Grounded in Him

Episode Notes:

These series make up today's Revive Our Hearts Weekend program:

"Love Is a Verb"

"The Truth about God"

"Spiritual Mothering"

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Dannah: God is our dwelling place. I want you to just sit and ponder that for the next few seconds. So . . . here’s Shane and Shane reading Psalm 90.

Shane and Shane: "Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations, before the mountains were brought forth, forever you have formed the earth in the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God." (Psalm 90:1–2)

Dannah: We’ll talk how to be grounded in God on this episode of Revive Our Hearts Weekend.

Shane and Shane music:

You have been our dwelling place,
Our everlasting God

"Psalm 90—Satisfy Us with Your Love"

Dannah: Welcome to Revive Our Hearts Weekend, I’m Dannah Gresh. 

I want to share with you something on my heart today. Who am I kidding, I share something on my heart every time I’m with you! But today I’m really passionate about an event that I’ve been a part of each fall—the Revive Our Hearts conferences. In odd years we host the Revive conference and in even years we offer the True Woman conference—where thousands of women gather to feast on God’s Word, to worship, and to pray together.

How I missed being with you last year! There is just something about women who are passionate about Jesus coming together to fan the flame of faith! As I have been thinking about gathering this October, I have actually gotten teary several times at the thought of what it will be like for thousands of us to lift our voices together in worship.

I want our time together today to be a mini-Revive '21 . . . to give you a taste of what’s coming up.

Pastor Chris Brooks, one of our featured speakers, will be sharing from God’s Word. If you’re a listener to Moody radio, you might have heard his daily call-in program—Equipped with Chris Brooks. Earlier this spring Chris was on Revive Our Hearts and we heard a message from 1 Peter. Chris explained that hope is like a good meal.

Chris Brooks: Any foodies out there? Have you ever had a meal that changed your life? Have you ever tasted some foods that you said, “My life will never be the same after this?” Some of you, that’s why you’re married today . . . because of that meal.

I remember visiting Hungary. We were in Budapest, Hungary, my wife and I. We were in this little town outside of Budapest called Eger, Hungary. We’re walking through Eger, Hungary. Eger is this old, Eastern European town. The skyline is marred by these ancient churches—beautiful for the eighth century and tenth century. And we’re walking on the skyline.

And then there was this little storefront restaurant—I don’t even know the name. We stopped to eat. It was recommended by the lady at the hotel after I tried to get a pizza and my wife said no. (laughter) And so here we are, sitting in this restaurant, and I asked the waitress, “What would you recommend?”

She said, “The goulash.”

Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever had authentic Hungarian goulash. Well, let me just tell you, friends: It will change your life! If you’ve never been on drugs, don’t eat it, because it will become your new addiction. 

So I ate this food. I said, “Honey, our next vacation has to be here. We’re planning a whole vacation around one meal that changed my life.”

I don’t know about you, but most of life is just eating to survive or to fuel your body. But there’s certain times when something breaks through that changes your life.

Well, this is what Peter wants us to know about the good news of Jesus. Most of the news you hear is mundane, everyday news. It kind of feels like recycled or warmed up oatmeal. It doesn’t really arouse or excite. But it’s not true concerning the good news of Jesus Christ. This is not the case.

Look at chapter 2. Look at verse number 3, the end of our passage that we’ll look at today. It says, “If indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.”

Have you, my friends, tasted that the Lord is good? Have you tasted the good news of the gospel? Have you tasted Jesus? Today we’re going to talk about what it means to taste the goodness of God.

Well, Peter expects that when we put our hope in God, it will change two things: The way we live and the way we love.

Let’s talk about the way we live.

In verse number 15, he tells us that we should be holy if our hope is in the right place. In other words, there’s a barometer.

One of the ways that you know you’ve put your hope in the right place is when you want to reflect the character of God. “Be holy, for I am holy.”

In verse 17, he tells us another way. He says of our conduct. “We should conduct ourselves in fear.” What type of fear? Fear of the Lord. This fear that we will waste such a great salvation.

I don’t want to waste the grace of God. I don’t want to live in this world in a casual or careless way. I want to live in an awe and a reverence of God that causes me to want to honor Him in everything. How many desire that as well, desire to honor God in everything? That’s one of the ways you know you’ve put your hope in the right place, if you’ve put your hope fully in Jesus.

Peter doesn’t want us to be fooled. He doesn’t want us to be deceived by the world or even self-deceived, thinking that we’ve put our hope in God when we really haven’t. How do you know you’ve placed your hope in God? You’ll desire to be holy. You’ll conduct yourself in fear.

But then, thirdly, he gets to this point: Verse 22, let’s read verses 22–25 together. Now here, his message is clear: You’ll love one another.

Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere brotherly love, love one another earnestly from a pure heart, since you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God; for all flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, and the flower falls, but the word of the Lord remains forever.

Do you feel where Peter’s confidence is at? You see where his confidence is at. He says, “Everything around us is going to fade. Everything around us is going to die. But the Word of the Lord remains forever.”

Well, let’s go back to verse 22. “Having purified your souls by obedience to the truth.” Here Peter is saying, “Because you’ve put your trust in Him, and you’ve diligently surrendered your heart to the truth of Scripture, you’ve purified your soul. And what is produced in you when your hope really is in Jesus, is this love, this brotherly love, this phileo, this brotherly love. It’s love that is not casual. It is love that is not shallow. But it is love for one another that is earnest from a pure heart.”

Now this commandment that he’s giving us, this imperative that he’s given us—to love differently than the world loves. Or maybe to put it a different way: Love differently than you did before you knew Jesus. The quality, the substance, the commitment, and the sacrifice of our love should be exponentially different now that we have put our trust and our faith in Him.

Now, just let me tell you that this really is the first time in Peter’s letters so far where he’s dealing with how we’re supposed to treat one another. Up until this point he’s been dealing with how we’re supposed to operate in the world.

Now, think about this for just a moment: How should we love those who are outside of the Church? How should we love those who have a different faith than us? How should we love those who have a different worldview than us? A different value system than us? A different political aspiration than us? How should we love them?

Well, I’ll tell you how we should love them. Keep your finger there and go to Luke’s gospel—Luke chapter 6. We’re just dealing with two verses—verses 32 and 35. The question on the table is: How should we love those outside of the household of faith? How should we treat and love those who have opposing worldviews than us, who seem to be our enemies?

Look at verse 32: “If you love those who love you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them.”

Verse 35: “But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and evil.”

This, my friends, is the challenge of what it means to be a follower of Jesus Christ. This is the dangerous proposition of the gospel. This is the call of Christianity, that we are not a self-centered people who love like those who don’t have a Savior.

No. Our Savior went to the cross . . . while we were yet sinners. Don’t ever misunderstand the gospel. It was not just the Centurions or the Pharisees or Sadducees or Sanhedrin that hung Him to that cross. While we were yet enemies to the cross, He loved us. And He calls us to love our enemies.

Again, a reminder, an inconvenient truth, a reminder that none of us want to hear because what we really want to hear Jesus say is, “Conquer your enemy.” What we really want to hear Jesus say is, “Go ye therefore and defeat those who have a different worldview than you. Crush those who have different political aspirations than what you have.” That’s what we really want to hear. But that’s not the Savior we serve.

There’s this old saying that, “In the beginning God created man, and man has been returning the favor ever since.” We typically recreate God in our own image and likeness, but that’s not the call of the gospel.

The call of the gospel is to be conformed to His image and likeness. As we put our hope in Him, we should love like Him. Every time you go into the Word, there should be this stinging reminder that, “God, I am so far from this.”

I’m not preaching this to you because I have arrived. I’m preaching this to you because it is true. It is the Word of God.

Dannah: Amen and amen. Chris Brooks with a powerful reminder of 1 Peter. I’m still stuck on that last point, the call of the gospel is to be conformed to His image and His likeness. Christ didn’t die on the cross and eradicate our sins so we could go on living the way we want. He wants to change us from the inside out.

We have Chris’s entire message on 1 Peter at ReviveOurHearts.com/weekend, and we’ll have a link in today's transcript. ReviveOurHearts.com/weekend.

Remember: Chris Brooks will be joining us at the Revive '21 conference in Indianapolis. I can’t wait to hear what he serves up as we feast on God’s Word together! I would love to have you join us too. You can come in person or participate online from the comfort of your home. We're going to learn about standing firm in a shaking world. And our world is really shaking these days! In fact, I wouldn’t blame you if you’re shaking just a little bit, too. Some days it’s hard for me to stand firm, but that’s why the message of this year’s conference is so important for each of us to hear.

We want to challenge you to be grounded in Christ, in the gospel, in God’s love, in God’s Word, through every trial. We have more information about the conference and you can register at ReviveOurHearts.com.

I just said that I wouldn’t blame you if you’re shaking a little bit, I won’t. But I do want to point you to the One who can calm those tremors. And believe me, friend, I know that may seem impossible when the world out there is shaking and the world in here [pat chest], is shaking. It’s hard to look to Jesus or to have faith that He is enough to calm my world.

Even the disciples had this problem. Remember when Jesus was with them in a boat during a stormy and windy night. The disciples were terrified. Their knees were shaking—at least that's how I imagine it. You could say they took their eyes off Jesus and allowed the shaky world to create fear in their hearts.

Can I just read that passage to you? It’s found in Mark 4, verses 35–41. 

On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, “Let us go across to the other side.” And leaving the crowd, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. And other boats were with him. And a great windstorm arose, and the waves were breaking into the boat, so that the boat was already filling. But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion. And they woke him and said to him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” And he awoke and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm. He said to them, “Why are you so afraid? Have you still no faith?” And they were filled with great fear and said to one another, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?”

Bible teacher and author, Mary Kassian says this was when the disciples had to reorient their hearts to truth. Even the disciples needed this little fine tuning now and then. They had known Jesus for a while, but their thinking was off. And they started to believe some lies about God. Here’s Mary.

Mary Kassian: Storms of life have a way of revealing what we really believe about God, don’t they? The disciples had some faulty beliefs about Jesus that needed to be corrected—subtle lies that were in their thinking that needed to be brought back into line. It was what caused them to experience panic instead of peace in the middle of the storm.

Their first panic producer was the lie that God wasn’t big enough. “God is not big enough,” is what they thought.

You see, in this passage, the disciples experienced two types of fear. The first type was an apprehensive type of fear. They were afraid that the storm was going to overwhelm them and that they were going to drown.

Now, it must have been quite the storm to frighten them. After all, these guys were seasoned fishermen. They were accustomed to conditions on that sea. But when this storm hit, even those seasoned mariners panicked, and they were filled with fear.

What’s interesting is what we read further on in the passage. The storm hit, and then they were afraid. But then Jesus calmed the storm, and the sea became perfectly still. And what was their response? They were terrified. They were more afraid of the power that Christ demonstrated than they had been of the storm.

Verse 41 says, “They feared exceedingly.” That’s the second kind of fear: reverential fear. Fear of God.

Now, what is fear? Basically, fear is seeing yourself as very small and something else as very big.

Apprehensive fear is the negative emotion. We’re fearful because we’re facing circumstances that are bigger and more powerful than we are—something out of our control. I look at the circumstances, and I’m afraid because I recognize that this situation is bigger than me, it could hurt me, and it probably will.

And whether my storm has to do with fractured relationships, my marriage, my children, my family, my friends, or health or finances or pressures at work or loss—whatever it is—I realize that:

• I am not big enough to handle it.
• I don’t have the resources.
• I don’t have the time.
• I don’t have the ability.
• I don’t have the capacity to calm it.

I’ve tried and tried. This storm is out of my control, and it’s overwhelming me.

Apprehensive fear produces panic and anxiety.

Reverential fear is quite different. Reverential fear is the positive emotion. We revere Christ because we know that He is bigger and more powerful than us and bigger and more powerful than any circumstance that we might face.

The disciples feared their circumstance more than they feared Christ. They saw their circumstance as bigger than Him. The lie that they believed was that God isn’t big enough.

Have you ever thought that? Have you ever looked at your circumstances and thought, This one is too big even for God. He can’t bring love back into this marriage. He can’t change this person’s heart. He can’t bring back this wayward child. He can’t cure this illness. He can’t restore unity to this church. He can’t resolve this crisis. He can’t fill this loneliness. He can’t satisfy this desire. He’s just not big enough.

Now, maybe you wouldn’t say so—not in so many words—but your anxiety and your lack of peace indicate that that’s what you truly believe.

Dannah: Jesus is bigger than the circumstances you're facing right now. Nothing is out of His control. Nothing. A great word from Mary Kassian. 

Mary will be at Revive '21 in October with us, and I’m looking forward to hearing what God has put on her heart.

You’re listening to ReviveOurHearts Weekend, I’m Dannah Gresh.

Another speaker at Revive '21 this fall will be everyone’s favorite "spiritual mother," Susan Hunt. I love how Susan cares for women. Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth said that every time Susan opens her mouth, it’s precious. And I second that.

A big topic and issue in our society right now is gender. And out of this comes questions on what is the role of a woman. Nancy asked Susan how the differences of men and women get applied. Here’s Susan.

Susan Hunt: I’m not even sure we can say exactly where it’s applied. I think it’s more of an attitude of a submission to the idea that men and women are different. And then the complementarity of the idea that together we put God’s glory on display. This does not mean that anyone has to be married to put God’s glory on display, but it means that the bringing together of our distinctiveness, of our strengths, that’s when then we are able to glorify God—whether it is in marriage or whether it’s in the church, the way men and women work together, serve together in the church.

Many times men and women are doing the same thing, but we will bring our distinctiveness to that. We will bring our femaleness and our maleness to that task, or whatever it is we are doing.

So we want to be careful that we don’t label this as certain behaviors, that we do not put womanhood and manhood into a box. But rather, that we see that there is distinctiveness and that there is complementarity of that distinctiveness so that there is unity in our diversity.

Nancy: So beautifully said Susan, and one of the areas of distinctiveness, then, as we get to the local church, for example, is that God has given to men the responsibility to provide spiritual oversight, spiritual authority, leading and feeding of the local congregation of that spiritual flock, that spiritual family.

But that’s a concept that has fallen into hard times today where people are saying, “But that’s not fair. Women are as smart as men. Some women are better Bible teachers or better pastors or could be better at leading the church, or whatever, than men.” This concept of male leadership in the context of the local church is really misunderstood, and people have a hard time, I think, accepting that today.

Susan: And that’s where we have to go back to: What is my purpose? Is my purpose to promote women? To promote myself? Or is my purpose to promote God’s glory? If my purpose is to promote God’s glory, then I will do it God’s way.

I do think we’ve got to be very careful that we understand that in doing it God’s way, we are putting on display some aspects of the Trinity. It goes back to the very nature of God. That’s what this is grounded in. So a genderless being and genderless ministry would not be able to do that. That’s why this is so important, because it has to do with the very nature of God.

So it continually drives us back to: Is my purpose God’s glory?

It is interesting to notice in Genesis that after God, in Genesis 2, gives us His calling for manhood, He says, “But it is not good for the man to be alone; I will make a helper suitable for him” (v. 18).

Here we begin to see God’s female design, and we see that He did not say that man was not good, but man’s aloneness was not good. His aloneness was not good because God was not alone. The Godhead exists in relationship.

So I think that all helps us to see the wonder and the beauty of this, and that we get to reflect that aspect of God.

Nancy: So talk about the woman, then, as a helper—the vital part of her design. What does that mean? What does that look like?

Susan: Well, at first, years ago, when I first began looking at that, I was a bit put off by that whole notion because of our concept of what a helper is.

But then I began studying the word azur and seeing that throughout the Old Testament, that word is most often used to refer to God as our Helper. As I began to look at how God helps us, then this concept just exploded in my heart and mind, that this is what we’re designed to bring into relationships. It is just an exquisite design.

Let’s just think of a few of the verses that speak of God as our Helper.

In Psalm 33, we read, “Our soul waits for the Lord; he is our help and shield” (v. 20). So here we see God defending us.

“God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble” (Ps. 46:1). He is our refuge. A helper is a refuge.

“Behold, God is the helper; the Lord is the upholder of my life” (Ps. 54:4). So a helper upholds.

Doesn’t that bring beautiful pictures into your heart and mind?

“But I am poor and needy; hasten to me, O God! You are my help and my deliverer” (Ps. 70:5). He delivers the poor and the needy. And down through history, women have been at the forefront of ministries to the poor and to the needy, the practical hands-on kind of ministry that, because of our design, we are drawn to.

“Lord, you have helped me and comforted me” (Ps. 86:17). Who does a child want to run to when they skin their knee? It’s the mother who comforts.

And so all through here we see these nurturing words that equip us to be mothers, not only biologically, but they equip us, this design equips us to be spiritual mothers. It equips us to bring something into the mix that will be greatly noticed as being absent if women do not play out our function and if we’re trying to be what men are called and designed to be.

Dannah: That's Susan Hunt encouraging all of us women to embrace who God made us to be!

Susan will be at Revive '21 with us along with Laura Beth Perry, Kim Cash Tate. Shane and Shane will be leading worship for us. If you’re not familiar with them, well you’ve been hearing some of their music throughout our time today.

I’m so excited for Revive '21, and I want you to be there too. I want you to be a part when we learn together what it means to be grounded, when everything around is shaking, we’re gonna be women who chose to be grounded in God’s Word.

You can join us at Revive '21 in Indianapolis or online. Register at ReviveOurHearts.com.

Thanks for listening today. Thanks to our team: Phil Krause, Blake Bratton, Rebekah Krause, Justin Converse, Michelle Hill, and for Revive Our Hearts Weekend, I’m Dannah Gresh.

Revive Our Hearts Weekend is calling women to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ. It's an outreach of Life Action Ministries.

All music from Psalms, Hymns, and Spiritual Songs, Vol. 1. Shane and Shane, July 23, 2021. © Wellhouse Records.

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