Revive Our Hearts

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth asks, "When a crisis interrupts your peace, where do you turn?" You go to where you can find God. That is where you turn. You do not ultimately turn to your husband. You do not ultimately turn to your friends. You ultimately turn to God.

Dana Grash: This is the Revive Our Hearts podcast with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, co-author of You Can Trust God to Write Your Story, for September 24th, 2026. I am Dana Grash.

Dana Grash: In any given moment, our stories can take tragic twists and turns. If you have been dealt a huge blow in recent days, first of all, I am so sorry. There is so much room to grieve that with the Lord.

Second, I hope today's teaching will flood your heart with comfort and perspective as you do. It is part of a series called A Breath of New Life with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: Well, I do not know about you, but I have so enjoyed getting to know this Shunamite woman, as she is known in 2 Kings chapter 4. We are seeing a woman who is generous, hospitable, gracious, contented, and a woman who is blessed by God in many ways as a result of her investing in the lives of others.

For those of you who are just joining us in this series, let me just back up and read the passage we have talked about so far and then we will continue in the next section today. 2 Kings chapter 4, beginning in verse 8.

One day Elisha went on to Shunem, where a wealthy woman lived, who urged him to eat some food. So, whenever he passed that way, he would turn in there to eat food. And she said to her husband, "Behold now, I know that this is a holy man of God, who is continually passing our way. Let us make a small room on the roof with walls, and put there for him a bed, a table, a chair, and a lamp, so that whenever he comes to us, he can go in there."

One day he came there, and he turned into the chamber and rested there. And he said to Gehazi his servant, "Call this Shunamite." Shunamite is the woman from Shunem. When he had called her, she stood before him, and he said to him, Elisha said to Gehazi, "Say now to her, 'See, you have taken all this trouble for us; what is to be done for you? Would you have a word spoken on your behalf to the king or to the commander of the army?'"

She answered, "I dwell among my own people." If you put that in the context of this whole passage, we said in the last session, she is saying, "I have what I need. I am content. What I have is enough." She did not have everything that she could have ever wanted. We will see that in a moment. But she was content with what God had provided for her and was using what she did have to be a blessing to others.

So, verse 14, Elisha said, when he got this report back, "What then is to be done for her? What can we do for this woman who has everything, who needs nothing, who is content? We want to bless her in some way because of how she has blessed us."

Gehazi answered, "Well, she has no son, and her husband is old." Read, "She cannot have children. She is barren." They they have not been able to have this longing fulfilled. That was a huge thing in Jewish culture for lots of reasons. And so, Elisha says to Gehazi, "Call her."

And when he had called her, she stood in the doorway, and he said, "At this season, about this time next year, you shall embrace a son." And she said, "No, my lord, oh man of God, do not lie to your servant. Do not get my hopes up only to have them dashed."

But verse 17, "The woman conceived, and she bore a son about that time the following spring, as Elisha had said to her." So, here we have this kind, generous woman who has served, she has invested in the lives of others, and now after years of infertility, God gives her this miracle child. Great gift from the Lord, great joy and fullness comes to this woman's house. You can imagine as she watches her son grow, she takes great delight in him. This is the child of her husband's old age. We do not know how old she was. And I imagine Elisha loved this child too, as he would come and visit the home. I do not know if the child called, you know, Elisha Uncle Eli or what. But now there were different noises in this house. There were little footsteps pattering on the floors of that home, and just such a joy and a delight.

Now you think, "Wow, end of story. What a great story." You would have thought that this woman would have lived happily ever after with her husband, her son. She already had a home, she already had a husband, now she has a child. You know, fairy tale ending, right? But life is not like that. All of a sudden, with no notice, a huge storm bursts out in this woman's world, where she has had great joy for these last several years. Now that joy turns to great sorrow.

One commentator on this passage said, "How precarious is every earthly possession?" Anything that you have that is physical or tangible, material, visible, anything that you can hold in your hand or touch or feel or taste, it is temporal. It is precarious. Every earthly possession can be taken away. And at some point, it will. That is why people who hold onto their stuff, people, friends, houses, material things, those people are insecure. Because all of that stuff can be taken away from you.

Truly secure people are people who set their hope in God, who can never be taken away from us. How precarious is every earthly possession? And we see this in verse 18. "When the child had grown," we do not know how old he was, but he was old enough to go out to the field. "He went out one day to his father among the reapers." And we will see in just a couple of verses that he was young enough to still be held on his mother's lap. So, some commentators have thought he was maybe four to six years of age, maybe seven, eight years of age, not a grown-up child, but not an infant child either.

"When the child had grown, he went out one day to his father among the reapers, and he said to his father, 'Oh my head, my head!' The father said to his servant, 'Carry him to his mother.'" Now, we do not know what happened to this child, possibly sunstroke. It was harvest time, so the sun would have been very hot even in the morning. This is in the scorching hot weather. But whatever it is, the father apparently assumes that this is a temporary problem. He does not realize how serious it is, and he figures the child's mother can help, so he says to the servant, "Take the child home to mom."

Verse 20, "And when he had lifted him and brought him to his mother, the child sat on her lap till noon, and then he died." In three verses, this woman's world is turned upside down and inside out. Total devastation. In the morning, she sends a healthy child off to work with his dad in the field. The child comes home before lunchtime, complaining of a headache, and within a short period of time, as she is holding this child on her lap, her son takes a final breath and is gone. In the course of a few hours, everything in this woman's world has changed.

Some of you have been there, and just had in a moment your whole world in one day before the day is over, before lunchtime. You get a call, you get some news, maybe with a child, maybe with a mate, maybe it would be with a house burning down, just something that you totally did not expect when you got up that morning.

In this case, intense joy that this woman has experienced through God's miraculous provision of this child, that intense joy is turned to inexpressible sorrow. Here was a woman who initially was barren, infertile. But God has miraculously allowed her to birth this child. She raises the child. Now she loses the child. Talk about a roller coaster of emotions, and different seasons of life, and first you are up and then you are down, and then you are up, and then you get whiplash just reading how quickly all this happens in her life.

In the present, she has lost the joy of her life. And then, as she thinks about the future, if she even stops to think about that at the moment, she has no hope for the future, humanly speaking, because death is so final, and now there is no son who will carry on the family name, who is going to care for her in her old age. I do not know if all these thoughts raced through her head at that moment, or she is just in, we do not know what was going through her mind, but if she stopped to think, these are the things that she would have thought of.

But she also knew that this child was the result of a miracle. This child was a gift of God. This child could only be explained in terms of God. So, if God could give her a child after years of barrenness, somewhere deep in her heart, she knew that God could give that child back to her.

So, verse 21, "She went up and laid him on the bed of the man of God, and shut the door behind him, and went out." She puts this child's body in a private place, where nobody will disturb the body. Maybe she does not want anybody to know that he has died. She does not want anybody, she knows she is going to go see the prophet. She did not want anybody to bury the child before she gets back, because they would have had quick burials in those days. But it also seems to be an act of faith, an act of hope, by putting this child on the prophet's bed, that maybe the prophet will be able to restore this boy back to life.

Verse 22, "Then she called to her husband and said, 'Send me one of the servants and one of the donkeys, that I may quickly go to the man of God and come back again.'" So, here is a woman, I have just been pondering this passage, kind of living in it, which by the way is a great way to do Bible study. I have been helped by commentaries, but mostly I have just been living in the passage and trying to experience what this woman experiences. She takes immediate, decisive action. She does not fall apart and, you know, have a meltdown. She exhibits, in fact, I think, remarkable self-control under the circumstances. She is not frenzied. She is clear-headed. She determines what needs to be done and she does it.

I think in this crisis, here is a woman who displays a lot of wisdom and grace. Which, by the way, you will not have in the crisis if you have not been developing wisdom and grace before the crisis. Here is a woman who had learned contentment, who had learned grace, who had learned generosity, who had listened to the man of God. Now all of that comes to bear in this horrific crisis moment of her life. It does not mean there are not tears. It does not mean she is not extremely grieving and sad and torn apart by this child's, the loss of this child. But it does not strip the wisdom and grace from her. She demonstrates that in this crisis.

One writer said, "Self-possession is that state of mind in which, though a person cannot hinder his feelings, he can govern them." I think that is what we see her doing here. She has the feelings. You cannot help those. There would be something wrong with you if you did not have deep, troubled, sad emotions at this moment. But by God's grace, she is able to govern those emotions so she can do what needs to be done at the moment.

As she heads out, I think of that passage in Hebrews chapter 11, which says, "By faith, Abraham considered that God was able even to raise his son from the dead. And by faith, women received back their dead by resurrection." If you know God, if your hope is in God, you know a God of the resurrection. We are going to talk about that as we continue in this series.

But let us continue in the progression here. Verse 23, she calls to her husband, she says, "Get a donkey ready, send a servant so I can go to the man of God." And her husband says, verse 23, "Why will you go to him today? It is neither new moon nor Sabbath." So, it seems that the dad does not know that the child has died. For whatever reason, the Shunamite woman does not stop and tell her husband what has happened. We could speculate as to what those reasons are. We do not know.

The dad says, "Why are you going to see the prophet today? It is not a new moon or a Sabbath." Apparently, she and her husband perhaps had been accustomed to go to Elisha's home to consult the prophet, to worship with the prophet, to hear him explain the Word of God on the religious high days, the rest days, the special feast days. So, they were accustomed to go there on special holidays, holy days, days of celebration, to worship, to pray, to hear the prophet read and explain the Word of God. So, he is saying, "It is not a holy day. It is not a holiday. Why are you going?"

All she says is, "All is well." That is actually the Hebrew word shalom. Peace. She does not tell him the shocking news that their son has just died. Just, shalom. Peace. Now, in my translation, that is translated "all is well." Some of your translations, some of the older ones, read, "all will be well."

I think it could be translated either. "All is well, all will be well." Either way, it is a statement of faith. The context is that she knows and loves and worships a God who is wise, who is good, who is alive, who is at work, and who can do the impossible. So, in that context, knowing that God, she goes, "Shalom. Peace. All is well. All will be well."

Verse 24, "Then she saddled the donkey, and she said to her servant, 'Urge the animal on. Do not slacken the pace for me unless I tell you.'" Here is a woman on a mission. Woman in a hurry. So, she set out and came to the man of God at Mount Carmel. Now Mount Carmel, I have read different things on this. It is somewhere between 15 and 30 miles away, maybe depending on where you were going at the mount.

It is apparently common in the East for the master to ride the donkey. She would have perhaps been riding on the donkey, while the servant would walk alongside and drive the donkey. So, she says, "Urge the animal on. Do not let up. This is not a joy ride here. We are not going for a, you know, Sunday ride in the park. We have got to get there fast." She has not told anybody what has happened. The servant does not know, apparently. Her husband does not know, but she knows. She knows she has got to get post haste to the prophet's house.

Again, remember she is not driving a car there. This is a journey that is going to take probably some hours. I do not know how fast they are going, but not faster than the servant can walk. So, they have got probably a few hours at least where she is pondering and contemplating and thinking about what is going on, and keeping this to herself, not being able to talk to anybody about it. But she knows where she is headed, and she is headed to the man of God. She knows that Elisha is a holy man who knows God, who listens to God, and who speaks the Word of God. She does not know what is going to happen, but she knows that she has got to get to someone who can tell her what God says.

So, her heart is in a crisis, you go to where you can find God. That is where you turn. You do not ultimately turn to your husband. You do not ultimately turn to your friends. You ultimately turn to God. By going to Elisha's house, that is what she is doing. She is turning to God in the crisis because she has found God to be a very present help to her in every season of her life. Now, when the chips are down, and she is on the worst day of her life, the worst moment of her life, the day when it feels that her heart has been ripped apart, she knows that the only solace she can find, the only help she can find, the only wisdom she can find, the only whatever she needs, all she can do is go to God and seek to find that.

Well, verse 25, "When the man of God saw her coming, he said to Gehazi his servant, 'Look, there is the Shunamite. Run at once to meet her and say to her, "Is all well with you? Is all well with your husband? Is all well with the child?"'" So, he is concerned about her. She has obviously got something on her mind. She is coming in a hurry. It is unusual. It would not be typical for her to come on a day like this. "Is everything okay? Are you okay? Is your husband okay? Is your child okay?"

Again, for the second time, she answers, "Shalom. All is well. All will be well." Now, what does she mean by that in this context? I think there are several things she could have meant, maybe more than one of these. But first of all, she is talking to Gehazi at this point, who is Elisha's servant. She is not at Elisha's house yet. Gehazi the servant has gone out to meet her. I think maybe she did not want to open up her heart and share her need until she could get to the man of God.

Gehazi had stayed in her home each time Elisha had been there, so she knew this man, and she may have felt that he just did not have, he did not know God the way Elisha did. We see that come out in this passage, and then also in the next chapter, which we are not going to study in this series. We see some qualities in Gehazi that are not becoming of a man of God. We see a man who does not have the same kind of compassion that Elisha has. We see a man who is more motivated by personal gain than by serving and giving. He does not have a servant's heart. She knew this man. So, she is not going to unload her heart to him, to someone who does not really know God or have God's heart.

As I was thinking about that last night, it makes me wonder when I ask people, "How are you doing?" Are they so convinced that I know God and that I really care, that I have a compassionate heart, that they are going to be willing to tell me what is really on their heart? Or are they more likely to just say, "Fine. I am fine." I wonder how many people say to me when I say, "How are you doing?" they say, "I am fine," not because they are fine, but because they do not think I really care, or maybe do not know that I will take the time to listen, to be concerned, or maybe they just do not feel that I really know God in a way that is going to minister to them at that point of need. That may have been one reason she says to Gehazi, "All is well."

She also may have meant by that that she was expressing an acceptance and a surrender to the will of God. "The Lord gave, the Lord has taken away. Whatever God does is good." Now, to say "all is well" in that sense is not to pretend that there is no pain, that there is no hurt, that there is no loss, that there is no grief. But it is to acknowledge that in the midst of tragedy, when your world is falling apart, that all is still well. And then to say that "all will be well," which is a possible translation, may suggest that she had faith and confidence that God could intervene yet and that all would be well. Regardless whether he did or not, God's providence was to be trusted, even while her heart was breaking. And so, she says, "All is well. All will be well."

Matthew Henry makes this comment on this passage. He says, "When God calls away our dearest relations by death, it becomes us quietly to say, 'It is well,' both with us and with them. It is well, for all is well that God does. All is well with those that are gone if they have gone to heaven. And all is well with us that stay behind, if by the affliction we are furthered in our way thither." If we are brought closer to heaven by God's affliction and that process in our lives, then all is well.

I got an email from a friend recently who has a prodigal child. It is way out in the far country. This friend had been praying with me as I have been working on this series on the Shunamite woman. She said, "I am thinking about my life, thinking about the Shunamite woman. Twice she said, 'It is all right. Everything is all right.'" Well, everything was not all right. Why did she say that? "Her faith and deep trust in a God she knew in an intimate way. I can imagine she would sing with deep heartfelt feeling, 'All is well.'" And then she signed it, "Resting," and put her name.

I do not know where God finds you today or where he may find you tomorrow. In some really major area of your life, with a child, with a mate, with a situation in your life, a circumstance over which you have no control, where your world just takes a sudden turn and it all looks disastrous. The question is, do you know God in such a way that even through your tears you can lift your eyes up and say, "All is still well, and all will be well?" She said that before she heard the end of the story, before the story played out. All was going to be well. But regardless of whether God reverses your circumstances or not, if you are in his hand and belong to him, then all really is well, and all will be well.

Dana Grash: I wonder if Horatio Spafford, writer of the hymn, "It Is Well With My Soul," had studied this passage. After he lost his four daughters to a shipwreck, he wrote, "When peace like a river attendeth my way, when sorrows like sea billows roll, whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say, 'It is well, it is well with my soul.'"

By God's grace, we are learning to make this same declaration. The Shunamite woman is such a beautiful example for us. Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth has been teaching through her story from 2 Kings 4. Now, if you have missed any of the series so far, you can find all the episodes at ReviveOurHearts.com.

You know, what a blessing it is to learn from women of the faith gone before us. Our newest study, "Devoted," highlights six women of the Bible with faith worth imitating. Women who said, "Yes, Lord," when it would not have been easy. All of us will experience seasons when we are invited to do the same. Will we be ready when those moments come? As Nancy said earlier today, you will not have wisdom and grace in the crisis if you have not been developing wisdom and grace before the crisis. We want to help you cultivate these qualities. That is why we are sending this study to everyone who makes a donation in September. To give and request your copy, visit ReviveOurHearts.com or call us at 1-800-569-5959.

Tomorrow, Nancy will continue helping you prep your heart for when crisis comes. Please join us again for Revive Our Hearts.

Dana Grash: This program is a listener-supported production of Revive Our Hearts in Niles, Michigan, calling women to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.