Not How-To but Why

Dannah Gresh: According to Kristen Wetherell, it’s easy to take our Bibles for granted.

Kristen Wetherell: I think we forget what a privilege the Word is because it’s ubiquitous, it’s everywhere. And the reality of this was not true for Christians centuries ago. And that is not the case for my brothers and sisters in persecuted countries.

Dannah: This is the Revive Our Hearts podcast with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, author of A Place of Quiet Rest, for January 24, 2025. I’m Dannah Gresh.

Here’s Nancy.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: Yesterday on this program, I put on my “accountability partner” hat to ask you how you’re doing in your devotional time with the Lord.

Today, I’d like to press that a little further and ask, “When it comes to faithfully spending time with the Lord in prayer and in His Word, how are things in your heart? What are your motives?” Are you doing it just to check off a box that says, “I’ve had my devotions”? Or are you doing it to draw closer to the Lord? 

That’s one of the things that Dannah Gresh and Kristen Wetherell are talking about today. Kristen has written a really practical book called Help for the Hungry Soul: Eight Encouragements to Grow Your Appetite for God's Word.

I know I want to grow my appetite for God’s Word, and I hope you do, too. So, let’s listen together. 

Dannah: Alright, Kristen. I have to laugh, because people think we’re in these amazing Revive Our Hearts studios. Revive Our Hearts does have some amazing studios in Michigan, but right now I’m at home in Pennsylvania, and you’re at home. What state do you live in?

Kristen: Illinois.

Dannah: Okay. Let’s reveal the specific locations in which we are recording. You first, please, please.

Kristen: (laughter) Well, okay. If you were to look on the screen, you would see a gym bag behind me. I’m pretty sure those are dirty jeans, and a row of my husband’s work clothes. I am in my walk-in closet right now.

Dannah: (laughter.) And I might say, the acoustics are phenomenal in that walk-in closet.

Kristen: Excellent. I love this walk-in closet for that reason. Where are you?

Dannah: I am in Baby Gap. Well, it used to be Baby Gap. We rent an old space in the mall across from our ministry studios—the ministry studios of True Girl, which is the partner ministry of Revive Our Hearts that I head up. This space became available, but it is also a warehouse where we ship out all of our books and everything.

So, behind me is a shelf full of equipment for guys. I think they’re for guys, because I don’t know the names of any of those cords and boxes. And in front of me are road cases from the True Girl tour.

My point is this: man, we get these ideas in our heads of what something should look like, or what something does look like, and so many times it’s far from reality. I feel like I have had times in my life where I thought my quiet time with Jesus should come with a candle, soft music in the background, and absolutely no interruptions from children or husband. That has hardly ever played out in reality. What about your life?

Kristen: Oh, same. Yes, the ideal is exactly that . . . it’s ideal. Therefore, it very rarely happens that way. Right? And yet, I think a lot of us do throw up our hands when the ideal doesn’t happen. Or, we push through, but with a sense of nagging guilt that something about it just isn’t enough, or it just wasn’t right or the way that God would want it to be.

So, I think it’s important that we confront some of these feelings of guilt and discouragement and dig a little bit.

Dannah: What does quiet time with God really look like? How quiet is it?

Kristen: (laughter) Yes. Let me give you a little taste of our morning.

My quiet time with the Lord this morning started with me sleeping a few minutes past what I wanted to—whoops. And then going downstairs, taking a few minutes too long probably to wake up, needing the caffeine. And then when I finally started, I said a prayer for the Lord to help me, and started reading my Bible. Then the first child is on the stairs needing the bathroom break. Then you take them, and thankfully, my husband and I switch off. But then the second child’s up.

So, it’s a not so quiet time. Other times, I look at my husband Brad and say, “I need quiet. I need to read my Bible by myself.” Yes! So I’m not saying, “We should not pursue this.” Even Jesus stole away from His disciples and from the crowds to be alone with His Father to pray. This is good. We should desire to be alone with the Lord. We should desire times like that.

And yet, God’s command to treasure up His Word in our hearts and to hold fast to it, it doesn’t come with prescriptions. He doesn’t say, “And this is what it must look like: you must read your Bible for thirty minutes and then consult commentaries and refill your coffee with the Romans Scripture on the mug, and have worship music in the background.” It doesn’t say that.

And so, a lot of our guilt, I would venture to say, is false guilt, because what God wants from us is our hearts. If coming to the Word this morning to be with Jesus involves some sweet little kiddos coming down the stairs, then so be it. I will be with Jesus, and hopefully they will catch me in the act of being with Jesus and want it, too.

Dannah: Yes, I love that! I frequently talk about Susannah Wesley and how she spent time with Jesus. You know that? Right?

Kristen: I do, it’s the best! Tell the story. It’s great.

Dannah: Well, she was known . . . Do you know how many children she had?

Kristen: I don’t know. It was a lot.

Dannah: Nineteen children.

Kristen: Wow!

Dannah: And so, she didn’t have quiet time. (laughter)

Kristen: No.

Dannah: But she was known to throw her apron over her head, and that was a sign the children respected. They knew, “She’s with Jesus. When that apron is over Mom’s head, we let her alone because she’s with Jesus.”

Kristen: You know, I forgot about that. I’m going to take that with me today. Tomorrow morning . . . the apron.

Dannah: You’re going to need an apron. Do you own an apron?

Kristen: I do.

Dannah: Oh, good.

Kristen: I have one somewhere. (laughter)

Dannah: So, we need to throw out the ideal. We really do. What are some ways that you experience quiet time with Jesus, and you’re meditating on His Word, and you’re growing in your understanding of who He is, but it’s less than ideal. What does that look like in your life?

Kristen: It may seem less than ideal in terms of this picturesque idea of quiet time, but it’s so much better than that. So the first thing that comes to my mind is the corporate worship gathering on Sunday mornings, or maybe for you it’s Saturday night or Friday night.

The time when we gather with our brothers and sisters in Christ to be fed by the Word of God and to receive the Word being read and sung and preached, man, that’s a feast for our hungry souls.

Dannah: It is.

Kristen: To receive the Word in that way. 

And then I also think, Dannah, about my mom’s life group at church. We meet mid-week, and we talk about the sermon. We get to open our Bibles and look at the passage again, which is meditation. We’re revisiting it. We’re thinking about it together and then asking God to help us apply it to our lives. How is He calling me to be different, to change, in light of who Jesus is?

So I think about those two things, and then I also think about being creative wherever you are. Can you listen to the Bible on your way to work? Can you turn it on through an audio Bible? Can you listen to it or read it with your kids? That matters. You’re not just laying a table before them. You’re feeding yourself.

Dannah: All of the things you’re talking about are sort of communal. So how does opening God’s Word together impact our appetites? I guess, partly why I’m asking is because I feel like more and more people are saying, “I can just do my faith on my own. I don’t need to go to gather with other believers. I walk with God on Sunday mornings in the woods, and that works for me.” What would you say to that? Why does it matter that we open God’s Word together?

Kristen: Oh, I’m so glad that you’ve asked that question because I agree. There is an alarming trend with private church, private walk with Jesus. 

Dannah: Right.

Kristen: And, again, it’s good. We want to walk with Jesus on our own, but when we consider what this entire Book is . . . So what is the Bible? It is, overarchingly, God’s Word addressed to God’s gathered people.

When Moses gives the law, who does he give it to? He gives it to God’s people, the Israelites.

When the prophets bring the warnings and the promises of God, who do they bring it to? They bring it to God’s people.

Even the New Testament, these are historical accounts of the life of Jesus, of the advent of the early Church, and letters to the Church in order to do what? Build up the Church. These are letters and books for the Church.

And so, when we think about what the Bible actually is, we could say very rightly that it is for individuals. It is for me. It is for you. But it is for God’s people. It is for the Church. When we look at it that way, we realize what a gift it is to meet together as a Body of Christ.

I think something happens . . . I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced this, Dannah, but something happens when you’re in a worship service, for example, or in a small group, or even just in conversation with other believers. You realize, “Oh, yes, you believe this, too. This isn’t just me. This isn’t just in my head or in my heart. You believe this. You’re staking your whole life and eternity on these words.” And that is so encouraging, and that will strengthen your faith.

Dannah: Yes!

I was talking to a twenty-something year-old woman on staff at Revive Our Hearts just last week. We just gathered, and we were talking about marriage and the roles of man and wife in marriage according to the Scripture and the importance of marriage and how God defines marriage. 

And she just said, “I feel like you just gave me my brain back. I feel like I’m not crazy because no one else in my age group, except for when I gather here, believes what we’re talking about.” It’s so life-giving to hear, “I’m not alone in what I believe about Jesus and His purposes for this world.”

We’ve got to do it together.

Kristen: That’s right. There are times when we need other people to hold us up. We feel like Moses, and we need others to hold our arms up because our faith is struggling, and we are in a dry season. We might be suffering. We need other believers to come alongside of us and to pray for us and to tell us what’s true and to tell us to keep going.

I have been there so many times, and it’s such a beautiful gift. It’s Jesus, through His hands and feet, ministering to us. It is a precious thing.

Dannah: Yes. One of my husband’s favorite verses (he says it all the time) is from Hebrews 10. It says, “Let’s consider how to stir one another up to love and good works” (v. 24).

Stirring one another up. We have to stir each other up because we get stilled, and we stop having that life-giving movement in our spirit that we get when we’re together. I think the next passage, the next verse says not to “neglect meeting together as some are in the habit of doing” (v. 25).

Kristen: That’s right.

Dannah: And so, it’s when we come together in that communal place, that love of Christ is stirred up, and our desire to look out at one another and the world to do good gets fed. We’ve got to do it.

Kristen: That’s right.

Dannah: So back to the Word, creative ways . . . We were talking about how you have quiet time in a realistic way, and you were listing some of the communal ways. What about some of your quiet personal ways?

Kristen: Well, again, this is not prescriptive, because it could look different for everyone, but I’m happy to just share what I do.

Dannah: Yes.

Kristen: I have found with my walk with Christ over the years that to be so helpful, for someone else to just say, “This is what I’m doing,” or “This is what I’ve done.”

So, right now, what it looks like for us is, we are morning people, which helps us to read our Bibles in the morning rather than some other time of day. We get up before the kids do. I’m working through the ESV Daily Reader’s Bible, and it’s been wonderful. I’ve used a reading plan over the past several years. It’s had me kind of all over the Bible, and this one just has me walking through the Bible from start to finish.

So I read 2–3 chapters, and then I ask myself, or I ask the Lord, “What are You wanting to affect my heart right now? What stands out to me? What is striking?”

I also ask, “What questions do I have?” Because it doesn’t always make sense.

I just take five or ten minutes, and I have a little space in the Bible, and I just write down repeated words or themes that I think are there, or attributes of God that I’m noticing, or human response—that’s always an interesting thing—how is this person responding to the Word of God.

Then, I just take a verse or even a phrase from a verse that the Lord is really pressing on my heart to take with me throughout the day. And that’s what I use for application. And then, I just try and use Scripture to pray whatever I’m looking at. If it’s more of a historical account and I need a little additional verbiage, I’ll turn to a psalm.

I’ll just use the Psalms to help me pray because, I imagine this is with a lot of listeners, too, but I can pray the same prayers, which is fine, but I often need a little help, a little kindling for the fire. So, the psalms help me do that. They just give voice to my own heart and my own thoughts and what the Lord is teaching me.

And that’s about it. I mean, the whole thing probably takes fifteen minutes, maybe twenty minutes, then I’m on to thinking about the day. So, that’s one gal’s quiet time in the morning. It doesn’t have to look like that, but it might.

Dannah: Yes. Right. Everybody’s is going to look a little bit different. The point is that we come. The point is that we come.

I realize that you have written this wonderful book about our hunger that we have for the Word, and sometimes lack of hunger. It’s called Help for the Hungry Soul: Eight Encouragements to Grow Your Appetite for God's Word.” It’s not a how-to Bible reading book, but it’s a why, why we read the Bible. What’s the difference?

Kristen: I think a lot of us who would call ourselves Christians, who have been around the church for a long time, those of us who might even receive very wonderful Bible preaching week in and week out, would say, “I know a lot of the how-tos. I’ve read a lot of these books, and that’s not really my problem. My problem is that I don’t really want to do any of these things. I don’t really want to open my Bible.”

And perhaps, “I am doing it. It’s a habit. It’s a routine, but it feels like going through the motions.”

Or, confession, “I haven’t been doing it because I don’t really want to, and other things just feel more satisfying in the moment.”

So this book is for the person who wants to examine their heart and wants to get to the heart of the lack of appetite and search a little bit and dig a little bit and look at the Word for what God says about His Word and how we can grow an appetite for it.

Dannah: You have referenced, between today and yesterday, some of those eight things that we could do. You’ve talked about pleading for a holy hunger. Yesterday, you said we’ve got to ask God for it. That’s where we have to start. We’re not going to have a hunger for it.

We talked a little bit yesterday about, “Don’t miss Jesus.” If when you’re reading the Word you’re not looking for Jesus on those pages, you’re not going to find what you’re supposed to be looking for.

You talked just a few moments ago about feasting with your church. I love how you said that–feasting. It’s a feast when you’re all together there.

You mentioned feeding yourself creatively.

What’s one other of these eight ways that you’d like to maybe encourage us with today?

Kristen: Sure. One other one is remember what a privilege it is to have a Bible. In the chapter, I think I talk about the three R’s. The first “R” being the privilege of revelation, the fact that God is speaking to me. He’s speaking to a human being, that He has condescended in that way to put words on a page so that I would know Him and walk with Him and then live with Him forever. What a privilege that is.

I think sometimes we forget what is this Book–and it can seem like a book or something that we just have to do or should do–but it’s a privilege to hear from the Lord.

The second “R” is the privilege of resources. I think we forget what a privilege the Word is because it’s ubiquitous, it’s everywhere. You can open your hotel’s nightstand and find a Bible. 

Dannah: Yes.

Kristen: And the reality is, this was not true for Christians centuries ago. Before the printing press was invented, the Word of God was communicated orally. And then even after the printing press was invented, a Bible was expensive because they could not produce as many copies as we can today and the materials cost more. So having a Bible in a family home was a rarity.

The fact that we can go online and look up resources upon resources to study the Bible, that’s unheard of before now. So I think we forget what a privilege it is because it’s everywhere.

Dannah: Yes.

Kristen: And it also makes me think about the privilege of religious freedom. I can read my Bible. I can go to church and worship with my church family.

Dannah: Oh, yes, praise the Lord.

Kristen: And that is not the case for my brothers and sisters in persecuted countries where the only option to gather is underground, and Bibles have been confiscated. (The internet is pretty amazing for that reason. Right? Praise God for the internet.) But it’s such a privilege to have the freedom to read God’s Word and to enjoy it.

And I think remembering these privileges will give us proper perspective.

Dannah: I would love to end our time today by exercising that privilege. Is there a passage of Scripture that has been truly meaningful to you in terms of stirring up your appetite that maybe you could read over us as we finish today?

Kristen: I would love that, yes. Let me find it.

It’s Isaiah (sounds of pages turning)

Dannah: I love that sound of those pages turning in the acoustics of your closet. (laughter)

Kristen: Okay. So this is Isaiah 50, verse 4: 

The Lord GOD has given me
   the tongue of those who are taught
that I may know how to sustain with a word
   him who is weary.
Morning by morning he awakens;
   he awakens my ear
   to hear as those who are taught. (ESV)

I love that verse because it reminds me that I cannot pour out a thing for others if the Lord has not first poured into me. It gives me a desire to pray that verse and to say, “Lord, would You do that? Would You, morning by morning, awaken me—not only physically, I need that, too—but awaken my heart to come to Your Word and to hear, and then be a sustainer of others, whether it’s my husband or my children or my coworkers or my neighbors.” Being able to pour out what God has first poured into me. That verse is such a treasure to me.

Dannah: You say that you often pray that Scripture. That makes me want to ask you if you could pray it over us?

Kristen: I would love to. I’m going to turn those pages again and get back to it here.

Lord God, You are the Lord. You are God . . . we are not. We are Your people, the sheep of Your pasture. Who are we, Lord, that You are mindful of us, that You care for us? Who are we, Lord, that You would speak to us. We are blessed.

And so, Lord God, would You give us the tongue of those who are taught? Would You awaken us morning by morning? Would You awaken our ears to hear as those who are taught—humble in heart and willing to receive from You?

And then, God, I pray that as we are taught, Your Holy Spirit would give us the strength to sustain with Your Word those who are weary around us. Help us to see those divine appointments. Make us Your heralds, the heralds of the good news about Jesus. And, God, when we are weary, keep us coming back, keep us hungering, keep feeding us, Lord. We love You. In Jesus’ name, amen.

Nancy: We’ve been listening to Kristen Wetherell, talking to the cohost of Revive Our Hearts, Dannah Gresh.

Whether you’re in the beginning stages of establishing the habit of a daily devotional time with Jesus, or you’ve been at it for a long time, I know you’ll be encouraged by Kristen’s book Help for the Hungry Soul: Eight Encouragements to Grow Your Appetite for God's Word.

Let me tell you: I’ve met with the Lord regularly for many years, but I can still get in ruts. I still need encouragement from time to time. 

We’d love to send you Kristen’s book. It’s our way of thanking you for your donation to help support the ongoing ministry of Revive Our Hearts. Be sure to request it when you give at ReviveOurHearts.com. Or, ask about it when you call 1-800-569-5959. 

Dannah: Now Monday, Nancy, we’re going to hear a message you gave at a Revive Our Hearts conference in South Africa. I think it will resonate in all our hearts, as Nancy talks about how we can prepare the way for revival. I hope you’ll join us next week here on Revive Our Hearts.

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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