Revive Our Hearts

Dannah Gresh: In your painful circumstances, have you run to worldly comforts? Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth says if you have, it's not too late to come back to the Lord. Would you just be honest enough to say to the Lord, "Lord, I'm tired of running. I want to stop running, and I want to come back home."

This is the Revive Our Hearts podcast with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, author of Adorned, for February 4, 2026. I'm Dannah Gresh. Nancy’s continuing in our series Ruth: The Transforming Power of Redeeming Love. If you’ve missed any episodes so far, you can find them at the link in today's transcript. Now, here's Nancy.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: Ever find yourself wanting to run from pressure? Which day, right? I got to tell you, the other night I received within a 24-hour period I received a couple of emails that just spelled out a lot of hard work and created in my mind some pressure. It was late at night, and I finally just took a look at all that I knew would be involved in following through on these messages, and I said, "I think I'm just going to bed."

That was my—I think if I just go to sleep, maybe you wake up in the morning and it won't all be here. In little ways but also some of us in big ways, the temptation in the midst of pressure, pain, problems, issues of life is to want to escape. You'll be glad to know as we get to the story of Ruth today that you're not the only one who finds yourself wanting to run and escape from the realities of life.

We're looking in the book of Ruth in the first chapter. We're still on verse 1, and we saw yesterday that this story takes place in the days of the judges, the dark ages of Israel's history. The Scripture says, "In the days when the judges ruled, there was a famine in the land. And a man from Bethlehem in Judah together with his wife and two sons went to live for a while in the country of Moab."

There was a famine in the land. When we go back to the Old Testament, the book of Deuteronomy in particular, we find that under the old covenant, God promised His people that if they obeyed Him, they would be blessed and that that blessing would come in the form of material and physical prosperity. The land would be fruitful, they would be fertile, they would have families and the land would produce.

Now, God blesses us today in different ways and does not promise those same kinds of blessings, but for the nation of Israel, God said, "If you obey me, the land and your women will be fruitful. You'll be prosperous." He also promised them that if they disobeyed His laws, there would be natural and physical consequences of their disobedience. He promised there'd be chastisement and that that would come in the form of famine and hunger, military oppression, different ways that they would be chastised if they disobeyed God.

God's purpose in giving these kinds of consequences was that He wanted to show that He was the one who was in control of the land, that it was not the Canaanite pagan gods of Baal and Asheroth who were in charge of the land and who controlled fertility, but that God was the Lord and the owner of the land. His purpose in bringing chastisement was to restore His people to a place of obedience.

God knew that when the pressure was on, the people would cry out to Him and He would be able to bless them and send mercy to them. I think of that line in Francis Thompson's "The Hound of Heaven" where God says, "All which I took from thee, I did but take, not for thy harms, but just that thou mightest seek it in my arms."

When God sends a famine, whether it's a literal famine or a spiritual famine or an emotional famine in our lives, His purpose is not to ruin our lives. His purpose is to open up our hearts and our hands to receive that which only He can give to us. In this day, there was a famine in the land, and so we know that likely, God was chastising His people. He was trying to restore them to a place of obedience.

We're told that in the midst of that famine, a man from Bethlehem in Judah left Judah, left his homeland to go live in the neighboring country of Moab. Bethlehem—the word Bethlehem means "house of bread." The word Judah means "praise." This man lived in a place that meant "house of bread and praise." That very name shows that famine was unusual in the land, that the norm was fertility and prosperity, that God was sending the famine to chastise His people.

God intends, by the way, for our lives to be houses of bread and praise, houses of plenty, houses of abundance. It may not always be physical plenty, physical abundance, but God intended for our lives to be fruitful, to be full. When we disobey God, He will often send a famine into our hearts or into our lives in some way so that we will see the areas where we've disobeyed Him. It's important that in those times we accept the famine as coming from the hand of God.

The Scripture says that this man left Bethlehem, Judah, took his wife and his two sons, and went to live for a while in the country of Moab. Moab was approximately 60 miles from Bethlehem. It was the other side of the Dead Sea if you can picture a map of Canaan there. The Moabites, you may remember, were the descendants of Lot through his incestuous relationship with his oldest daughter.

That's where this nation had come from, and the Moabites were the Jews' enemies. There was a lot of bad history between the Moabites and the Jews, but this man felt that the famine was so bad in his homeland that he decided to run to escape to neighboring Moab. That looked better to him at that point. Keep in mind, why did God send famines in those days? Because He wanted to chastise His people who had disobeyed Him.

If the famine was the result of disobedience on the part of God's people, what was the solution to the famine? Not running, but repenting. Elimelech, this Jewish man, chose to run rather than perhaps being an instrument of revival and calling the people to days of praise and fasting and seeking the Lord, calling the people to repentance. Really, his move to Moab revealed a lack of faith and that he did not see the purpose in the hand of God in this famine.

I think there's no question that he should have stayed where he was, but where he was seemed so troubled that he thought where he was going would be the solution to his problems. Instead of staying where he was, getting right with God, getting his family together and others together and seeking God, he gathered his family and took off for another country, thinking that he would do better there.

The suggestion here is that he probably intended to stay just for a short time. It says he went to live for a while, but when you come to the end of verse 2, you see that he continued there. He went for just a short trip thinking he'd be back, but three of the four who left Judah and went to Moab never came back. They ended up parking in Moab, living there, planting their family there, and the consequences that they were trying to escape, they found themselves in even worse consequences when they landed in Moab.

The road to destruction and the road to bitterness—we're going to see Naomi as a woman who knew a lot about bitterness—that pathway begins when we try to escape from the consequences that God has designed to mold us, to sanctify us, to chasten us. When we try to run from those circumstances, we set ourselves on a pathway to something far worse.

I'm reminded of that verse in Psalm 55 where the Psalmist said, "Oh, that I had the wings of a dove! I would fly away and be at rest. I would flee far away and stay in the desert. I would hurry to my place of shelter, far from the tempest and the storm." Have you ever wished that God would call you to the uninhabited regions of the world? "Lord, if I could just go to this desert island where there are no people, no problems."

Well, there are days when we just want to escape from it all, but David learned the same thing that Naomi's family was going to learn and that the key is not running. The key is facing the problem, facing the difficulty and finding God in it and making your way to the eye of the storm. So often when we're in a time of famine, loss, hardship, deprivation, circumstances pressing in on us—maybe it's because of our own sin, maybe it's because of the sin of others, but the famine affects us nonetheless.

Often rather than seek the face of God about why we're in this condition, what we do is look at other fields of the world, other countries, other places, and we set our heart on that place. Often I think it's not because the world and the place we're running to is so attractive, but because the place where we're living, the reality of the world where we are, has become so dry and we say, "It's got to be better out there."

Instead of facing the real cause for our dryness and getting to the source of the problem, we do what Elimelech and his family did, we do what the prodigal son did. We run away to a far country, and we're looking invariably for some substitute for what we've lost, thinking that if we could just get into this different situation, if we could just move, if we could just have a different set of circumstances, then we would get rid of our problems.

The problem is when we run from our problems, we forsake the mercy of God that He wanted to give us in the midst of the famine, in the midst of our problems. We tell ourselves, "It's just for a short time. I just need a break. I've just got to get away for a little bit." Moab can take a lot of different forms and shapes in our lives. For me the other night, it was, "I'm just going to go to bed. I'm just going to sleep, escape from all of it."

Now, there's nothing wrong with sleeping when it's time to sleep, but if I'm sleeping to run from pressure and to run from problems, I'm going to find it really doesn't solve my issues. Some of us run to food or we run to the mall, shopping. Some of us run to our job, to career. You may have found yourself sometime running to a different geographic location. Maybe your whole family got up and moved just to escape from some problems, pressures that you were experiencing in the other place where you lived.

All of us at times find ourselves running to friends. Nothing wrong with friends. Sometimes they can give us godly counsel, but sometimes we're really just trying to get somebody to empathize, somebody to sympathize, and somebody to be an escape for us from the reality, the painful reality of our circumstances. I know of women who have run into drugs, alcohol, prescription drugs. It's become an escape.

They're trying to anesthetize the pain, trying not to have to face the reality of their famine. There are women who've run into the arms of a man, thinking that in that place of escape, they can get out of the pain of their current marriage, the pain of their current difficult relationships, and so they find someone who's sympathetic, who's warm, who's got a listening ear and who empathizes with their situation.

What are they doing? They're running to Moab, running from the famine in their current situation, their current marriage, their current environment. We often tell ourselves, "I'm not going for long. I'm just going to taste. I'm just going to touch. I'm just going to experiment. I'm just going to get a little feel of relief. It'll only be for a while." That's what Elimelech said.

"We're just going to Moab for a while, just while the pressure's on. We'll come back." Elimelech never did come back. His sons never came back, and so often we end up staying in that far country, addicted. I did a conference and I've been reading through some of the comments that women wrote afterward sharing major issues of addiction and bondage. They didn't start out addicted to alcohol, addicted to prescription sleeping pills, addicted to food.

What happened? They thought they were just going for a little while into an escape, but the little while became a long while, and now they find they're imprisoned in their Moab. They can't escape, they can't get out. Now they have no heart for God, no heart for God's people, and the consequences in Moab are far worse than what they were trying to escape at home.

The place that we often think will bring relief and freedom from the pressure and the problems ends up becoming a place of even greater sorrow and sometimes even death. We're going to see that there's a God who has mercy on us and can find us even in Moab and who is always working to bring us back home. But you know, we're never going to find that route home until we first come to admit that we've been running.

I wonder as you're listening to the story of Ruth here, if you're identifying maybe with some area of your life where right now you're in a running pattern. You've run to some place, someone, some circumstance to get out of the reality and the pain and the difficulty of your current set of circumstances. You thought it was going to be just for a while, but you find now you're in a place of bondage, a place of greater and worse consequences than even the ones you were trying to escape.

Would you just be honest enough to say to the Lord, "I have been running." Now He knows it. He knew it from the moment you left Bethlehem, Judah. But have you ever come to admit it? To acknowledge, "I've been running." The first step to restoration, the first step back to Bethlehem, Judah, back to the place of bread and praise, is to admit, "I'm in a place I never should have gone. I never should have taken off to this far country."

Now your taking off may not be as drastic or as obvious as Naomi and her family taking off to Moab. Maybe it's not even in ways that other people would realize by looking at you, but you know in your heart that you're using this experience, this friend, this circumstance as an escape. Would you just say to the Lord, "Lord, I'm tired of running. I want to stop running, and I want to come back home."

Dannah Gresh: Unlike Naomi and unlike you and me, Jesus never ran from difficulty. He perfectly, courageously faced every situation. Yet, He was punished on our behalf so that when we come to our senses and come back home, our Heavenly Father welcomes us. Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth will be right back. She’s been warning us against escape to Moab, running to something that looks like it will relieve pressure but really just makes problems worse. My friend Erin Davis talked about this on the Women of the Bible podcast. If you’re not familiar, Women of the Bible is a podcast and videocast all about, you guessed it, women of the Bible. The Ruth series goes right along with our six-week study we’ve been telling you about, Ruth: Experiencing a Life Restored. Let’s listen to a portion of that.

Erin Davis: Food can be a real Moab for me. I just want to run into that pantry and find some quick satisfaction. Venting with women in the same season of life as me. So all my closest friends have young children and when we get together, if we're not very, very careful, we can just gripe, gripe, gripe, gripe, gripe. And that's a Moab. It doesn't actually relieve any of the pressures of parenting.

Dannah Gresh: Erin Davis on the ways we sometimes try to escape to Moab. If you’d like to hear more from this podcast episode, we’ll link to it in today's transcript at ReviveOurHearts.com. You can also listen to seasons of Women of the Bible on Abigail, Esther, Rahab, and Elizabeth. Now let’s get back to part two of today's teaching. Here's Nancy. And you know, here at Revive Our Hearts we recognize that men and women are equal in value as created by God, and we also believe God gave husbands and wives different roles in marriage. God’s given husbands the primary responsibility to be servant leaders, to listen to the input of their wives and make wise decisions. That’s going to come up a lot in the next portion of Nancy’s teaching. Now, if this conversation about men and women is new to you, then we’d love to point you to some helpful resources. You can visit ReviveOurHearts.com to find today's transcript and we’ll include some links there so you can learn more about biblical manhood and womanhood. I hope you’ll check those out and get lost in the beauty of God’s wonderful design. Now back to today's teaching. Here's Nancy.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: How many of you wives can think of a time when you saw your husband getting ready to make a decision and you were sure it was the wrong decision? Let me see some hands. Every married woman in the room, I think. How many of you it was something that you can remember a time when it looked like the decision was not just a minor decision, but a major something, and you were afraid that this might really have serious consequences for your family? Maybe it was a move or a job change or some decision he was making and you were really concerned about where this would take your family. I see some hands, quite a few hands on that as well. What do you do when your husband leads to a place where you're not sure God is leading?

Well, Naomi can relate to that very question. Ruth chapter 1, let me read the first two verses. "In the days when the judges ruled"—these were the dark ages of Israel—"there was a famine in the land." The famine was God's way of getting the attention of His people and calling them away from their idolatry and back to repentance and obedience. In the midst of that famine, a man from Bethlehem in Judah together with his wife and two sons went to live for a while in the country of Moab. They ran. They ran from the circumstances that God had designed to bring His people to repentance.

Now, we don't know that the famine was because of this man's sin in particular. He may have been a man who was really trying to obey God, but we do know it was because of the sin of God's people, or we can assume that based on the fact that God told His people when they disobeyed there would be famines. So whether he was personally responsible or not, this man says, "There's too much pressure here. We're taking off. We're leaving. We're going to another country."

Verse 2 tells us the man's name was Elimelech, his wife's name Naomi, and the names of his two sons were Mahlon and Chilion. These names are kind of interesting as you look at the background. Elimelech means "my God is king." As I think about this man, I think here's a man who really didn't live up to his name. I see this move to Moab as a situation where he didn't trust that God was really in control, in charge of the circumstances.

He reacted in fear perhaps, but not in faith. Now, Naomi's name means "pleasant." We're going to see that the day comes when she says, "I've been misnamed. That name doesn't fit me very well." It did at the end, but there was a period during that time where she said, "This is not the right name for me." Mahlon, the name of their first son, means "sickly and weakly." His brother's name Chilion means "pining away."

We're going to see that these two boys did live up to their names. They both died at an early age. The Scripture says that this man Elimelech, his wife Naomi and their two boys left Judah, left Bethlehem during this time of famine and went to Moab. It's interesting as you read this story, we're reminded that when we leave the will of God, when we leave the place that God has designed for our sanctification, we seldom leave alone.

It says this man left and he took his wife and his two sons with him. Invariably, you and I take others with us when we leave the will of God. We may not intend to hurt others, but our decisions do affect others. In fact, everything that you and I do—our attitudes, our actions, our choices—everything we do affects the lives of our family and of the people around us. Their lives can be ruined by our disobedience, or they can be blessed by our obedience.

But our lives do have influence. Don't think for a moment that the choices you make that seem so minor and insignificant don't have any bearing on those around you. I wonder if Elimelech had been able to read the story as we read it and know what was going to happen to his family. I assume he's a man who cared for his family, loved them. I don't think he wanted to lead them into a place where their lives were going to be destroyed.

But he didn't stop to think, apparently, of what this decision to run might mean for those that he loved, not to speak of what it would mean for his own life. You and I can be the instrument of ruin and destruction for the lives of those around us, but when we choose to obey God, our lives can be instruments of blessing and revival. Unfortunately, often it's children who are affected by our decisions and who pay the consequences.

I'm amazed when I read prayer cards that women turn in in our conferences how often women don't apparently see the connection between their own choices and where their children are spiritually. I saw some where women were saying, "I've got this bondage to some sin habit in my life, some area where I don't have self-control. Please pray for me." In the next breath, they would say, "Pray for my children who are living lives of open and blatant immorality."

They're not making the connection that by their choosing to live lives that are out of control and not living lives surrendered to God, they've created an environment where it's easier for their children to go further in their sin and to live in destructive lifestyles. I think one of the things that makes this more challenging—it was true then and it's true today—is that there was so little measurable difference in this era between Moab, the pagan country, and Israel, where the people of God lived.

The people of God had so fallen into the ways of the world that I don't think Moab really seemed that far away from a spiritual standpoint. Moab was an idolatrous pagan people. They offered child sacrifices. It was a wicked religion that was practiced there. But the Israelites, the Jews, were doing many of the same things. Today when the church has become so like the world, when we move into that far country, that place of escape and running, oftentimes we may not think it's that big a deal.

We may not realize how far we've gone from the ways of God. The suggestion here is that Elimelech took his family, he led them into Moab. That raises the question, what if your husband leads you and your family down a wrong path? Was Naomi partially responsible here? Who's to blame and what's a wife to do if her husband says, "We're going to Moab"? Let me make several suggestions that don't come right out of this text but by way of application.

I think the first one is to make sure that your own conscience is clear as a wife. Make sure that your conscience is clear. There's some things we're not told in this story. We don't know, for example, did Naomi influence Elimelech to go to Moab? Was this her idea? Like Sarah saying to Abraham, "Take Hagar in order to solve this problem of how to have children"?

Was Naomi so miserable and unhappy, was she whining and nagging and so miserable that Elimelech finally said, "Look, we're getting out of here. I'm not going to put up with this whining woman anymore. We're going to Moab"? We don't know. Was Naomi fearful, was she discontented, or maybe none of the above, but when she saw her husband getting ready to make a wrong decision, did she appeal to him?

Did she pray for him? Did she encourage him to consider the consequences? What was her attitude? Did she pray that God would change his heart? Was she a victim or was she partially responsible for this decision? The answer is we don't know. Here's the challenge: don't assume when you see someone in a difficult situation, in a difficult marriage for example, don't assume that you know all the facts of that situation.

I look at some marriages and I hear one partner telling the story and I think, "Oh my goodness, I can't believe this wife has had to put up with that situation in that marriage." But the fact is we don't know all the facts. We don't know if Naomi was blameless in this or not. When it comes down to it, whether she was blameless or whether she was guilty, there was still grace available.

But first as a wife, make sure that your own conscience is clear, and be careful when you're drawing conclusions about God's dealings in other people's lives. It may seem very obvious to us that some wife is the innocent party, and she in fact may have been living a godly life in that marriage. But the fact is we don't know. We don't know what goes on behind the walls of a home.

God does not hold you accountable for your husband's sin. God does not hold you accountable for your husband's wrong choices. God does hold you accountable for your choices, for your sin, for your reactions, for your responses. By the way, this can go both ways. I don't mean to pick on husbands here because plenty of wives make wrong choices that affect the husbands as well.

But we're a room full of women here. Remember that when your husband makes, as he will at times, wrong choices, that you can still respond in a godly way. You cannot blame your wrong responses—your whining, your complaining, your speaking evil of your husband—you cannot blame that on your husband's decision. You're responsible for your choices, for how you respond to that situation.

So here we have a man who made a choice, a wife who followed, whether she was part of that choice or not we don't know. Even if she was a victim of her husband's wrong decision, the point comes in this story where she has to take responsibility for her own life and return to Bethlehem. She does not have to spend her life a prisoner of his wrong choices. There comes a point when she is able on behalf of their family to repent, to go back to Judah, to leave Moab and to make right choices.

That says to me that you and I can make right and godly choices regardless of our past, regardless of what we've done or what's been done to us. We can have a right relationship with God regardless of where your family is spiritually, regardless of whether your husband walks with God or not, you can walk with God. Even if your husband takes you to Moab and you follow there out of obedience to God and reverence for your husband, you can have an intimate, personal and right relationship with God.

Ultimately as you wait on the Lord and entrust yourself to Him, you're going to experience what Naomi ultimately experienced and that is the joy of restoration. Seeing that God really can bring good out of evil. The Scripture says that He will even cause the wrath of men to praise Him. The wrong decisions of others as they affect our lives can ultimately turn to the glory of God if we're willing to keep our place, to take our place before the Lord in humility and in obedience and say, "Lord, I choose regardless of what other choices other people may make, I choose to walk with you and to trust that your presence and your provision will be sufficient for me in this place."

Dannah Gresh: Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth will be right back to wrap things up. She’s been leading us in a very practical discussion from the book of Ruth, and I want to underscore something Nancy mentioned briefly. She talked about the importance of a wife trusting God even if her husband is being unwise or leading her away from God’s best. Now here's an important clarification. Some wives are in extremely difficult situations where their lives or their children’s lives are in peril, laws are being broken, and I'm talking about physical abuse or other dangerous situations. Should a wife in that scenario trust God? Absolutely. Always.

But that doesn’t mean she just passively does whatever her husband tells her to do. Civil authorities might need to be involved, godly counsel should be sought, and if you're in that kind of difficult circumstance, please pray like crazy and reach out for godly counsel. A wise counselor can help you know what specific steps you can and should take next. Okay? Well, we’re only in the opening verses of Ruth so far in this series, and we’ve covered a lot.

I hope you’ll study this book further on your own. To help you do that, we’d love to send you Ruth: Experiencing a Life Restored. This six-week study invites you to marvel at God’s redeeming love. He brings beauty from brokenness, blessing from hardship, and joy from waiting, not just in Ruth’s life, but in yours too. This resource is yours when you make a donation of any amount. Just visit ReviveOurHearts.com to give or call us at 1-800-569-5959. Be sure to request Ruth: Experiencing a Life Restored when you do.

Tomorrow, continue walking through the book of Ruth with Nancy. She’s going to take some time to talk about the Lord’s discipline and why it’s a really good thing even though it rarely feels good. I hope you’ll come back for Revive Our Hearts. Here's Nancy with a final thought.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: I wonder if there's some situation that comes to your mind where someone else has made a wrong decision and it's affected your life. Maybe it's your husband, maybe it's your parents, maybe it's a boss, maybe it's a pastor of your church, and you've ended up experiencing some consequences because of someone else's wrong choices. Would you just acknowledge to God the truth that it is possible for you to live a godly life and to walk with Him even in the midst of those circumstances?

And if you've been resenting and resisting and whining, complaining, speaking evil of someone else because of the choices they've made, would you just even right now in your heart repent and say, "Lord, it's not just their sin, it's my sin too. It's how I've responded, it's how I've reacted in my spirit, in my words, in my actions. I've not waited on you. I've not trusted you."

And would you ask God's forgiveness for your wrong reactions or for any part that you may have had in contributing to that wrong decision? You can't choose for someone else, but you can choose to walk with God. Lord, would you begin even this moment to pour out your grace and to create circumstances to bring about restoration of women who may be in a Moab today because someone else made a wrong decision?

Would you give them the sense of hope and faith that you are still in control and that you are going to cause these circumstances to work to their ultimate good and to your glory? I pray it for Jesus' sake. Amen.

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