My beloved sisters,

I am so blessed to ring in a new year with you and to anticipate God’s goodness and faithfulness in the coming 12 months. Let’s allow 2014 to be more than the next number on a calendar. Let’s deliberately enter into a fresh season and invite Jesus to do something brand new in us and thank Him in advance for what He has planned. His ways are always right. Always fitting. Without having a clue what is ahead in 2014, you can have unshakable confidence that your God will be good to you. He holds you securely in the palm of His hand.

I am deeply thankful for you this day and all you mean to His Kingdom. You are staunch servants. Mighty, mighty women of God.  I am amazed by all you do in His Name and for the beauty and creativity of His holy calling displayed and parceled among you. You sharpen me and keep me running my race at full speed toward the one and only goal worth setting: the finish line where Jesus stands, urging us forward and waiting to welcome us home.

I have a simple truth on my heart this new year but it is washing over my soul like a waterfall.

I want to obey God.

In mid-November of 2012, God dropped a word so convicting on my heart through another teacher’s lesson that my face instantly burned. You’ve had those times, too, when you look around the room sheepishly to see if everyone is glaring at you, hoping you got it so that the congregation can all move on to the next point. This was the word:

Stop sowing over and over in the exact same field.

 I wasn’t looking for it. I didn’t ask for it. I was happy where I was. Like many of you, I like things to stay the same. I loved my circle of relationships and the familiar places I got to serve. I’ve never lost a passion for those places and have often wept with thanksgiving to God for the privilege of walking through some of the same doors again and again. I have a history of long relationships and staying put and that’s how I like things. But I knew God was talking to me. It burned like a branding iron.

Every single day for nearly 14 months, that same word has reverberated in my soul and troubled my feet.

I have made some strides and taken some steps. The Living Proof Live event team and I felt the urging of the Holy Spirit almost simultaneously to continue to do what we’ve been doing – calling people to worship and the Word – but to become very proactive about reaching the lost and the less-discipled. You will hear us become vocal about this initiative in the coming months leading up to our new LPL calendar year that launches in April. We are passionate to still serve women who know Christ well but we’re also hoping they will join us shoulder-to-shoulder in the accelerated outreach effort that God is blazing in our souls. We are praying earnestly that women will come bringing the lost and the searching and the broken and the untaught. A dying world surrounds us. One that Jesus loves. One that He died and rose again to redeem.

The process of change is not simple. It takes forethought and prayerful preparation. We are, for instance, deliberating on ways to make tickets available because we know that lost people aren’t prone to buy tickets to Christian events. We’re trusting God to show us what to do and how to do it. The free ebooks that we’re putting out for the first 10 days of January are part of this initiative. We’re very aware that, when it comes to reaching the unreached, free is key.

So strides have been made but they are only first steps.

I shared with you the date in 2012 that this word came to me so that, if you needed it, you’d have some assurance that I’m not knee jerking or reacting impulsively. I have had all these months to pray and study and listen to Jesus and ponder His leadership.

Fast forward 12 months exactly to the most recent November. A year after hearing from God so clearly about sowing further than the field that I’d loved and served in for so long, I had a very disturbing dream. I can count the significant dreams I’ve had through the decades on one hand so I’m not prone to look for messages in my sleep to keep from having to actually pray and read the Bible. That God can speak through dreams is clear in our own Bibles, of course, but for many of us it is unusual. I don’t feel the release right now to describe the dream though I may someday. What I do feel is a strong compelling to share with you what I knew beyond a doubt it meant. I believe that I can either be obedient to God in the faith walk He is setting before me or He will take my voice. I do not feel that it was a rebuke. I felt that it was a warning.

I was saved in childhood but I was 18 years old the first time I ever had a vivid encounter with God and it accompanied my calling. Christ has been so merciful to remain with me through harrowing ups and downs, fears and failings, and flaws and frailties. Good grief, what grace He has poured on my life. What forgiveness flows from His wounds on the cross. I’ve been so foolish at times and learned many things the hard way but I am not new to the believing walk. I don’t look to the air for my words from God. I look to the Scriptures. It is my daily bread. I want revelation any way Jesus wants to give it but I’ve been around long enough to know that, if it is unrecognizable in His Word, it is not of Him.

38 years have come and gone since that day I received my calling.

And I have rarely – if ever – received clearer orders from God.

I share this with you because I love and esteem you so much and want you to know that I haven’t lost my footing or had a dramatic change in my theology as I tread into a wider perimeter than I’ve served before. I say this to you before I have a single invitation on the docket that is out of the ordinary. I’m not manipulating you in advance of announcing some big plan to you. No such plan exists. No such invitations have yet come that I know of. But when they do, I will take them prayerfully before God and if He says go, Sister, I’m going to go. I must.

For lack of a better way to say it, I am not picking up and moving across the fence. I think this is more about dismantling a fence anyway. I’m not leaving Living Proof Ministries. I’m not departing from our mission statement of many years: to encourage people toward knowing and loving the Lord Jesus Christ through the study of His Word. I’m by no means leaving my beloved church, Bayou City Fellowship. I’m not saying goodbye to the blog or this community. On the contrary, we have an active year before us and summer Bible study right around the corner. I hope to enjoy many more years of fruitful friendship and partnership with LifeWay through in-depth Bible studies and Living Proof Live events. They have been so gracious and willing to exceed denominational boundaries. I praise God for them.

We must all be willing to exceed denominational boundaries. Revival is at stake. Nearsightedness will trip us and disunity will slay us in the perilous days to come. We can prioritize our denominations over the Scriptures if we want to but we will shrivel up and die on the vine if we do.

We who are called to teach must teach the Scriptures even if – and especially when – they differ from our long-held stance. That we will answer for.

These are days for bravery.

To avail ourselves to the Holy Spirit and a fresh work of Christ in our midst, our healthy fear of God must far exceed our fear of man. I say this with tremendous love. Those who refuse to rock the boat when Jesus is tossing the waves in their faces will never know the thrill of the water beneath their feet.

For without faith it is impossible to please Him. Hebrews 11:6

Change is on the horizon and certainly not only where I live and serve. The winds of the Holy Spirit are picking up. We can dig our feet in the ground and demand to stay right where we are. We can toil to maintain things just as they have been for years. And we can be left out of a coming awakening that could one day be recorded in the annals of Christian history.

We can throw our boundaries up at God, keep stacking our divisive bricks, and insist that He obey us.

Or we can obey Him.

God help me, that’s what I want to do. I am too old anymore to let the bullies boss me. And I am too young to quit.

Out of the stunning grace of God, I have had the joy of serving among some of the most well-discipled women in the Bible belt. Many of them take notes each week as their pastors preach. They listen to podcasts in their cars on the way to work. They serve their local congregations, feed the poor, and minister to the sick. Many of them have done every Bible study on the market by every teacher available. They keep their faces in the Scriptures. They memorize and evangelize and sacrifice. They are warriors. I’m not worthy of them but I so dearly love them. I have no words to convey how honored I am to have served among them and I deeply hope to serve among them still. But to serve them only – or even primarily – lacks stewardship. God is telling me to get my ear pressed to the ground for opportunities to serve in environments where women are less commonly studying the Bible in-depth. Some of those places may look very different from those I’ve visited before. I make this promise. I will hold tight to the Word and seek with everything in me to teach it soundly. I will hold onto Jesus as the love of my life. I will pray hard and you’ll never waste a prayer on me.

The days are short. The times, urgent. For all of us.

Need is a part of what steers a call.

I have no idea what the future holds. I have no idea where God will send me or if those places will seem different to many of you. But this I do know: if I do not tell Him wholeheartedly that I am willing to go anywhere He leads and serve anyone He says, He is going to do His good pleasure anyway. And without me.

I have to go with Jesus on this or my soul will collect an inch of dust on the lifeless, wooden altar of safety and sameness.

Thank you for your patience. You have been so gracious to bear with me through this lengthy letter. When all is said and done, I pray with my whole heart that this post will turn out to have been more than just about me. That’s so nauseating. I could have done that at home by myself and saved you the time. But maybe God wants to say something similar to someone else.  Maybe it’s time for your next step, too, even if you have no idea where your foot is going to land.

Maybe you’ve been raised to keep your faith to yourself…and it’s time to start sharing it.

Maybe you’ve studied and studied for years…and it’s time for you to get up and teach.

Maybe you’ve been mentored so well that you know it all by heart…and it’s time for you to mentor others.

Maybe you’ve been the focal point of much compassionate ministry and you thank God for it…but it’s time now to pay it forward and minister to others.

Maybe you’ve been breaking free for 10 years…and it’s time for you to live free and show somebody how it’s done.

Maybe all our risk-free living is not really living.

And maybe I’ve missed it. But I am about to take that chance.

GRACE from LPV on Vimeo.

My beloved sisters, my dear and very gifted friend Stephen Proctor took the grace writing I did for the simulcast and set it to music by Tony Anderson with images that animate it with fresh life. I pray that somebody who needs grace for Christmas more than any gift that could be wrapped in paper and tied with a bow will stand under this spout and be drenched in Jesus. That first Christmas morning, grace deeper than the floor of the oceans and higher than the heavens came wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger.

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth…And of His fullness we have all received, and grace for grace. John 1:14,16 NKJV

You are so loved here at Living Proof. Merry, merry Christmas, my dear loved ones.

I AM SO PROUD OF YOU I COULD DO TEN CARTWHEELS!!!!!

LET YOURSELF FEEL THE HOLY NOD OF GOD THIS WONDERFUL DAY, MY BELOVED SISTER.

YOU HAVE DONE SOMETHING THAT HE ESTEEMS AS TREASURE BEYOND PRICE.

HE HAS LISTENED INTENTLY EVERY TIME YOU’VE SAID A VERSE OUT LOUD AND RECOGNIZED THE SOUND OF YOUR VOICE WITH DEEP AFFECTION.

HE HAS BEHELD YOUR RADIANT FACE, DAUGHTER OF GOD, AND FOUND YOU SO LOVELY.

LET YOURSELF HEAR HIS COMMENDATION THIS DAY.

LET HIM SAY “WELL DONE” TO YOU.

Oh, Jesus was so worthy of all this work, wasn’t He, Sister???

You have been a stellar group and you’ve kept to the exact instructions with every single entry, limiting them to the verse alone. This time when you leave your verse, you get to leave a comment with it. Testify! Boast in the Lord! Tell us a specific way God used this year of Scripture memory in your priceless life.

THEN, click this!

Hallelujah Chorus

Beth, Houston. Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. Colossians 2:2b-3 ESV

I love you so much I could cry. Thank you for the privilege to serve you. 

Hey Sisters! Grab a Bible before tuning in if you have one close by!

A 12th Month That Redeems a Year from LPV on Vimeo.

Hey, my beloved sisters! I have you on my mind right now, wondering how you are and what God is presently sowing into your path. I’ve been writing to you steadily through Children of the Day but today I found myself longing for real-time interaction. I’ve been thinking about a verse that I’ve known and loved a very long time. I like it in almost any version but it’s by far the most gorgeous in the King James.

I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
    Marvelous are Your works,
    And that my soul knows very well.

     Psalm 139:14 NKJV

It’s the last line that I love so much. Life is hard and all our unanswered questions and unsolvable mysteries can make us feel like we’re getting sucked further and further into a black hole. We can come to the conclusion that there is really very little that we can know and, for the most part, we earthlings are victims of gravity, the soles of our feet stuck to the dirt and growing more callous by the day. Depression runs particularly rampant this time of year and darkness can be even darker for children of light. We know it’s not where we belong but we don’t always know how to crack the door to the sunshine.

We’re going to give that a shot today.

My challenge to you in the midst of all our questions is to behold what we each – individually, not corporately – really do know all the way into the dark folds of our souls. Here’s the 2-part assignment:

1. Complete this sentence: Right now I don’t have any idea… (pick only one thing, the thing that you find most confusing right now or most removed from your knowledgeable reach).

2. But these things my soul knows very well: (Write 5 things you know – really, really know – even in the black of night, even when you don’t feel well, even amid your thousands of other questions. Don’t just come up with 5 things by rote because you know they’re the right things to say and they’d be the top 5 priority pieces of information for people of our faith. What 5 things make the most difference to you right now in your circumstances?? What does your soul know very well? 5 things, Sweet Things. Don’t copy anybody else’s answers. Don’t even read anyone else’s list until you leave your comment. This is not about their relationship with your God. This is about yours. In a world of wondering, what do you know, Sister? Resist being predictable. Think about it. Don’t say it if you don’t know it to your core. For instance, don’t say, “I know God loves me” if the truth is that you doubt it every single day. Say what you know.

And those things will bridge your faith over to what you don’t.

I love you so much.

Hey, my dear sisters!

Although I won’t post this until Tuesday, I’m writing to you on the afternoon of Sunday the 10th. This is about the thousandth time I’ve corresponded with you from somewhere around an altitude of 27,000 feet. I’m on my second Delta flight of the day, heading home to Houston with so many memories of the last 8 months swimming around in this blond head. As many of you know because you so faithfully prayed us through, we wrapped up our final Living Proof Live event for 2013 this weekend. God just flat-out could not have given us a louder, more wonderful congregation at the Ocean Center in Daytona Beach, Florida for a finale. They wanted Jesus and, in His unfathomable grace, He showed Himself faithful.

As any of you in a travel-oriented ministry know, life is all the while taking place while you live out a schedule that was set in stone way before you got a whiff of what the year would hold. We’re better off that way, aren’t we? If we could see what was coming, we’d insult the grace of God by our faithlessness that He’d not come through when the time came to meet the need. The greater Moore family – and, by that, I mean Amanda’s 4 Jones, Keith’s parents who live next door, Melissa, my man and me – have had a year with as much upheaval and pain as we have met in a decade.

Jesus graciously allowed Keith and me to have, hands-down, the most peaceful year of our marriage. You know the kind of people who are carefree and smooth sailing? Well, that would not be us. We both tend to be on the feisty side. And I write that with a smile. I’ve been so thankful for this, our closest-ever kiss of bliss. I don’t know what we would have done otherwise. Our children and our parents needed us badly. Needed Jesus badly. We just tried to be constant and present reminders that He was there and that we were right beside them. And we ate a lot. Sometimes that’s the best way to show a little extra love around here. We are a close family and close families laugh together and cry together and, in our clan, when an unforeseen collision happens, all of us are in the car. Some are in the front seat. Some in the back. But, make no mistake, we’re all in the car. And that’s how we want to be. I know many of you can relate.

So, through many ups and downs, twists and turns, needs and bleeds, we’ve lived these last many months on drips, streams, and gushes of God’s grace. I’ve flown north, south, east, and west this year earning Platinum status on United and turning on my cell phone at the first touch of the wheels on the tarmac to see if everybody at home was okay. I could cry typing and not just over memories that make my heart ache but because Jesus has been so faithful to us. He has gotten us through. He’s still getting us through. And He will get us through again in 2014 when we, then, live out a schedule etched on the calendar before we had any idea what was coming.

Jesus is coming. That’s what I know. And that’s why we Moores and Jones will stay at it, come what may.

With the finish of our last Living Proof Live event for the year and with your patience, I thought I might introduce you to some of the people I have the privilege to serve alongside. Some are more familiar to you because you’ve seen them on the platform but all are huge, vital contributors to the ministry that takes place. Most of them come from Nashville, Ron (security) comes from Louisville, Shela-Lyn, our beautiful and gifted sign language interpreter, comes from Phoenix, and I am the lone but happy traveler from Houston. Some come by 18 wheelers to the events with all the big equipment. The rest of us fly but the end result is the same: we arrive and get to work. There is not a single slouch. We couldn’t make it with a lazy team. We’ve never found a formula or a system that works every time. We have to be ready for almost anything and I do mean spiritually, physically, emotionally, and technically. Everybody multitasks and nobody quips, “That’s not my job.”

All of our job descriptions have morphed through the years. If something needs doing, somebody just gets up and does it. For instance, Ron doesn’t just run security. He sets out the elements for my team and me to take communion before the opening on Friday night. Rich used to just be in charge of picking me up at the airport and driving me to the event and keeping a general eye out for me. While he still does the driving (because we will not let him go), he also developed into a spectacular, in-demand professional photographer and, because of him, we have the whole LPL lifetime archived in pictures. He is also our resident foody, although you wouldn’t know by looking at him, and he does the restaurant planning.

Well, if I don’t stop this, you’ll get bored and I’ll never get done so let me get to the fun part: some pictures that I just happen to have on my cell phone.

Here’s all of us, the Living Proof Live team:

I love them so much I could bawl. Here is the praise team and a few of our other hardworking buddies like Stephen Proctor who runs and masterminds our visual worship (in the very back) right after the simulcast this year.

Here’s me and my old dead man of sin at the simulcast. Laughing. (If you weren’t there, this was a way of illustrating Romans 6.)

Here’s the whole LifeWay women’s event team (that puts on LPL) all living out their dream of being the praise team. Makes me so dang happy. That’s Flat Travis with them in case he looks a bit…well…flat. They are stellar women and hilarious. I’ve had the joy of serving with a publisher full of people who pursue Jesus Christ at fever-pitch. I do not take it lightly.

This picture was taken when we all first got to Daytona Beach and met up for team supper on Thursday night. Betsy oversees all our LPL events and we’re nuts about her. Susan provides something for us beyond all price. She welcomes those who receive Christ as Savior, prays with anyone who needs it, and often counsels women at the event who are really hurting. Paige Green, right next to me, oversees all LifeWay women’s events (like dot.mom, Priscilla Shirer Live, etc.) If Paige and I lived in the same city, we might be BFF. I love working with her so much but she is also a personal friend. I even love her mother. It’s that kind of thing. That’s our buddy, Stephen Proctor, on the other side.

Saturday night after the event, a small handful of us braved the amusement park there on the boardwalk in Daytona Beach and, honestly, we laughed like 10 year-olds. I’m scared of rides, by the way, but my fears meant nothing to this team but grounds for mockery and scorn. Once a gauntlet is thrown down, my pride usually exceeds my fear which is why I’m on this ridiculous roller coaster. And why we rode it over and over and over. Trav took this picture of Angela (his wife, dear as blood-kin to me), Paige, Bradford (who works at Travis’s church in Jackson, TN and is often a part of our team on the road) and me.

This action shot of Ang and me absolutely kills me. Please try to wrap your head around our Texas and Tennessee hair. It looks as though we are battling the very flames of hell but, clearly from our expressions, God is giving us the victory.

Ang is one of the most powerful women of prayer I know and, Girlfriend, I know some. I work with a whole staff of them. We’ve been doing something different in the 3rd session of Living Proof Live this year, spending a good bit of it in intercessory prayer for whatever segment of women the Holy Spirit lays on our hearts. Here I asked Angela to pray over all the moms in the room who are still actively raising children. The whole picture moves me so much. Look at the men on the front row (Travis and the guys on our praise team) pressing in. You’ll also see our friend Christine Caine on the edge of the shot (standing). We were amazed with her busy schedule that she’d come and attend this LPL. (She was speaking at a large church in the area the next day.) She has two of the cutest daughters you’ve ever seen so, in this picture, she is very actively engaging in prayer as a recipient. I asked Christine to pray over the young women in the room just minutes before Ang prayed because she has a divine gift for mobilization like few people I have ever met. I’ve heard from a number of those young women on Twitter saying what a powerful time it was.

I suppose I’ve just about worn you out by now, haven’t I? So I’ll go ahead and wrap up our 2013 LPL wrap-up. This is Travis, my dear and true son in the faith, Bradford and me on that silly roller coaster.

That picture sums up the entire 16 year journey of Living Proof Live. Jesus has been outrageously faithful on this ride and allowed us to worship Him and seek Him with congregations of the most fabulous and diverse women we could ever have imagined serving. We want so much to lift Jesus higher and higher next year, to say His Name louder and louder, and to proclaim His Word clearer and clearer. If God chooses to increase His glory through these events in the coming years and make this group of Jesus freaks the least bit useful through His magnanimous grace, then we’ll have cause to keep doing this.

The team and I won’t go back on the road together until next April because I (ecstatically!) start Tuesday night Bible study in Houston in January then head back to Australia right after it concludes in mid-March. When I land back in the States, it will be time to pack the LPL suitcase again. By that time, if I don’t have the manuscript for Children of the Day complete and turned in, I may be fried like a chicken.

Thank you for humoring me today with my sappy sentimentality over my beloved team. I am nuts about them. As wild as we are about one another, we have one thing on our minds the moment the event is over: getting back home to our people. My darling and me. There is no place like home.

Good morning, ladies! Just a quick disclaimer: We recorded this video a week ago Tuesday and are getting a few emails and phone calls about conflicting dates. Just so we’re all clear, Daytona LPL IS this coming weekend, the 8th – 9th and it is sold out! Originally you would have been watching this video last week, so the timing would have made more sense. We are so sorry for any confusion, but hope that helps. Thanks so much for your grace as we are far from slick. Blessings!

That Beautiful Word “Immediately” from LPV on Vimeo.