Burden and Purpose (Or, In Which I Take a Shameless Cue from Nancy Leigh DeMoss)

What makes Faith Today tick? Why is it here? Why do I do what I do, as sporadically and falteringly and bumblingly as I do it?

Nancy Leigh DeMoss

Initially, this was going to be a permanent page on the side of the blog, right under "Doctrine." Since this is my online condominium I can do exactly as I please with it, and so if need be I may repost this there. But I decided this was too important to risk sidelining to a section many readers might not even notice.

I decided it would be a good idea to share with all of you why I am writing this blog, and to do that requires something of a history lesson wrapped within a (only seeming) rabbit trail.

In 2001, Nancy Leigh DeMoss founded Revive Our Hearts, a women’s radio ministry which was to succeed Elisabeth Elliot’s Gateway to Joy program. (ROH also functions as the women’s outreach of Life Action Revival Ministries, which Del Fehsenfeld founded in 1971 and with which Nancy has been closely involved in speaking, counseling, and revivalist capacities since 1980.) Having traveled extensively as a women’s conference speaker and women’s revival summit leader for several years, Nancy became increasingly concerned with the spiritual devastation gripping the lives of multitudes of professing Christian women who came to hear her speak. They were dissatisfied, demoralized, desperate, flirting with immorality, proud, frazzled, contentious, drained, depressed, resistant to God’s Word, enslaved to everything from food to shopping to memories of past sins, and more than a few were quite literally suicidal. 

They did not believe God, and they were in bondage.

While I have none of the graciousness, multudinous published books, or hard-won Biblical insight after 50 years of walking with Christ that Nancy does (and which makes her teaching ministry immensely attractive – or should – to men, as well), I too have an increasing burden as I watch the decline of American Christianity today. I, too, am extremely distressed at the unbelief, autonomy, Biblical illiteracy, carnality, pride, and resultant fruitlessness and spiritual devastation that haunts the vast majority of evangelical churches and ministries today.

I grieve for the teeming millions of evangelicals who have no idea they are lulled into spiritual lethargy, benighted immaturity, and mediocrity because everyone around them is similarly mediocre, carnal, and lethargic, so they have no idea anything is amiss. I am angered by the seemingly endless Christians who find themselves proudly indifferent to -- if not incensed by, and opposed to -- to the inflexible and all-consuming authority of Scripture; who resist having the confining weight of Biblical standards placed upon them, too blind to realize that therein is the only path to freedom; and who resent being expected to be and do anything higher because their weak preaching and insipid spiritual lives have never created a genuine brokenness or a longing for accountability and conformity to Christ’s narrow way…and who think they’re spiritual in doing it.

I am distressed at the theological culture which perceives discerning and Biblically-faithful people as killjoys, enemies, Pharisees, and basically all-around dreadful people who inexplicably have the audacity to insist -- worse, with anything approaching earnestness and force -- that professed Christians actually subordinate the entirety of themselves to the imperial authority of God through the Word. I am angry that vast numbers of evangelicals vilify and savage the motives and methods of such people, instead of doing such the carnality and unbelief they rightly expose, and from which they seek to sever us, that we might be even wholly captive to Christ.

I am disheartened at the dearth of truly Biblical preaching, replaced as it is with shallow, man-centered, topical, psychological pep talks which fail to grasp the depth of the heart of God and truly transform and break sinners. I am horrified at the seemingly endless willingness for virtually every stripe of spiritual harlotry to be aided and abetted by professed Christians, either attempting to use Scripture to do so, or simply asserting what they want to believe and do regardless of Biblical prohibitions.

And while I have not been around long enough to see the demoralized, drained, and depressed end-result, I know both from Scripture and sanctified common sense that it will indeed come, absent repentance.

To best understand the burden and purpose of Faith Today, I reached back into the hidden vaults of the Internet to find several articles Nancy wrote in the early days of Revive Our Hearts. I have tweaked these snippets just a tad, primarily in the pronouns, so that they might apply more readily to both men and women. However, I have yet to find a better non-inscripturated statement of the very thing I am attempting to do by creating this blog.

“Several years ago, God began birthing in my heart a vision for wide-spread personal and corporate revival and reformation among Christian men and women. I pray that God will use Revive Our Hearts to help that dream become a reality. Here, in a nutshell, is my burden for this ministry:

• To help Christians experience spiritual freedom and fullness through practically applying the Word of God to every area of their lives and relationships. To help them discover biblical answers to the root issues that keep them from being all God created them to be.
• To help Christians become spiritually fruitful.
• To call believers to a life of surrender, sacrifice, service, and Spirit-filled living—that they might be life-givers and instruments of revival in their homes, churches, and communities.
• To mobilize a "counter-revolution" of holy, humble, surrendered, thankful, praying Christians who will reflect to our world the wonder and the beauty of His heart and His ways—believers whose lives will advance His Kingdom and His redemptive purposes in the world.” (Source; emphases mine)

When asked what led her to take responsibility for ROH:

• A growing burden as I looked into the eyes and listened to the stories of thousands of Christians who are living defeated, barren lives and who are in perpetual bondage.
• An irresistible sense of the call of God to speak the Truth to believers and to call them to respond in surrender, obedience, and faith.

And, later in the same article, when asked what she hoped to accomplish with ROH:

I am believing God for genuine revival among Christians. I pray that He will raise up a movement of surrendered, trusting, joyful, wise, praying, fruitful disciples who will reflect the beauty of His ways in their homes, churches, and communities. (Source; italics mine)

I, too, pray that God uses this simple blog written by a flawed, frail kid to produce impossible reformation and revival within His people...especially me...as He gives me voice and platform to proclaim with bold, brokenhearted  authority His precious, transforming Word.

Amen.