An Encounter with Friendship

Watch this series on video here.

Leslie Basham: If you like to get things done, does the biblical story of Mary and Martha kind of bother you? Here’s Erin Davis.

Erin Davis: I don’t believe Jesus was trying to make Martha the poster child for all that’s wrong with type-A. I think He was being a true friend.

Leslie: This is the Revive Our Hearts for Wednesday, May 7, 2014.

Nancy Leigh DeMoss: It is a great joy to have a guest teacher, Erin Davis, with us for this series here at Revive Our Hearts. If you’ve not been able to hear the first two sessions, you can go to ReviveOurHearts.com and pull up the transcript or the audio. We’ve never done this in all these years. We’ve had other guests on the broadcast, but not another teacher.

I’ve watched Erin grow over the years. I’ve seen her love for the Lord grow and her love for His Word. I’ve seen God really use her, especially in speaking to teenage gals. She’s got a heart for women of every age. Here in our Revive Our Hearts studio audience today we’ve got about half teenage girls, a lot of moms, and grandmoms. So we have women of every age as we’re looking together into God’s Word and seeing some of these encounters that Jesus had with women.

Erin has written a resource, a study designed for teenagers, but I think good for women of every age. It’s called Beautiful Encounters. It’s about women who met Jesus and how His presence changed everything about their lives. We’ve looked at two very different women so far. The first was Anna, who was advanced in years, as the gospel of Luke says, and a widow.

We looked last time at the adulterous woman and the label she wore. Jesus took take off of her and gave her a new label, as He wants to do for us. Today we look at a woman with a very different background from either of those first two.

So we’re very thankful to have Erin here. This resource is available. We’ll tell you at the end of the broadcast how you can get a copy of it for yourself or to share with some young women in your life.

Erin, welcome to Revive Our Hearts, and thanks for bringing the Word to us and pointing us to Jesus.

Erin: Thank you.

My best friend’s name in kindergarten was Angie. She was a quirky strawberry blonde who had a habit of wearing a tutu and cowboy boots to kindergarten. She might be where I got my fashion sense. I like to say my personal style is bag lady chic.

In high school I went to church camp with another girl whose name was Erin, and we became fast friends, but unfortunately, a tendency to like the same guy eventually ended that friendship.

I spent most of my adult years largely friendless. Now, don’t feel bad for me. I had plenty of acquaintances and lots of people to spend time with, but I lacked deep intimate friendships because I’m not sure—as grown women—we have a clue how to do the friendship thing.

We either have this over-romanticized vision of friendship, where it’s all going to be “girls’ nights out” and Ya-Ya Sisterhood, or we realize that friendship isn’t really like that, but that it’s messy and inconvenient—and so we keep things at the surface level.

Thankfully, like so many areas of our lives, we don’t have to keep guessing what God intended friendship to look like. Jesus modeled healthy friendship to us in the Bible. If you study the gospels, you’ll see that Jesus had circles or layers of friendships, just like we do.

He had the twelve disciples, which are those who spent the most time with Him and did ministry with Him, but within that circle there was an inner circle—Peter, James, and John. They’re the three that got to witness the transfiguration in Matthew 17. Another example would be in the Garden of Gethsemane in Matthew 26.

He takes all the disciples into the garden, but He takes Peter, James, and John further in. So He has three guys that are His closest friends. If you’re listening, I want you to know that all friendships are not the same, and that’s okay. It’s okay to have those friends that you keep really, really close in your life, that are there for the most intimate moments, and then have other layers of friendships.

Jesus had lots of important friendships in the Bible. If I were to ask you who Jesus’ friends were, you might have gotten those examples I just gave you. You probably would have told me about the twelve disciples. You might even have said that Peter, James, and John were His inner circle.

But He also had other friendships, and one of them was Martha. He has this beautiful, sweet relationship with Martha in the Bible. Martha is the woman who encountered Jesus, who we’re going to talk about in this session. We’re going to look at her in a couple different places in Scripture.

You probably are most familiar with the first place we meet Martha in Scripture, which is Luke 10. It’s that passage in Scripture that every Type-A woman in the world, such as myself, kind of cringes and gets twitchy at. I like to say I’m not Type-A, I’m Type Double-A. I like to get things done. I like to-do lists. I like things to go the way I plan them—and that’s the Martha we see here in Luke 10.

You may already know the story. Martha gets caught up in cooking a meal that’s too perfect on dishes that are too clean, and her sister Mary seems to get all the gold stars just for sitting at Jesus’ feet. Now, us Type-A, Type Double-A ladies, we like gold stars a lot! (laughter) I’m always saying to my husband, “How many gold stars was that meal worth?” He says some arbitrary number, like seven thousand, and I say, “Yay! I did it all for the gold stars!”

If I could have sticker chart, like kids have, with gold stars, I would give them to myself. That would thrill me to no end. So, that’s the type of person that Martha is. She’s a Type-A woman, she probably likes gold stars, and her sister gets all the gold stars for sitting at Jesus’ feet. For real . . . that’s all she does . . . she just sits at Jesus’ feet.

We like to study that and imagine that that caused Martha some angst. Really, that’s not what this story is about . . . Martha’s encounter with Jesus that day. What we really encounter is true friendship. We don’t encounter Jesus preferring one personality type over another; we encounter Him modeling true friendship to us.

Because Martha was so distracted, she tends to get a bad rap as a controlling, clueless busybody. But I don’t believe that’s what Jesus saw when He looked at Martha. Let’s read Luke 10:40–42:

But Martha was distracted with much serving. And she went up to him and said,
"Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me."

I recognize the shrill tone, don’t you? Like, “Jesus, do You not see what I am doing here for You? And do you not see that Mary is just sitting there, and the turkey is burning, and the mashed potatoes are overflowing, and there are spots on the dishes—and she’s just sitting there. I want You to tell her to help me!”

But the Lord answers her so sweetly, really.

But the Lord answered her, "Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her."

Jesus gently rebukes and teaches Martha in this moment. He doesn’t just say what He thinks she wants to hear.

Now, hear me young women, a friend who just says what they think you want to hear is not a friend. That’s the first principle of friendship that Jesus models for us here. First, He pushes her toward the truth. He genuinely cares what’s going on in her world, and He gets involved. He meets Martha where she is, and then He helps her recalibrate back on course when she’s off-track.

There’s so much we can learn from true friendship from this sweet, simple, short encounter that Jesus has with Martha. In a culture completely obsessed with feeling good . . . We’ve been raised with the idea that our self-esteem should be fed into. That there should be this steady drip of people making us feel good about ourselves and giving us those gold stars.  

Often we look to our friendships to satisfy our craving for constant ego strokes. This is not the formula that Jesus modeled with Martha. He doesn’t just say, “Oh, thank you for all you’re doing!” and go on and on and on and affirm her. He takes a moment and says, “Martha, we’re a little off course here.” Instead of stroking her ego, He tells her what she needs to hear instead of what she wants to hear. That’s a great quality of a good friend.

We tend to think of this encounter as some sort of living object lesson for being a good type of woman versus a bad type of woman, but that’s not what it is. Jesus wasn’t blasting Martha. He was being a true friend. Instead of simply stroking her ego, He helped her see where her priorities were out of whack.

He was helping her find peace when she was so wrapped up in the tyranny of the urgent. I don’t want to put words into Jesus’ mouth . . . the way He handled it was perfect. But for me, it’s helpful to think of what this encounter might look like if I was in Martha’s shoes. 

So, Jesus comes over, and I’m stressed to the max. It’s the morning-before-Thanksgiving-dinner stressed to the max. We had Thanksgiving dinner at our house last year, with only forty-six people in our living room! So Jesus comes over and forty-six people are going to be at my house at any moment

. . . and I forgot to thaw the turkey!

. . . and I didn’t realize that everything was going to have to go in the oven at the same time, so I have sixteen side dishes in one oven, and they’re not all going to go in there.

. . . and the rolls didn’t rise.

. . . and my crust burned on my pie.

. . . and my toddler has hidden my hairbrush.

. . . and I am stressed. 

I am stressed to the max! You guys know this version of stress, right? That’s the kind of stress that Martha was feeling. Now, what would a true friend do in that circumstance? Would a true friend come in—and I’m screaming, and I’m slamming pots down—so she starts screaming and she starts slamming pots down, too. Because I’m stressed, she’s stressed. 

No! That would not be helpful! Would she lie to me, right to my face? Would she say, “Listen, everybody really likes their turkey on the rare side.” No! This is also not helpful. A true friend would take an approach much more like Jesus did with Martha. “Erin, I know you’re stressed out about many, many things, but there’s really only one thing that matters about this day. The purpose of this day is for us to come together and to give thanks to God. Whether the food is good or it isn’t, whether the dishes are clean or they aren’t, or whether you ever brush your hair again—it doesn’t matter.

"What matters is that we’re together, and we give thanks, and your children see you giving thanks, and your parents see you giving thanks, and your grandparents see you giving thanks. The one thing that will never be taken from this day is gratitude. We’re going to eat those leftovers, and then they’re going to be gone. Your dishes are going to go back in the china cabinet. None of that really matters. The one thing that you need to choose in this moment is gratitude.”

That would be the approach of a true friend. So, I don’t believe Jesus was trying to make Martha the poster child for all that’s wrong with being Type-A. I think He was being a true friend.

John 11:5 says, “Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister [Mary].” Jesus loved Martha. Jesus loved Martha. There was a relationship there, a friendship there. Jesus was being such a sweet, true friend by saying, “Listen, you've done lost your mind. You need to get focused on the one thing that matters, which is that I’m here. I want to spend time with you, and I have a lot to teach you.”

Leslie: That’s Erin Davis, today’s guest teacher on Revive Our Hearts. She’ll be right back with the second half of today’s message. We’re breaking in to remind you of something important. You play a big role in helping other women hear Bible teaching like this on Revive Our Hearts. Here’s Nancy Leigh DeMoss to explain how. 

Nancy: On a typical day like today, the Lord is using Revive Our Hearts to give women the truth that sets them free. Messages like this one are going out on the radio. Women are listening to the podcast. Some are listening at ReviveOurHearts.com or reading the transcript, and that’s all possible thanks to listeners like you who believe in what the Lord is doing through this ministry and want to see it continue.

At the end of May we end another fiscal year. That’s the time we wrap up our accounting books, evaluate, and look toward the year ahead. I’m so grateful for the way the Lord has provided for this ministry day after day, month after month, year after year. This May we’re asking the Lord to provide for the ministry’s financial needs once again, to help us end the fiscal year in the black and enter the summer in a healthy position so we don’t have to pull back any of our current outreaches.

In order to do that, we’re asking the Lord for $435,000 in donations this month to continue our current ministry. Any giving above that amount will allow us to take advantage of some key opportunities to expand the outreach of this message. Later in today’s program, we’ll tell you about a resource from Erin Davis that we’ll send when you support the ministry this week.

If you’ve never supported Revive Our Hearts before, thanks to a special matching challenge, all gifts from first-time donors will be doubled. So, will you ask the Lord if He would want you be a part of meeting this need? For all the details, you can visit us at ReviveOurHearts.com, or you can call us at 1–800–569–5959. Now let’s get back to our guest teacher, Erin Davis.

Erin: Let’s look ahead to John 11, another maybe familiar story, and another situation where we see Jesus modeling true friendship. Let me give you a brief recap: Mary and Martha’s brother, Lazarus, was ill, and in verse 3:

So the sisters sent to him, saying, "Lord, he whom you love is ill." But when Jesus heard it he said, "This illness does not lead to death. It is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it."

Jesus doesn’t rush to their sides. He doesn’t drop everything to be with them. I think there’s another great example of true friendship in that. Jesus had priorities, and He stuck to them. When you’re looking for true friends, great friends, friends to walk through life with, don’t pick somebody who can just be pulled here and there, willy-nilly. Don't pick friends whose priorities can be changed, who doesn’t know what’s important. She can be yanked in this direction, in that direction. That’s not what Jesus did.

He heard that His friends were in trouble, and He stayed and continued to do ministry where He was. Why did He do that? That would maybe seem like being a bad friend in our definition of friendship. But He said so in verse 4: “This illness does not lead to death. It is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” He waited so that He could be most glorified.

So, He stays there a little while longer. When He knows that Lazarus is dead, in verse 11, He and the disciples head back to awaken Lazarus. We know the whole story . . . the disciples don’t know what’s going on. Jesus says, “We’re going to go back and wake Lazarus up.”

The disciples say, “What? Is he sleeping? What’s going on?” But Jesus knows he’s dead, and Jesus knows He’s going to raise him from the dead. So, let’s pick it back up in John 11:17:

Now when Jesus came, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days. Bethany was near Jerusalem, about two miles off, and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them concerning their brother. So when Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, but Mary remained seated in the house (vv. 17–20).

Martha’s response to Lazarus’ death was to run toward Jesus. She heard He was coming, and she dropped what she was doing, and she took off running toward Him. And this is where her getting-things-done attitude paid off. I’m sure that there were things to do. I’m sure there were arrangements to be made, people to tend to, and meals to cook. But I want you to notice that when Jesus taught Martha the lesson, she got it. She didn’t miss it.

So the next time she had the chance to be with Jesus and to encounter Him, she did it. She dropped the things on her to-do list, she dropped the plates that she was spinning, and she ran to Him. That’s because Martha’s friendship with Jesus changed her, as our friendship with Jesus—and with the friends Jesus puts in our lives—should change us. She chose the “one thing” in this passage. I love it!

If we just leave Martha’s story in that first Scripture where Jesus is saying, “Mary chose the good thing and Martha didn’t,” then that’s kind of a bummer of a story for Martha. But then we skip ahead, and she does it. She chooses the “one thing,” and she doesn’t just choose it, she runs headlong toward the one thing!

In verse 21, Martha says to Jesus,

“Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that whatever you ask from God, God will give you." Jesus said to her, "Your brother will rise again.”

And then they go on to have this dialogue about the resurrection.

This is another reason I like Martha, because she wanted to talk things through. I can’t think without talking. It’s how I process information . . . much to my sweet, quiet husband’s chagrin. It’s how I like to figure things out—I like to talk it out.

So Martha runs to Jesus, and she wants to talk to Him. She wants to dialogue with Him about what’s happened. She wants to talk about the resurrection, and she wants to talk about what would have happened if He’d been there. She’s figuring it out as she talks with Him.

I love that Jesus doesn’t blow her off; He doesn’t shut her up. He has that conversation with her. He says, “Let’s talk about it—let’s talk about the resurrection.” And they have this sweet dialogue about it. I know that we’re talking about Martha here, but it’s worth contrasting how Jesus responds differently to Mary in this story.

In verses 28–29 (remember, Mary chose not to run out to Jesus; she stayed where she was):

When she had said this, she went and called her sister Mary, saying in private, “The Teacher is here and is calling for you.” And when she heard it, she rose quickly and went to him.

Now when Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet, saying to him, "Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died." . . . When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled (vv. 28–29, 33).

Skip ahead to verse 35, and I believe it is one of the sweetest verses in the whole Bible—also the shortest—every kid knows. “What’s the shortest verse in the Bible?” It’s this one: “Jesus wept.” When we contrast that with what we talked about in session 1, that He was divine, now we see that He’s also fully man.

There are these friends that He loves, and they’re sad; they’re weeping. Mary literally throws herself at His feet and is desperate and says, “If You had been here, this wouldn’t have happened!” And the Bible says that He was moved, and He wept (see vv. 32–33).

Mary and Martha responded very differently in the face of grief. Martha ran out to meet Him, desperate to talk with Him about what happened, and Mary just waited there, and then she fell at His feet in tears. But Jesus sweetly met both sisters where they were.

When Martha wanted to talk out on the road, Jesus talked out on the road. When Mary fell apart and wept, Jesus fell apart and wept, because He was being a true friend. We can know from Scripture that God is not some unfeeling robot who’s going to respond to our differences in the same way, because He doesn’t respond to them in the same way.

He’s not going to respond to you in the same way He responds to me. Your personality is okay with Him. He will respond to you in the language you understand, I believe, because that’s how He responded to His friends in the Bible. He respected their personalities and He responded to their grief in unique but equally loving ways.

Jesus’ response to Lazarus’ death shows us another characteristic of a true friend. When Martha and Mary faced tragedy, Jesus didn’t try to comfort them from a distance. He didn’t send a card. He moved toward their grief. He walked into the storm with them, and He felt the emotions that they were feeling.

The Bible tells us He was moved by their pain, and that He even felt it, too. I saw this modeled in a high school library not long ago. Two sixteen-year-old girls had been killed in a car accident in our small town and, because we work with teenagers, my husband and I were called to be grief counselors in that high school. We took turns.

So I was in that library, and the grief was palpable. Teenagers don’t hide their emotions, which happens to be one of the things I most love about them. They weren’t crying politely into their hankies; they weren’t acting like everything was going to be okay. They were absolutely crushed and devastated by the loss of these two sixteen-year-old girls in a crash.

As I sat there and watched this happen—and it was very uncomfortable—I was reminded that Jesus moves toward us when we’re in that state. I wanted to literally glue myself to the wall. I was hoping nobody needed counselling, because I was so uncomfortable. But that is not at all what Jesus would have done. That’s not what He did with Mary; that’s not what He did with Martha.

He walks headlong into our pain. The Bible says in Psalms 34:18 that He’s close to us when we’re brokenhearted. I don’t know about you, but when other people are brokenhearted, I kind of want to recoil. But the Bible says He presses in to us when we’re into that state.

When we’re weary and fed-up, Matthew 11:28 says He wants us to come to Him. He doesn’t want us to get cleaned up and get our face looking good again, to suck it up. He says, “If you’re worn out, if you’re tired, if you’re fed-up, come to Me in that state.” That’s what He sweetly does with Mary and Martha. That’s because Jesus was a good friend to Mary and Martha, and Jesus is a good friend of mine.

John 15:15 says:

No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.

This is Jesus is talking, and He says, "You are my friends; you’re in the inner circle.” Jesus is the King of kings, the Lord of lords, and He says, “I don’t call you servants anymore. I’m going to rip off that label and replace it with ‘friend.’” That’s another truth that we can become so familiar with, but if we let it really marinate in our hearts, it should cause a two-fold reaction.

First, we could never again say that we’re friendless in those moments that we feel alone and lonely, and we feel like the world is against us, or we feel like nobody really knows us. We can feel that, but we can hold on with both hands to the truth that “Jesus calls me His friend.”

The second reaction that this should cause us to have—and young people listening, I would especially encourage you to pay attention to this—is that we need to worry less about having the right friends and worry more about being the kind of friend that Jesus modeled.

So, let me very quickly give you three characteristics that Bible gives for being a true friend. Proverbs 17:9 says, “Whoever covers an offense seeks love, but he who repeats a matter separates close friends.” I love how the Matthew Henry commentary describes this passage as “a ripping up of faults.”

True friendship means that I see the ways that you’re imperfect, and I let you see the ways that I’m imperfect, and it’s like I write it on a piece of paper and I rip it up, and I be your friend anyway. I’m not interested in perfect friendship anymore, because it doesn’t exist and the good stuff isn’t there. The good stuff is saying, “Here’s my yucky side; I see your yucky side—let’s rip it up.”

True, Jesus pointed out when Martha’s priorities were whacky, but He didn’t hold it over her head. He continued to love her and have a friendship with her. I think, in contrast, our tendency—when we see the human, struggling side of our friends—is to turn tail and run. That’s not what Jesus did.

The Bible says a true friend will cover it; rip it up. Proverbs 17:17 says, “A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity.” Jesus loved Martha when the going was easy, and He was just over for a leisurely supper at her home. And Jesus loved Martha when things were gut-wrenchingly hard—and everywhere in-between.

He’s the same kind of friend to you. He loves you all the time, and if we will follow His example, we’ll be the same kind of friend to others. And it’s hard. Actually, true friendship is counter-cultural, because of that which I mentioned earlier—we believe friendship exists to stroke our ego. If friendship exists to stroke our ego, when the going gets tough, we head out. But that’s not what Jesus did, and that’s not what He calls us to in His Word.

Finally, in Romans 12:15: “Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.” This is what Jesus modeled for us at Lazarus’ tomb. He was moved by their pain. He rolled up His sleeves and He got messy, because that what true friends do. How about you?

I bet you rejoice when your friends rejoice. I bet you have friends who you laugh and have a great time with, and that’s good. You celebrate victories and accomplishments with them; most of us do. But do you weep when they weep? When your friends are suffering, do you suffer with them, or do you distance yourself? Do you put yourself back to the safe zone?

I thank God that that’s not the kind of friend Jesus is to us. Because of that, we need to be a true friend like Jesus was to our friends and meet them where they are. I love the words to the hymn, "What a Friend We Have in Jesus. I think that’s a fitting description to end this session on true friendship, so let me just read them to you:

What a friend we have in Jesus,
All our sins and griefs to bear.
What a privilege to carry
Everything to God in prayer.

O what peace we often forfeit;
O what needless pain we bear;
All because we do not carry
Everything to God in prayer.

I’m not sure I ever sang the second verse, but it’s sweet:

Have we trials and temptations?
Is there trouble anywhere?
We should never be discouraged;
Take it to the Lord in prayer.

Can we find a friend so faithful
Who will all our sorrows share?
Jesus knows our every weakness;
Take it to the Lord in prayer.

Are we weak and heavy laden,
Cumbered with a load of care?
Precious Savior, still our refuge;
Take it to the Lord in prayer.

Do thy friends despise, forsake thee?
Take it to the Lord in prayer
In his arms He'll take and shield thee;
Thou wilt find a solace there. 

("What a Friend We Have in Jesus by Joseph Scriven)

Nancy: What a friend we have in Jesus! I was thinking, Erin, as you were talking . . . we have different kinds of friends and friends that bless our lives in different ways, but there’s nothing like a friendship where we are pointing each other to Jesus.

I had a phone call last night with a few of my women friends. We get together on the phone periodically, because we all live in different places (our mutual friend, Dannah, was on that call). Periodically we’ll talk, several of us, and we share an update on our lives, and how we can pray for each other. 

Each one of us shared last night, and we stopped and prayed for each one. On the last call we had like that, one of the women on the call at one point burst into tears. I think of Mary and Martha there, of the grief they were experiencing. This gal was the last one to share on that particular call and there had been lots of updates. But when it was her turn, she started bawling, because there was all kinds of pressure going on in her life.

We didn’t resist her; we didn’t tell her we wished she wasn’t on that call. We told her we were glad she was our friend and that we could be her friends. We prayed for her and we (you know how you do this on the phone) “linked arms” with each other over the phone. We encouraged her and pointed her to Jesus.

This is a friend who has done this for us. Each of us on that call has been in the weeping-person place at different times, where we just needed someone to care, someone to help us to think straight when we were confused, and most of all, someone to point us to Jesus. That is the sweetest and truest kind of friendship.

Yes, it’s messy at times; yes, it’s hard at times, but so, so sweet, when Jesus is at the center of those friendships.

O Lord, how grateful we are for the Friend that You are to us, and that You have called us Your friends. That is so amazing! Thank You, Lord, and make us true friends to those You have put in our lives. Help us to be honest and compassionate and to overlook offenses. 

Help us to not focus on the faults, but to help point each other to grace and to Christ. Please use our friendships to help build up one another, until we all more like Jesus, that amazing True Friend. We pray in His name, amen.

I know that many of you listening today want to get a copy of the book that Erin has written. It’s a Bible study on women who encountered Jesus. It’s called Beautiful Encounters, and it’s available as our way of saying thank you when you make a donation of any amount to the ministry of Revive Our Hearts.

Just give us a call at 1–800–569–5959, or visit us online at ReviveOurHearts.com. When you make your donation, be sure and let us know that you want to have a copy of this study. It’s a great resource for your own Bible study, but also a great resource moms and grandmoms may want to consider doing with a daughter or a granddaughter in your life—maybe something in a high school girls’ Sunday school class.

I think women of every age are going to be really impacted by studying these women who met Jesus. When we come back for Revive Our Hearts next time, we’ll be looking at yet another woman whose life was transformed when she encountered Christ.

Leslie: Thanks, Nancy. You can get the book Nancy’s been talking about for a gift of any amount when you contact us by next Wednesday, May 14.

You are thirsty—not for physical water. There’s a deep craving in your soul, and only one thing can satisfy it. Erin will talk about it tomorrow. Please be back for Revive Our Hearts.

Oh, and one more thing, to see today’s teaching from Erin on video, visit ReviveOurHearts.com. Each day of this series, you’ll find that day’s complete teaching on video. Just visit ReviveOurHearts.com.

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

All Scripture is taken from the English Standard Version. 

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