Revive Our Hearts - Open Your Home, Open Your Bible, Ep. 2

At True Women 25, Erin Davis issued a challenge.

If there's 500 women in this room, I don't do math, so that's maybe a terrible guess.

But if there's 500 women in this room, and each of you started a home Bible sitting

next week and had 10 ladies coming, that means in two weeks there would be 5,000 women

engaged in Bible sit, like that.

And if every woman listening right now started opening her home, just think how those

numbers would multiply.

This is the Reviver Hearts Podcast with Nancy Dimash Walgamuth, author of Adorned.

For March 5th, 2026, I'm Dana Grasch.

Your home is meant for ministry.

It's a place where burden-bearing happens and the lost are welcomed into the family of

God.

That's what Erin Davis shared yesterday in part one of her message.

Open your home, open the Bible.

Today, she's sharing more about the healing and humbling practice of hosting a home Bible

study.

Before we listen, let me read you the passage Erin is teaching from.

Here's Mark, chapter 5, verses 35 to 43.

While he was still speaking, people came from the synagogue leader's house and said,

your daughter is dead.

Why bother the teacher anymore?

When Jesus overheard what was said, he told the synagogue leader, don't be afraid.

Only believe.

He did not let anyone accompany him except Peter, James, and John, James's brother.

They came to the leader's house and he saw a commotion, people weeping and whaling loudly.

He went in and said to them, why are you making a commotion in weeping?

The child is not dead, but asleep.

They laughed at him, but he put them all outside.

He took the child's father, mother, and those who were with him and entered the place

where the child was.

Then he took the child by the hand and said to her, to leave the womb, which is translated,

little girl, I say to you, get up.

Immediately, the girl got up and began to walk.

She was 12 years old.

At this, they were utterly astounded.

Then he gave them strict orders that no one should know about this and told them to give

her something to eat.

Now here's my friend, Aaron Davis.

All right, let's make some observations.

What does Jesus do in this situation?

What do you see him do?

He heals, right?

And where does he heal?

In her home, right?

If you studied Jesus' miracles at all, you know that he actually didn't have to go into

her home to heal her.

He didn't have to be anywhere near her.

He didn't have to touch her.

If we keep reading in Mark 7, we'll find another mother, a mother who begs Jesus to heal,

her daughter, and he does it from a distance.

He doesn't go into the home.

He does the same thing for the Centurion Servant in Matthew 28.

And in John 4, we find another father, another sick child.

And again, Jesus heals from a distance.

So why did he choose to enter gyros' home?

Well, I think one of the reasons is that our homes is where we do the real work of walking

through grief with each other.

And because they're where we do the real work of walking through grief with each other,

our homes are also where we experience real healing.

If you've ever been to a funeral for someone you love, you know that that public expression

of grief is meaningful, but the actual work of processing the grief happens at home

when there's no more casseroles, right?

And the same is true for the women in your community.

Yes, they need to see us in public, but they also need to sit on our couches.

They need to be invited to dinner.

They need somewhere to go when they need to cry week after week, after week, after month,

after year.

There's a couple of really hard situations in my home Bible City group.

One woman has buried two young adult sons in the past two years.

That kind of grief doesn't get dealt with in an hour on a Sunday morning.

It requires us to do the burden-bearing grief-sharing work over the long haul with our friend.

Now we did go to the funerals of both of those boys.

It's a moment I will probably never forget when her most recent son died.

My whole Bible City group.

She wouldn't get far from the casket, whom a what mother would.

And we went, we stood in line for hours, and we got there, and we just surrounded her,

and she collapsed into us, and we had no chill, we wailed.

And it was an important moment, but I got to tell you that wasn't where the healing has

been happening.

The healing has been happening when, now, week after week, month after month, we still

ask her about her boys.

When week after week, month after month, we are not trying to get her to move through

her grief quickly and move on.

When she can sit on the couch and take all of the masks off and tell us how much she's

still struggling, that happens in intimate spaces.

In ways that cannot happen in public spaces.

Yes, the grieving need to hear their pastors sermon, but they also need to have their

Bible open and be knee to knee with somebody else, especially when they're hurting.

And I submit this question to you, who's not hurting?

There are varying levels, but we can do real grief work with each other in our homes.

Everything is not a linear process.

We're terrible with grief in the modern West.

We rush people through it, but it's not a linear process, and it can't be programmed.

What women need when they're hurting is the presence of someone who loves them and will

feed them the word when they cannot feed themselves.

And our homes is where we do that.

Now I need to acknowledge this, that it's a sad reality that the women who are hurting

the most are often the most avoidant of home ministry.

And that's because there's nowhere to hide, right?

You can slip in and out of a Sunday morning church service with some degree of anonymity.

You cannot do that in living room ministry.

And here's how I handle this in my group, I call it out.

About every three weeks, I say, look at me, look at me.

We don't run.

We don't bail.

And if you do, we will track you down and find you.

I say to them, the weeks when you least feel like coming are the weeks that you most

need to show up here.

And I say to them often, and they say to me, we are committed to each other.

And we will keep coming when it hurts.

We expect commitment in our group.

And I encourage you to do the same.

The home ministry advances the kingdom through the ongoing work of burden bearing.

And through walking with each other through grief, healing, and loss, snapshot number three,

Jesus and Zacchaeus.

Let's sing it.

Zacchaeus, no, we don't want to sing.

I know we little man was here.

He climbed up in a sickermore tree for the Lord he wanted to see.

And as the Savior passed that way, he looked up in the tree.

And he didn't actually say what you've been singing.

Let's read it.

All right.

We're going to go to Luke chapter 19.

I know you want to sing it.

It's in you.

Let me read us Luke chapter 19 verses 1 through 10.

He entered Jericho and was passing through and behold there was a man named Zacchaeus.

It was a chief tax collector and he was rich.

He was seeking to see Jesus who was, but on account of the crowd he could not, seeking

to see who Jesus was.

But he was small and satcher.

So he ran on ahead and climbed up in a sickermore tree to see him, where he was about to pass that

way.

And when Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, Zacchaeus, hurry and

come down before I must stay at your house today.

So he hurried and came down and received him joyfully.

And when they saw it, they all grumbled.

He has gone to be the guest of a man who is a sinner.

And Zacchaeus stood and said to the Lord, behold, Lord, half of my goods I give to the

poor.

And if I have defrauded any one of anything, I restore it for fold.

And Jesus said to him, today salvation has come to this house since he is also a son

of Abraham, for the son of man came to seek and save the loss.

One question, where did Jesus want to meet with Zacchaeus?

In Zacchaeus is home.

Another important question, how did Zacchaeus's heart respond to having Jesus in his home?

He repented.

James 516 gives us this command as believers, therefore confess your sins to one another and

pray for one another that you may be healed.

The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it's working.

These are two essential, non-negotiable rhythms of their Christian life.

We confess our sin and we pray for each other.

I want you to imagine if your pastor on Sunday morning replaced that part in your sermon

which causes all introverts a slow death, where he says, turn and say, hide your neighbor.

And instead on Sunday he said, turn and confess your deepest sins to your neighbor.

We wouldn't do it.

Why?

And secondly, probably shouldn't do it.

Yes, confession of sin is mandatory for all believers, but it is not wise to confess

all sin to all believers.

And it's really not wise to do that on online spaces.

I get messages like that a lot.

People will DM me and tell me things, I don't need to know.

And I always say the same thing, I need you to go to your pastor's wife or your women's

Bible study leader with this.

It's not that I don't care, but we need to look somebody eyeball to eyeball when we confess

our sin.

And the goal of confession of sin is not sensationalism or just sin vomit to just be like, here's

oh my junk.

Actually the end goal is accountability.

And so yes, we can pray together in large groups, but we can't pray for each other in meaningful

ways.

I would love to pray for you.

I actually have no idea what your greatest needs are.

And you probably have no idea what my greatest needs are.

And so this happens in small groups.

An amazing way to steward the gift of your home well is to make it a place of prayer.

What did Jesus say to Zach?

Yes, did he say repent for the kingdom of heaven as a hand?

No.

He sometimes said that.

Did he say go and sin no more, no, though he sometimes said that verse 5, he said, Zacchaeus

hurry and come down for a must-state your house today.

Jesus doesn't speak the language of shame, that's the language of Satan.

Jesus wants to rid us of our sin, to free us, not condemn us.

And so Jesus' very presence in Zacchaeus' home made him want to turn from his sin.

I have long prayed that people would pull onto our property and that whether they recognize

it or not, something in their spirit would go, that's better.

One of my favorite stories is about my friend named June, she was four at the time and her

family was coming over dinner and they pulled in and she said, I want this place.

That's the spirit's work, but you know what?

It doesn't just start with, I love this place.

Then it leads to openness and then we can burden bear and then we can pray about what really

matters and then we can be honest about our sins and we can hold each other accountable.

I've seen what Zacchaeus responded to Jesus, I've seen it over and over in my living room.

We use our home for many things, we love to hang out, we love to have people there.

But something happens special when our bibles are open in our living room.

So because our homes are the spaces where we sin most often, it also makes sense that

they are the spaces where we repent and ask for forgiveness most often.

And part of the reason we often aren't consistent in using our homes to fulfill the great commission

is because it is messy work.

Don't let me put any rose colored glasses on any of y'all.

It is messy work.

Just in the stories we looked at, property was damaged, me time became group time, resources

got used up, a grieving family had to deal with an insensitive crowd in the case of gyrosist

daughter, Jesus's visit to Zacchaeus was unplanned, which is something we are totally allergic

to in our culture.

Do not drop by unannounced.

And we're going to start wrapping up here, but all of this is another reason why I

believe all saints are called to home ministry, not just because what it does for others,

but because of what it will do in you.

What is going to be revealed in you when you have to show your house to the people you

want to impress?

I have four sons.

The bathrooms in my house could be an episode of CSI at any moment.

It's like so many body fluids on every surface, like why, why on the ceiling, Lord?

Why?

And so it forces me to deal with my pride and my perfectionism when people are in my

home.

What does it reveal in you when you are somebody who prefers Netflix and sweatpants at the

end of the hard day?

And you are forced to actually let people in at the end of a hard day.

Then it becomes a means where we push back against our selfishness and it becomes a

way to fight this platform building era of the church.

Committing to home Bible study.

If I never teach it another conference again, that's okay.

If I never write another book again, that's okay.

But until Jesus comes back, I will host Bible studies in my home.

Because it is my act of resistance against Christian platforming.

I'm deeply concerned that if there were an eighth letter written to the American church

in 2025 that what the spirit would highlight would not be a letter of commendation.

And so the goal becomes less who can I impress and more who can I lead in so intimately

that I cannot impress them anymore and so that we can do the real work of working out

the gospel together.

The people who gather in my home every week starting with my family can tell you how utterly

unimpressive I am.

And if you want to, you can ask them and they can tell you what sins have the greatest

grip of my life, where I'm weak, they can tell you how dependent I am on grace, they

can tell you the real answer to how well I love my husband and children.

And those are the lessons worth teaching.

You guys don't know any of that.

My in real life friends who will sometimes attend conferences with me just laugh and laugh

and laugh about it.

They're like people try to take pictures with you.

I'm like, I know.

It's hilarious.

I mean, I think it is the funniest thing ever.

It is, but that's part of the miracle of home-based Bible City is what God will use it to

do in you.

At the end of the day, this is all about stewardship.

My time is yours, my money is yours, my gifts are yours, my home is yours.

Use it all for your glory.

Some ministry is actually the norm for our brothers and sisters around the world.

And the reality is that the more the institutions of a society reject Christianity, the more

we are going to be forced to do our ministry in our homes.

And I actually think that's worth celebrating.

We see that in the local church.

We see that they did both.

They worshiped in the synagogue together and they gathered in homes.

And they were devoted to the apostles' teaching, to prayer, to breaking bread together and

to forgiving each other.

So that's the model.

Those are things that home-based ministry can do that other kinds of ministry can't.

Now I know you want me to give you a checklist because everybody loves a checklist.

I don't have one.

You just do it.

You just do it.

You could have a neighborhood Bible study, you could have one for the ladies in your church,

you could provide childcare or not.

You could do it during the day or in the evening, you could feed them or not.

You could do a Bible study book or just go through a book of the Bible.

You can host and teach or you can teach and ask someone else to host.

Or you can do the reverse, trial and error, make mistakes, but you stay committed.

I'm convinced that when we stand before the white throne judgment where our works are

burned out, that one of the things that's going to be weighed is how well we loved the

saints with the resources we were given.

When do you start?

How about next week?

If there's 500 women in this room, I don't do math, so that's maybe a terrible guess.

But if there's 500 women in this room, and each of you started a home Bible study next

week and had 10 ladies coming, that means in two weeks there would be 5,000 women engaged

in Bible study, like that.

And if just 10% of them decided in the next six months to start Bible studies in their

home and they had 10 ladies coming, then that would mean 10,000 women engaged in Bible

study in the next few months.

Now start doing the multiplication on that.

How would marriages change?

How many prodigals would we pray back into the fold?

How many people who are right now, today walking through grief and think they're totally

alone would soon feel like, you know what, this is terrible and I'm hurting, but people

are carrying this with me.

How many people who are deeply entrenched in sin and it is driving their lives would have

a place where they could bravely say, I am a slave to this thing.

10,000 women.

That's almost twice the size of this conference.

Baring one another's burdens, walking through grief and loss, confessing sin, this is the

way that the spirit has been working since Pentecost.

It is the way that he will work until Christ returns and I'm simply inviting you to be

a part of it.

I'd like to end our time by commissioning you back into your communities to start home

Bible studies.

Now you might be on the fence, that's okay, I trust the Lord to work that out with you.

So stand up and I will commission us all back into our homes.

You don't have to adjust your shirts.

You're fine, you look good, you look nice, there will be no photo of this moment.

In our house before you leave the house, I say put a hand on somebody, so put a hand on

somebody, it's not woo woo straight out of the Bible, do it.

And let me pray a commissioning prayer for us as home missionaries.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for calling us your servants to be heralds of the gospel.

As these women go forth to share the good news, I pray for your spirit to empower them.

Fill them with your presence, your wisdom and your love that they may be bold and proclaiming

the truth and compassionate in their interactions with others.

Lord, grant them joy in their work of home ministry, resilience in the face of setbacks,

and perseverance to continue faithfully until you return for us.

Lord, may their experiences in the mission field of their homes spread your kingdom

to every corner of your world.

Help us to open our hearts to the needs of others.

Help us to open your word for it contains the words of life.

Help us to open our homes for your glory.

In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ and the king and head of the church, we commend

these missionaries into your loving care, amen.

Amen.

You know, Aaron Davis prayed that prayer over the women at the true woman conference, but

I'm praying it over you.

May each of us offer up our homes for the glory of God and the good of the saints.

As we use our homes as centers for fellowship and healing, let's remember the incredible

value of kindness.

In a world increasingly marked by anger and harshness, Christ's light kindness stands

apart.

A deeper kind of kindness by Nancy Damaswalgamuth helps women understand how their words, attitudes,

and actions shape the climate around them.

Through biblical teaching and 100 practical expressions of kindness, this resource equips

you to reflect the beauty of the gospel.

Trust your copy as our thanks for your gift of any amount to revive our hearts this month.

You can do that by visiting reviveourheartz.com or calling us at 1-800-569-5959.

Tomorrow we're talking about what it means to be an instrument of grace in the lives of

the women around us.

We live in a world that is anything but kind.

Incivility, rudeness, bullying, arrogant, angry debating on news and talk shows.

Road rage, people blasting each other on social media, quick to lash out, no filter on

people's tongues and behaviors.

Do you see this around us?

Do you ever see it in your own heart, your own spirit?

You see, gals, when we are kind, when we go about doing good, including to those who

are ungrateful and undeserving.

We stand out, where a breed apart is counter-cultural.

We demonstrate the presence of Jesus in our lives when we're different than all the loud,

raucous, shouting, arrogant, raging, unkind world around us.

I hope we'll all become women who live out the beauty of the gospel together.

Please be back for revive our hearts.

This program is a listener-supported production of revive our hearts in Niles, Michigan, calling

women to freedom, fullness and fruitfulness in Christ.