Saying “Yes, Lord” to the Seemingly Impossible

Dannah Gresh: Early on, Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth recognized this: She needed to lean on God, not her natural abilities. 

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: I asked the Lord, “Don’t ever let me get to the place in ministry where I feel like I can do this without You.” And that is one prayer God has been very faithful to answer. He keeps me sensing I can’t do this if God doesn’t come through.

Dannah: We’re celebrating our twentieth anniversary week here on the Revive Our Hearts broadcast with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth. It’s Tuesday, August 31, 2021. I’m Dannah Gresh.

If you’ve ever felt completely inadequate to do a difficult task, you’ll identify with what Nancy is sharing on today’s program. 

Before we get to that, let me say thank you for the many testimonies and congratulations you’ve been calling in to wish Nancy and Revive Our Hearts a happy birthday. On Friday this program turns twenty. And Nancy turns . . . well (I probably shouldn’t say it on the air), more than twenty.

Kris called from Arkansas and left us this message.

Kris: Happy birthday to both the ministry and to Nancy. I want to say to Nancy thank you for staying in the battle. Thank you for swimming upstream, for not giving up. Thank you for making your will pliable to conform to God's will. Your teachings and those of your ministry have helped me alter my course closer to God's will, and I'm very thankful for you.

Dannah: Thank you, Kris, and it sounds like you had a furry friend there with you, too! 

If you’d like to call and let us know how God has used Revive Our Hearts in your life, here’s the number for our testimony line. It’s 269–697–6161. We’d love to hear from you. Yesterday we heard from Nancy about her years prior to the start of Revive Our Hearts. You can review that episode on the Revive Our Heartsapp, or by visiting ReviveOurHearts.com.

Nancy is talking with Bob Lepine, who was instrumental in helping us get going with this program twenty years ago. Bob has served on the Revive Our Hearts Advisory Board all the way from the beginning. Let’s listen.

Bob Lepine: All of these formative years and the experience we’ve talked about really led to an unexpected encounter in the summer of 1995. I was attending Campus Crusade for Christ’s staff conference. All of us who were on staff were in Ft. Collins, Colorado for a week of training and equipping, and we were hearing from a variety of speakers. It was a great week. 

And at ten o’clock on either Tuesday or Wednesday morning (I don’t remember which), I saw on the schedule that we were going to hear from Nancy Leigh DeMoss. One of my besetting sins is cynicism. 

So I looked at your name. I didn’t know you. I didn’t know anything about you other than the fact that your mom and dad had been benefactors to Campus Crusade, had been donors to the ministry. And my cynicism went, “I guess this is payback. You know, we get to listen to their daughter because they’ve given money to Campus Crusade.”

I’m just confessing on the radio, that’s a wrong thing to be thinking! But I showed up obediently, ten o’clock in the morning sitting out there. You were introduced by Dr. Bill Bright. You got up in your red dress with your then-black hair. (laughter). This is still on YouTube; people can watch the video of this. You got up to speak to us on the subject of brokenness.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss (1995 Campus Crusade recording): God is more offended, I believe, by the arched back, the stiff neck, the haughty eyes, and the unteachable spirit than He is by the sodomite, the prostitute, the adulterer, the murderer, or the abortionist. 

Because frequently those who are so wrapped up in sins of the flesh know that they are sinful, but those of us who are the respectable leaders, the Pharisees, the ones who have it all together, we so often find it difficult to acknowledge the real need of our hearts.

In recent weeks I have found God searching my own heart. I've gone before Him many times and said, "Oh God, show me what it means to be a broken person, to live a lifestyle of brokenness.” What are some of the characteristics, the evidences of a proud, unbroken spirit?

Let me just share with you some that have come to my own heart as I have waited on the Lord. 

1) Proud people focus on the failures of others, but broken people are overwhelmed with a sense of their own spiritual need. 

2) Proud people are self-righteous. They have a critical, fault-finding spirit. They look at everyone else's faults with a microscope but their own with a telescope, and they look down on others. But broken people are compassionate. They can forgive much because they know how much they have been forgiven. They think the best of others, and they esteem all others better than themselves.

3) When confessing their sin, proud people tend to deal in generalities, but broken people are able to deal under the conviction of God's Spirit to acknowledge specifics. 

4) Proud people areconcerned about the consequences of their sin, but broken people are grieved over the cause, the root, of their sin. 

5) Proud people are blind to their real heart condition, but broken people walk in the light. 

6) Proud people don't think they have anything to repent of, but broken people realize that they have need of a continual heart attitude of repentance.

7) Proud, unbroken people don't think they need revival, but they're sure that everyone else does. Whereas humble, broken people continually sense their need for a fresh encounter with God, for a fresh filling of His Holy Spirit.

Bob: God was speaking to me through your message, and then I was aware that what you were sharing was intensely biblical. You were taking us to passages in the Scriptures; it was profound. God was using it. I didn’t know it at the time, but He was using your message throughout that room in the hearts of so many people because at the end of your message that day, the Spirit of God was pressing on people. People were coming forward to confess their stubbornness, their pride, their hard-heartedness, and God used that message over a period of days for a reviving work there in our midst. 

I remember walking away from that thinking first of all how God used that message in my own life, but then thinking, Ineed to share this with our listeners of FamilyLife Today. So I got a copy of the message, and a few months later we aired it on FamilyLife Today.

Dennis Rainey and I talked, and I said, “We ought to look for an opportunity the next chance we get, to try to do an interview with Nancy.” The next chance we got was two years later when you were back speaking to the Campus Crusade staff. This time you were speaking on holiness. We had contacted you ahead of time and said, “While you’re there, can we sit down and talk about singleness with you?”

So we recorded a series of messages on your experience as a single and your insights into that subject. At the end of that conversation, we talked about the fact that God had used Elisabeth Elliot profoundly in the lives of so many people for so many years . . . including in your life.

She had spoken particularly to so many women. She was on the radio at the time. She was in her mid-seventies, and we could see that there would be a time when she would not be on the radio any longer. We said, “We’ve started wondering who is God going to raise up to take Elisabeth’s place?” (We agreed nobody could take her place.) But, “Whose voice?”

And you said, “I have been praying that God would raise up that person.” 

We said, “Well, we think we might know who it is!” And when we said, “Have you ever thought about being on radio?” I remember you saying, “No, not me!”

Nancy: “It’s a great idea, but you’ve got the wrong person!”

Bob: Right. When we had that conversation, did that strike fear? Did you sense God speaking in that moment? Do you remember how that conversation struck you at the time?

Nancy: Well, it certainly was not something that I said, “Yes, let’s charge ahead and do this! It’s what I’ve always wanted!” There was a sense of, like, holy fear. This was something that tapped into passions I had for the Word of God and for ministering to women, but I also knew that it was a huge undertaking.

I was at the time in itinerant ministry—I had been for years. I had like maybe fourteen different messages I would cycle and develop. Here we were talking about 260 programs a year! I could not fathom that. I did not feel able.

I felt utterly inadequate in terms of being personally prepared or ready for something like this. I was very aware of Elisabeth’s Elliot’s huge footprint that she had left. Over the next eighteen months—as you and Dennis Rainey know well—we had a lot of conversations, a lot of prayer.

I spent time fasting and asking a lot of questions: What would this look like? What would be involved? Time just getting to know what we were talking about. And for me, it really came down to two basic things I had to settle. 

One was the surrender issue. “Lord, if this is what you’re calling me to, then I’m the Lord’s servant. Let it be to me as you have said.” Just that, “Yes, Lord!” that has become a trademark of Revive Our Hearts [and has been symbolized] by the white handkerchief . . . the surrender. 

And then was the faith issue. If God was wanting to put me into this kind of role, that He would give me what I needed to be able to do what He called me to do. And so at the first it was, “Lord, is this what You want?” And then second was, “Can I trust You, that you will give me what I need to be able to do this?” It was an eighteen-month process.

I know you and Dennis Rainey must have wondered, as must our team have wondered, “Are we ever going to land this plane? Is this ever going to be resolved?” But it was so important to me to know that this was God calling.

There were some amazing, precious moments for me in the Word, passages that at particular points would really be quickened in my heart. I remember Acts 18:27, where it’s talking about Apollos. It says he ministered much to them who had believed the grace of God. 

I don’t know how many times I had read that passage, but in the moment, in that process, this was part of my sensing the Lord was giving me a go-ahead on this. I had to know, as I said a moment ago, that this was God, because I knew it would be hard. I knew I wasn’t adequate, and that if I was following my own leading or anybody else’s appeal, when it got hard I wouldn’t be able to stay with it.

But because of going through that extended arduous process of seeking the Lord, here’s what happened (and you watched this). It was hard! That first year that we were doing this, I could hardly breathe the whole year! 

• We recorded 320 programs that year, because we had to have a catalog before we actually launched.
• I was in the middle of a few books I was finishing that year. 
• We had a full conference schedule. 

It was craziness! There were moments—many of them—when I thought, I am not going to make it! But because of the assurance God had given my heart that He was sending me this direction, it was almost like, “It doesn’t really matter if you make it, what matters is that you’re being obedient.” 

And to change the metaphor, it was the sense of being in a boat that is rocking like crazy on a wave-filled sea . . . but this confidence that Christ was in the boat with me and that we were going to get to shore!

Bob: Keep your eyes on Him.

Nancy: Exactly! Keep your eyes on Him. I can say that from the day we launched and in twenty years we’ve been through a lot of hard places (and a lot of sweet and beautiful places, too). But in the hard places, I’ve never once doubted that this is what we were supposed to do. 

So how it affected me was also inconsequential, and where the funds were going to come from, or where the staff was going to come, or where I was going to get my next message. You and MaryAnn were often on the receiving end of phone calls.

In those early days we recorded in Little Rock, Arkansas, where FamilyLife was based. We would record on back-to-back Mondays and Tuesdays, which meant that on Sunday, for the whole weekend, I was in heavy labor and travail “birthing” new messages. They were quarter-hour programs then. We would do fifteen on Monday and fifteen on Tuesday.

I would get to Saturday night or Sunday and I’m going, “I can’t do this!!” More than once you and MaryAnn found me in a puddle . . .

Bob: . . . ten o’clock or eleven o’clock on a Sunday night, with you saying, “I don’t have what I need for tomorrow!”

Nancy: Exactly! And we would pray. You would point me back to Jesus and help me think through what it was I was getting ready to teach. Then we’d get into the recording session. You sat through all of those in those early years, coaching and helping to develop. And there was the power of God.

Women were being deeply moved. We had women in the room. It was that small Sunday school room at the Summit Church there in Little Rock, Arkansas, with cinderblock walls, very makeshift. The engineer was off in a closet adjacent to that room. There was no beautiful studio such as we have and enjoy today. But we saw the power of God time come after time after time.

There was no substitute for preparing—that’s still hard work for me—but having done the preparation and then trusting the Lord to give the anointing and the fresh oil, He has done it! Now we’ve passed our program number 5,000! I couldn’t have imagined that, but God knew. He called, and He has equipped, and He keeps doing it.

And I would say, Bob (you know this), that I had always had this sense of desperately needing the Lord. I had it then, and I have it now when I go to record a program for Revive Our Hearts, when I get up to give a message at a conference, when I go to write a book. 

I asked the Lord earlier in my Christian life, long before Revive Our Hearts started, I knew that I had some natural gifts, and I never wanted to be able to serve the Lord in a way that I could feel I could do it without Him.

I asked the Lord, “Don’t ever let me get to the place in ministry where I feel like I can do this without You.” And that is one prayer God has been very faithful to answer. He keeps me sensing, “I can’t do this if God doesn’t come through.” That’s really hard. 

It’s something that anybody who’s walking with God—whether it’s doing a daily broadcast or raising children or serving in a very secularized marketplace environment—we all have times of feeling this, and if we don’t, there’s something wrong. 

But it kept me going back to Him, it kept me dependent on Him, it has kept me on my knees. And here I am, now, forty-some years doing ministry as a vocation, I still feel that way, and I don’t want to ever get over it!

I don’t ever want to feel like, “I could write this book. I could write this article. I could do this broadcast.” I don’t want to be running on the fuel of some natural gifts. There’s no substitute for keeping your pond stocked, for keeping in the Word.

We, I always wanted this ministry to be out of the overflow of a life and a heart. I don’t want to spend my life looking for messages for Revive Our Hearts. I want to spend my life in the Word, getting to know God, letting Him change my life and then, out of that overflow, be ministering to others.

Bob: Kind of the analogy we had was that there are some maple trees that, when you pound the tap into the maple tree, the sap just starts to flow out quickly. And that was what was there. It was in you. We just had to figure out how to tap it and bring it out effectively.

Nancy: If you keep that metaphor, I think that’s got to be kind of painful for that tree though, because you’re putting that spike into it, or whatever it is! 

Bob: And it was painful! And there were seasons . . . again, you didn’t doubt. But you were depleted often during those early years, because to begin a program (as you said, 320 programs in the first year of recording), that involves study and writing and thinking.

A lot of people who are on radio have been pastors for ten or fifteen years, and they’ve got their sermons, and you go get those. We were starting with zero. You had messages you’d given, but not anything we could use on radio. So it was a yeoman’s work in those early years. Had you not been a single woman at that time, I don’t know how it could have happened.

You didn’t have a staff. There were no researchers who were feeding you notes and things. This was all your labor, but then you started to see fruit coming from that labor. Even in the room there as you were teaching and women were responding to it. 

And then people would hear it on the radio a month or two later, and we’d start getting letters in from that. And that has been so important, not only in the early years but even today. The notes and the emails from listeners, talking about how God meets them through the teaching, that’s fuel for your soul, isn’t it?

Nancy: It is! And even as you say that, I’m mindful that there are those who serve the Lord faithfully in pastorates, or on the mission field, or as moms, or whatever for decades or a lifetime, and they never get to see much fruit from their labors. Maybe they even get opposition.

As you look at the history of the church, we have been blessed to see a lot of fruit, to see a glimpse of lives that have been changed. I get those letters and emails; this happens all the time, and it’s very sweet! It is fuel! But faithfulness is serving the Lord whether or not you get that.

We serve now, and we’re grateful when we see some of the fruit, but we’re not dependent on that. That said, one of the things I prayed early on and still have longed for, and we’ve seen God really do . . . I love that passage, 1 Samuel chapters 3 and 4, where it says that Samuel heard the word of the Lord, he spoke the word of the Lord to Israel . . .

Then it says the Lord did not let one of his words fall to the ground. (see 1 Sam. 3:19) I remember being gripped by that as we were just launching Revive Our Hearts and saying, “Lord, we’re going to say a lot of words!” I remember saying to you, “Christian radio does not need any more speakers! There are lots of those; there may be too many.”

I didn’t want to just add to noise . . . and I’m not saying they’re all noise. I’m just saying there are plenty of great ones. And so my prayer was, “Lord, I’m going to live in Your Word. I’m going to ask You to speak Your Word through me to the hearts of women. 

But my prayer is, “Would You not let one of these words that’s from You fall to the ground? Would You cause these words from You—not my words, but Your words—to penetrate and pierce hearts, to take root and produce fruit? Would you arrest people’s hearts as they are listening?” 

That may be with their headphones on in a cube at work or in their minivan carting kids . . . and now there are so many ways that people listen to the content.

We have heard so many stories of how God has been faithful to answer that prayer! I take no credit for this. This is the work of the Spirit of God. But the letters, the emails, the conversations with people who have had to pull their car over to the side of the road . . . a woman kneeling in her kitchen weeping, pleading with God for forgiveness as I was doing a series on the tongue from the book of Proverbs, and thinking about things she had just said to her husband before he left for work that day. God timed when she heard that program with what was going on in her life. He didn’t let it be like just water off a duck’s back—in one ear and out the other—God penetrated her heart. 

God has called women to serve Him. God has given women hope. God has brought women healing. He has delivered women from shame and from guilt. Beautiful things that I could never have done . . . that no broadcast, no podcast could do. But the Word of God going forth in the power of the Holy Spirit changes lives! 

So you think, Okay, well, I don’t have that kind of ministry. That’s really lovely for Nancy and Revive Our Hearts where you are, in this season of your life.

Bob, you have grown children, you have a lot of grandchildren. Robert and I are in a new season of our lives. We’re speaking to people, we have conversations with people in the workplace, with staff, with friends. You may be homeschooling your children, or you’re teaching a Sunday school class or a discipleship group or one-on-one mentoring.

We’re all speaking words that are meant to be God’s Word flowing through us to invest in the lives of others. We’re believing God as you’re having that what seems like an irrational conversation with your fourteen-year-old late at night when you’re exhausted! Just to believe God that if it’s not your words but God’s words flowing through your life, spoken in the Spirit of Christ that you may not see or experience the fruit right now, but that those words are being used by the Holy Spirit. Then you exercise faith that they’re going to have their intended purpose in God’s way and in God’s time.

Dannah: It’s easy to assume some individuals speak God’s words better or more than we do, but Nancy’s been reminding us: If we’re His children, we represent Him, and we need to be speaking His words to others, no matter what. 

Nancy spoke with Bob Lepine, who’s been a friend and partner of Revive Our Hearts since we first went on the air in 2001. This Friday is our actual twentieth anniversary, so we’re taking some time to look back on how God has been working in and through Nancy, and in and through Revive Our Hearts. Aren’t you glad she said, “Yes, Lord,” to the seemingly impossible? 

We never could have guessed the plans God had in store for Revive Our Hearts. Part of those plans included conferences attended by people from all over the United States and all over the world. Bob and Nancy will talk more about that coming up later this week. 

And that gives me an opportunity to remind you of the upcoming Revive ’21conference in Indianapolis. Nancy will be there, of course, along with a whole team of dynamic speakers and worship led by Shane & Shane. 

We’re going to hear all about how we can stand firm in a shaking world, how we can be grounded. It’s going to be Friday and Saturday, October 8– 9, in the Indianapolis Convention Center. If you can’t make it in person, you can sign up to watch online. For all the details about Revive ’21: Grounded, visit ReviveOurHearts.com, or call us at 1–800–569–5959. 

Well, so far we’ve heard about the days leading up to the launch of Revive Our Hearts. Tomorrow, Bob Lepine joins Nancy to continue reflecting on the early days, and you’ll get to hear a little of the very first Revive Our Hearts teaching series, which providentially coincided with September 11, 2001.

I’m Dannah Gresh, inviting you back for Revive Our Hearts—encouraging you to say “yes!” to God. 

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

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