A number of years ago, fifteen or more I think, I was invited for the first time to speak at The Cove, the Billy Graham Conference Center. I was honored to be asked and had looked tremendously forward to it and prepared diligently, prayerfully. I’m also a mountain girl and I never met a Blue Ridge Mountain I wouldn’t have married. It was the first weekend of November. I remember the time of year distinctly because it holds a significant place in this story. I almost always travel alone to conferences to minimize any distraction to a sense of Christ’s presence as I prepare but my wonderful hosts at The Cove had set aside a two-bedroom cabin for me that was perched, I was told, in a spectacular spot on the mountain, just above the conference center.
My friend, Jan Silvious, was within driving distance of it and I knew she’d be the perfect cabin companion for those three days because she also travels and speaks and teaches and knows what it takes. And she’s refreshingly low maintenance. We rarely get to be in the same place so it couldn’t have been a better time to pull off a reunion.
When I arrived at the conference center, I was taken aback by its beauty. It remains, to date, one of the most breathtaking places I’ve ever served. It was late Fall but Fall nonetheless and girlfriend’s a sucker for Autumn. I recall it being a pleasant kind of chilly. I’m not even sure I wore a coat. A sweater and a jacket was more like it, I recall. The young man hosting me asked if I’d like a tour of the building and the grounds. Yes, yes, of course, I would.
It happened almost immediately. This is the wretched side of having a rough and sinful background. You supply the enemy with so much material for condemnation and your self-destructive human nature is more than happy to double-team with him. I say this is the wretched side but, make no mistake, there is a good side. God’s grace to me is not in vain. I never, not for one minute, forget what Jesus pulled me out of. I never walk toward a microphone that I do not remember my past. I am not remotely tempted to believe any hyped-up press. I don’t know how leaders with a more righteous track record handle all of that but God is faithful to guard us and uses other means I’m sure. These are the means He uses very effectively with me.
How I have learned through the years to recognize the difference between God making the best use of my sinful past and Satan capitalizing on it is, of course, the result. The outcome of the Holy Spirit whispering, “No matter where I send you, never forget from where I saved you,” is humility. The outcome the enemy whispering, “No matter where he sends you, never forget what all you’ve done,” is misery. You’d think after a while I wouldn’t fall for it but sometimes it still rolls over me like an avalanche. That afternoon was one of those times.
No thinking person imagines Billy Graham was a perfect man. We all recognize there is no such thing. We are all weak in our natural selves. Christ alone was utter perfection wrapped in bruisable flesh. But, touring those grounds, it is absolutely impossible to miss how much the man did right. There’s also just this sense of sacredness there that I can’t explain. Perhaps even righteousness. Whatever it was, I suddenly felt woefully out of place. Jan arrived and we settled in our delightful, cozy cabin. I never said a word about what I felt. I spoke that evening for the first of what would be three times over the next 24 hours. The group was warm and welcoming and God seemed present. When we got back to the cabin that night, Jan looked at me and said in the plainspoken way that makes her one of the most fabulous people on earth, “What is wrong with you?”
When you are trying to hide how you really feel about something, never invite a Christian counselor to join you. They’re onto you. And they don’t mind confronting you.
“Nothing’s wrong with me!” I smiled my happiest. “I think I’m just tired. The time change and all.”
“It’s a one hour time change,” Jan quipped, deadpan expression. “Beth Moore, I know you. Something’s wrong and I want you to tell me this minute what it is.”
I mean, what was I going to say? “I feel bad about myself.” Oh, brother. Get a grip. Have a little cheese with that whine. I knew she’d roll her eyes and should. I wasn’t new to this thing. I teach the power of the cross continually and pound heavily on the difference between Holy Spirit conviction and self-condemnation. But, for the life of me, I could not pull myself out of this one. It was not that I felt guilty. It was that I felt heartbroken. Even the recollection causes tears to sting in my eyes.
I hugged my friend, told her how happy I was that she’d come, assured her I was OK, which she, of course, knew was bull, and we each headed to our rooms and went to bed.
The only person in the universe I wanted to talk to was Jesus. I lay in that bed and sobbed and sobbed with a wide-open Bible on my heaving chest. I suppose it was open to the Psalms. I’m not sure. I couldn’t have seen through my tears to have read a single word. Sometimes you just hold the Scriptures. I said in whispers between sobs, “You were worthy of that.” “I wish so much I’d done it that way.” “You were so so worthy of that.” “I wish I could do it all again.” “I am so sorry.” “I am so, so sorry.” My past relationship with defeat was complicated. I covet those with backstories filmed in black and white. “I was in terrible sin. Then I met Jesus. Then I never terribly sinned again.” If that’s your story, you are so blessed. Depart from me, I never knew you.
I was a little girl when I came to know Jesus. A very troubled little girl who would cycle in and out of the pit for years and years. My darkest time of sin and defeat did not occur out of rebellion. I was not looking for trouble. I was awakening to the brilliance of Scripture and was becoming increasingly enraptured by Jesus. I’d already surrendered my life to ministry at 18 and pledged to be faithful to Him all my days. I wasn’t. I have no explanation for the darkest season except that Satan placed a bet on my well-hidden brokenness wrought by victimization and unrelenting instability in my childhood home. At the time I fell into the deepest abyss that would ever swallow me, I was a young adult who genuinely loved Jesus and never let the sun come up without meeting with him. The devil’s mean. The flesh is stupid. And together, they team up for a trainwreck.
That dark time was years behind me as I lay in bed and sobbed that night in the cabin above The Cove. I’d long since had counseling over it. Long since, by the grace of God, broken out of the pattern that had dogged my young years. Long since lived in the light. I’d truly repented and never returned to that pit. Still, the regret at times was almost more than I could bear. Every wave of fresh love I’d have for Jesus would be followed sooner or later by a fresh wave of heartbrokenness over old sin.
Jesus was strangely quiet that night as I wept. Often in a wave of despair like that one, His Spirit will remind me of certain verses or I’ll sense His comfort. I didn’t feel like He wasn’t with me. I just felt no response at all. Not even a good, swift kick in the pajama pants like, “Oh, get over it.” Nothing, just quiet. Just despair. I cried until I was empty, my hair sopping wet at the temples. I fell asleep with that Bible wide open on my chest.
The next morning I awakened well before dawn and crept quietly, so as not to awaken Jan, into the small den between our two bedrooms to turn on the coffee maker. I looked out of the picture window of our cabin and saw a strange and unfamiliar sight. I squinted my eyes and looked as hard as I could. I walked over to it and tried to make out what I was seeing. I hurried over to the door and opened it and everywhere I looked, it was the same sight.
I ran into Jan’s room and said, “Get up! I have to show you something!”
“What on earth?”
“Jan, get up! I need you to see something! I need to ask you something!”
I got her by the hand, dragged her onto the porch of that little cabin, both of us in our pajamas, and I turned her toward me, held her by the shoulders and said, as seriously as I have ever said a word in my entire life, “Jan Silvious, I have a question to ask you and I need you to think about it and be very sure about your answer before you give it to me.”
“OK,” she said, looking completely confused and coffeeless.
I pointed toward the limbs of the trees right in front of us. “Jan, is that frost? Or is that snow? I need to know.”
“This is what you got me up for?”
“Jan. Frost? Or snow?”
She shook her head and laughed at her friend from the hotlands of the Texas Gulf Coast and said, “Beth, that is not frost. That is snow. Frost does not heap up on the branch.”
And I began to jump up and down right there in my pajamas and I yelled from the top of my lungs for that Blue Ridge Mountain and every soul on it to hear, “Whiter than snow! Whiter than snow! Jan, Jan, Jan! I’m whiter than snow!” Got her by the arms. Made her jump with me.
“We’re whiter than snow!”
That morning when our host greeted us, he said, “How about this snow? We weren’t expecting it this weekend. It’s pretty early for these parts around here.”
Oh, no no no, Brother. It was right on time.
It was one of the best days of my life.
Today, on this day, we remember the best day of our lives.
Christ’s worst day. Christ’s best day. The day toward which the first day dawned. The day heaven and hell crashed violently in the skies and the devil who’d shown up for his big triumph was put to open shame.
And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him. Colossians 2:13-15
“Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord:
though your sins are like scarlet,
they shall be as white as snow;
though they are red like crimson,
they shall become like wool. Isaiah 1:18
Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean;
wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.
Let me hear joy and gladness;
let the bones that you have broken rejoice. Psalm 51:7-8
Whiter than snow, loved one in Christ. The nightmare is over. You’re clean.
Whiter than snow.
