Revive Our Hearts

Guest (Female): It's extremely painful to wake up every single day not knowing what's going to happen with my mom.

Guest (Male): That's what one Revive Our Hearts listener said to us when she wrote from Hungary.

Guest (Female): Your ministry has been a blessing to me for a while. A friend of mine showed your website to me about a year ago, and since then I start my morning by listening to your podcasts as part of my daily devotion.

This week we found out my mom has lung cancer. I know we are in God's hands and He is above all things. Yet it's extremely painful to wake up every single day not knowing what's going to happen with my mom.

This morning I woke up with the same pain in my heart. When I started to listen to today's message on Revive Our Hearts, God strengthened me with Nancy's message. Out of pain can come incredible beauty, and grace, and strength, and healing, and hope, and means to help other people in pain. Please pray for my mom, and thank you. God bless your ministry.

Guest (Male): Wow, what a touching message. And as the Lord prompts, I hope you'll pray for this woman and her mom, their extended family and friends as they go through this trial.

When Revive Our Hearts first began, I don't think any of us could have envisioned how the Lord would take this message to women in countries all around the world. It never ceases to amaze me how the Lord can use messages that we record here in Southwest Michigan and send them to a woman in Hungary at just the time she needs that word. You are part of making this happen day after day as you pray for Revive Our Hearts and as you give to support our various out-reaches.

Dannah Gresh: It's so true, Nancy. We're asking God to provide $1.4 million by May 31st. That'll help us meet the current needs of this ministry. As we shared, we're navigating a budget shortfall at this time. We have reserves we can dip into, but we don't want to do that. We'd rather use those funds to push new initiatives forward and reach more women like the one you just heard from.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: The Lord encourages us in both good and hard times to go to Him, to share our needs, and to ask Him for His provision. He knows the needs you may be facing, and He knows the needs our ministry is facing. And together this is a time to trust Him for His provision.

If you've given toward Revive Our Hearts' current need over the past few weeks as many already have, I want to say a huge thank you. Please know how grateful I am and how grateful our team is for your part in helping to meet this need. Maybe you've been thinking about giving a special gift but you just haven't gotten around to it yet. Well, now would be a great time to do that.

Your gift at this time really will make a difference. We'd love to have you join us as together we call women to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ. As the Lord prompts and as He supplies, you can make your gift today by visiting us at ReviveOurHearts.com or give us a call at 1-800-569-5959. Again, that's 1-800-569-5959.

Thank You, Lord, for every giver, every friend, every person who prays, every person who writes notes and encourages us and shares how You're using this ministry to bless and encourage them in their walk with You. Thank You for everyone who's given so far to help meet this need. Thank You for everyone who's thinking about it, praying about it, and considering it.

We just trust You together not only to meet the needs of Revive Our Hearts but to meet every need of every friend who is listening to my voice right now according to Your riches in glory in Christ Jesus as we trust You. In Jesus' name I pray, Amen.

Guest (Male): According to Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, there are some important signs to look for in your walk with God.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: Where there is life, there will be fruitfulness. That is the result of Christ's life, His word, and His spirit flowing in us, filling us, and then flowing through us to others.

Dannah Gresh: This is the Revive Our Hearts podcast with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, author of Adorned, for May 27, 2026. I'm Dannah Gresh.

Everyone longs to have a life full of purpose and meaning, and as followers of Jesus, we want our lives to be useful in advancing the kingdom of God. Today Nancy will show us what a life of fruitfulness looks like and what God has to say about it. Here's Nancy.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: Let's see what the dictionary has to say about fruitfulness. I looked it up in several dictionaries and let me share some of the results that I found that I think are helpful. First of all, Webster's 1828 Dictionary, that's the original Webster's Dictionary, says that fruitfulness means very productive, producing fruit in abundance. It also means prolific, bearing children, and not barren. Giving life, being a life-giver—this is fruitfulness.

Another dictionary said fruitfulness means fertile, producing good or helpful results, beneficial, profitable, and producing many offspring. For somebody who has a lot of children, you would say, "Wow, they have been really fruitful." Another online dictionary says that fruitful activity multiplies or adds to what's already there, producing more of something.

We all do a lot of activity. The question is, are we doing fruitful activity? How do you know if it's fruitful? If it's fruitful, it will multiply or add to what's already there, producing more of something. As we're going to see in God's Word, He wants us to produce more of something. That something is the life, the heart, and the spirit of Jesus through our lives as we become fruitful.

The concept of being fruitful or bearing fruit is introduced on the very first page of the Bible. We also see it on the last page of the Bible and many, many times in between. But to get us started on this little couple-day overview of fruitfulness in the scripture, let me invite you to turn in your Bible or scroll to it to the book of Genesis chapter one, the first page of the Old Testament.

I want to show you the concept of fruitfulness from the very beginning. In fact, Genesis means beginning. In the beginning of things, God intended that every living thing should be fruitful. Look at Genesis one, first of all verses 11 and 12. "Then God said, 'Let the earth produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and fruit trees on the earth bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds.' And it was so. The earth produced vegetation: seed-bearing plants according to their kinds, and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good."

When God made these trees, these shrubs, and these plants, He made them in such a way that they were to bear fruit, and in the fruit they bore, there would be more seeds so that that fruit could produce more fruit. Fruit-bearing would go from one generation to the next. These trees and this vegetation were not just to exist for themselves. They were designed and created to multiply, to be productive, and to produce more just like themselves. That concept is introduced in verse 11 of the first chapter of the Bible.

It wasn't just plants and trees that were to be fruitful. If you go to verse 20 in Genesis chapter one, verses 20 and 21: "Then God said, 'Let the water swarm with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the sky.' So God created the large sea creatures and swarms in the water according to their kinds. He also created every winged creature according to its kind, and God saw that it was good."

As we come to verse 22, notice the connection between God's blessing and fruitfulness. God made these birds, these living creatures, and these large sea creatures. He made them with life, and then verse 22: "God blessed them and He said to them, 'Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters of the seas, and let the birds multiply on the earth.'" God created these birds and sea creatures, He blessed them, and part of His blessing was that they would be multiplied. They would produce others like themselves.

It wasn't just plants and trees and animals that were to be fruitful. As we continue in the creation account in Genesis one, we see that human beings were created and commanded to be fruitful. Look in verse 28 in Genesis chapter one. After God created male and female in His image, "God blessed them and said to them, 'Be fruitful.'" That's the second time we're seeing that connection: be blessed and be fruitful.

"God blessed them and said to them, 'Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth and subdue it.'" They were blessed to be a blessing. We have been blessed to be fruitful, to multiply, and to reproduce. We were not created just to be consumers, but to be producers, reproducers, and to be fruitful. This is emphasized throughout the book of Genesis.

We've already seen the connection between God's blessing and fruitfulness in Genesis one. If you turn to Genesis nine, you're going to see this same concept after the world was destroyed in the flood. Genesis nine verse one: "God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, 'Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.'" Do you feel like you've read that somewhere before? This is God's design and God's plan.

In Genesis chapter 17, God said to Abram, "I will make you extremely fruitful and will make nations and kings come from you." He wasn't going to produce just a little bit of fruit; he was going to produce, by God's enabling, a lot of fruit—extremely fruitful. When I read that, I think, oh Lord, I want to be a woman who is extremely fruitful. We'll talk more about what that looks like in just a moment.

In Genesis 35, God said to Jacob, "I am God Almighty; be fruitful and multiply. A nation, indeed an assembly of nations, will come from you and kings will descend from you." And then in Genesis 48, Jacob says to his son Joseph, "God Almighty appeared to me at Luz in the land of Canaan and blessed me. He said to me, 'I will make you fruitful and numerous. I will make many nations come from you, and I will give this land as a permanent possession to your future descendants.'"

Fruitfulness suggests that there will be a future and there will be descendants and they will be multiplied. It's not just us taking up space here, breathing air, and doing life, but us giving life to others. We've been blessed by God to bless others. As we come to Genesis 49, we see that as Jacob is dying, he gives a blessing to his sons. He passes on this blessing. He has been fruitful. His father was fruitful. His father was fruitful.

Jacob wants his son and his son's children to be fruitful. So Jacob says to his son Joseph, one of his 12 sons and his beloved son Joseph, "Joseph is a fruitful vine, a fruitful vine beside a spring. Its branches climb over the wall." Doesn't that sound just beautiful? Like a garden—a fruitful garden. This vine that is next to a spring is drawing its life from the water of that spring and its branches are extending, climbing over a wall.

We're not just staying in this little box of who we are and who we want to be, but we're spreading, multiplying, producing, and giving life to others. That blessing in Genesis 49 sounds so picturesque and so idyllic—just this beautiful fruitful life. But as we look in scripture, we see that sometimes we're called to be fruitful in hard places. There are hints of this early on in the scripture.

In Genesis 41, Joseph named his second son Ephraim. He said, talking about the meaning of that name Ephraim, "God has made me fruitful in the land of my affliction." Joseph had suffered a lot. He had been mistreated and treated unjustly. He had a difficult life. But he named this son a word that means God has made me fruitful in the land of my affliction. That says to me fruitfulness in my life and yours is not dependent on our circumstances. People who live in hard places can still be fruitful by God's grace.

Another example is Genesis 47. The nation of Israel settled in the land of Egypt. It's a long story about how they got there. They acquired property in it and became fruitful and very numerous. They were not in their homeland; they were transplanted to Egypt. In Egypt they were fruitful, and as a result of their multiplying and being fertile, they ended up in an oppressed place, persecuted by the Egyptians. You can be fruitful in a hard place.

You see this same thought in Exodus chapter one. It says the Israelites were fruitful. They increased rapidly, multiplied, and became extremely numerous so that the land was filled with them. When the land of Egypt became filled with Israelites, the Egyptians got scared. That welcoming hospitality that the Israelites had experienced when they first went to Egypt turned to opposition and persecution. Yet that's where God placed them for that time and He made them fruitful. He prospered them.

As I was just reading that verse, "The Israelites increased rapidly, multiplied, and became extremely numerous so that the land was filled with them," I just had this picture cross my mind. What if the people of God, what if women of God who listen to Revive Our Hearts, who've been blessed by it, and who grow from it, what if God blessed our lives in such a way that we multiplied and increased rapidly and became extremely numerous so that the land was filled with women, men, and people of God who know God, love God, and walk with Him?

That's a picture of what happened to the Israelites and what could happen in times of revival as God multiplies the fruitfulness of our lives. That's what we long for: women everywhere talking about Jesus, promoting the gospel, sharing the gospel with others, being light and salt, and influencing their homes, their workplaces, their churches, and their communities until the land is filled with the beauty of Christ shining through fruitful believers.

That's the vision we have for Revive Our Hearts and it's God's vision for His church, so that one day the glory of the Lord will cover the earth as the waters cover the sea. How does it happen? How does it start? By you and me being fruitful believers. In the Old Testament, fruitfulness is promised to God's people mostly in relation to the land, crops, and physical offspring. Mostly when you read about fruitfulness in the Old Testament, that's what it's talking about.

In Leviticus chapter 26, God said, "If you follow my statutes and faithfully observe my commands, I will give you rain at the right time and the land will yield its produce." You can't have good harvests if you don't have rain. God says, "I'm going to bless the land physically. I'm going to give you physical harvests and the trees of the field will bear their fruit. I will turn to you, make you fruitful and multiply you." The fruit it's talking about is related to the land, rain, sun, crops, and physical offspring.

Another example of that is in Deuteronomy chapter seven, beginning in verse 13. "God will love you, bless you, and multiply you." Blessing and fruitfulness go hand in hand. We've been blessed to be a blessing and blessed to multiply. "He will bless your offspring and the produce of your land: your grain, new wine and fresh oil, the young of your herds and the newborn of your flocks in the land He swore to your ancestors that He would give you."

The vision there is for physical fruitfulness—a land, produce, and harvest. God will bless your offspring and give you children. He will give them children. He will give you grain, wine, oil, herds, and flocks. That's the example and the evidence of fruitfulness found mostly in the Old Testament. Psalm 105 verse 24 says the Lord made His people very fruitful. He made them more numerous than their foes.

You remember this in Egypt when the Israelite women were having babies and the Egyptian king Pharaoh said, "Stop them from having babies," but the women kept having babies. God made them fruitful. That's what the psalmist is talking about in Psalm 105. God made His people very fruitful and He made them more numerous than their enemies. We see another example of this concept of physical fruitfulness in Psalm 128.

I'm reading here from the English Standard Version. It says, "Blessed is everyone who fears the Lord, who walks in His ways. You shall eat the fruit of the labor of your hands." Here you are walking with the Lord, God blesses you, and then He makes you fruitful. You will eat of the fruit of the labor of your hands. You shall be blessed and it shall be well with you. Your wife will be like a fruitful vine within your house.

God says, "I'm going to bless you with children." Now God did not bless every believing Jew with children. We have many illustrations in the scripture of women who longed for children and were barren. They were not able to have children until God supernaturally intervened to give them children. He's not saying that every woman who loves God will have children or will have many children.

Some women who love God will never be called by God to marry. They may not have biological or physical children. Some women who are married are not able to give birth to biological children. But God is saying, looking at the nation, one of the evidences of my blessing in the people of Israel is that you will be physically productive. You will have offspring. Your wife will be like a fruitful vine within your house and your children will be like young olive trees around your table.

Young olive trees are going to grow up and produce more olives. He's saying this fruitfulness thing is a generational thing passed from one generation to the next. You will be blessed so you can be fruitful and so you can be a blessing to the next generation. They will be blessed and they will become fruitful so they can become a blessing to the next generation. This is how the family of God is supposed to multiply in the world.

We see a picture of this in how God made His people productive in the Old Testament. Psalm 128 continuing in that passage says, "Behold, thus shall the man be blessed who fears the Lord. The Lord bless you from Zion." What is He saying? May the Lord make you fruitful, may He make you productive, and may He give you children. He says, "May you see the prosperity of Jerusalem all the days of your life. May you see your children's children."

Children are a blessing from the Lord and physical children are a blessing from the Lord. But all of this is going to point to a bigger family—the family of God—and how the heart of God and the gospel are reproduced from one generation to the next. This physical fruitfulness was a picture in the Old Testament of a deeper, more enduring kind of fruitfulness. This is where we learn about the life of the righteous, those who are in Christ.

We learn that those who are righteous will live fruitful lives. They may not have a lot of children, land, or material wealth, but they will be spiritually fruitful and rich. They will pass that heritage and that legacy down to their spiritual children and grandchildren. Look at the first psalm in the Old Testament, Psalm one. It's talking about a righteous person who meditates on the law of the Lord. His focus and his connection is to the Lord.

It says he will be like a tree planted beside flowing streams that bears its fruit in its season and its leaf does not wither. Whatever he does prospers. There you see it moving from the physical fruitfulness to talk about the spiritual reproduction of a man or woman who fears the Lord and walks with Him. The point is where there is life, there will be fruitfulness. That is the result of Christ's life, His Word, and His spirit flowing in us, filling us, and then flowing through us to others.

We're not supposed to sit like bumps on a log and just enjoy our relationship with God and our time at church and just let all the rest of the world go while we're enjoying the gospel and Christ. No, God wants us to be bearing fruit as we walk with Him. As our hearts become tuned to Him and we meditate on His law, we will bear fruit in the appropriate season. Our leaf will not wither and whatever we do will prosper.

You see a similar concept in Jeremiah chapter 17 beginning in verse seven. It says the person who trusts in the Lord, whose confidence is the Lord, is blessed. We've been looking at the connection between blessing and fruitfulness. When it says this person who trusts in the Lord is blessed, what do you think is going to be the result of that blessing? Jeremiah 17 verse eight: "He will be like a tree planted by water. It sends its roots out toward a stream. It doesn't fear when heat comes and its foliage remains green. It will not worry in a year of drought and it will not cease producing fruit."

This is the life of a person who trusts the Lord and who relies on the Lord for his righteousness and for his salvation. This is a picture of a person who is alive spiritually and the evidence is that he is bearing spiritual fruit. He doesn't just do it in good times; he does it in hard times. In a year of drought, when the heat comes, he will never cease producing fruit.

Just some takeaways from what we've looked at so far today about fruitfulness. We've learned that God blessed His creation—plants, animals, and people—to be a blessing. We were created to be fruitful, to bear fruit, to be productive, to multiply, and to reproduce. Spiritual fruitfulness is the result and the overflow of our union with Christ and His Word.

That's what we saw in Psalm one—the righteous person who meditates on the law of the Lord. As we walk with God, we will be fruitful. The person who trusts in the Lord in Jeremiah 17, that person will be fruitful. Spiritual fruitfulness doesn't just happen. You can't just say, "Oh, I'm going to produce spiritual fruit," if you don't have a life that is walking with God. Spiritual fruitfulness is the result and the overflow of our union with Christ and with His Word.

As you walk with Christ in the light of His Word, He will make you spiritually fruitful. Our fruitfulness is not dependent on our circumstances. It's not dependent on what's going on around us or on whether we have people to encourage us in our faith or to help us grow. We need those things, but spiritual fruitfulness is not dependent on anything or anyone other than the giver of life Himself—the Lord Jesus.

God made us to be fruitful and we can be fruitful in the midst of adversity, in the midst of those hot summer days, and in the midst of drought where there hasn't been rain. God can make us fruitful even in the land, as Joseph said about his son, "God has made me fruitful in the land of my adversity." You may feel like you're like Joseph today, that fruitful vine hanging over the wall near the stream, and it may feel like bearing fruit is just easy right now.

More likely, you're finding that it's challenging. You wonder, how can I be fruitful in this place? Well, we will be fruitful as we cling to Christ, as we trust in Him, as we soak in His Word, and as we let Him produce His fruit in us. Then the expression of that will be that our lives will have an impact. We'll bear fruit in the lives of others and we will never cease to produce fruit for the glory of God. That's what you were made for. That's what I was made for. I want to challenge you to say, "Lord, make me fruitful. I want to have a fruitful life and walk with You."

Lord, would You make it so that in this season, whatever that looks like for my friend listening today, in my season of life, in each age, in each complex place, and in each challenging moment, would You produce Your fruit in us and would You produce Your fruit through us for Your glory? I pray in Jesus' name, Amen.

Dannah Gresh: Amen. Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth has been explaining the concept of fruitfulness, showing us how the Bible describes truly fruitful people. Something I'm sitting with is this idea of fruitfulness multiplying. Don't you want to be a part of that? Our faithfulness can trickle down to our daughters and granddaughters and the younger women in our churches. That's just really exciting to me.

I've been heading up the new Wonder app for teen girls and oh, how I want to see more of these young women become fruitful in Christ. Wonder is one way Revive Our Hearts wants to partner with you to that end. Right now our teen girls are participating in the Wonder Summer Bible Reading Challenge. The goal of the challenge is to help them stay consistent in their Bible reading even with more relaxed summer schedules.

Instead of scrolling their summers away, our sweet Wonder girls are growing their devo streaks, earning book badges, and inviting friends to join them in the app. We would love for your teen girl to join us too. To learn more, visit ReviveOurHearts.com/Wonder. There you'll find a link to download the Wonder app and I cannot wait for your girls to dive in.

If Revive Our Hearts' out-reaches excite you, you can be a part of moving them forward. We're hoping to add further app updates, advanced features, and even live events for teen girls in the future. You can donate today at ReviveOurHearts.com to help make that happen. When you give any amount before the end of this month, we'll send you a copy of Nancy's booklet, Called to Thrive, as our thanks.

Today Nancy's talked a lot about fruitfulness and how much we should all want it. But you can learn a lot about something by studying its opposite too. That's exactly what she'll do tomorrow. I'm Dannah Gresh inviting you back for Revive Our Hearts.

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