Revive Our Hearts

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: Revival isn't something we make happen. We can't turn ourselves back to God. We can't revive ourselves. The prayer is, "Lord, would You revive us? Would You turn our hearts back to You?"

Dannah Gresh: This is the Revive Our Hearts podcast with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, author of Brokenness: The Heart God Revives, for April 9th, 2026. I'm Dannah Gresh.

If you've been reading through the Bible with us this year, you know that we're beginning the book of 1 Kings today. And if you haven't been reading through the Bible with us but you're interested in joining, hop in and let me tell you, I have had to play catch-up a few times, and each time I have had to muster up the motivation to do that, but I did it and I was so glad I did. So if you need to play catch-up or just start reading in 1 Kings and skip what you've missed, that is totally okay. Visit reviveourhearts.com/bible2026 for more information.

So say you're on a long, multi-day road trip. Do you fill up your vehicle with gas one time and expect to make it without gassing up again? No. Or even as you go about your day. Do you start your day with a sip of water, hoping that'll last all day? No. You need to be constantly re-energizing your body with water. Just like keeping gas in your car and hydrating your body with water, we need to be refueling our minds and our hearts with Christ.

And even though we are to seek the Lord, only He does the reviving work in our lives. Sometimes, even when we're doing work for God, we can lose sight of our love for Him in the process. Nancy shared a great reminder for times like this with the Revive Our Hearts staff. A couple of years ago, our team went through the Seeking Him study together. And the message we're about to listen to was the first in that series. The truths about revival Nancy shared might be just what you need to hear too. Nancy began her talk by sharing a story that was in the news at the time. You may have heard about the charges against Alec Murdaugh. Though the trial has now received a verdict, at the time Nancy recorded this message, the case was just unfolding. Let's listen.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: If you are a news follower, you've probably seen this trial of Alec Murdaugh, who's a wealthy—he was wealthy at one time, very successful at one time—lawyer from South Carolina. He comes from a prominent family, generations of prosecutors and lawyers and law practice, and very just high-profile in their community and a highly respected family for generations. But now he is being accused of murdering his wife and his son.

I was kind of spellbound listening to portions of—they've had all the testimony, all the witnesses, the prosecution, the defense. The prosecution gave their closing arguments, and it was captivating as this prosecutor talked about how Alec Murdaugh had been in what the prosecutor called a gathering storm. A gathering storm. There had been pressures building up in his life over a period of years. Alec had had some debt, and he got pressured about paying that debt because he was spending money lavishly on lifestyle but also on an opioid addiction. $50,000 a week was the cost of the pills he was taking. You just can't even believe that somebody could live through all of this.

Here's this man with this gathering storm. He's got this generations of family legacy and a reputation to protect, but the pressure of then having to pay for this habit he had, the debt he had, and then lots of things that came into his life and his family, the pressures became unbearable. He began to engage in even more destructive behavior. During this trial, he confessed to having stolen millions of dollars—I think it's at least $9 million—from settlements he got as a lawyer for people who were involved in accidents. He tried their cases and he got money for them, millions and millions of dollars, and he would steal from—he was already getting paid handsomely for those settlements, but then he would steal from the portion that was supposed to be going to the people he had been representing.

These clients over the years, including two sisters who had been horribly hurt in an accident, another person who had ended up as a quadriplegic in an accident—he had got them money and then stolen it from them. These clients had no idea what was going on. They thought he was helping them, when he was actually helping himself while he was harming them. The prosecutor talked about and challenged in the cross-examination, challenged this man, like, "You were looking these people in the eye and you were telling them one thing, and they were trusting you, and you were living a lie the whole time."

Eventually, this whole thing would collapse. He would be discredited, he's lost his career. But the whole time, until this trial when he finally acknowledged some of these lies, he was smooth. He was a smooth talker. He's a skilled lawyer and he was constructing these elaborate defenses and alibis. He kept wanting to do whatever he had to do to keep from getting exposed. And he fooled everyone for a very long time, including his family and closest friends. The prosecutor said, "They thought he was what he was in public. He was so convincing." And then this line just stuck with me: the prosecutor said, "Not a single person close to him knew who he really was."

It's a shocking and tragic story, and as I've watched this horrific tragedy unfolding, it's been striking to me that there is something of the spirit of Alec Murdaugh in every one of us. There's something of his spirit in me. We have a propensity, a bent toward hiding, being one thing in public and another in private. It's been sobering to me to realize, because you look at this man who's just so messed up, but then to think of me and us and realize we are only ever a series of small steps away from disaster.

In that light, Alec Murdaugh is coming to a day of reckoning. He's been unwilling to humble himself; therefore, he is being humiliated before the entire nation. But before we get there, I want us to look at Psalm 85. Let me just want you to open your Bible. I've got mine open. Just notice the inscription. It says "for the choir director." This is intended to be used for our public worship, for our corporate worship. And then it says, "a psalm of the sons of Korah." There are 11 psalms that are designated this way, the sons of Korah.

You've heard that name Korah, and you remember in Numbers how Korah was a Levite who rebelled against the Lord, and God destroyed him and his whole family. I mean, he is noted—I'm memorizing the book of Jude right now, and the rebellion of Korah is a big thing even in the New Testament. But here were the descendants of Korah, who were Levites, the descendants of a man who had rebelled against God's authority and had perished and took a lot of other people down with him. But here are the descendants of that man. Think about the amazing grace.

They write psalms, 11 of them in our scripture, inspired by the Holy Spirit. They didn't try to hide their background. They didn't say, "Sons of uh..." They were sons of Korah, who had rebelled so greatly, but now here are these men being used by God to write songs and psalms that would be used in the corporate worship. Listen, we are sons and daughters, all of us, of Adam, the rebel. We ourselves are born rebels. We are sinful people, but we have been saved to serve a holy God. I love just the inscription of this psalm.

As we read it, you'll see that it is a psalm, a prayer for the people of God. This is not a prayer for "them." This is a prayer for "us." This is not about "those people out there." This is a prayer about "us." So you see in verse 2, you see "Your people." Verse 6, you see "Your people." Verse 8, He speaks to "His people," "His faithful ones." Verse 9, "those who fear Him." This is a prayer for us. In fact, in verses 4 through 7, the word "us"—"return to us"—that word "us" is used six times just in those few verses there. So it's "revive us" collectively and "revive us" individually. It's a prayer for us, for the people of God, for our ministry.

If I could just break it down for you and give you a little bit of a handle on how to outline this in your head, then as you go back to it and pray through this, you'll have maybe some just a little skeleton to hang your thought and prayer on. So the first three verses, the sons of Korah, the psalmist, is looking back and praising God for His blessing, His favor, and His grace in the past. And then verses 4 through 7, the psalmist is praying for God's blessing and favor and grace in the present. And then in the rest of the chapter, verses 8 through 13, he is celebrating the promise of God's blessing and favor and grace in the future.

Praising God for His blessing, favor, and grace in the past, the first three verses. You see that, "Lord, You showed favor to your land. You restored the fortunes of Jacob. You forgave our people's guilt. You covered all their sin. You withdrew all Your fury. You turned from Your burning anger." Lord, in the past You have moved in Your people, among Your people. You have done amazing things for us. You have given favor, verse 1. You have given forgiveness, verse 2, when we have sinned. And verse 3, You have restored fellowship when it was broken.

So we look back and we see what has God done in the past. As you look back 20 years ago, what did you see in Revive Our Hearts then? Maybe we hardly had a website then. This was a lot of things were new, but there was a lot of blessing and favor and grace that God showed to me, that God showed to us, not only at the beginning of Revive Our Hearts. But look back in your life to seasons of blessing, seasons of special grace, maybe when God saved you, maybe when He restored your heart when it had wandered away from Him and you experienced a fresh, sweet sense of His favor, His blessing, His grace.

And then we see in verses 4 through 7 the psalmist saying, "Lord, You've done it before," but now as he looks at the present, he says, "Lord, we need You to do it again." A prayer for now, pleading with God, not just praising Him for His past blessings and favor and grace, but now pleading with God for fresh blessing and favor and grace, and out of desperation saying, "Lord, we need You."

Look at verse 4: "Return to us, O God of our salvation. Abandon Your displeasure with us. Will You be angry with us forever? Will You prolong Your anger for all generations? Will You not revive us again so that Your people may rejoice in You? Show us Your faithful love, Lord, and give us Your salvation."

Now I want you to look at a word that I'm reading in the CSB. I know it's a little different in other translations, but at the end of verse 3 it says, "You turned"—God, You turned—"from your burning anger." And then verse 4 it says, "Return to us." That's the same word. In fact, some of your translations will say "restore us." So Lord, at one time You turned Your face toward us. You turned Your face away from us when we sinned. But when You forgave our sin, You turned Yourself toward us. And now he's saying, "Lord, would You return to us as You did in the past? And would You turn us back to You?" Turn us back to You, turn Yourself back to us. The same word there.

And then you see that word, same word, it's translated different in the English, but it's the same word in the Hebrew, verse 8: "let them not go back to foolish ways." When the Lord has turned back to us, has turned our hearts back to Himself, let us not turn away again from the Lord. Let us not go back to our foolish, self-centered ways of living.

So that word "turn." God turning away, and turning His favor and grace and blessing away when we turn our faces from Him. But then God turning Himself to us when we confess and humble ourselves and are repentant. And God turning us back to Himself. There are times we can't turn ourselves back to God. We can't revive ourselves. The prayer is, "Lord, would You revive us? Would You turn our hearts back to You?" You just see this desperation, this longing, this sense of need.

I read an article a couple weeks ago that really struck me called "The Faith Crisis of Francis Schaeffer." And Francis Schaeffer, as many of you are aware, was a 20th-century American theologian and philosopher and pastor. And what I had forgotten was that there was a point in his life when he had a major crisis of faith. And this article was exploring what caused that and then how he was restored from that.

But here's what caught my attention. It said in this season, he was in a very conservative denomination and was very active in it. It said he grew concerned that he had become cold and doctrinaire. These people, as he reflected years later, he said they were zealous for their theological precision, but not for obeying Jesus' command to love one another as I have loved you. And they were lacking reality, the need for cultivating closeness to God and depending on the Holy Spirit. And then listen to this line: "They were serving Jesus but not enjoying Him."

Wow, that stopped me in the middle of that article dead in my tracks. He became concerned, Francis Schaeffer became concerned—he had all this theological training, he was a pastor, he became a missionary, started an incredible ministry in Europe—but he became concerned that he had become cold and doctrinaire. Lacking reality. Lacking love. Theologically precise, but lacking reality. Not cultivating closeness to God and dependence on the Holy Spirit. Serving Jesus, but not enjoying Him.

That's what this psalm speaks to. Lord, we're doing the right things, but we need the fresh oil of Your Holy Spirit. I need it. I need it so that I don't become self-sufficient, independent, but I'm leaning into You and I'm experiencing the joy of Your salvation and the fullness of Your spirit in my life. I'm finding as I'm getting older—no secret to most of us—that things dry up. My skin dries up and your body changes, your cells change. And there are all kinds of products I've been getting ads for these since the day I turned 40. These ads come in all the time. And they're like how to stay young.

So the one I'm into currently is—I just got a fresh supply of it the other day—it's called Lifecell. It's a skin care product. It's a moisturizer. It's called ultra-concentrated skin rejuvenation. And the promise is here that you apply it day and night to your face for a lifetime of youthful skin. Well, I wrote LOL in my notes here because there's no such thing if you live to any advanced age at all of a lifetime of youthful skin.

But there's a sense here in which you realize that we need moisturizers. We need things that refresh and replenish and rejuvenate and renew and revive ourselves physically. Do you think we need that any less when it comes to our souls? Getting shriveled up, cold-hearted, barren, dry—maybe not a lot, but just a little, incrementally. We need the oil of the Spirit, the moisturizer of His word and of fellowship and communion with God's people. And the prayer: "Lord, would You restore to us? Would You turn us? Would You bless us in fresh ways with Your favor and Your grace? We need You."

And so we cry out, "Lord, revive us, not just once, but again and again and again and again." My heart gets crusty. My heart gets cold. My heart gets desensitized. I lose a sense of wonder of the things we're talking about and helping others experience. Would You revive me? Would You revive us again? We need God to revive us and turn us again to restore and renew and rejuvenate us as we contemplate what it is He has for us down the road.

And verses 8 through 13, the promise of His blessing, His favor, and His grace in the future. If you meditate on these verses, I'll just read a few of them here, but you're going to see it's freedom, fullness, and fruitfulness. That's what God is promising. That's what He's given in the past. That's what we're praying for now, and that's what He has promised He will give us in the future. But just look at a couple of these verses.

Verse 8: "I will listen to what God will say." So he's prayed his prayer: "Lord, would You revive us? Hear us, give us Your salvation, give us Your steadfast love. We need You, restore us, return us." But then he stops talking and says, "I'm going to listen. I will listen. I will hear, I'm going to lean in to what God has to say." So God's going to speak. He is speaking, He's always speaking to us through His word. The question is, am I listening? Do I have ears to hear and a heart to receive what He will say?

Verse 10: "Faithful love and truth will join together." Oh, I skipped verse 9, I've got to do that: "His salvation is very near those who fear Him so that glory may dwell in our land." It's the glory of God in our lives, in our ministry, in our churches that we're longing for. This isn't about us. This is about His glory. And then we see these promises, faithful love, "hesed," God's covenant-keeping love; "truth will join together; righteousness and peace will embrace; truth will spring up from the earth; righteousness will look down from heaven; the Lord will provide what is good and our land will yield its crops; righteousness will go before Him to prepare the way for His steps."

God wants us to prepare a pathway of righteousness, holiness—Isaiah 35 calls it a highway of holiness where He can come and walk in the midst of us, where He can bring what is good, He can cause us to flourish individually, collectively, and as a ministry. And I don't know about you, but I don't want to go through same-old, same-old, same-old and have a dry, cold, or indifferent heart. I want fresh tenderness, fresh peace, fresh grace, fresh freedom, fresh fullness, fresh forgiveness day after day after day.

And the sweet thing in this psalm is it all points us to Him. In Him, in Christ the reviver of Revelation chapter 3, the church in Ephesus, their love had grown cold. And what did Jesus say? Remember. Think back to the past blessings and grace and favor. Then confess, repent, acknowledge where you are. And then believe God to send fresh mercy, fresh oil, fresh grace, fresh favor, fresh blessing into your life, into my life, and into our ministry.

So as we close this time together today, I want us to just bow our hearts before Him and ask Him for what we just read about here. So we pray, O Lord, first, return to us. Return to us. And Lord, restore us to You. Turn us back to You. Turn Yourself to us, and then restore us. Turn our hearts to You, to gaze upon Your beauty, to be taken captivated with the wonder of who You are and the gospel message that we are proclaiming to others today. May we be restored to the wonder of that.

Lord, would You revive us. Revive our hearts. Revive my heart. And then, O Lord, would You cause us to rejoice in You. Rejoice in You. To find our gladness, our soul satisfaction, our deepest longings fulfilled not in things or people or our job or the weather or how things are going for us in this season, not in the condition of our physical bodies or our aging or our weariness or whatever. Help us not to find our rejoicing, our deepest rejoicing, in anything or anyone more than we do in You.

So Lord, would You restore us. Return to us. Revive us. And cause us this day and this week to rejoice in You. And thank You for Your promise that You—Psalm 69:32—that You will revive the hearts of all those who seek You. So Lord, we're going to seek You together and pray, revive us again. We need it, Lord. And we thank You by faith for what You will do. We pray in Jesus' name, amen.

Dannah Gresh: Amen. I hope that prayer is one your heart has been stirred to pray. Revive us again, Lord. That was Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth sharing a message as part of the Seeking Him study that our staff walked through together. It was really such a powerful experience for all of us to go through it as a team. And we've also heard story after story of women whose lives have been impacted through this study. Here's one story Nancy shared with our team.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: Yesterday, in God's timing, we got an email from a woman named Suzy, who has been a monthly partner for this ministry ever since, I think it was January of 2002. So right at the beginning of the ministry, month after month after month, she has supported this ministry. And she saw the Prayer and Praise Update. She saw it and responded, sent this email to Revive Our Hearts right away.

She said, "Revive Our Hearts has been a part of my life since Nancy started broadcasting on KHCB in Houston. I just read today's email. What joy!" And we talked in that email about how we're starting into a Seeking Him study as a team. And she said, "Seeking Him influenced my life years ago. Yesterday I found a signed copy of Seeking Him from Nancy, unused, and my old workbook." So she had been through it once and then had this other one that she hadn't used.

She said, "I'm so excited to start again. My life has been very hard these past three years, and I've been asking the Lord for a renewed love for Him as I did when I first started listening to ROH. So praise the Lord, I'm starting anew tomorrow."

Dannah Gresh: I love that. We're always excited to hear these stories about how God is using resources like Seeking Him to make a difference in women's lives. And He uses listeners like you to reach them. Suzy wouldn't have had access to Revive Our Hearts resources without your prayer and generosity.

By the way, there's more information about the 12-week Seeking Him study linked in the transcript of this program at reviveourhearts.com. Let me remind you, Revive Our Hearts is a listener-supported ministry, which means when you give to this ministry, you're making it possible for us to reach women around the world and to help them thrive in Christ.

If you'd like to join us in this mission, here's a great option for you to think about. You could become a Revive Partner, which is a monthly partner like Suzy. Find out more about how to join the team on our website. Go to reviveourhearts.com/partner. This role comes with lots of perks, so be sure to check those out as well.

Another way you can support us is by giving a gift of any amount. With your gift, you'll receive the Refresh: 30 Days of Personal Revival journaling set as our way of saying thank you. This set contains scripture cards and a journal where you can reflect on selected passages. To give and request your Refresh journal set, visit reviveourhearts.com or call us at 1-800-569-5959.

Tomorrow, Nancy will be back along with Bob Bakke talking about persisting in prayer and continuing to seek God for revival. You won't want to miss this important conversation. Please be back for Revive Our Hearts.

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