Revive Our Hearts

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: Listen, if you're a child of God, God has already redeemed and delivered you from the worst possible outcome from sin, from Satan, from hell, from eternal damnation and condemnation, from the wrath of God. You have been delivered.

Dannah Gresh: This is the Revive Our Hearts podcast with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, author of Choosing Gratitude. For September 3rd, 2026, I'm Dannah Gresh. Nancy, happy birthday!

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: Thank you, friend. With every birthday, I'm just more conscious of the faithfulness of God, the goodness of God, and the joy of belonging to him. Wow, I've always said I wanted to be a godly old lady since I was a little girl. I've wanted that. The older part is happening faster than I ever dreamed it would, and I'm so thankful for the progress year after year that God has in drawing me closer to himself.

Dannah Gresh: Well, we have certainly all seen that in you, Nancy, and we are blessed, blessed, blessed to be led by your example. But there's another birthday we need to celebrate today. It's the birthday of Revive Our Hearts, too. It's the first day that you were on the air back in September 3rd, 2001.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: I remember that day so well. Of course, what none of us knew that day was that eight days later our nation would be reeling from the terrorist attacks on 9/11. For a few weeks after that, probably no one was much listening to Revive Our Hearts because they were so tuned in to the news reports of what was happening in our country.

But again in God's providence, he had led us months earlier to prepare programming for the earliest days of Revive Our Hearts that would prove to be timely and needed in our country about that time.

Dannah Gresh: As I consider it, you have certainly helped several of us through a lot of storms in our lives, like 9/11 and personal challenges and pains, through these last 25 years. I'm so grateful for that.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: I've often said that when it comes to storms, either you're in one currently, or you've just come out of one, or you're about to go into one. I don't know which of those describes you right now, but today we're going to be looking at the faithfulness of God in the midst of storms. That's a theme we've touched on a lot on Revive Our Hearts through the years.

Dannah Gresh: Yes, in fact, I should explain that we're celebrating 25 years on the air by hearing highlights from the Revive Our Hearts archives. This concept of storms is a topic you spent a lot of time on.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: Well, because it's so common to all of us. I've walked through a lot of storms myself. I've walked with a lot of other women through some deep and difficult storms in their own lives. So whether it's counseling my own heart or ministering to the needs of other women, I've found it so important to learn how to keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, clinging tenaciously to the truth we know even when it seems that the waves around us are rising higher and higher.

Dannah Gresh: So true, Nancy. In fact, a Revive Our Hearts listener wrote not too long ago and told us her story. She said, "Over four years ago, my husband walked away from our marriage and had an affair. He had a child on the way." Now this woman had been listening to Revive Our Hearts each day on her way to work, and God used it to help her through this horrible situation.

She goes on to write, "Your program and Nancy's books were such an encouragement to my heart during the bleakest time in my life. The ministry also encouraged me to pray that God would heal and restore our marriage." Nancy, you know there are so many women just like this one, desperately needing to hear the truth during life's biggest difficulties.

Oh, and I almost forgot to tell you the rest of this story. This listener wrote to say, "This summer, we will celebrate 17 years of marriage and three years of recommitment to those vows. God has given us so much healing and grace. I can't even imagine how we would be here without him."

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: Wow. It makes me teary just thinking about that woman. Praise be to God who does do miracles and takes us through storms. Now, not every story turns out just like that one. But whatever those waves look like in your life, and whatever the outcome may be, you can know that God is faithful even in the midst of that storm. If you're still in the middle of a struggle, I hope you're going to be encouraged by what you're about to hear.

Dannah Gresh: Trusting the Lord during suffering is one of the main themes Nancy's covered during her years of serving the Lord full-time. Let's explore that theme by listening to one of the very first Revive Our Hearts messages ever recorded. In fact, if I'm not mistaken, this was the series on the air on 9/11. It's called Walking Through Life's Deserts.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: God sends us into the desert to teach us. Deuteronomy 8:3 says, "He humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna to teach you that man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord." God had something he wanted to teach his people, and it took the desert for them to learn it.

You see, it's in the desert that we learn what really matters. We learn what's really necessary. That's where the children of Israel learned that they needed more than physical bread to sustain their lives. They needed the word of God to sustain their hearts, to sustain their souls and their spirits. There was an inner part of them that had a need that was even more crucial than their physical needs.

We're so driven by our physical needs. If we're hungry, that is the ultimate need, right? We're so driven by what we can see and touch and taste and our natural physical senses. But God sends us into the desert where sometimes those needs may not be met. Even a period of fasting voluntarily can be so healthy for the soul because we find out I need more than physical food to live. I need God. I need him more than I need air to breathe.

A friend wrote me recently and told me about a three-year period where God had taken him through a desert experience. He's in full-time Christian work. He was still continuing to serve the Lord, but he says during that three-year period, there was an amazing absence of the emotional sense of God's presence. Day after day over three years, he felt like God was nowhere near.

Then he went on to say, "Here are some lessons I've learned." That's the point. Through those three years, day after day of feeling "I can't see God, I can't sense him, I'm not experiencing him in ways that I have at other times," and then he says, "Here's what I learned." God sends us into the desert to teach us.

God sends us into the desert to strengthen our faith and to make us dependent on him. He wants to strip us of reliance on ourselves or reliance on others. The children of Israel, when they were back in Egypt, were totally reliant on Pharaoh. Now it wasn't much of a life because Pharaoh didn't have a heart for these Israelites. But when they ended up in the desert, they looked back wistfully on Egypt at points.

They said, "Oh, how wonderful it was in Egypt." What short memories they had. But they were dependent on Pharaoh, and Pharaoh was their provider. But God wanted them to come to the place where they depended totally on him. How does God put us in that place? Where we have no props. We have no substitutes. We have nothing and no one else we can depend on.

So your friends move away, or they die, or they fall out of your life in some way, or your financial support falls away in some sense, or the visible means of support that you had looked to are removed. What happens? Then you find that God really is enough. You'll never know that Christ is all you need, really, until he's all that you have. And when he is all that you have, you will find out that Christ really is all that you need. So God in the deserts makes us dependent on him.

The Apostle Paul said in 2 Corinthians chapter 1, where he talked about the hardships that he had endured while ministering in Asia, "We were under great pressure far beyond our ability to endure." I cannot tell you how often I go to this passage and I find what my own heart needs in my moments where I feel so stretched, where I feel like I can't be stretched anymore.

The Apostle Paul experienced that. He said, "We were under great pressure far beyond our ability to endure so that we despaired even of life. In our hearts, we felt the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves, but on God, on God who raises the dead." If we're going to die, then we know we're relying on God who does resurrections.

So what's the worst that can happen to me in this experience? I die. Well, what's so bad about that? God raises the dead. He said no matter what the extremity, how far it goes, it's okay because I'm relying on God. We tend to rely on things and people that we can see. But God wants to teach us to depend on what we cannot see. That's faith.

To rely on his character and his word. "Man does not live on bread alone," that's the physical, "but on every word that comes from the mouth of God." I read earlier in this series a lengthy excerpt from Charles Colson's article "My Soul's Dark Night," where he talked about a year-long experience of desert in his own life.

He concluded that piece by saying, "Faith becomes strongest when we are without consolation and must walk into the darkness with complete abandon. Faith isn't really faith," he said, "if we can always rely on the still small voice of God cheering us on." When you can't hear, when you can't see, when you don't know, when you can't see the outcome, and you feel like you're in this blind dark night of the soul, what do you do?

You walk by faith. That's where you learn to walk by faith. As I was studying for this session, a verse came to mind I hadn't thought about in some time from the Song of Solomon chapter 8, verse 5. It's just this one little short verse I think so describes what happens in our deserts. It's talking about the bride and her bridegroom, the bride and her lover, and their intimate relationship and how that relationship is built and strengthened.

It says in Song of Songs chapter 8, verse 5, "Who is this coming up from the wilderness leaning on her beloved?" When you have walked through the wilderness, through the desert, and you come out of the desert, you know what your posture will be? Leaning on your beloved. Leaning on the everlasting arms, safe and secure from all alarms. Leaning, leaning, leaning on Jesus, leaning on the everlasting arms.

Dannah Gresh: That's Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth from the series Finding God in the Desert. It's one of many series Nancy's provided over the years that point women to the Lord even in the middle of very tough circumstances. Another one of those series is called The ABCs for Handling a Meltdown.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: Praise is not an emotion. It may involve our emotions, but it is an act of my will. It is a choice I make to bless the Lord. To bless means to speak well of someone, to speak a good word about them. The word actually used here, "barak" to bless, has connected with it the meaning of to bend the knee, to kneel down. It means I bless the Lord, but it's with a heart attitude of humility and worship.

David, who'd been going off in this very fearful way and his mind had just gotten out of control and his emotions and his behavior had gotten out of control, his mind and behavior get reigned back in when he says, "I will make a conscious, disciplined choice of my life no matter what the circumstances to bless the Lord."

He bends the knee, he bows his heart, he humbles himself, and says, "Lord, you are bigger, you are more real, you are more present than any circumstance I am facing in my life." So my eyes may be filled with tears, but I'm going to lift them up and with a bowed heart say yes. I embrace these circumstances. I bless you in the midst of them because you are still good no matter what King Saul does, no matter what terrors I may be facing in my life, I will bless you.

I'll bless you at all times. His praise shall continually be in my mouth. All times. In the good times and in the bad times. When I'm happy and when I'm sad. When I feel on top of it and when I feel overwhelmed. David is saying the response, the pattern of my life in every circumstance is going to be, "I will bless the Lord. I will bless the Lord. I will praise him." His praise, that word there, is a hymn of praise. It's a song that exalts God.

His praise will continually be in my mouth. I think that's an important part of dealing with meltdowns, dealing with depression and discouragement, is to speak the truth about who God is. To bless him with our mouths. They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and the word of their testimony. Speak the praise of the Lord. Get it from my heart to my mouth.

Out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. So what's in your heart is going to come out. If your heart is centered on God and focused on him, then out of that will come blessing of the Lord. He says in verse 2, "My soul makes its boast in the Lord. Let the humble hear and be glad." To boast in the Lord, that word boast is the Hebrew word "halal." Does that sound like something you've heard before? Hallelujah. Praise to God.

The word means to shine, to be bright, to praise or celebrate, to make something bright. It's the idea of radiance. He says, "I will make a big deal about God. I'm not going to radiate to other people my problems and my burdens and my concerns," though there is a place for sharing those, but with the goal of pointing each other toward God. I'm not going to boast in my frustrations or my issues. I'm going to boast in the Lord. I'm going to make a big deal about him.

Dannah Gresh: Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth has been showing us how to keep our feet planted on the truth of God's word even when our emotions are raging. We've been hearing part of a series called The ABCs for Handling a Meltdown. You can hear the rest of that series at reviveourhearts.com.

Now let's listen to another classic message from Nancy about trusting God while suffering. It's called God's Faithfulness in Times of Trouble. She's in Psalm 107.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: Listen, if you're a child of God, God has already redeemed and delivered you from the worst possible outcome from sin, from Satan, from hell, from eternal damnation and condemnation, from the wrath of God. You have been delivered. You may be in a storm, you may be in some other kinds of chains, but you've been delivered in the ways that matter most for all of time and eternity. So, says the psalmist, "Give thanks to the Lord. Let the redeemed of the Lord say so."

One devotional writer I've been reading says, "A soul redeemed demands a life of praise." You might want to just write that in the margin of your Bible. I've written it in mine. A soul redeemed demands a life of praise. Women, if you've been redeemed, if I've been redeemed, it is unthinkable that we should live lives of anything other than unceasing, unending praise and thanksgiving and worship.

We may do that through tears, and we may do it at times when all around us seems dark. When the waves are so high that we're sick to our stomachs and we can't see over them, we can't see beyond them, we can't find our way, we're at our wits' end. But we lift our eyes up to heaven, into the light of his face, up from our darkness, and we say, "Oh God, I choose to believe that you are good, that your steadfast love endures forever, and I give you thanks that I have been redeemed."

A lady wrote to us and said, "Years back, back in the early days of Revive Our Hearts radio, I was a heap of a mess on my kitchen floor as you spoke about loving your husband. This past week, fast forward, I was once again a heap of slobbering mess, but this time it was out of pure joy, thanksgiving, adoration, worship, and praise to my Heavenly Father for his unending, undeserved faithfulness, grace, and mercy."

She said, "The Lord has restored my family and my marriage." And here I think this is even more important: "He has rescued me out of the slimy pit of self. And every day, let the redeemed of the Lord say so. Every day I have the glorious opportunity of speaking biblical truth into the hearts of discouraged women. Oh, give thanks to the Lord for he is good. Let the redeemed of the Lord say so."

You can experience fullness, freedom, and fruitfulness in Christ as long as you keep abiding in him and letting him have his way, letting him be God, trusting him with what you can't understand, not demanding answers, not demanding fixes, crying out, and then trusting God to deliver in his way. Not only does God want to turn some of the desert places where you are in his way and time into fruitful places, but for generations to come, the fruit of your walk with Christ will be experienced in the lives of coming generations.

One commentator says about this conclusion, "Although there are ups and downs in this life, the end of all things for God's people is not down, but up." Can you remember that? We know this and we look for it because we know that God is both good and sovereign. God loves us, and because he does, he comforts us, preserves us, and brings us through even the hardest experiences in life.

What do you do when you're in trouble? Cry out to the Lord. A lot of women did that last night. But crying out to the Lord shouldn't be just something we do when an invitation's given. It's something we ought to be doing all the time. Don't stop. Keep crying out, keep praying, keep looking up. Cry out to the Lord. Believe that in his way and in his time, he will rescue you. He will bring you to your desired haven.

Have you been redeemed? Have you been delivered from trouble? What do you do? Two things. You give thanks. Would you do that just right now? From your heart, maybe just whisper a prayer of thanks for his redeeming love in your life, for his goodness. Then you tell others. Let the redeemed of the Lord say so. Declare it to God, declare it to others.

Dannah Gresh: That's Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth from a series called God's Faithfulness in Times of Trouble. Before we're done today, Nancy, I'd just like you to pray for our listeners who maybe are in the midst of a storm right now.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: I'd love to do that. We can all relate to going through times of trouble. I know I've felt that in many times myself this year. But focusing on God's goodness in the midst of our struggles is the key to weathering those storms in ways that honor Christ and help us to grow through the storm.

Dannah Gresh: Nancy, one of my favorite things you've repeated to us over the years is the phrase "Heaven rules." You've reminded us that God is sovereign over our every joy and our every sorrow. He's worked all things together for our good. As we celebrate not only your birthday, but also 25 years of ministry for Revive Our Hearts, I just want to shout it from the rooftops that the Lord has been so good to us.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: One of the ways the Lord has shown his goodness is through the generous support of our listeners that has made this ministry possible. If you're a member of our monthly partner team, I wish I could just hug you. I wish I could look in your eyes and say thank you, thank you, thank you. Thanks for being our friend. Thanks for walking in this journey with us. Thanks for partnering with us in this ministry. Only heaven will reveal the fruit, the results, the changed lives around the world that have come about as a result of your investment in this ministry.

If you're not one of our monthly partners, I want to invite you today to consider joining that special team. Monthly partners are like a grassroots team that are sharing the messages and the resources that they've received from Revive Our Hearts.

Dannah Gresh: Our monthly partners also commit to pray for Revive Our Hearts, and that is so important. We need your prayers.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: We really do. That's the most significant gift anyone can give this ministry.

Dannah Gresh: This year, in honor of 25 years of ministry, the Revive Partner Team worked together to purchase and send 2,500 Bibles to women in 25 different prisons from around the US. Just a huge thank you to our monthly partners.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: Our monthly partners also support us regularly with a donation of at least $30 per month. As a listener-supported ministry, we depend on your gifts. Your consistent giving helps even out the ups and downs that come with one-time donations.

Dannah Gresh: This month, if you sign up to become a member of the Revive Our Hearts monthly partner team, we'd like to send you our welcome collection. It includes a devotional from Revive Our Hearts called Daily Reflections. You'll be receiving that devotional each month once you become a partner. And of course, a free conference registration. That's really a favored partner perk.

All the details about the welcome collection can be found at reviveourhearts.com, so head there to see all of these things in the monthly partner team welcome collection. That's where you can sign up too. Or you can call us for more information at 1-800-569-5959.

If you want to make a one-time gift to commemorate 25 years of Revive Our Hearts, you can do that as well. Visit reviveourhearts.com or call us at 1-800-569-5959 to donate. When you do, you can request our newest Bible study on Women of the Bible, Devoted. That's our way of saying thank you. Tomorrow we'll continue marking our 25th year of ministry. We'll be looking at the theme of biblical womanhood, and I hope you'll be able to catch tomorrow's program. Nancy, would you close today by praying for those of us who are going through storms in our lives right now?

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: I sure will, Dannah. I'd love to use a prayer that's found in the Puritan collection of prayers called Valley of Vision. Lord, high and holy, meek and lowly, you've brought us to the valley of vision. We live in the depths, but we see you in the heights. We're hemmed in by mountains of sin, but we behold your glory.

Let us learn by paradox that the way down is the way up, that to be low is to be high, that the broken heart is the healed heart, that the contrite spirit is the rejoicing spirit, that the repenting soul is the victorious soul, that to have nothing is to possess all, that to bear the cross is to wear the crown, that to give is to receive, that the valley is the place of vision.

Lord, in the daytime stars can be seen from deepest wells. The deeper the wells, the brighter your stars shine. Let us find your light in our darkness, your life in our death, your joy in our sorrow, your grace in our sin, your riches in our poverty, your glory in our valleys. We pray it in the precious name of Jesus. Amen.

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