Revive Our Hearts

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

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: And I asked the Lord, don't ever let me get to the place in ministry where I feel like I can do this without you.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: And that is one prayer God has been very faithful to answer. He keeps me sensing, I can't do this if God doesn't come through.

Dana Grash: We're celebrating our 25th anniversary week here on the Revive Our Hearts podcast with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth. It's September 8th, 2026. I'm Dana Grash.

Dana Grash: If you've ever felt completely inadequate to do a difficult task, you'll identify with what Nancy is sharing on today's program. Before we get to that, let me say thank you for the many testimonies and congratulations you've been calling in to wish Nancy and Revive Our Hearts a happy birthday.

Dana Grash: Last week, this program turned 25, and Nancy turned, well, you know what, I probably shouldn't say it on the air, more than 25. Chris called from Arkansas and left us this message.

Guest (Female): Happy birthday to both the ministry and to Nancy. I want to say to Nancy, thank you for staying in the battle. Thank you for swimming upstream, for not giving up.

Guest (Female): Thank you for making your will pliable to conform to God's will. Your teachings and those of your ministry have helped me alter my course closer to God's will. And I'm very thankful for you.

Dana Grash: Thank you, Chris, and it sounds like you had a furry friend there with you, too. If you'd like to call and let us know how God has used Revive Our Hearts in your life, here's the number for our testimony line. It's 219-200-2288. That's 219-200-2288. We would love to hear from you.

Dana Grash: Yesterday, we heard from Nancy about her years prior to the start of Revive Our Hearts. You can review that episode on the Revive Our Hearts app or by visiting reviveourhearts.com. Nancy's talking with Bob Lapine, who was instrumental in helping us get going with this program 25 years ago.

Dana Grash: Bob has served in an advisory role from the very beginning, and today he serves as the chairman of the Board of Directors. Let's listen.

Guest (Male): All of these formative years and the experience that we've talked about really led to an unexpected encounter in the summer of 1995.

Guest (Male): I was attending Campus Crusade staff conference. All of us who were on staff were in Fort Collins, Colorado for a week of training and equipping, and we were hearing from a variety of speakers. It was a great week.

Guest (Male): And at 10:00 on, I don't remember if it was a Tuesday or a Wednesday morning. Do you remember which day of the week it was? I just saw on the schedule that we were going to hear from Nancy Lee DeMoss.

Guest (Male): And one of my besetting sins is cynicism. So I looked at your name. I didn't know you, didn't know anything about you other than the fact that your mom and dad had been benefactors to Campus Crusade, had been donors to the ministry.

Guest (Male): And my cynicism went, I guess this is payback. You know, we get to listen to their daughter because they've given money to Campus Crusade. I'm just confessing on the radio it was a wrong thing to be thinking.

Guest (Male): But I showed up obediently. 10:00 in the morning, sitting out there, and you were introduced by Dr. Bright. You got up in your red dress with your then black hair. And people, this is still on YouTube, people can watch the video of this. You got up to speak to us on the subject of brokenness.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: God is more offended, I believe, by the arched back, the stiff neck, the haughty eyes, and the unteachable spirit than he is by the sodomite, the prostitute, the adulterer, the murderer, or the abortionist.

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

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: In recent weeks, I found God searching my own heart. I've gone before him many times and said, "Oh, God, show me what it means to be a broken person, to live a lifestyle of brokenness."

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: And what are some of the characteristics, the evidences of a proud, unbroken spirit? Let me just share with you some that have come to my own heart as I've waited on the Lord. Proud people focus on the failures of others.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: But broken people are overwhelmed with a sense of their own spiritual need. Proud people are self-righteous. They have a critical, fault-finding spirit. They look at everyone else's faults with a microscope, but their own with a telescope, and they look down on others.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: But broken people are compassionate. They can forgive much because they know how much they've been forgiven. They think the best of others and they esteem all others better than themselves.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: When confessing their sin, proud people tend to deal in generalities, but broken people are able to deal under the conviction of God's Spirit to acknowledge specifics. Proud people are concerned about the consequences of their sin, but broken people are grieved over the cause, the root of their sin.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: Proud people are blind to their real heart condition, but broken people walk in the light. Proud people don't think they have anything to repent of, but broken people realize that they have need of a continual heart attitude of repentance.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: And proud, unbroken people don't think they need revival, but they're sure that everyone else does. Whereas humble, broken people continually sense their need for a fresh encounter with God, for a fresh filling of his Holy Spirit.

Guest (Male): God was speaking to me through your message. And then I was aware that what you were sharing was intensely biblical. It was, I mean, you were taking us to passages in the scriptures. It was profound.

Guest (Male): God was using it. I didn't know at the time, but he was using it throughout that room in the hearts of so many people. Because at the end of your message that day, the Spirit of God was pressing on people. People were coming forward to confess their stubbornness, their pride, their hard-heartedness. And God used that message over a period of days for a reviving work there in our midst.

Guest (Male): I remember walking away from that thinking, first of all, how God had used that message in my own life, but then thinking, I need to share this with our listeners on Family Life Today. So I got a copy of the message and a few months later we aired it on Family Life Today.

Guest (Male): And Dennis Rainey and I talked, and I said, we ought to look for an opportunity, the next chance we get to try to do an interview with Nancy. And the next chance we got was two years later, when you were back at Campus Crusade staff, you were speaking this time on holiness.

Guest (Male): And we had contacted you ahead of time and said, while you're there, can we sit down and talk about singleness with you? And so we recorded a series of messages on your experience as a single, and your just your insights into that subject.

Guest (Male): And at the end of that conversation, we talked about the fact that God had used Elizabeth Elliot profoundly in the lives of so many people for so many years, in your life, in my life, that she had spoken particularly to so many women. And she was on the radio at the time.

Guest (Male): But we all, she was in her mid-70s. We could see that there would be a time when she would not be on the radio any longer. And we said, we've started wondering, who is God going to raise up to take her place? And we agreed nobody could take her place. But whose voice? And you said, I have been praying that God would raise up that person. And we said, well, we think we might know who it is. And when we said, have you ever thought about being on radio?

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: No, it, not me. I'm thinking somebody else. It's a great idea, but you've got the wrong person.

Guest (Male): When we had that conversation, did that strike fear? Did you sense God speaking in that moment? Do you remember how that conversation struck you at the time?

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: Well, it certainly was not something that I said, "Yes, you know, let's charge ahead and do this." There was a sense of like holy fear, that this was something that tapped into passions I have for the word of God and for ministering to women.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: But I also knew that it was a huge undertaking. I was at the time an itinerant ministry, had been for years. I had like, you know, maybe 14 different messages. I would cycle and develop, and here we were talking about 260 programs a year. I could not fathom that. I did not feel able.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: I felt utterly inadequate in terms of being personally prepared or ready for something like this. I was very aware of Elizabeth Elliot's huge footprint that she had left. And over the next 18 months, as you and Dennis Rainey know well, we had a lot of conversations, a lot of prayer.

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

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: One was the surrender issue. Lord, if this is what you're calling me to, then I am the Lord's servant, let it be to me as you have said. Just that, "Yes, Lord," that's become a trademark of Revive Our Hearts. "Yes, Lord," the surrender.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: And then was the faith issue, that if God was wanting to put me into this kind of role, that he would give me what I needed to be able to do what he called me to do. And so the first was, "Lord, is this what you want?" And then the second is, "Can I trust you that you will give me what I need to be able to do this?"

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: And it was an 18-month process. I know you and Dennis Rainey must have wondered, as must our team have wondered, like, "Are we ever going to land this plane? Is this ever going to be resolved?" But it was so important to me to know that this was God calling.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: And there were some amazing, precious moments for me in the word. Passages that at particular points would really be quickened in my heart. I remember one in Acts chapter 18 where it's talking about Apollos and it says he ministered much to them who had believed the grace of God. And that's a passage, I don't know how many times that I read that.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: But in that moment, in that process, this was part of my sensing the Lord was giving me a go-ahead on this. I had to know, as I said a moment ago, that this was God, because I knew it would be hard. I knew I wasn't adequate.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: And that if I was following my own leading or anybody else's appeal, that when it got hard, I wouldn't be able to stay with it. But because of going through that extended, arduous process of seeking the Lord.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: Here's what happened, and you watched this. It was hard. That first year that we were doing this, I could hardly breathe the whole year. We recorded 320 programs that year because we had to have a catalog before we actually launched. I was in the middle of a few books I was finishing that year. We had a full conference schedule. It was craziness.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: And there were moments, many of them, when I thought, I am not going to make it. But because of the assurance God had given my heart, that he was sending me this direction, it was almost like, it doesn't really matter if you make it. What matters is that you're being obedient.

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

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: And so I never, exactly, keep your eyes on him. I can say that from the day we launched, in the hard moments, I've never once doubted that this is what we were supposed to do. So, how it affected me was almost inconsequential.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: And where the funds were going to come from, or where the staff were going to come from, or where I was going to get my next message, you and Mary Ann were often on the receiving ends of phone calls. In those days, those early days, we recorded in Little Rock, where Family Life was based. We would record on back-to-back Mondays and Tuesdays.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: Which meant that on Sunday, for the whole weekend, I was in heavy labor and travail, birthing new messages. They were quarter-hour programs then, and we would do 15 on Monday and 15 on Tuesday. And I would get to Saturday night or Sunday and I'm going, I can't do this.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: And more than once, you and Mary Ann found me in a puddle and. And we would pray and you would point me back to Jesus and and help me think through what it was I was getting ready to teach. And then we'd get into the recording session. You sat through all of those in those early years, coaching and helping to develop.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: We'd get there and there was the power of God. And women were being deeply moved. We had women in the room. It was that small Sunday school room at the Summit Church there in Little Rock, with cinder block walls. And very makeshift. The engineer was often in a closet adjacent to that room.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: There was no beautiful studio such as we have and enjoy today. But we saw the power of God come time after time after time. And it was no substitute for preparing. That's still hard work for me.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: But having done the preparation and then trusting the Lord to give the anointing and the fresh oil. He has done it, and he called, and he has equipped, and he keeps doing it. And I will say that I had, Bob, from the, you know this, always this sense of desperately needing the Lord.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: I had it then and I have it now, when I go to record a program for Revive Our Hearts, when I get up to do a message at a conference, when I go to write a book. I asked the Lord earlier in my Christian life, long before Revive Our Hearts started, I knew that I had some natural gifts, and I never wanted to be able to serve the Lord in a way that I could feel I could do it without him.

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

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: And that's really hard. It's something that anybody who's walking with God, whether it's doing a daily broadcast, or raising children, or serving in a very secularized marketplace environment, we all have times of feeling this. And if we don't, there's something wrong.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: But it kept me going back to him. It kept me dependent on him. It kept me on my knees. And here I am now, 40-some years doing ministry as a vocation. I still feel that way, and I don't want to ever get over it.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: I don't want to ever feel like, I could write this book, I could write this article, I could do this broadcast, running on the the fuel of some natural gifts. There's no substitute for keeping your pond stocked, for keeping in the word.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: And that we wanted this ministry. I always wanted it to be out of the overflow of a life and a heart. I don't want to spend my life looking for messages for Revive Our Hearts. I want to spend my life in the word, getting to know God, letting him change my life, and then out of that overflow be ministering to others.

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

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: If you keep that metaphor, I think that's got to be kind of painful for that tree though.

Guest (Male): And it was painful, and there were seasons, again, you didn't doubt, but you were depleted often during those early years because to begin a program, as you said, 320 programs in the first year of recording.

Guest (Male): That involved study and writing and thinking. A lot of people who are on radio have been pastors for 10 or 15 years, and they've got their sermons, and you go get those. We were starting with zero. You had messages you'd given, but not anything we could use on radio. So it was a, it was a yomen's work in those early years.

Guest (Male): Had you not been a single woman at that time, I don't know how it could have happened. And you didn't have a staff, there were not researchers who were feeding you notes of things. This was all your labor. But then you started to see fruit coming from that labor.

Guest (Male): And even in the room there as you were teaching and women responding to it, and then people would hear it on the radio a month or two later, and we'd start getting letters in from that. And that has been so important, not only in the early years, but even today. The notes and the emails from listeners talking about how God meets them through the teaching. That's fuel for your soul, isn't it?

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

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: We have been blessed to see a lot of fruit, to see a glimpse of lives that have been changed. I get those letters and emails. This happens all the time. It's very sweet, and it is fuel. But faithfulness is serving the Lord whether or not you get that.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: We serve now, and we're grateful when we get, when we see some of the fruit, but we're not dependent on that. That said, one of the things I prayed early on and still have longed for and we've seen God really do.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: I love that passage in First Samuel, chapters 3 and 4, where it says that Samuel heard the word of the Lord. He spoke the word of the Lord to Israel. And then it says, "The Lord did not let one of his words fall to the ground." And I remember being gripped by that as we were just launching Revive Our Hearts and saying, "Lord, we're going to say a lot of words."

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: I remember saying to you, "Christian radio does not need any more speakers." There are lots of those, maybe too many. And I didn't want to just add to noise. I'm not saying they're all noise, I'm just saying there are plenty of great ones.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: And so my prayer was, "Lord, I'm going to live in your word. I'm going to ask you to speak your word through me to the hearts of women. But my prayer is, would you not let one of these words that's from you fall to the ground? Would you cause these words from you, not my words but your words, to penetrate and pierce hearts, to take root, to produce fruit?

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: Would you arrest people's hearts as they're listening, that maybe with their headphones on in a cubicle at work or in their minivan carting kids, or now so many ways that people listen to the content? And we have heard so many stories of how God has been faithful to answer that prayer.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: I take no credit for this. This is the work of the Spirit of God. But the letters, the emails, the conversations with people who've had to pull their car over to the side of the road. A woman kneeling in her kitchen weeping, pleading with God for forgiveness as I was doing a series on the tongue in the book of Proverbs, and thinking about things she had just said to her husband before he left to work that day.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: And God timed when she heard that program with what was going on in her life. And then didn't let it just, you know, like water off a duck's back, in one ear out the other. God penetrated her heart. God is called women to serve him. God has given women hope. God has brought women healing. He has delivered women from shame and from guilt.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: Beautiful things that I could never have done. No broadcast could do, no podcast could do. But the word of God going forth in the power of the Holy Spirit changes lives.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: So you think, okay, well, I don't have that kind of ministry. That's really lovely for Nancy and Revive Our Hearts. But wherever you are, in this season of your life. Bob, you have grown children, you have a lot of grandchildren. You may be homeschooling your children, or you're teaching a Sunday school class, or a discipleship group, or a one-on-one mentoring. We're all speaking words that are meant to be God's word flowing through us to invest in the lives of others.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: And to believe God as you're having that what seems like an irrational conversation with your 14-year-old, late at night when you're exhausted. Just to believe God that if it's not your words, but God's words, flowing through your life, spoken in the spirit of Christ, that you may not see or experience the fruit right now. But that those words are being used by the Holy Spirit. And then you exercise faith that they're going to have their intended purpose in God's way and in God's time.

Dana Grash: It's easy to assume some individuals speak God's words better or more than we do. But Nancy's been reminding us, if we're his children, we represent him, and we need to be speaking his words to others, no matter what.

Dana Grash: Nancy was talking with Bob Lapine, who's been a friend and partner of Revive Our Hearts since we first went on the air in 2001. As we celebrate our 25th anniversary this month, we're taking some time to look back on how God has been working in and through Nancy and in and through Revive Our Hearts.

Dana Grash: Aren't you glad she said, "Yes, Lord" to this seemingly impossible? We never could have guessed the plan that God had in store for Revive Our Hearts. Parts of those plans included conferences attended by people from all over the United States and all over the world. Bob and Nancy will talk more about that coming up later this week.

Dana Grash: And that gives me an opportunity to remind you about something, True Woman 27 is just one year away. Now, you may be thinking, oh, I've got plenty of time, but let me tell you, women are registering now. And we're offering early bird pricing you don't want to miss.

Dana Grash: Nancy will be there, of course, along with a whole team of dynamic speakers. We're going to hear about how we can glorify God by living out his beautiful design for womanhood. It's going to be September 30th through October 2nd in the Indianapolis Convention Center.

Dana Grash: If you can't make it in person, you can sign up to watch online. For all the details about True Woman 27, visit truewoman27.com or call us at 1-800-569-5959.

Dana Grash: Nancy's teaching on the radio and now podcast wouldn't be possible without those listeners who've given over the last 25 years. Neither would our conferences, global outreaches, blog articles or print resources. God has used listeners just like you to make it all happen.

Dana Grash: If you'd like to help us celebrate 25 years by making a donation, you can do that at reviveourhearts.com or by calling us at 1-800-569-5959. When you do, we'll send you our newest book, "Devoted, Six Women of the Bible Who Said Yes, Lord." Be sure to request it when you give.

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

Dana Grash: I'm Dana Grash, inviting you back for Revive Our Hearts and encouraging you to say, "Yes" to God. This program is a listener-supported production of Revive Our Hearts in Niles, Michigan, calling women to freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.