Kay Arthur: God, You created me woman. You know what You designed for me to be. I don’t want to be a foolish woman. I want to fulfill Your purpose for me. Speak to me through Your Word. Cleanse me through the washing of Your Word, and work in my life so that when I see You face to face, I am not ashamed, but I hear well done, My good and faithful daughter.
Father, now convict me of sin, of unrighteousness, of judgment, and fill me with Your strength and power with Your blessed Holy Spirit. In Jesus’ holy name, I thank You that because what I have prayed is biblical, You will hear, and You will answer, amen.
Leslie: This is Revive Our Hearts with Nancy Leigh DeMoss for Friday, November 12.
Nancy Leigh DeMoss: What kind of woman do you want to be? Kay Arthur asked that question yesterday, contrasting a wise woman with a foolish woman, based on the book of Proverbs.
She delivered that message at the True Woman conference last month in Fort Worth, Texas. We’re about to hear part 2 of that message, and Kay is going to confront some important issues in our day, asking whether we’ve become too comfortable with sin.
When I first heard this portion of the talk, I had to ask myself some tough questions, like: When was the last time my face was wet with tears over the sin in our nation and the sin in my own heart?
During this message you’ll hear Kay refer to women waving white hankies. Women were waving these across the auditorium, representing a white flag of surrender as their way of saying “Yes, Lord, I submit to You.”
Now, as we pick up this part of the message, Kay is reading from Jeremiah chapter 9 where the prophet makes an intense, earnest appeal, and we hear the heart of God grieving over and confronting the spiritual idolatry and adultery of His people.
Kay:
Thus says the LORD of hosts, "Consider, and call the mourning women, that they may come; send for the wailing women, that they may come! Let them make haste and take up a wailing over us, that our eyes may shed tears and our eyelids flow with water. For a voice of wailing is heard from Zion, 'how we are ruined'" (verses 17-19, NASB).Listen, we ought to be wailing for other women. We ought to be wailing for the condition of the women in the United States of America because, honestly, and I don’t mean this cruelly, but we are a generation of harlots that are raising harlots. We are destroying this nation with our harlotry, and a voice of wailing is heard.
When was the last time you wept, that you groaned for the sins that are going on in our nation among women?
When was the last time you were kind enough, bold enough, caring enough to talk to another woman and to call her to holiness and righteousness? It says,
Now hear the word of the LORD, you women. Let your ear receive the word of His mouth. Teach your daughters wailing, and everyone her neighbor a dirge. For death has come through your windows (verses 20-21).In Jeremiah 9:23, the Lord says
Let not a man boast of his wisdom, and let not the mighty man boast of his might, let not a rich man boast of his riches; but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands [Me] and knows Me (verses 23-24).How well do you understand God? How well do you know Him? Precious one, are you just a New Testament Christian? You will not know God. You will not understand God until you get in Genesis. Yes, I see the white flags. You will not understand God until you start with the beginning, "God created the heavens and the earth" (1:1).
Every time Israel gets in trouble, you see it throughout the Old Testament, God reminds them: I’m the One that created the heavens and the earth. That’s why there’s such a battle over evolution and why you and I must know and understand the Word of God. It’s in the Old Testament that we get to know God. It’s in the Old Testament that we understand His justice and His righteousness and His holiness, and how we are to live. He says,
"Let him who boasts boast of this, that he understands and knows Me, that I am the Lord who exercises lovingkindness, justice and righteousness on earth; for I delight in these things," says the Lord. "Behold, the days are coming that I will punish all [now listen carefully] who are circumcised and yet uncircumcised" (verses 24-25).Now, He’s not speaking just about men. What He’s saying is, "You’re circumcised physically, but your heart is not circumcised." The old is not cut away, and you have not become new. Are you a woman who tolerates sin, who white washes it with ungodly counsel, and in doing so, does not warn people of God’s coming judgment?
He goes on to say in Ezekiel, “Because you disheartened the righteous with falsehood when I did not cause him grief” (13:22). You’re giving wrong counsel. You’re saying that this is God. It is not Me, and you are giving wrong counsel. “But you have encouraged the wicked not to turn from his wicked ways and preserve his life, therefore, you women will no longer see false visions nor practice divination, and I will deliver My people out of your hand. Thus you will know that I am the LORD” (verses 22-23).
Listen, when you and I speak as a child of God, we’re going to be held accountable for what we say. We’re going to be held accountable for the counsel that we give. If it is not according to the Word of God, it is wrong because in this Book is everything and anything that you and I will ever need that pertains to life and godliness (see 2 Peter 1:3). I see the white hankies. It is so important.
Now, listen to what He says: Are you a woman who played the harlot and in the process sacrificed your children? What am I talking about? Abortion. It says therefore, oh harlot . . . You say, “I don’t like you to talk about abortion. I’ve had an abortion. It brings up bad memories.”
I want to tell you something—and I do this in my book—it’s time to pull the plug on pain.If God has forgiven you, you are forgiven. Put it away and move forward.(Applause) But if you have not confessed it, then confess it, and He is faithful and just to forgive your sins and to cleanse you from all unrighteousness (see 1 John 1:9).
Therefore, O harlot, hear the word of the LORD. Thus says the Lord GOD, "Because your lewdness was poured out and your nakedness uncovered through your harlotries with your lovers and with all your detestable idols, and because of the blood of your sons which you gave to idols (Ezekiel 16:36).
You took your child, and you offered your child to a false god, and that’s what many people do when they get on the abortion table. They take their child, and they offer that child in their womb where they’re to be secure, on the abortion table because they have not listened to God, because they have not been the woman God wants them to be.
Do you want to be that kind of a woman? Listen, women are powerful. The way you live has greater influence than you know on your husband, on your children, on your church, on your community. It is influence for good or influence for evil or influence for nothingness.You say, “What do you mean by nothingness?” Nothingness is this: “I’m going to remain in neutral. I’m not going to take a stand for anything. I’m not going to call sin, sin. I’m not going to call people to righteousness because I want people to love me and because I want to be accepted.” What kind of a woman is that?
Are you a woman who has raised your children as 1 Timothy 2:15 says to walk in faith, to walk in love—now, listen carefully—to restrain themselves. They don’t run all over the church. They don’t run on the pews. They don’t stand on people’s furniture. Are you that kind of a woman rather than women who abandon their children on the altar of their career or before the idol of self or who would assume that they, not God, are the provider? Do you understand? “I can’t stay at home, God. I can’t take care of my kid.” Have you thought about down-sizing?
I want to be careful here, and I understand there are extenuating circumstances, so please hear me that I know all of that. But I don’t believe that God ordained for you to have children and have someone else raise them, including your mother or your in-laws. God gave you a child for you to raise, and you are accountable.(Applause and cheers)
But you say, “I’ve got to provide.” God promises to provide all of our need according to His riches in glory. You and I have to believe. We have to be women of faith. We have to trust Him, and God will come along.
You say, “But my kids’ education . . .” Listen, God loves your kids more than you love them. God is wiser than you, so don’t lean to your own understanding. Lean on the person of God. Embrace His precepts for life.
From Deborah and Yaw El, in the days of judges, in the darkest hour of those days, there was a woman that was an out-front leader. There was a woman that stayed at home, and both of them conquered the enemy because both were women of courage. One took the tent peg and nailed the enemy to the floor, and that’s what you and I need to do.
From them to Mary who, in the fullness of time, when God sent forth His Son, a Son that would deliver men and women from sin, from its penalty, which is the wages of sin is—what?—death—from its power so that I am freed from sin. If the Son shall set you free, you shall be free indeed.
On July 16, 1963, I went down on my knees, an immoral, divorced woman, telling my husband to commit suicide when he said he was going to, and later on he did. But I came up a brand new creature in Christ Jesus, “old things passed away, all things became new” (2 Corinthians 5:17). I’m telling you, I was delivered from the power of sin, and if you haven’t been delivered from the power of sin, you do not have Christ in you because that is part of the work of the Holy Spirit.
What kind of a woman do you want to be—condemned in your sin or cleansed by the blood of Jesus Christ once for all and cleansed daily by the washing of the water of the Word? Do you want to be a true woman, what God intended you to be—godly, righteous, loving, faithful, holy, fulfilled, not frustrated, triumphant, and not defeated?
If you’re going to be a woman of God, this Book has to be your daily bread. He said it in Deuteronomy. Jesus quoted it to the devil in Matthew 4:4. He turns, and He looks at the devil, and He says, “It is written, man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes out of the mouth of God.”
What you and I are holding is the very words of God. In 2 Timothy chapter 3, He says this in verse 16, “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God” (KJV). The word is only used once in the whole New Testament, and it means “God-breathed.” All Scripture is God-breathed. These are the very, very words of God.
What are you doing preferring the writings of men and women and reading those above reading the Word of God? What is your favorite book? If it’s not the Bible, something is terribly wrong, and you can turn it around by coming to know the Word of God, because these words are spirit and life. Jesus said, “The words that I speak are spirit and life” (John 6:63, NKJV). They are a discerner of the thoughts and the intents of the heart, as Hebrews says.
So in 2 Timothy 3, verse 14, He says you, “however, continue in the things that you have learned and become convinced of, knowing from whom you have heard them.” This is Paul’s last letter to his son. He’s going to die, and he says, and “from childhood you have known the sacred writings” (verse 15).
Now, what are the sacred writings that Timothy knew? Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges . . . all the way through the Old Testament. That child was taught the Word of God. This is the foundation for all of your Christian life. And he says “all Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and it is profitable for [teaching]” (verse 16, KJV).
It is profitable not only for teaching, but for reproof, to show you where you’re wrong.How do you know you’re wrong if you don’t know the Word of God? That’s why our society is in the mess that it’s in because we know what the world says, and we listen to the Christian TV, and the Christian radio, but we are not listening directly to God, and God wants you to know Him. God wants you to discover truth for yourself.
He wants you to know that this is not what this person thinks or what that person says or this one preaches. “This is what I’ve said, and this is My Word, and it is profitable for what you believe. It is profitable for reproof, and when I reprove you, I’m going to show you how to correct yourself.”
It is profitable for correction, and it is profitable for training in righteousness so that you know how to live and how to be a true woman of God and how to be a child of God that pleases Him, “so that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work” (verse 17).
What he’s saying in essence, if you look at the play on the Greek word, he’s saying this: There is not any situation in life that can come your way, that can throw you for a loop if you know the Word of God, if you are established in the Word of God. There’s nothing. He’s got every base covered, in principle and precept.
That’s why in Psalm 119, he says, “I love Your precepts. Through Your precepts I get understanding, and I hate every false way.” (Psalm 119:104).
Precious ones, I want you to know, and I want you to understand one thing, and that is this: “Faith is the substance of things hoped for. [It is] the evidence of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1, KJV). If God has said it, it will surely come to pass. He says, “I watch over My Word to perform it” (Jeremiah 1:12. ESV). As He has purposed, it will come to pass.
You and I need to live by every Word that comes out of His mouth. My whole passion, my whole life, the whole life of our ministry is to establish people in God’s Word. In Psalm 119, verse 102, he says, “I have not turned aside from Your ordinances, for You Yourself have taught me.”
God has given you the resident Holy Spirit, your Tutor, to take the Word of God and to teach it to you so that you might be the woman that God intended you to be. If all other women don’t stand, you will stand anyway because you love your God, and if you love Him, you will obey Him and keep His commandments.
Let’s pray. Father, seal it to our hearts now, in Jesus’ name we pray. Don’t let us get away. Oh, Father, tether us, as Nancy said, to Your Word. In Your name we pray, amen. (Applause)
Nancy: You’ve been listening to a message that Kay Arthur delivered at the True Woman conference in Fort Worth last month. As you’ve heard, Kay is passionate for each of us to know God’s Word, and I hope this message has stirred in you a desire to know the Scripture more deeply.
When Kay finished this message, I felt it was important to make sure that the women gathered there had a chance to respond to the conviction of the Spirit:
It’s so easy in a conference like this just to move on into the next thing, but I think we would abort the process of what God is doing in our hearts if we just moved too quickly because God’s been speaking.
So I invited the women to make some changes based on what they had just heard:
Do you know how you know if you’ve really heard? It’s if you do it; if you say, “Yes, Lord,” if you respond. For so many years, so many of us have sat in church services, women’s conferences coming out of our ears, Bible study classes. We’ve sat; we’ve listened; we’ve been moved; we’ve been stirred; we’ve applauded; we’ve waved white flags. But our hearts have not really been bowed, and we’ve not really been changed.
It would be easy to sit here and think it would be neat to see all these other women responding, but I think the Holy Spirit is asking each of us: What is your response?
I believe that question applies to each of us now. What’s your response? Is there some action you need to take?
There are women in this room who right now are involved in an immoral relationship, not physically maybe, though there may be those as well, but on the Internet, flirtatious relationship, you’re playing with fire, giving your heart to somebody other than your mate, to a man who’s married to someone else. You need to come and confess, repent before the Lord.
I wish you could have seen what took place there at that Fort Worth Convention Center that very moment as hundreds of women got up out of their seats and headed toward the front of that auditorium where they knelt and just made an altar before the Lord.
Now you may not be able to do that right now, but perhaps you can bow your heart and just make an altar there in your heart, wherever you are. Confess any areas where the Lord has shown you that you need to repent, to confess sin, to ask the Lord for grace and strength to obey Him. Please don’t let this day end without making things right with God.
Oh Father, how I pray that You would please have Your way right now in each of our hearts and lives. Help us to be women and men who come to You with open hearts to Your Word day by day, and help us, by Your grace and the power of Your Holy Spirit to live out the truths that we have heard. I pray it for Jesus’ sake, amen.
Used with Permission. Revive Our Hearts
Series: The Powerful Influence of a Godly Woman (Kay Arthur)
I’m so thankful that Kay was able to be with us at the True Woman conference in Fort Worth last month where she shared a message that God used in a very significant way in the lives of those women.
Now as you hear this message, it will be helpful to know that the women who were at the conference received a white hanky when they arrived at True Woman. Each of those hankies was inscribed with the words, “Yes, Lord.” We asked the women to wave those hankies like a white flag of surrender any time that something was said that they particularly wanted to respond to by saying, “Yes, Lord, I hear what You said, and I’m wanting to respond in surrender to Your truth.”
So you’re going to hear Kay refer to those white flags from time to time. Even if you don’t literally have a white hanky handy, I hope you’ll be saying, “Yes, Lord,” in your heart as we listen to Kay Arthur.
Kay Arthur: My question today—God’s question today—is what kind of a woman do you want to be? Because you have a choice. Proverbs 14, verse 1, says this: “The wise woman builds her house.” And that is our home, that is our structure, but putting it with us today, our house is His temple. And a “wise woman builds her house, but the foolish tears it down with her own hands.”
Precious one, the time for you to decide what kind of a woman you want to be is now. It is now. Life is not going to get easier. It is going to become more and more difficult. I believe with all my being that America is under the judgment of God. We have believed a lie. We have not given ourselves . . . I see the white hankies. We have not given ourselves to the Word of God. We have entangled ourselves with the affairs of this life, and we have forgotten that we are on the front lines and we are to please Him who has called us to be a soldier.
We have become lax. Our successes and defeats as women are written in His Word. And it all began with a woman. It began with Eve. Eve who believed the lie of the serpent. Eve who believed that she could know good and evil, that she could make her own decisions and that really God was holding out on her. That’s why He didn’t want her to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. She took the fruit of the tree. She ate it. She gave it to Adam, and Romans 5:12 says, “By one man sin entered into the world.”
From the Genesis account of Sarah, the wife of Abraham, the wife of Abraham who hoped in God. The wife of Abraham who obeyed her husband. The wife of Abraham—and you want to write this Scripture down, 1 Peter chapter 3, verses 5 and 6. The wife of Abraham—now listen carefully—who did what was right without being frightened by any fear.
Sarah was a courageous woman. Sarah believed God and if we had time, we could go into her life and learn many, many principles. But what I want you to see is from the beginning, from the first book of the Bible, Genesis all the way through to the book of Revelation, chapter 19, what we see is the great influence of women.
I want you to turn in your Bibles to Revelation chapter 19, and I want you to see in that chapter two women—the contrast of two women. One that is foolish and one because of her foolishness is destroyed, and one that is wise. In Revelation chapter 19, speaking of Babylon—mystery Babylon, the mother of harlots typified as a woman. It says in verse 2, “Because His judgments are true and righteous; for He [God] has judged the great harlot who was corrupting the earth with her immorality.”
I want you to know as I stand before you, and I’m not proud of it, but I am all right with it because I know what the blood of Jesus Christ does. I understand grace, and I understand redemption, and I understand forgiveness, and I understand that when Jesus hung on that cross, He paid for my sins once for all, and there is no more sacrifice for sin. I see the white handkerchiefs. There is no more sacrifice for sin, and I know that.
But I will tell you that up until the age of 29 when I received Jesus, I corrupted families, and I corrupted men, and I corrupted my children, and I corrupted me because of my immorality.
She is a great harlot who was corrupting the earth with her immorality, and it says, “And He [God] . . .” I want you to hear this. I want you to understand His justice. I want you to understand His righteousness. I want you to understand His holiness. I want you to understand that He may love you with every fiber of His being and He has, but like the rich, young ruler, He will let you walk away if you don’t come to God on God’s terms.
And this is what He says: “He has avenged the blood of His bondservants on her. And a second time they said, ‘Hallelujah!’ Her smoke rises up forever and ever.” But contrast that woman with the Bride of Jesus Christ. Verse 7, it says, “Let us rejoice and be glad and give glory to Him, for the marriage of the Lamb has come and His Bride [now watch] has made herself ready. It was given to her to clothe herself in fine linen, bright and clean; for the fine linen is the righteous acts of the saints.”
It’s the righteousness of the saints. You and I need to decide what kind of a woman we are going to be because you and I from this point on are getting our bridal gown ready, and we are doing it by our righteousnesses, by our righteous acts.
So what you see from Genesis and the account of Sarah to Revelation 19, these two women, you can see the influence of those women who are not women of faith and those who are true women of God.
So my question comes to you again. What kind of a woman do you want to be? God has given you everything in Christ Jesus that you need in order to be the woman that is the Bride of Christ who is beautifully adorned for her husband when He comes in all of His glory.
In Psalm 68:11-12 it tells us this, that a woman who proclaims good things, who holds her post in the home reaps the spoils of victory. Do you want to be that kind of a woman? Listen to what it says. “The Lord gives the command; the women who proclaim the good tidings are a great host: kings of armies flee, they flee, and she who remains at home will divide the spoil.”
Like it or not, God has ordained that the home is the domain of the woman and that she is to be the worker of the home, and she is to be the keeper of the home. Do you want to be women who are at ease, complacent about the Lord, not listening to the Word of God?
You’re too busy; you’ve got too much to do. Women engaged in the culture thinking that you can step and live in the midst of that crooked and perverse generation without holding forth the Word of Life as He says. As a consequence just seeping and standing in it, you in turn are touched.
In Isaiah chapter 32, you want to write it down, verses 9-13, listen to what he says. “Rise up, you women who are at ease, and hear my voice; give ear to my word, you complacent daughters. Within a year and a few days you will be troubled.” Listen, it was in the days when Isaiah was prophesying of the coming judgment of God because Israel had played the harlot, because Israel had turned her back on God, because Israel had lifted up her skirts to every passerby.
And so He says, listen to me you complacent daughters. “Within a year and a few days you will be troubled, O complacent daughters; for the vintage is ended, and the fruit gathering will not come. Tremble, you women who are at ease; be troubled, you complacent daughters; strip, undress and put sackcloth on your waist, beat your breasts for the pleasant fields, for the fruitful vine, for the land of my people in which thorns and briars shall come up; yea, for all the joyful houses and for the jubilant city.”
Right now in the days of Isaiah things were going great, and they thought they had it made—just like us before the crash came. They didn’t know what was coming, and God had laid it on my heart to tell people and to warn people that God hates idolatry. He is going to pull the economic rug right out from the feet of America and put us on our faces because Colossians 3 says greed is idolatry.
But we don’t think it’s going to happen to us because we have a wrong concept of God. Listen to me carefully. Judgment is on the horizon. It cannot be—listen, listen, listen, women! It cannot be life as usual. We need to cry for God’s Spirit to be poured out on us from on high.
Do not be a foolish woman who in her bitterness because life didn’t go her way urged her husband to let go of integrity and curse God and die. Who is that woman? You know if you know the Word of God. You know it’s Mrs. Job. And you know when their whole world fell in, she just looked at Job and she said, “Why do you continue in your integrity? Curse God and die.”
And listen to his response to his wife. “But he said to her, you speak as one of the foolish women speaks. Shall we indeed accept good from God and not accept adversity.” But God is sufficient. His power is perfected in our weakness. His sovereignty rules over all, and He is equipping us and refining us and getting us ready to meet the Lord and not be ashamed when we see Him at His coming.
So I want to ask you another question. Are you a woman seeking love? Are you looking for it wherever you can find it? Are you taught and tutored by wicked women rather than godly women? Do you get your philosophy of life from Oprah? Do you get your philosophy of life from The View? Do you get your philosophy of life from the magazines and the culture that are telling you and magazine cover after magazine cover how to have sex another way and how to do this, how to do anything but be righteous?
He says in Jeremiah chapter 2, verses 33-36, “How well you prepare your way to seek love! Therefore even the wicked women you have taught your ways.” He says, “Also on your skirts is found the lifeblood of the innocent poor; you did not find them breaking in. But in spite of all these things, yet you said, ‘I’m innocent.’”
How well you prepare your way To seek love! Therefore even the wicked women You have taught your ways. Also on your skirts is found The lifeblood of the innocent poor; You did not find them breaking in. But in spite of all these things, Yet you said, ‘I am innocent; Surely His anger is turned away from me.’ Behold, I will enter into judgment with you Because you say, ‘I have not sinned.’ Why do you go around so much Changing your way? Also, you will be put to shame by Egypt As you were put to shame by Assyria.
God knows your heart. There’s no hiding from God. If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, He’s there. If I descend into the darkness, even there the light is bright about me. There is no hiding from God. He says, “Yet you said, ‘I’m innocent; surely His anger is turned away from me.’” And God says, “Behold, I will enter into judgment with you because you say [now listen], ‘I have not sinned.’”
We are living in a time and age when people do not understand sin. We are a nation that has lost our biblical moorings. We don’t know right from wrong. We do not know what the absolutes of God are. We have diluted Him and made Him a mamby pamby God that is not righteous and is not just, and you cannot do that to Him. Don’t be a foolish woman.
Or as Proverbs 6 and 7 says, are you a woman on the hunt; an evil, adulteress in pursuit of a man? Who is your house, your bed, the way to Sheol, the way to grave? Have you by your immorality, by your adultery reduced a man to nothing more than the price of a loaf of bread? That’s what Proverbs 6 and 7 talks about when it talks about the evil woman, the adulteress woman. Do you dress like a harlot? It talks about her attire as the attire of a harlot.
Are you a woman that worships at the shrine of expediency? The world sets your agenda, not God, because you bowed the knee to the feminist movement that began in the 60s, and you won’t let it go. It’s a rational matter of expediency rather than faith. That’s what your life is. Is that your life?
Expediency. “I don’t have time for in-depth Bible study.” I’m so sick of hearing that! I’m so sick of older women telling younger women, “Oh, you’ve got to raise your children.” Now listen, that is the time to be studying the Word of God and going deeper and learning it inductively so that you know truth for yourself, so that you’re steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, not turning to the right and not turning to the left but observing to do according to all that God has commanded us.
Precious ones, listen to Jeremiah 7, verse 18. It says, “The children gather wood, and the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead dough to make cakes for the queen of heaven; and they pour out drink offerings to other gods in order to spite Me.” God is talking about His people, Israel. God is talking about Israel who He calls His wife.
God is talking about a nation that He has given clear commandments to and the first one is, “I am the Lord. I am a jealous God. You shall have no other gods before Me. You shall not create any image in the heaven above, in the earth beneath or under the earth. You shall not worship them nor bow down to them.” And here they are making cakes to the queen of heaven.
So later in Jeremiah you read this in Jeremiah 44, verses 15-17: “All the men who were aware that their wives were burning sacrifices to other gods, along with all the women who were standing by, as a large assembly, including all the people who were living in Pathros in the land of Egypt . . .” Where they had been sent because of their disobedience to God. Well, they weren’t sent there. They went there in disobedience to God. Saying this, “As for the message you have spoken to us in the name of the LORD, we are not going to listen to you!"
I want to ask you a question. Do you have ears to hear what the Spirit of God is saying to the churches? Have you even opened the book so that you know what God is saying to the churches?
They go on to say, “But rather we will certainly carry out every word that has proceeded from our mouths.” In other words, the Word of man has precedence over the Word of God. And they say, “by burning sacrifices to the queen of heaven and pouring out drink offerings to her, just as we ourselves, our forefathers, our kings and our princes did in the city of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem.”
Now catch this last line. “For then we had plenty of food and were well off and saw no misfortune.” God allows us to go through trials. It’s the trial of our faith that proves the reality and the genuineness of our faith. And if you’re going to go just by when you are blessed, then you are listening to the wrong message on TV. But the problem is people don’t know it, and they don’t understand it because they don’t know the Word of God.
Nancy: Tomorrow we’ll hear part two of this message from Kay Arthur that was delivered at the True Woman conference last month in Forth Worth, Texas. I remember sitting on the front row at that convention center as Kay delivered that message. As I listened to her speak, it was clear to me that God was doing something important in that auditorium. There was just a real sense of conviction and the weight of her words sinking into people’s hearts.
We had a full schedule planned for the rest of that Friday morning, but I sensed a need at the end of her message to just pause and let those words sink in. It’s just too easy to hear a message like this and say, “Wow, what a great message,” without actually stopping to respond to the Lord.
So I want to take a moment to ask you some of the questions that I asked at the end of Kay’s message at that conference.
- Have you been a foolish woman in any ways?
- Have you perhaps torn down your home or your marriage rather than building them up?
- Maybe there’s some inappropriate or immoral relationship that you’re involved in right now, whether physical or emotional, perhaps in the work place, perhaps on the Internet.
Let me encourage you to find another woman that you know who loves the Lord and share with her what God has been saying to your heart. Then by God’s grace repent of that sin and begin to take steps of obedience.
O Lord, how I pray that You will have Your way in each of our hearts. Holy Spirit, please move us past the place of just listening to a message like this, to a place of full, whole-hearted surrender to Christ as Lord. I ask in Jesus’ name, amen.
Used with Permission. Revive Our Hearts
Leslie Basham: Bible teacher, Kay Arthur, knows firsthand human rebellion and divine mercy.Kay Arthur: So here I am, shaking my fist, my puny little fist, into the face of God and saying, “To hell with You, God.” And before the foundation of the world, He said, “To heaven with you, Kay.”Leslie: This is Revive Our Hearts with Nancy Leigh DeMoss. It’s Tuesday, December 16.As a young bride, Kay Arthur expected to lead a successful country-club lifestyle, but her husband showed signs of depression, and her facade was about to crumble. We heard that much of Kay’s story yesterday, and Nancy is back to pick up that conversation.
Nancy Leigh DeMoss: As you read through the Scripture, you see that it is a great story of God’s incredible, awesome, redeeming love. We see that over and over again, and it’s a joy to see that redemptive gospel story lived out in the lives of real people who have known what it is to come to face their own sinfulness and their own failure, but then to see God’s redeeming love transforming their lives, giving them a new life, and making their lives fruitful and useful.
We’re talking this week with Kay Arthur, who’s a long-time dear friend and has been a great encourager and something of a mentor to me in ministry. Kay and her husband, Jack, are the founders of Precept Ministries International. Kay has written many, many books, many Bible studies; she’s done more than any one woman should have been able to do in a lifetime.
Kay, I admire you; I respect you. Thank you for taking time today, in the midst of a crazy schedule—a book-writing deadline—to share your story with our Revive Our Hearts’ listeners.
Kay: It’s been a privilege, Nancy. I told the Lord . . . after I got saved, I was sitting there, and I was nursing David, our youngest son. We were missionaries on the mission field, and I thought, “God, where were You when I was a teenager?” Here I was working with teens, English-speaking teens, in Guadalajara, Mexico, having my third baby with my second husband, teaching these teens to know God and to know His Word and to love it, and I thought, “Where were You when I was a teenager? Why did I have to go through all of this? Why am I divorced? Why didn’t the first marriage work? Why do I have to have this battle of the immorality that followed my first marriage before I married Jack, before I became a Christian, before I moved from a religion to a relationship? Why . . .”
Nancy: You had a lot of regret there.
Kay: A lot of regret, and just thinking, if someone had been there, like me, and I don’t mean that in a wrong way, but me, on a mission, knowing God, teaching these young girls and young guys the Word of God, then I wouldn’t have done this. I was sitting there, getting more upset by the moment, and God spoke to my heart. I’ve never heard anything audibly, but God spoke to my heart, and this is what He said to me: “I saved you when I wanted to save you,” and that is backed up by Galatians chapter one, verses 15 and 16 where Paul says, “When it pleased God . . . to reveal His Son in me” (NKJV) and then God spoke to my heart and said, “If you will quit moaning and groaning about the past and share it, I will use it.”
So sharing all of this is part of the ministry that the Lord has given me. I look at you, and you were raised so differently than I was, but God has put us together as a body. So we have Nancy over here with this background, and He has Kay over here with this background. Kay’s preference would have been to have had Nancy’s background, but Kay is not her own, she’s been bought with a price, and when it pleased God, He revealed His Son in me.
So God takes both of us, Nancy, as you know, and as you so well teach . . . I feel like I’m preaching to the choir, as they say . . . but He takes both of us, and He puts us together, and He puts us in His Body, so that women who have shaken their fists in the face of God as I did after I left my first husband and have gone out and walked in rebellion and reaped the harvest can still know that there is hope.
You opened up the program by saying that we have a Redeemer. I love that Scripture, “I know that my Redeemer lives.” The One that redeemed us is not dead. The One that redeemed us is the One that died on the cross, was made sin for me and sin for you, because even though you were raised that way, we were all born in sin, so He became sin for us. God brought death; He was buried; He was raised to walk in newness of life. He lives, and because I’m united in His death and burial and resurrection, as Romans 6 says, I can walk in newness of life. We have a Redeemer that buys us out of the slave market of sin and sets us free, takes off the chains, and then gives us this awesome, awesome life.
Nancy: I think what makes the grace of God precious to us is when we see it against the backdrop of our failure and our sinfulness, and that is what I love about your story and the way you’ve been so open to share it. You tell about the past, not to highlight the past, but to say, “This is what makes God look so incredible, and His mercy so rich.”
Kay: That’s right, and you and I have the same passion, and the passion is “in Him we live and move and have our being,” and “from Him and through Him and to Him are all things” (Acts 17:28, Romans 11:36). He’s the epicenter of our lives. He’s the Alpha and the Omega, and He’s everything in between, so it’s all God. So that’s where it doesn’t matter about the blackness of our lives. God shines in that darkness.
Nancy: As you look back on that, those young adult years, that early pilgrimage, which was so dark in many respects, can you see now that God in His providence was using the failure and the difficulties to prod you to Christ?
Kay: After six years of marriage, about six and a half years of marriage, I’m very bad on time, my kids will tell you that . . .
Nancy: . . . and this was marriage to Tom Getz, for those who weren’t with us yesterday.
Kay: Yes, my first husband. I was married at 20. For six and a half years I was married to Tom. We had two sons during that time. He was an engineer by profession. I met him when I was a cheerleader for Case College when I was in nurse’s training. He went in and he was a naval officer, and then he dropped out of flight training, finished the Navy, and then went into engineering, and a job, and then we divorced—on the advice of two ministers. This was after Tom had been to seminary and dropped out of seminary. So two ministers counseled us and never once opened the Word of God.
Nancy: What was happening in the marriage to let them counsel that?
Kay: What was happening in the marriage was that he was depressed. He would get angry and frustrated, but there were no grounds, no biblical grounds for divorce. Even if there are biblical grounds for divorce, and I think you and I hold the same view. Even if there is adultery, I don’t counsel a woman to get a divorce. I counsel a woman to forgive and to work that out and to come back. I know there are times when that is impossible, so I want you to know that . . .
Nancy: . . . but nobody counseled you that way, about forgiveness or . . .
Kay: . . . oh, no. Nobody counseled me anything . . .
Nancy: . . . or trying to make the marriage work . . .
Kay: . . . no. They listened to my story and one said, “You need to separate.” The other one, when we got finished, put his arms around me, kissed me on the neck, whispered in my ear, “You sure are a good-looking girl, Kay.”
Nancy: This is a minister?
Kay: This is a minister. I left my husband and stayed in his home . . .
Nancy: . . . the minister’s home?
Kay: The minister’s home, while I looked for a place, and did everything short of the actual sexual intercourse. Isn’t that awful? I’m ashamed to say it.
Nancy: Let me back up. If you could go back and do that marriage again to Tom Getz, knowing what you’ve learned about the Word of God, the ways of God, the heart of God . . .
Kay: I never would have left him.
Nancy: What would you do differently?
Kay: If I had been counseled properly, and, of course, you could be counseled properly, but if you don’t know God, and there’s not a real respect or reverence of God, because you can have a respect and reverence for God and not know Him yet. But if I had respected the truth, which I think I could have, then I wouldn’t have divorced him.
He was a sick man, but we didn’t know that he was manic-depressive, that’s what they called it in those days. He did hit me once, and I ended up on the bed, and I tasted something salty on my lips, and I reached up and wiped the blood off of my nose, and I just said, “That’s it. You’ve had it. It’s over.” I just grabbed my pillow and went downstairs to, like the family room, and he followed me.
I took my rings off. Now, you’ve got to remember, he got me a perfect diamond, three perfect diamonds, and one was a carat and a quarter. I took that off; I took off a wedding band that I didn’t want diamonds in because I never wanted to take it off. Inside was engraved, “Our love is eternal, holy,” and that was my intention.
I threw them across the room. Well, they were so expensive that Tom was down on his knees (I bring this out in my book As Silver Refined, Learning To Embrace Life’s Disappointments). Tom was down on his knees, crawling around trying to find that diamond, and I thought, “You love that diamond more than you love me.”
That wasn’t true, but sometimes, in the heat of a moment, we get these wrong thoughts. Of course, we’re in a warfare, and of course, until we belong to Jesus, we’re walking, as Ephesians says, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that works in the sons of disobedience. We know that Satan is a liar; he is a destroyer; he abides not in the truth. So you’re in that mode, and he’s just goading it on.
Tom wouldn’t go to counseling with me. This is where I would have negotiated with him and said, “Look, we’re having a hard time, let’s both go to counseling,” but he just said, “I’ve been through seminary. I don’t need to go.”
Nancy: You said that one of the regrets you have about your marriage is the way you used words as weapons.
Kay: Oh, yes. I can take my tongue and cut you down. I don’t do that anymore since I’ve come to be a child of God and learned what James 3 says about the tongue, but I could cut. That was the way I fought—not with my fists or anything like that—just words.
Words are worse than, well, I won’t say worse than fists, because there are too many women who are physically abused today. If you are being physically abused, let me just say this, God does not intend for you to be a punching bag. It’s not good for you to allow him to do that, so please hear that very carefully. But words stay in a person’s mind. A bruise will heal, but it’s the words that go with it that shape your thinking if you’re not in the Word of God.
So, yes, I would have, but one of the things I’ve learned is would have, should have, could have—they don’t exist. I can’t erase the past. All I can do is learn from it. I love what Paul says in Philippians: “Forgetting those things which are behind, I press forward,” (3:13, NKJV) but he doesn’t just say that in a vacuum. What he says in Philippians, in the context of forgetting those things which are behind, he talks about knowing God. He says, I have counted what was gain to me, those things “I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord” (verses 7-8).
To know Him, to be found in Him, to know and experience the power of His resurrection, which is what our Redeemer does. He not only buys us out of the slave market of sin, He resurrects us to walk in newness of life.
Nancy: Before you experienced that redeeming love of Christ, you still had lower and further to go.
Kay: Yes.
Nancy: You left Tom Getz . . .
Kay: Right. I left him. I moved back to, like a condo, an apartment, and stood in the living room of my home, literally, and shook my fist in the face of God, and said, “To hell with You, God; I’ll see You around town. I’m going to find someone to love me.”
Now, I don’t want to offend anybody, but that’s what I said—“To hell with You, God.” But what I want you to understand when I said that—I didn’t know that He had gone to hell for me, so to speak. It says in the Apostle’s Creed, “and He descended into Hell and the third day He rose again from the dead.”
In other words, He was made sin for me, and here I am saying, “To hell with You, God.” And God, I don’t know it, but God, before the foundation of the world, said, “To heaven with you, Kay,” because in Ephesians chapter 1, it says in verses 3-4, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him [in Jesus] before the foundation of the world” (NKJV).
So here I am, shaking my fist, my puny little fist, into the face of God, saying, “To hell with You, God,” and before the foundation of the world, He said, “To heaven with you, Kay.”
Nancy: You’re running from the Hound of Heaven.
Kay: I’m running from the Hound of Heaven, although I really don’t know it at that point. I really don’t know it.
Nancy: He’s pursuing you, and you don’t know that.
Kay: He is pursuing me. He has a plan, and when it pleases Him, He’s going to open my eyes. So that leads to a life of immorality. I became what I thought I would never become—an immoral woman. And in those days, it was called an immoral woman—having sex outside of marriage was still not really acceptable in those days. Betty Friedan takes off in the year that I’m saved, 1963, with feminism this and that.
Nancy: And you have these two little boys.
Kay: I have these two little boys, and am trying to earn a living. I’ve left my husband. He’s picking them up every so often and taking them skiing or whatever. I go from one man to another man to another man, like the song says, “Looking for love in all the wrong places.” What happens is I have an affair with a married man. I don’t know he’s married when I meet him. I fall in love with him. We can talk and talk and talk and talk and talk for hours, so there’s that wonderful communication that women really, really desire, and then I find out he’s married. Well, I’m in love with him, and so now I’m doing something that I never thought I would do.
One of the things I tell people, Nancy, is, and I demonstrate it if I’m on the platform giving my testimony. I sunk into a pit that I dug with my own hands, shovelful by shovelful. The thing is that you let one standard go, and then you let the next standard go—because it’s easier—and then the next one, and so you dig into a pit.
Nancy: I’ve heard you quote that saying that I’ve heard others say, that sin will take you . . .
Kay: . . . farther than you ever wanted to go; it will keep you longer than you ever intended to stay; it will cost you far more than you expected to pay. I heard Wayne Barber, my pastor, say that, and I picked it up, because it’s so true.
So anyway, I was having this affair with this married man. When he told me he was married, I was in love with him, and then I found out his wife was pregnant with their sixth child. Then, after a while, is when I began to hear the Hound of Heaven. I began to think, “Some day I’m going to stand before God. He’s not going to be pleased with this.”
That concept was put in my mind by God, and here’s God beginning His convicting work. I was convicted and said that I would never have an affair with a married man because it was adultery, and I knew the Tenth Commandment. I knew the Ten Commandments. I didn’t know much of the other Scripture, but I knew “Thou shall not commit adultery.”
I knew that my parents had both come from broken homes. My parents had a solid, wonderful marriage, but here was that conviction. Because of the Law, then the Spirit of God dealing with me that I’m going to stand before God, I decided that I’d be good, and I thought, “Oh, God, I can’t be good.”
Later on, when I got saved and read Romans 7, I thought, “Oh, you knew what I was experiencing—the good that I wanted to do, I couldn’t do; the evil I didn’t want to do, I did. Oh, wretched man. Who will deliver me from this body of flesh?” So what I was experiencing was the inability to be righteous, because I would try.
I broke off the affair, and I loved this man. I mean, I never loved a man like I loved Jim, but I broke it off. But I couldn’t stop being immoral. I thought, “I’m a slave,” and I was. The Bible says, “Whoever commits sin is a slave of sin, [but] if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed” (John 8:34, 36, NKJV).
Nancy: That is the power and the message of the gospel, that Jesus Christ came into the world to save, to deliver, to rescue those who were slaves to sin—which is all of us. We’re born in slavery to sin, and God was in the process of, by the power of His Holy Spirit, drawing you to see first that you couldn’t keep the Law. Then He’s going to open your eyes to see that there is One who did, and who wants to do that in you.
You don’t want to miss the rest of Kay’s story as she shares with us how she came to true faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and in a personal relationship with Him that transformed her life, has given her hope and a new life and a sense of purpose and meaning and the ability to please God in a way that was never possible apart from Christ.
So be sure to join us as we pick up this conversation the next time on Revive Our Hearts.
Leslie: Nancy Leigh DeMoss has been talking with Kay Arthur about our inability to do good on our own. Throughout this week, her story will show us what it means to move from rebellion and self-righteousness to true faith.
Nancy, it’s an important message each of us needs to be reminded of.
Used with Permission. Revive Our Hearts.
Nancy Leigh DeMoss: Over these past several days, we’ve been listening to a precious story of the amazing grace of God, and we’ve seen that in the life of my long-time and dear friend, Kay Arthur.
Kay, thank you so much for your willingness to share out of where God found you so that His grace could be magnified. I believe there are those who have been listening to this series who are experiencing God’s grace, perhaps, in a whole new way themselves as a result of your willingness to share.
Kay: As a result, precious ones, of our prayer for you . . . This has been Nancy’s and my prayer for you. We’ve learned as He says, “My grace is sufficient” (2 Corinthians 12:9), He’s talking about the fact that when you get saved, you get all of God and the grace of God, and that grace—which gives you access to everything that Jesus Christ is and has—is sufficient for you. We’ve longed that you would experience it and live in it. Right, Nancy?
Nancy: Yes, and our team is praying that, too, even as this series is being aired, that God would connect the dots in your heart and make Christ real to you. That’s what it takes—the Holy Spirit drawing us to Christ, opening our eyes to see what we could not see apart from Him, and then showing us that Christ is our righteousness and our life and our only hope.
If you haven’t heard the first part of Kay Arthur’s story, you need to make sure to go to our website, ReviveOurHeartsRadio.com. You can listen to these past several days, or you can order a CD. There may be someone that you would want to share this story with—somebody that you know needs to hear this testimony of God’s grace. If you’ll call us or go online and place an order, we’ll be glad to send that to you.
Kay: May I interrupt, my friend?
Nancy: Of course.
Kay: When you’re saying that, I just think about 1 Corinthians 15:10. Paul’s writing. He’s telling about the gospel. He’s talking about how God appeared to him as one untimely born. He was living during the time of Jesus, saved after Jesus died, was buried, and was resurrected. He was a persecutor of the Church.
So many times we think, “I’m untimely born,” but listen to what he says. He said, “He appeared to me” (verse 8, NASB) Then he said, “By the grace of God, I am what I am,” and I love this, “His grace toward me did not prove vain” (verse 10, NASB). In other words, it wasn’t useless. “But I labored even more than all of them”—the other apostles—“yet not I, but the grace of God with me.”
I think that’s a good verse for you to maybe memorize, don’t you think, Nancy?
Nancy: That grace of God is something that we desperately need. I think about the apostle Paul. Talk about somebody who could have had regrets; talk about a past.
Kay: That’s right. Yes. He said he was the chief of sinners. He was a murderer.
Nancy: He tried to wipe out the church and almost succeeded.
Kay: Exactly. So this is what you need to know, and you need to understand that so many times what we do is we live a life of regret because we look at our past and we think, like I did, “Oh, if only I had known Christ.”
If you didn’t hear that part of the testimony, you need to go online and get this from Nancy.But we look at the past, and we say, “Oh, I blew it. If only I hadn’t . . .” God knows all that. God even knew what my children would go through. Now, it grieves Him, but He still knows, and there is grace to cover it. He says His grace is sufficient; His power, grace’s power is perfected in weakness.
He says, “Therefore, I will glory in my infirmities—and my necessities and my reproaches, etc.—for when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12:9–10, paraphrased).
Nancy: “And where sin did abound . . .”
Kay: “. . . grace did much more abound” (Romans 5:20, paraphrased). It’s His lavish, extravagant grace. And listen, Romans chapter 5 says, “Having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have obtained our introduction by faith into this grace”—now listen carefully—“in which we stand” (verses 1-2, NASB). We stand in it. It’s in the perfect tense—past completed action with a present result. That’s where you’re permanently rooted—in the grace of God.
Nancy: Kay, you had this background that you shared with us, and we won’t go back into the details of that today, but there was a lot of immorality, failure. You left your marriage, which in retrospect you said you should not have done. After you became a Christian, did you struggle with guilt? Or did the grace of God just wash all that away?
Kay: After I became a Christian, I told you in the last program that I started devouring the Word of God. I also started devouring biographies—Isobel Kuhn, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Robert Murray McCheyne, D.L. Moody, George Mueller, all of those—and those in a sense mentored me. They gave me a vision of what I could become in the Lord.
I’ve got the Spirit of God inside me. I’ve got the Word of God. I’ve got the example of others, and I’ve got a hunger and a thirst for righteousness, so I wanted to be obedient to God. I knew that God hated divorce. I said to God, “God, I’ll go back to Tom. I do not love him. I feel in love with the first man that I met.” His name was Dave Pancer, and he loved the Lord. I wanted to marry him, but he wouldn’t marry me—by the grace of God, he wouldn’t marry me. So I came to the point where I said, “God, I want to be pleasing to You.”
I love that verse in 2 Corinthians chapter 5, verse 9, “I have as my ambition, whether in this body or out of this body—to be pleasing to Him” (paraphrased). I wanted to please Him, so I said, “I know You hate divorce. I’ll go back to Tom, even though I don’t love him. You changed me; You can change him.”
So here I am all primed to return to my husband. I’m thinking about writing a letter to tell him that I would come back. I don’t get around to the letter; I get a phone call. I’m to go into John Hopkins at that time. I was in an automobile accident, and I needed a cervical fusion. So I’m getting ready to go into John Hopkins to check in. It’s a Sunday and I get a phone call. It’s from the hospital, John Hopkins, saying Cleveland, Ohio, is trying to get a hold of you, call this number. It’s my in-laws. I think, “Oh, Tom is there, and he’s calling because he knows I’m going into surgery.” He told me, “I want to take care of you.”
So I call. It was my father-in-law. He came on the line, and he was kind of slobbering and saying, “Tom’s committed suicide.” So my husband at 31 years of age hung himself on a closet door in the apartment that he had rented. I took the kids and got them settled. I called my parents. But before I did anything like that, when I hung up the phone from talking with my father-in-law, I tried to call my pastor. I’m so thankful he wasn’t home. I’m so thankful that it wasn’t the arm of flesh that strengthened me.
I’m not saying that God doesn’t often use that, but I slipped to my knees off of that bed where I had the phone, and God just spoke to me. He brought to my memory three Scriptures that I had read and focused on, but I didn’t know where they were in the Bible.
One was 1 Corinthians 10:13. I had memorized that (I should have known where it was) as the assurance of victory. It says, “There is no temptation . . .” Later on when I would study the Bible, I found out that the word for temptation is periosmos, and it means “trial or testing or tempting,” depending on the context. “There is no temptation—trial or testing—taken you but such is common to man. You’re not unique, but God is faithful, and with the temptation—the trial, the testing—He will make a way of escape that you might be able to bear” (paraphrased). So I knew I could bear.
The second thing that came to my mind, and I’m not saying this is the order (I can’t remember the order). First Thessalonians chapter 5, verse 18, “In everything give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you” (KJV). God was going to show me that He was sovereign. This was the truth, Nancy, that helped me the most in all of my life. I’m going through horrendous trials right now—horrendous. I can’t share them, but they’re horrendous, but I’m able to walk as more than a conqueror.
Nancy: Because . . . ?
Kay: Because I know God is sovereign. Because I know He rules over all. Because I know He does as Daniel 4 says, “According to His will in the army of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth. I know that no one can stop God’s hand, and I know that no one can say to God, ‘What are You doing?’” (verse 35, paraphrased).
He knows what He is doing, so in every trial—and this has been trial upon trial upon trial upon trial, and things that we never thought that we would experience those trials—His grace is sufficient because I know that He is sovereign. I know that it’s not an accident. I know that He has a purpose. I may not see it; I may not know it; I may not understand it, but I am the clay, and He is the potter (see Isaiah 64:8).
The third verse that God brought to my mind was Romans 8:28, “All things”—and this is all that came to my mind. “All things work together for good to those . . . who are the called according to His purpose” (NKJV). That’s all I got.
Now, I always, when I’m teaching from Romans 8:28, together with 29 and 30, which leads us to the culmination, but He says, “in all things, keep on working together”—it’s in the present tense—“for good” (paraphrased). It’s not all things are good, but because God is sovereign, because He is in charge, and because I belong to Him, and because I’m His workmanship, and He’s transforming me into the image of Christ, which is what 28 and 29 talk about, then He’s going to make it work together for good.
So I had those three Scriptures when Tom committed suicide because, remember, I had said to God, “I will go back to him.” I’m expecting to go back to him. Well, in an earlier program, we talked about the tongue, and I told you about my tongue. James talks about how a tongue is a little member, but it controls the whole body, and it has the power of life and death in a sense.
I knew in my heart that I had helped put the rope around Tom’s neck because when he would call me (this is when we were separated and then divorced) he would say to me, “I’m going to kill myself.” The philosophy in those days was that if somebody is talking about suicide, you bluff them out of it. So I was trying to bluff him out of it.
Nancy: They don’t really intend to do it?
Kay: Yes. They don’t intend to do it. You just make them angry. You bluff them out of it. So I would say, “Well, go ahead, but do a good job, so I get your money.” He got a private plane, and he was flying, and I said, “Well, why don’t you fly your plane into the side of a mountain?” That was cruel, absolutely cruel, so I knew that I had encouraged him in suicide. I hadn’t said, “No, your life is valuable.” Now, this was all before I came to know Christ, when I would say this to him, but I knew I had helped put the rope around his neck.
How do you live with that? Well, you remember what He teaches you, “You’re a new creature, old things are passed away” (2 Corinthians 5:17, paraphrased). Youremember that He has forgiven all of our sins—past, present, and future. You either live in misery with your failures, or you live in grace remembering that God’s grace has covered your sins and has redeemed everything and is going to use it for His good.
I had a choice, and that choice was whether to believe God or not, and the reason that I was able to go on and the reason that I’ve been able to handle Tom’s suicide is because I understand who God is.
There’s a verse I love. I absolutely love it. It says in Daniel chapter 11, verse 32, the second part of the verse says, “But the people who know their God will be strong and stand firm, for they will be able to be strong and do exploits—to take action” (paraphrased). In other words, you are not immobilized; you are not paralyzed.
I want to tell you, precious one, today, as you’re listening, whoever you are; if you know Christ, you are not immobilized. You are not paralyzed. You are not defined by your past. If you think so, then you need to keep listening to Revive Our Hearts. If you have extra time, you can listen to or watch our television program, or go online and listen toPrecepts for Life. You’ll just get the Word from Nancy; you’ll get the Word from me. You need the Word because it’s the truth that sets you free.
I saw and discovered John chapter 8. It says, “But if the Son shall set you free, you shall be free indeed” (verse 36, paraphrased), and, “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free” (verse 32, paraphrased). That’s what you and I are all about. That’s what revives our heart. He says in Psalm 119, “Revive me according to Thy precepts” (verse 25, paraphrased).
Nancy: And it’s His precepts, His Word, that really has set you free and renewed your heart and your mind and given you hope.
Kay: Exactly. The Bible says, “Through thy precepts, I get understanding: therefore I hate every false way” (Psalm 119:104, KJV). It’s good to hate false ways because they’re false. But that was just the beginning.
Here I am. My husband has committed suicide, and I’m saying to God, “God, what do You want?” God takes me to Bible school. He moves me from Baltimore, Maryland, to Chattanooga, Tennessee. I went to Tennessee Temple. I didn’t have a degree or anything—didn’t get a degree—but I went to Bible school.
There God laid on my heart one day . . . my family didn’t understand me. In a sense they had all rejected me because I sent them a “You must be born again” letter, and they didn’t like it. I was visiting my family, and it caused a family quarrel, and I ran upstairs and fell down beside the bed.
I’m a student at Tennessee Temple; I’m home for Christmas, and all of a sudden, on my knees, I’m just feeling like I’m so out-of-kilter. “God, am I crazy?” This is so different, and then God speaks to me. In the stillness of my heart, I hear Him say, “You’re going to marry Jack Arthur.” I thought . . .
Nancy: And Jack Arthur was . . . ?
Kay: Jack Arthur. When He said, “You’re going to marry Jack Arthur,” well, I knew he was a missionary. I knew he was with Pocket Testament League. He was a graduate of Tennessee Temple. I knew that he had been stoned for preaching the gospel in South America.
He did open-air evangelism, and they would go in with a truck and their own power supply and show Christian movies and then give the gospel and hand out Gospels of John in that wonderful, wonderful ministry, and he had been stoned. So our church was praying for him. Highland Park Baptist Church—which was connected with Tennessee Temple—where you were dedicated, right?
Nancy: Yes.
Kay: So our church was praying for him. I knew who he was, but I didn’t know what he looked like or anything. I came home and I got his prayer card so I would know what he looked like when he came along. Do you know that one day, God closed the hospital where I worked. I would work weekends—12-hour shifts—and He closed the hospital. I said, “God, why did you let them close the hospital? You know I’ve got to have the money.” He reminded me, “In everything give thanks” (1 Thessalonians 5:18, NKJV). So I said, “Okay. I don’t know why, but thanks, anyway.”
So I was off. I took my two boys to a recital that was there at Tennessee Temple. Afterwards, we went into the happy corner. I was buying ice cream cones for my boys, and I heard my Mark, my younger son, say, “Mr. Arthur, would you sign our Bible?” I turned around. Our ice creams were melting. There he was—Jack Arthur. He looked just like his picture, and that was nice.
Nancy: Now tell me you introduced yourself.
Kay: We . . . yes. He was talking to my boys, and so we talked. As we talked, he told me what he was doing—that he was going back to South America. I just stood there, and I thought—this is what I thought; this was me in those days—“You don’t know it, buster, but I’m going with you.”
Nancy: You love him and have a wonderful plan for his life?
Kay: I just knew what God had said; I just didn’t know how He was going to do it. Then he left, and I didn’t see him, so I thought, “I better go to summer school so I can graduate.” So I went to summer school, graduated, and he didn’t show up. So then I thought, “Well, I’ll go to college at Tennessee Temple.” So I enrolled at college, and he showed up. Then in November he asked me to marry him; in December we were married, and then we went for the mission field. That is what I was called to do—the mission field.
My heart was broken when we had to come off the mission field because of my health. I didn’t know that disappointment is God’s appointment—you drop the “d” put in an “h” and give a space between His appointment. What He had in mind was Precept Ministries International. So my missionary heart is more than satisfied in 150 countries and 70 languages, teaching people how to discover truth for yourself.
Nancy: What an important and powerful and beautiful reminder that God specializes in taking tangled, hopelessly messed up pieces of lives and making something beautiful, something that will bring Him glory. There are no messes that God cannot redeem by His grace.
Kay: Exactly. Do you know what I titled my first testimonies that were coming out? I titled my testimony, “Help Me, Lord, I’m a Mess.”
Nancy: We’ve got some listeners who would say, “That’s where I am. I’m a mess. Is there really hope that God can do something, make something out of my life?” And you say . . .
Kay: I say He’s described as the God of all hope. As He says to Israel, “I know the thoughts that I have for you; thoughts of good and not thoughts of evil, to give you a future and to give you a hope” (Jeremiah 29:11, paraphrased). He said it to Israel, His chosen people, and He’s saying it to you, and He’s saying it to me because that’s what God is all about—He’s the God of all hope.
Used with Permission. Revive Our Hearts.
Leslie Basham: The effects of sin are devastating. Kay Arthur remembers wanting relief from the consequences of sin.
Kay Arthur: I ran up the stairs and fell down beside the bed and cried out to God. I said, “God, I don’t care what You do to me. I don’t care if I never see another man as long as I live. I don’t care what You do to my two boys. I don’t care if You paralyze me from the neck down, if You’ll just give me peace.”
Leslie Basham: This is Revive Our Heartswith Nancy Leigh DeMoss for Wednesday, December 17.
Nancy Leigh DeMoss: “Sin will take you farther than you ever intended to go, it will cost you more than you ever expected to pay, and it will keep you longer than you ever intended to stay.”
I’ve heard that quote attributed to a number of different people. Kay Arthur, who is our guest on Revive Our Hearts this week, first heard it from Pastor Wayne Barber.
Kay, that quote really describes what you experienced as a woman in your 20s, as you went into a marriage that you expected to be fulfilling and happy. It turned out not to be. You went through that process, and we’ve been listening to your story the past couple of days.
I want to say to our listeners, if you’ve missed the last couple of programs, you want to be sure and get the CD or go to our website and listen to it, because it’s a powerful story of our inability to keep God’s law.
But we’re turning the corner today to say, “God’s grace finds us in that powerless, impotent, lost, condemned condition, and rescues us.”
So you’re out of that marriage now to Tom Getts. You have these two little boys. You’ve gone into an immoral lifestyle.
Kay: I’m playing the harlot. I’m dressing like the harlot, I’m just not charging money.
I remember that there was a club in Washington, D.C. I was living in Arlington, which is a suburb of Washington, D.C., and there was this club. It was like a Playboy club, only it wasn’t; it didn’t have the bunny tails. I was thinking about getting a job there.
That’s how far I had gone. That was the fruit. And really, if you didn’t hear the first two days of this, you really need to get it, because we talked about the mind.
That was the fruit of what I had thought as a young person. That was the focus of my thoughts, to be sexy, to be all of this that I saw on the movie screens and such. “As a man—or a woman—thinks, so he or she is.” That was the harvest.The harvest didn’t come immediately, but it came. So I lived this immoral lifestyle, with these two boys.
What broke my heart was them saying, “Is this going to be our daddy? Is that going to be our daddy?” because they wanted a daddy. They needed a daddy.
This is what we forget. What they needed was their own daddy. If I had been in tune, or if I had had a mentor or a counselor, or if somebody had witnessed to me . . .
Now, God knew what He was doing and what He had planned. But just so that you can know, you need to be sharing the gospel. You need to be there for other women. You need to be there and bring forth the Scriptures, because it’s truth that sets you free.
Well, I wouldn’t have gone through all of this. They wouldn’t have gone through all of this. They could have had their father. I could have gone back to Tom, but this is what happened.
I lived this immoral lifestyle. As I told you yesterday, I had become convicted that someday I’m going to stand before a holy God. So I broke off the affair, but the immorality was still there. I was saying, “God, I don’t want to do this,” but I was doing it.
The Bible says, “O wretched man that I am [wretched woman that I am]! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” (Romans 7:24). Because you use your hands and your mind and your thoughts and your tongue and your whole body as instruments of unrighteousness, you’re a slave.
So I came out of Johns Hopkins, and in the traffic there was a man that I had known before. We had been involved in kind of Christian work, church work. So we reconnected, and here I am with this conviction that I’m going to stand before God, so I’ve got to be good.
So I get my boys, and on the one side, we get together with his family, and we’re having family time—and on the other side, here I am dating and living an immoral life.
Well, this man and his wife had a party. I went to the house, and we were talking. This man turned around and looked at me and said, “Why don’t you quit telling God what you want and tell Him that Jesus is all you need?”
I looked at him and thought, “You are so rude.” I said, “Jesus is not all I need. I need this, I need that, I need that.” And I threw my mink from my first marriage over my shoulders and walked out. I went home.
The next morning, Nancy, I felt terrible. I thought, “I cannot go to work. I’m just going to call the doctor and say, ‘I can’t come to work.’” So I called him and said, “ Dr. Chique, I can’t come to work. I’m sick.”
I thought, “I am sick. I have a sickness that no one can cure, because it’s not physical. I can’t cure this. I can’t stop being immoral. I’m sick.”
So that day I decided I would take my boys and go camping with this family and with a group of Christians. Well, that morning, getting ready to go camping, I decided I’d bake a cake and take it.
Tommy went off to the morning camp. Mark was hanging onto my apron, hungry for Mother’s love.
I was baking a cake. I got it out of the oven, and all of a sudden I turned around, got down on my “haunches,” so to speak, and looked at him and said, “Mark, honey, Mommy’s got to be by herself. Will you please let me be alone for just a minute?”
I ran up the stairs and fell down beside the bed. I cried out to God, and I said, “God, I don’t care what You do to me. I don’t care if I never see another man as long as I live. I don’t care what You do to my two boys. I don’t care if You paralyze me from the neck down, if You’ll just give me peace.”
Those were the three worst things I could think of that could happen to me. And there on my knees beside that bed, God gave me the Prince of Peace, the Lord Jesus Christ.
I love that Scripture: “Come now, and let us reason together . . . though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow” (Isaiah 1:18).
Later on, as I was reading the Bible, in Romans I discovered this verse, Nancy. It says, “And he called her beloved when there was nothing lovely about her” (Romans 9:25). He called her beloved.
It’s referring to a verse from Hosea 2:23. It’s talking about Gomer, and it’s a picture of Israel when she’s played the harlot. Yet God, in His love for her, reached down into that cesspool, pulled her out, washed her with the precious blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, stripped off her filthy rags, and clothed her in His garment of righteousness.
And that’s what happened to me on that day. Now, I didn’t know I’d been saved. I didn’t know the terminology. But I knew that when I got up, I was different. I knew that wherever I went, Jesus was going with me. I knew—it was gut; it’s spirit. It’s the Spirit inside.
I knew that I couldn’t dress the way I dressed, which was very sensual. I knew that. It just automatically hit me.
Nancy: I love what I’ve heard you say: “I got down on my knees a harlot, and I got up a saint.”
Kay: That’s right. That’s right.
Nancy: What a description that is of what the Scripture says in 2 Corinthians 5:17. “If [any person] is in Christ, he is a new creation.”
Kay: That’s right. “Old things have passed away [and] all things have become new.”
You know the verse, and it’s right in that passage in 2 Corinthians 5. He says in verse 16, “Therefore, from now on, we recognize no one according to the flesh. Even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know Him [in this way] no longer.”
We don’t see Christ on a crucifix. We don’t see Christ as a baby in Mary’s arms, because He’s transcended all of that.
The thing is that I was a harlot, but I’m not anymore; I’m a saint. I’m saint Kay. It’s not something you have to be canonized. It’s something you have to be born again, and you’re made that.
Saint simply means “set apart.” It means “consecrated.” It means “holy.” It means “belonging to God.”
“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature.” I tell people, “When you look at me, I don’t think you think harlot, do you?” No, because I’m not anymore.
Nancy: That’s what Paul said to the Corinthians. He lists all these sins that people can commit, and he says, “That’s what some of you were” (1 Corinthians 6:9-11).
Kay: Yes. “But” he says, “you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus.” Awesome, isn’t it?
Nancy: And it’s Christ who does it.
Kay: Yes, it’s all Christ.
Nancy: You could not make yourself a saint.
Kay: No. It is all Christ. As you read through and observe the text and saturate yourself with the Word of God, you see that salvation is of God. It is all God’s doings.
It’s just the grace of God. It’s the mercy of God. It’s the kindness of God that brings you to repentance [see Romans 2:4] and then makes you a new creature.
Nancy: I’m just thinking as we’re talking, Kay, that there is someone listening right now who perhaps has a religious background, as you did. She may have been baptized, confirmed, catechized, whatever it is that they do in your particular church, or maybe no church background at all. But God has been working in some woman’s heart, showing her her sinfulness, her need, her inability to please God.
Maybe she’s living an immoral life. Maybe she’s living a good religious life, but she’s not righteous; she doesn’t have a relationship with Jesus Christ. Would you just speak to that woman for a moment?
Kay: Yes. Honey, I would tell you that it is no accident that you’re listening to Revive Our Hearts today.
What He’s saying to you is, “This is My time. This is My time. I’m drawing you into My kingdom. I want you to become My daughter, My child.
“That’s why I’ve had you listening. That’s why I’ve warmed your heart, because by My Spirit I’m causing you to be born into My family. All you have to do is receive Me. All you have to do is believe.”
That’s what salvation is. It’s recognizing that God is God. It’s recognizing that His Son Jesus is God and that He died on that cross, and that He who knew no sin was made your sin [see 2 Corinthians 5:21].
Just think of all your sins, and then think of them wrapped up in a package and put on Jesus Christ. Think of Jesus Christ receiving those sins, being made sin for you, so all you have to do is say, “God, I believe. I receive Jesus Christ.”
He says that to those who receive Him, He gives them the authority to become children of God [see John 1:12].
You say, “But He might reject me.”
Oh, no. You just don’t know yet. You’re going to find it out. But in the Scripture, Jesus says that “those that come to Me I will not cast out” (John 6:37).
His arms are wide open, as wide open as that cross. It’s that Calvary love. He’s saying, “I love you. Will you believe that? Will you receive Me as your God, as your Savior?”
All you have to do is say, “I believe. I receive.” And you know what? You become a child of God. Why don’t you do that right now?
Why don’t you say, “God, I believe. I believe that Jesus died for my sins, that He paid for them. I believe that He was buried. I believe that You raised Him from the dead and that He lives. And it’s the living Jesus I’m asking to come into my life. Thank You for loving me. God, thank You for the gift of eternal life.”
Now listen to me, precious one. The Bible says we believe in our heart, and that results in righteousness; but “with the mouth confession is made unto salvation” (Romans 10:10). In other words, you’ve got to tell someone.
It’s important for you to confess. It’s important for you to say it, because He says, “If you confess Me before men, I’ll confess you before the Father who is in heaven.”
So “with the mouth, confession is made unto salvation.” So by your writing to Nancy atReviveOurHearts.com, that is a confession also.
So what do you do? You believe in your heart and you confess with your mouth that Jesus Christ is your Lord, your Master, your God.
He then will bear witness with your spirit that you are a child of God. And obviously you can’t tell that to Nancy.
Nancy: I’ll tell you what you can do—send us an email. I would love to hear. I’ll get the email, and our team will pray for you, and we’ll send you something that will help you take the next steps in your walk with Jesus Christ.
So do confess it. Do tell someone today.
But while you’re doing that, email us or write us a letter and let us know, “I have trusted Christ as my Savior today.” We want to rejoice with you in the grace of God that He’s extending to your life.
Kay: The way you’re going to know it is that there’s going to be a change. Remember 2 Corinthians 5:17, “If anyone is in Christ . . .” Now you’re in Him.
He’s in you; you’re in Him, and you’ll never be separated. When you become a new creation, you’re going find changes in your life.
First John tells you about some of those changes.
- You’re going to begin to understand the Word of God.
- You’re going to hate sin now.
- You’ll still sin, but not like you used to, because you’re no longer a slave to sin.
Kay: One of the things was, this young man that I started to date brought me a Phillip’s translation of the New Testament. I opened that book and began to read, and I thought, “I didn’t know this was in the Bible. I didn’t know that.”
What happens is, you have the mind of Christ now, and the veil comes off of the Word of God, so you’re going to have a hunger for the Word of God. When you open the Word of God you’re not going to understand it all, but God is going to begin to teach you.
The Holy Spirit is in you. (You can read about this in John 14.) The Holy Spirit moves in and becomes your in resident tutor. He’s going to lead you and guide you into all truth.
So that’s what happened to me. I had a hunger for the Word of God. I read the Word of God. I began to understand God. I had a conviction of sin, because now the Spirit was in me, and He’s the Holy Spirit.
I stopped drinking. I noticed a change in my temper. The immorality stopped immediately.
Nancy: Was that a battle?
Kay: No, it was not a battle. I knew it was wrong.
Now, dealing with temptation was a battle, and dealing with my memoires was a battle. I would be driving, and all of a sudden I would remember something I did with a man, and I would begin to feel horrible.
Then the Spirit of God would show me that that’s what I was, but not anymore. So He taught me to bring every thought captive to the obedience of Jesus Christ[see 2 Corinthians 10:5].
But the way I dressed changed immediately. The immorality stopped. Not the temptation. I mean, I have been tempted.
What you do becomes a habit in your life. The power is broken, but sometimes the tendency toward the habit is there. So I learned to apply 2 Timothy 2:22 to it: “Flee . . . youthful lusts.”
Nancy: Of course, as you were getting the Word into your system, that began to renew your mind and cleanse your life, and it began that transforming work of God’s grace. That’s a lifelong process that we call sanctification.
Kay: That’s right. That’s what he talks about in Romans 12:1-2, that you are transformed [and it’s a process] by the renewing of your mind so that you might know what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.
Nancy: The Lord started you that day on what has been an amazing journey. We’re going to pick up with the next chapter of that story when we come back again on Revive Our Hearts.
I’m thrilled for what I believe is, for some of our listeners, a new start today.
Kay: That’s right.
Nancy: They’ve become a new person. I want to say again, I hope that you’ll write and let us know. Send us an email, drop us a line. Say, “Today is the day that Christ has come into my life and saved me.” We want to rejoice with you in that.
Used with Permission. Revive Our Hearts.