes. In spite of the fact I was living a very ugly life. I was living with a guy. I was living with my rich producer boyfriend. I was a party girl. My language was not great. I was not living any kind of godly life at all.

But He whispered to the deep place of my heart, “I love you. You’re mine. You’re beautiful to me. I’ve done all this just to draw you back home to me.” I felt His broken heart for me. I think that’s what the physical sensation was, this ache, this thing that almost caused me to call paramedics.

I was having the privilege of feeling His broken heart for His lost ones. I was a serious prodigal, and He was coming after me. I’d never thought about God’s heart breaking for us, only about our hearts breaking, needing Him, but not His heart breaking over us.

It rocked me, it blew my mind that He cared that much.

Then, the second thing He showed me was who He was as my Father. He was not some distant, cosmic universal God, like I’d come to believe in the New Age. But He is my infinite Abba, Daddy, and He just wanted me to crawl up on His lap. I didn’t have to cleaned up first.

Nancy: You didn’t have to perform to earn His love. That’s grace isn’t it? That’s what grace is?

Nancy Stafford: I could come to Him just as I was. And then I just fell on my face, sobbing, because of grief. I think I cried for days. Grief and repentance, and then, what was amazing is, the third day He flooded me with peace and joy . . . those very things that had been missing in my other search for Him. After all those years, the peace and the joy of the Lord came.

Nancy: It was really a search for Him that couldn’t be satisfied with anything less than Him.

Nancy Stafford: No, until I ran smack into His lap. I felt like the prodigal kid. I felt like I had grabbed His sleeve, and now I wasn’t going to let Him go. I was rushing home again.

Nancy: And, of course, what was that prodigal’s dad doing? He was hugging. He wasn’t going to let go, either.

Nancy Stafford: He was running toward me as hard and as fast as I was running toward to Him, and that is the marvel of our God.

Nancy: And of the gospel. It’s for sinners.

Dannah: I hope you'll remember Nancy Stafford’s story if you’re ever tempted to seek out the limelight. Even if we don’t aspire to be a model or actor, we all can identify with the craving for attention and recognition. That conversation took place before social media was really a thing, but today we can think thoughts like, If only my YouTube channel would blow up, or If only I could become a social media influencer.

Nancy Stafford and Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth have both discovered that only Jesus can satisfy. I’ve discovered that too, and I hope you are basing your whole life on it.

Nancy: You know, Dannah, here at Revive Our Hearts we often talk about “freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.” If you think about it, we’ll never have freedom in Christ, we’ll never have fullness, we’ll never have fruitfulness in Christ if we’re not satisfied with Christ. 

 

That’s a message we want to put on “loop” and say it over and over. Jesus is the only One who can give us that satisfaction we’re all thirsty for. 

Before we wrap up, I’d like to quickly thank the sponsors of today’s program. That’s anyone who supports Revive Our Hearts with their prayers or their donations. In response to your prayers the Lord sustains us on a daily basis. And your financial giving helps us continue to bring you the message of satisfaction in Jesus as we call women to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Him. So, thank you, we could not be more grateful!

Now, we are almost to the end of May. Our prayer, our desire has been to see God provide a significant amount of funding as we close up our fiscal year. If you’ve already given to help with that goal, thanks so much. You’ll find up-to-date information on the progress at ReviveOurHearts.com.

If you’ve been thinking about giving, now is the time to do that to have it count toward our May goal. We’re so grateful for whatever amount you decide to give as the Lord puts it on your heart. 

In fact, we’ll say “thank you” by sending you a copy of the book our team has produced called, (Un)remarkable: Ten Ordinary Women Who Impacted Their World for Christ, Volume 1. And along with that book, we’ll send you instructions on how you can receive a digital copy of (Un)remarkable, Volume 2. This book is so hot off the press it’s not even off the press yet! But you’ll be able to read an advance digital version of volume 2 of (Un)remarkable. Again, that’s just a small way for us to thank you for your support as we finish up our fiscal year.

To make a donation, simply visit ReviveOurHearts.com and click where you see “donate.” If you wish you can call us at 1-800-569-5959. Ask about (Un)remarkable volumes 1 and 2 when you call. Thank you so much for being a part of what God is doing in and through this ministry.

Dannah: Next week we’ll talk more about the ways we look for satisfaction other than Christ. Nancy will be here Monday to continue in the series “Satisfying Our Thirst.” Please be back for Revive Our Hearts.

Revive Our Hearts with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth is calling you to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.

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