Revive Our Hearts

Dana Gresh: Free to be real. Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth was invited to speak at a conference on that theme, and the concept of vulnerability got her thinking.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: As I thought about the theme of free to be real, a story came to mind about an actor who in the recession couldn't get a job. He couldn't find work and he was looking in the want ads in the newspaper and he saw an ad by the local zoo that said they were short on monkeys.

And he thought, "You know, that's something maybe I could do." So he went to the zoo, he applied for the job, he got it. They handed him a monkey suit. He put it on, he got in the monkey cage, and he was an entertainer at heart. Monkey see, monkey do. They scratched, he scratched. They ate bananas, he ate bananas.

And then he noticed that there was a rope hanging from the top of the monkey cage and that if he would grab hold of this rope and begin to swing across the cage, that the fans really liked that. The crowds liked that. So he would swing across that cage, he would do all kinds of acrobatic tricks and as an actor, he just loved this.

And one Saturday morning, beautiful day, sunny day, crowds from all over gathered to watch this amazing death-defying monkey swinging back and forth on this rope. Now, what he had not noticed was that right next to the monkey cage was the lion's cage. And as he was swinging back and forth, going further and further, just getting more and more brave, he swung out over the lion's cage.

The crowd just loved it until all of a sudden, the rope broke and he fell smack in the middle of that den of lions. And those lions began stalking and pawing and growling at him, and one lion began to just run into him in an attack formation.

And all of a sudden, that actor, he tore off his monkey hat costume and he started to scream, "Help, help! Get me out of here!" only to hear the lion say, "Shut up, you fool, or we'll all lose our jobs!" Well, the fact is that most of us go through life wearing some sort of mask, playing a part.

Most of us, truth be told, are really not free to be real. We're ashamed, we're ashamed of our secrets, we're ashamed of our past, in many cases. We're fearful about what others would think if they knew what we were really like. We're fearful of rejection. We're actors, aren't we?

Dana Gresh: Today, you're invited to discover the freedom to be real. This is the Revive Our Hearts podcast with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, author of *Lies Women Believe and the Truth That Sets Them Free*. From May 13th, 2026, I'm Dana Gresh.

Before we get started today, I want to let you in on something I'm so excited about for the teen girls in your life. Over on the Wonder app, we're about to kick off our summer Bible reading challenge. Now, the heart of this challenge is to guard your girls from scrolling their summers away and to help them replace screen time with scripture time all summer long.

So if you've got a daughter or granddaughter who hasn't joined us on the Wonder app yet, we'd love to have her. Summer really is a great time for her to hop in. To learn more and share the app with a teenager you love, visit reviveourhearts.com/wonder. Now, here's Nancy with the first half of her message from the Free to Be Real conference.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: I hope you brought your Bible with you today. I want to ask you if you have one to turn to the Gospel of John, John chapter four. Let me begin reading in verse three where we see that Jesus left Judea, the southernmost part of Israel, and he departed for Galilee, the northernmost part of Israel. And he had to pass through Samaria.

Now, if you've studied this passage, you know that Samaria is right in the middle between Judea and Galilee. And typically, Jews, for reasons that we're going to see in just a moment, would not go through the most direct route through Samaria, but if possible, they would go around even though it took longer because of years of animosity and hatred between the Jews and the Samaritans.

But the scripture tells us that Jesus had to go through Samaria. And I think the reason is that God told him to go that way, that God knew that in his providence, there was a woman who would be there who needed to encounter Jesus. And could I say that with thousands of women in this auditorium and thousands of women joining us in other venues, it's easy to get lost in a crowd. But you never get lost in the crowd with Jesus.

He has come today to pinpoint specific women with specific issues, specific needs. He knows your name, he knows your story, he knows the seat where you're sitting. You cannot hide from him, and let me tell you this: you don't want to hide from him because when you encounter him, he will transform your life.

So Jesus came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob's well was there. So Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well. It was about the sixth hour, or 12:00 noon according to our time clock. A woman from Samaria came to draw water.

Jesus said to her, "Give me a drink," for his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food. The Samaritan woman said to him, "How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?" Now, we won't go into a lot of detail except that this woman knew that she had two strikes against her, at least.

And that for Jesus to strike up a conversation with her as a Samaritan, despised by the Jews, and as a woman, despised in many cases by men in those days, that it was astonishing that Jesus should initiate a conversation with her. And so Jesus speaks to her and he says, "If you knew the gift of God and who it is that is saying to you, 'Give me a drink,' you would have initiated the conversation."

Now, we need to remember that when it comes to matters of grace, we never initiate a relationship with God. He is always the one who comes initiating a relationship with us. But Jesus says to her, "If you knew who I am and what I have and what I could do for you, you would have asked me, and I would have given you living water."

Now, the woman has come to the well to draw literal water. She knows about that. And Jesus asks her for a drink of literal physical water. But now Jesus turns the conversation to something entirely different, and that's a matter of living water, water for her thirsty soul, which was after all the greatest need and the reason that God took her to that well that day.

Well, the woman is confused. She doesn't know anything about this living water. She only knows about the water in that well. And she says, "Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock."

Jesus said to her, "Everyone who drinks this water, this water in this well, will be thirsty again." Now, the proof of that was that the woman had to come back to that well day after day. She'd fill up her water pot, take it home, use it up, it would be empty, she'd come back to that well and get her supply replenished.

"You drink of this water, you will be thirsty again. But whoever drinks of the water that I give him will never be thirsty again." Jesus is offering to this woman and to us today a water that quenches the thirst of our souls forever and ever and ever. "The water that I will give him will be in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life."

The woman said to him, "Sir, give me this water so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water." Now, Jesus had just said a few verses back, "If you ask me, I will give you this living water." Now the woman is asking and you'd think the next verse would be Jesus saying, "Here's the living water."

But there's an interesting what seems like a diversion at this point in the text. Jesus doesn't immediately give her the water. Instead, he turns in a different direction. And I believe the reason is that he knew that this woman was looking for temporary relief from her problems. She wanted an escape from her problems, as we are prone to desire.

But Jesus wanted to give her something much richer, much deeper than just temporary relief. He wanted to give her permanent release from the heart issues that were destroying her life. But in order to do that, in order to give her the living water, that required getting to the real issues of her heart.

And so Jesus asked this woman a question that is intended to get her to take off her mask. He probes a part of her heart, a part of her story that she has kept walled off, something she doesn't want to talk about, a place she doesn't want to go. And Jesus says, "If you're going to have living water, you have to be willing to go to this place, this hidden place of your heart."

And so in verse 16, Jesus says to her, "Go, call your husband and come here." Verse 17, the woman answered him, "I have no husband." Now, as you live in this text, you begin to get the feeling that what she's really saying is period. End of conversation. Not going there, no way, no how.

You can ask me about anything. You can ask me about weather, you can ask me about politics, you can ask me about sports, but marriage? Uh-uh. We're not going there. That's a private part of my heart. There's too much pain there. There's too much maybe guilt in her case. We don't know the details.

But don't talk to me about my family. What is the one area of your life that you don't want somebody asking questions about? That you don't want anybody penetrating or probing? You want to keep it walled off. You want to stay behind your mask. What's that one area of your life that's most uncomfortable for you to talk about?

Can I tell you that if you want the living water that Jesus wants to give you to satisfy and quench your thirsty soul, that's the one area he's going to ask you about. That's the one place among others that you're going to have to go. And this brings me to my first observation about this passage and that is that our natural inclination, our natural instinct is not to be real.

Rather it is to cover up, to hide, to wear masks. I was in a group of people one time and we were introducing ourselves and they did it this way. It was a kind of small group and they said, "Everyone go around, tell us your name, and then tell us one thing about yourself that no one else in this group knows."

And so I thought of something really profound like, "I used to play the cello when I was in high school." Nobody in that group knew that. Well, that was true. But I guarantee you this. We all have parts of our story, parts of our past, parts of our heart, myself included, that no way were we going to share it in that circle.

We only told things we felt safe telling others, things we didn't mind others knowing. That's because our bent, our inclination is to hide, to cover, not to get real. It goes back to Genesis chapter three. What did Adam and Eve do after they sinned against God? They tried to hide behind the bushes from God.

I mean, that's like trying to find a place on this platform to hide with all these cameras. You can't do it. But they tried. They hid from God, they hid from each other. Their intimacy was broken. When God came to them and said, "What have you done?" did they get real? No way. They hid, they covered, they blamed, they excused.

And we are experts at hiding, at covering. Covering who we are, what we've done. We're experts at defending ourselves, blaming others, rationalizing, excusing. We are master pretenders. And that's why when we go to church tomorrow morning and everybody asks us, "How are you doing?" what are most of us going to say? Fine.

Now, if you're fine, it's okay to say fine. But a whole lot of us aren't fine. We've got women in this room crying ourselves to sleep at night over some issue, some burden, something that's heavy on your heart in your own life or a burden you're carrying for a family member. But we're all fine.

Why? Because we're scared to get real. We think maybe nobody cares or if they did know how I'm really doing, they wouldn't accept me. They might reject me. We have fear and guilt and shame and pride. And so the Samaritan woman says, "I have no husband," meaning I don't want to discuss this any further.

I don't want to go there. She was uncomfortable. This was embarrassing. There were shameful things about her past. There was a fear of rejection, perhaps guilt, and those things keep us from coming out into the light. We want God and others to think that we're fine.

We're okay, we're no better than others, we're no worse than others. We're good wives, good moms, good friends, good sisters, good people, good Christians, spiritual. And so we hide. When you hide behind a mask, it may be the easier way at first, but there are consequences.

Think about this woman who was hiding behind her past and the isolation and the alienation that resulted. You say, "How do you know that?" Well, there's a clue in this passage. It appears that this woman came to the well alone. Now, we know she came at what time of day? At noon.

Noon was not the typical time when women would come to the well to get water. That's the hottest time of day. This is a hard chore. So they would usually come early in the morning or later in the evening when it was cooler. But she comes alone at 12:00 noon. Why do you suppose?

It's not like women, you know, we women, we like to do things in droves, in packs. I mean, when was the last time you were out to dinner with some couples and a man got up from the table and said, "I'm going to the restroom. Would anyone like to come with me?" Not likely. But women, we do those things together.

We do it in a crowd. But this woman came alone. Why do you suppose? I think here's a woman who was alienated from other women, who she felt looked down on her because of her past. She felt rejected. So she came alone. When we hide behind a mask, we're not real with God.

When we're not real with God, we can't afford to be real with others. So we put up walls. And as we're going to see, when we hide behind masks, we cannot really connect to God. We can't be true worshipers of God. Oh, we can sing, we can put our hands up in the air, but there were a lot of us in the last few moments here as Charles was leading us who were going through the motions, but we weren't really worshiping God.

And you know one of the reasons some of us can't? Because we're hiding. We're covering. We're putting up walls and masks. And so Jesus says to this woman, "Go, get your husband." He's saying, "I want the truth. And if you're going to get this living water I'm offering you, you've got to tell me the truth."

He wants the truth about who she is, where she's been, what she's done, what has been done to her. He wants the truth about her past and about her present, about the things she's ashamed of, the things she doesn't want anyone to know, about her need and yes, about the sinful ways that she has tried to get those needs met.

Jesus wanted this woman to come just as she was. No pride, no pretense, no hiding, no trying to look respectable, no saying you're fine when you really aren't. And so verse 17, Jesus said to her, "You are right in saying 'I have no husband.'" Now, some of us, the problem with us is we've read this passage so many times, we're too familiar with it.

But I want you to put yourself in this woman's sandals. Here's a total stranger. Never seen this man before. And he says to her, "You are right in saying 'I have no husband,' for you have had five husbands, and the one you now are living with is not your husband. You're in an immoral relationship. What you have said is true."

Now, if you're in the habit of marking in your Bible, let me encourage you to underline or circle that word true because it's going to come back in this passage. Jesus wants the truth. He wants it from this woman, he wants it from us. We don't know the details of why this woman had had five marriages, whether it was through death or divorce or both.

But we know that she's in an immoral relationship now and she's had a series of broken marriages. And the details aren't really important. What's important is that she knows that he knows not only the number of marriages but the implication is "I know everything that's behind every one of those failed relationships."

Busted, caught, exposed, mask torn off. And that is when there is hope of getting that living water. So Jesus taps into this woman's history, into her pain, into the rejection, into the ways that she had been sinned against, but also into the ways that she had sinned.

You see, the core issue was not the number of times she'd been married or the nature of the relationship she was in currently. The core issue was her broken relationship with God as evidenced by the wells that she was constantly running to, the wells of men in her case and perhaps others because we all have these wells, the wells she was running to other than Christ to try and satisfy and meet the deepest needs of her heart.

So we see that our inclination is not to be real but to hide. But then this second observation, that God sees behind our masks. He knows who we really are. Not just the image we try and give to others, not just the impressions we carefully construct for others, but he knows the truth, the whole truth.

The eyes of the Lord are in every place, beholding the evil and the good, Proverbs 15 tells us. The Psalms tell us, "O Lord, you have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from afar. You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, O Lord, you know it all together."

Jesus said in the Gospel of Luke, "Nothing is covered up that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known." 1 Corinthians 4: "When the Lord comes," Paul says, "he will bring to light, he'll put a spotlight on the things that are now hidden in darkness, and he will disclose the hidden purposes of the heart."

Hebrews chapter four: "No creature is hidden from his sight, but we are all naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account." What's the truth that you want to keep hidden? Can I just remind you, Jesus knows. He knew all about that woman in Samaria and he knows all about you.

He knows what others have done to you, the rejection, the abuse, the husband who abandoned you. The Lord knows. He knows the things that you're uncomfortable talking about. He not only knows the things that have been done to you, he knows what you have done. He knows about those habits, the overspending, the debt, the addictions.

Television, movies, computer games, romance novels, food, alcohol, prescription drugs, the things that you run to to escape from the pain, to escape from the real world. He knows about the anger issue, the temper issue. You'd never tell that to people at church, but Jesus knows.

He knows about the eating disorders. He knows that there are women in this room who are estranged from their parents. He knows about the multiple marriages, the broken vows, the broken covenants. He knows about the immoral relationships before you were married.

He knows that there are women in this room and at sites all across this country who are right now playing with fire in an immoral relationship with a man that you met over the internet, somebody you met at work, no one else knows. He knows those personal moral habits, the self-gratification.

He knows the areas of sinful addiction and bondage. He knows about the abortions. The things that you dare not breathe to the people who are closest to you, he knows. He knows things about us that no one else knows. He knows things about us that we don't know or have never even acknowledged to ourselves.

The things that Psalm 19 calls the hidden sins in our hearts. He knows that there are some of us in this room who from all appearances really are doing just fine. Christian leaders. You're a leader. You teach Bible studies, you lead women's ministries in your church. You have an impressive exterior.

But Jesus knows not just the outside but he knows the inside. He knows the heart, the thoughts, the intents, the motives, the people that we smile at with this pious grin but in our hearts, we can't stand them. He knows it all. He knows and he's waiting for us to get honest so that he can give us living water.

Dana Gresh: Jesus offered some challenging words to the woman at the well, and you know what? They're words you and I need to hear as well. Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth has been helping us understand the heart of vulnerability. Why wear a mask when Jesus already sees the deepest parts of us?

We saw today that it's safe to be real with him. He wants to offer life, not condemnation. We'll hear the second half of that message from the Free to Be Real conference tomorrow. If you haven't noticed, this week is all about freedom in Christ.

It's one of our favorite things to talk about here at Revive Our Hearts. We interact with so many women, women who wake up in bondage to their past, their fears, or the pressure to perform. And we know the solution. It's Jesus. He offers freedom from what enslaves you, fullness that satisfies your deepest longings, and fruitfulness that flows from abiding in him.

For 25 years, God has used Revive Our Hearts to point women to these truths, and we're eager to see how he'll continue to bless this ministry in the 25 years to come. But this mission is a family endeavor. We can't accomplish any of this work without you.

Our fiscal year ends May 31st, and we're trusting God to provide $1.4 million. It's a greater need than usual, and it represents women around the world waiting to hear that they are called to thrive in Christ. Don't let the year close without being part of what God is doing here.

Your gift today matters more than you know. And reminder, when you make a donation of any amount, we'll send you a booklet titled *Called to Thrive*. We just want to express our gratitude. In this booklet, Nancy walks you through nine short devotions, journaling prompts, and reflection questions rooted in her teaching on freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness in Christ.

And we just can't wait to get that in the mail for you. And fret not, international listeners, even if you're outside the US or Canada, you can download a digital version. To give and request *Called to Thrive*, visit reviveourhearts.com or call us at 1-800-569-5959.

One woman heard Nancy's teaching on the woman at the well, the same teaching you just listened to. She was so moved that she wrote a song. She told Nancy about it the next day and suddenly found herself up on the platform to sing. Hear more of this story tomorrow on 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.