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SSMT 2017: Verse 2!

bethverse2

Hey, Everybody! Let’s get some traction on this 2017 Scripture memory action! It’s time for Verse 2! This is the post where you’ll leave your comment with your Scripture entry.

Remember, you get to choose your own verse according to what you need most or what presently lands on your heart with the power of the Holy Spirit. I am committing to memorize the one-chapter, 25-verse Book of Philemon this SSMT year so at times my verse will seem a little random and be an incomplete sentence. Like today. Grin. That can be a challenge for an English teacher by trade.

I’ll always recommend another Scripture that I think makes a fabulous memory verse in case you are having trouble deciding on one. Remember that we strictly limit the comments to our SSMT verse-entries so the entire comment thread is a spectacular stack of little more than Scripture. It becomes such a help to many who are not even part of SSMT but searching for comfort for their aching souls or strength for their faith. Lots of people realize along the way that they can come to these posts and find powerful Scriptures. The majority of people don’t yet know how relevant the Bible can be or how to search the Scriptures for verses that speak to their needs. They don’t realize many of these verses even exist. Our enormous privilege is to put these verses on easy-access display for them and help bridge them over to open Bibles and, if they desire, to the incalculable gain of studying it in-depth.

So that’s enough from BM-Big Mouth. Here’s my entry and below it, you’ll find the verse I’m recommending this time around to those who are drawing a blank.

Beth Moore from Houston, Texas: “and Apphia our sister and Archippus our fellow soldier, and the church in your house.” Philemon 2 ESV

 

Recommended verse if you need one:

“And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment,” Philippians 1:9 ESV

 

I love you guys! Stay with it!


———Quick reminder from LPM——–
You can get SSMT updates with the LPM App notifications!

Here’s how…
-Download the app
-Once you’re in the app, go to the top left corner and tap the 3 horizontal lines, choose Settings, next choose Notifications, then turn on notifications for SSMT 2017. And your done!

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SSMT 2017: Verse 1!

Hey, Everybody! Drumroll please! Welcome to the 2017 Siesta Scripture Memory Team! The entry of your Verse 1 selection acts as your registration. Please read this brief post before you leave your comment so you’ll know exactly how to do it. We are not legalistic about much around here but I am a drill sergeant about the precise way we accept comments for SSMT verse entries. One perusal through the first several hundred comments and you’ll understand why. It’s such a powerful sight you will almost want to cry. Or shout. Or throw your head back and howl your loudest hallelujah. It just all depends on how you process a fresh glimpse of divine revelation. You’ll have before you a feast spread out lavishly on a huge banqueting table.  Keeping the comments to the bare minimum makes Scripture itself stand out on the page. If we add a lot of other verbiage to the comment, the verse is more likely to get lost in it.

Not only will your soul be fed by the entries of others, you’ll discover verses you didn’t even know existed and get ideas for future selections. Any time you can’t decide what verse to memorize, jump on the comments and see what resonates with you. Any time you feel bone-dry or downcast or distracted or discouraged or just plain directionless, open up the comments on any SSMT post and behold the words of the Lord. It’s so powerful I could slap my desk thinking about it.

OK, this is how the information should appear in your comment:

Name (first is fine), city: verse, reference, Bible translation.

(Don’t forget your translation! People love knowing exactly which translation your selection came from.)

So you’ll have a paradigm for how it looks, here is my entry for Verse 1 and you’ll see at the end of the post where I made a slight little addition to add some soul-deep conviction if you wish:

Beth Moore from Houston Texas: “Paul, a prisoner for Christ Jesus, and Timothy our brother, to Philemon our beloved fellow worker.” Philemon 1 ESV

You get to choose your own verse according to what you need most right now, what resonates with you in your present circumstances or what God just simply seems to land you on. This year I feel like He’s leading me to use my 24 entries to memorize the one-chapter book of Philemon. It contains 25 verses but the last one is easy so I’ll throw it in with my 24th verse as my final entry. I’ve done stacks of spirals full of unrelated Scriptures for my memory work in previous years. Other times I’ve done several different chunks or one solid chapter. There is no wrong way to do it. It just all depends on what the Holy Spirit seems to be energizing us to do. If something about chipping away at one chapter through the course of the year rings your bell, you are so welcome to join me or you can look through the Scriptures and choose a different chapter of similar length. I so loved memorizing Psalm 25 several years ago. I recited it as recently as yesterday. It has 22 verses ready to go if you’d like to consider it. You’d only need to tag on 2 separate verses after you memorized the psalm to fulfill your 24-verse goal. Jude is another one-chapter book I memorized. It contains 25 verses but I will warn you in advance, take that one on only if you like a challenge. It is pretty wordy.

Let’s just add two little words this time to the front of the entry of our first verse: I commit! And go right ahead and add that exclamation mark at the end of it for the sake of some very appropriate enthusiasm. What you’re about to do bears FRUIT. God’s Word does not return empty. He sends it forth with accomplishing power and divine purpose. That’s worth anticipating with excitement. (In fact, Isaiah 55:11 is a fabulous Scripture to memorize if you’re still searching for a great launch verse.) I think we ought to add those two little words because I keep reading how allergic we’re growing culturally to making commitments of almost any kind. I’m sure you’ve read the same thing. But here’s the deal. We will never be mighty servants of Jesus Christ, alive and awake in the Holy Spirit, bringing glory to God the Father all while standing against evil rulers, powers and principalities without commitment.

Ain’t happenin’.

Nothing was tentative to those early New Testament believers about following Jesus. They didn’t fulfill their callings by being scared of commitment. They gave Him their lives. They bore His name. They testified to the death. Let’s do this thing, Sisters. Let’s do it deliberately. We’re not destined to be weak-willed women. We’re called to be stunningly strong willed about God’s will. So, here’s my official entry for verse 1 of the Siesta Scripture Memory Team challenge of 2017!

I commit! Beth Moore from Houston Texas: “Paul, a prisoner for Christ Jesus, and Timothy our brother, to Philemon our beloved fellow worker.” Philemon 1 ESV

Your turn, sisters! Try to make each of your entries within 24-48 hours after the posts go up around the 1st and the 15th of each month. Also remember not to worry if you don’t see your comment posted for a day or so. Wait a while before you post the same verse a second time. We moderate all comments to filter through spam and trash and general nastiness so the process can take a little time. Here we go! I’m beside myself with joy. Thank you for the privilege to store up the very words of God with you. They are life and breath to us. Iron in our blood. Steel in our bones. So much love to you.

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My man and me

Thirty-eight years tomorrow.

The organist played the wedding march and I stood next to my Daddy in the foyer with my heart pounding like clapping thunder in my chest and wearing an ever so slightly off-white, nothing special wedding dress so as not to be a total fraud. We’d rented the dress for $65 and it never even occurred to me to mind. I come from very modest means and there was no world in which I expected my parents to spend several hundred dollars on a dress. They didn’t have it. And, except for the monthly stresses of bill paying in our home and overhearing my mom on the phone with bankers about overdrafts and loans and mortgages, we didn’t care that we made it by the skin of our teeth. It was normal to us and, for that matter, normal to most of the people we knew.

The congregation of about 200 came to its loud feet with the prelude and almost that many faces looked straight back at me and Daddy. My eyes darted up the middle aisle of that small Baptist church, shifting back and forth from smiling face to smiling face, many very familiar to me despite having been there a few short years. I served wherever I churched because that’s what I was raised to do. Never considered not. That day at Spring Woods Baptist Church in Houston, Texas, my wide-eyed gaze also fell on a few faces of those who filled the front aisles. Family members. And, trust me when I tell you, they weren’t smiling. Every year around our anniversary, Keith and I recount the whole ignominious scene with one another and mock the family scowls and laugh until our sides split. Nothing could have been less humorous on that particular day but the thought that we spited all of them by making it this long brings Keith and me no small glee. We were both in long term stable relationships when we met. I was engaged. He was soon to be. Each of our families loved our significant others. And, in a way I won’t go into trying to explain, so did we.

I’m not sure Keith and I ourselves completely understand why we dropped everything dependable and remotely stable in our lives and flew headlong into one another with all the tranquility of a pair of cymbals. The best explanation is that clamor attracts clamor and baggage attracts baggage and, boy, did we each have some. And then there was just pure chemistry. Had we been married to other people when we met, God help us, I trust we would have either ignored or resisted it or, by that time, never met but the fact was, we weren’t married, we did meet and we did not remotely ignore nor resist one another.

The words “wedding planner” weren’t even in my vocabulary or that of anyone I knew. The woman standing in the foyer with Dad and me on the day of the wedding was one of the very same women who brought a green bean casserole or jello salad every Wednesday night to fellowship supper. When the organ piped up, she nodded her head, touched my shoulder and said “Now.” She’d told us to go slow and Dad and I had practiced the night before but, for the life of me, I was either going to run down that aisle to that man in the tux or my hind end was going to flee to the parking lot where I’d holler like a wild hyena until somebody picked me up and hijacked me to Mexico.

I cannot say that it did not help that Keith Moore was the most beautiful man I’d ever kissed in all my life. Dad and I flew so fast down that aisle that my veil nearly took me to the wind like the flying nun.

A thought which carries impressive irony.

In seconds it seemed, the pastor said to the congregation, “Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you Mr. and Mrs. Keith Moore.”

And, just like that, the wedding was over.

Let the drama begin.

And I guess in a lot of ways it’s never come to an end. It’s just a different kind of drama these days for the most part.

I’ve been asked many times if I’ll ever write a book on marriage. I don’t expect to. I have no intention of setting us up as some exemplary couple. Keith and I have not had a great marriage. But, somehow, in recent years, we’ve managed to find ourselves in a pretty good one. And I guess it’s fair to say you’ve never met two people happier about being pretty happy.

We don’t just kiss on our anniversary. We high five.

I’m really reluctant to do what I’m about to do because what if he and I get into the biggest fight of our lives tonight and I maniacally hurl all his fishing gear and deer heads and forty pair of unders in the front yard? I’ve never done that before but I’ve always known I had it in me. I’ve always kept my pitching arm in shape for such a time as this. And what if one of the neighbors videos us and I end up on the YouTube cussing? I’ve never been one to cuss much but, if I’m ever going to have a cussing conniption, it will be my luck to have it on the YouTube. One time I did try to leave Keith and he said, “Go right ahead. Leave me. But you’ll look in your rearview mirror and there I will be and not because I like you any better than you like me. Because I don’t. But because we are married and married we’ll stay.” Keith never was a great Catholic except about the one thing I wished he’d been more Baptist about: splitting.

And so, like somebody pulling teeth, I’m reluctantly going to tell you with little commentary a few of the things that have kept us at it, every single one of which is nothing but the dripping grace of Jesus. We can’t even take credit for the things that have actually worked. So here goes and then I’m closing this post and publishing it before I change my mind.

If you don’t mind, I’m going to do this backwards and start with the bottom line because everything else comes back to this: We have both and each been willing, many times through bitter tears and against our human-hearted natural preferences, to choose to love each other again. Over and over and over and over.  After some really harsh things.

We had Amanda nine months and two weeks from our wedding day after being told I’d need surgery to conceive. Liar, liar pants on fire. We may as well have named her Elmers. She was the glue God used to hold our first few years together. Then came Melissa, who was a dyed in the wool daddy’s girl. We still wouldn’t have made it even with them to consider, I’m sorry to say, if not for that one bottom line above.

We developed compassion for one another. We were both messed up and we each understood why. And, I really don’t know a better way to say it, we felt sorry for one another and started trying to help each other get better.

The fact that I could sob as I write this next one is fittingly ironic. We each think the other is hilarious. The only thing Keith and I have done as much as fight is laugh. I don’t know why we got that gift but we did. We even laughed at times in the terrible years. We tried not to but we couldn’t help ourselves. We are each the most absurd person the other has ever met. We are a cartoon strip and we know it.

One last thing. I told Keith before we were engaged that God had placed a call on my life at 18 and, if he didn’t think he could handle it, he better run for his life. Having no other paradigm for a woman in ministry, he looked at me with a measure of horror and said, “Are you going to be a nun?” (We’d made out for the better part of the last hour so the absurdity of this one makes me rub my forehead with no small delight.)  No, I said, to which he responded, “Then I’m in.” And he has been. For somewhere around 15 Bible studies, numerous other books, 23 years of Sunday School lessons, many years of Tuesday night Bible study and two Friday nights a month with me on the road. Unwaveringly. And not as a weakling but as the strongest willed man I’ve ever met. Nobody need wonder who wears the Wranglers in my family. And you may as well not go to seed feeling sorry for him. He’d have to lie to say I ignored him and then I’d have to hit him with my purse and, considering all the lip glosses in it, it would hurt considerably. Him, not me. He just wasn’t the kind that would be ignored. When we were at home together, we were at home together. I didn’t hang out on the phone all the time doing ministry or study my commentaries in front of him – I did that while he was at work – or flip through magazines. To this day, if I’m messing around on social media on my phone when I’m with him, he’ll say, “Pay attention to me!” And I’m glad he will. And I do. Or we’d have nothing.

And, finally, after many years, I returned a certain spiritual favor after all he’d done to be supportive of my calling: I just accepted him like he was and quit trying to turn him into a deacon or some big spiritual beacon. He didn’t want to be one. Doesn’t want to now.

Thirty-eight years tomorrow. This one man and me. We’ve decided to stay in this dance a little bit longer.

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Because, ladies and gentlemen, smilers and scowlers, we are Mr. and Mrs. Keith Moore.

 

 

 

 

 

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2017 SSMT Instructions! Join us for the biggest Scripture Memory Team under heaven!

***NOTE: If you are looking to register your verse 1, go ahead and comment with your selected Scripture on the “SSMT 2017: Verse 1!” post.***

 

Hey Everybody!

We are revving up around here for SSMT 2017! The Scripture memory team we host and support every other year is the most extensive thing we do around here on the LPM blog, so you can know that you are the size of an Airbus on our ministry radar right now.  siesta_1_revised

We are elated about the year we have ahead and believe with all our hearts that God finds tremendous delight in this group of diverse women banding together to memorize His Word. Here is everything you need to know about how to participate in the 2017 Siesta Scripture Memory Team! Please be sure you make it all the way to the bottom of the post where you’ll find the information about our matching spirals.

First, a few things up front since many people joining us have no previous interaction here:

*For you new-comers, an explanation of the name is in order. “Siesta” is just an endearment for “Sister.” There’s no club to join and no person you need to become. If you’ve trusted Jesus as your personal Savior, you’re a sister in Christ. If you don’t know Him, we’d love for you to stick around and get to know us and see if anything around here draws you. Everyone is welcome. Here’s a bit of our back-story on the weird name: When we first began the blog, it never occurred to any of us how much we’d come to love each other. As the community grew closer and closer and the participants more and more familiar with one another, one of you asked what name we should call each another. I tried to say, “I’ll tell you what we are: We’re sistahs!” but spell-check switched it to “siestas.” It stuck and that’s been us ever since. We even liked the thought that its actual meaning is to take a nap. We’ll know we’ve been a place of divine intervention if we’re a respite from the female competition and clatter out there. Only Jesus can give us that kind of relief in this exhausting culture.

*We call this a Scripture memory “team” because that’s exactly what we are. We cheer each other on, hold each other accountable, and urge one another to make it to the goal – 24 verses systematically memorized in 12 months – through a process that requires significant practice.

*Very often you will see me refer to SSMT. Just so nobody’s confused from the start, that is an abbreviation for “Siesta Scripture Memory Team.” If you’re not participating in SSMT, please know that we don’t limit the entire blog to our Scripture memory participants. It has a big presence on here because it’s twice a month but we still do lots of other things. Please don’t feel left out or forgotten.

*Why 24 verses? In previous years, we’ve found this to be a very doable pace: 1 verse every 2 weeks. If you do much more, you’ll tend to fall behind and not retain. If you do much less, the impact is negligible. You really can do this. So many of you will surprise yourselves with what you’re capable of doing in the power of the Spirit. Yes, it takes work but it’s tremendously fulfilling and the results are nearly immeasurable. Look at it this way: we’re going to be meditating on something: unforgiveness, toxic memories, misery, lust, greed, dissatisfaction, jealousy, competition. Let’s choose Scripture instead! Christ Himself said as a man thinks, so is he. He also said His words are spirit and life. This is work worth doing, Beloved. Never – NOT ONCE – have I ever known anyone to get to the end of a Scripture memory commitment and say that it didn’t make any real difference. Not a single time.

OK, NOW FOR THE INSTRUCTIONS. You can cut and paste these somewhere if necessary. Here’s how it will go:

Instructions

1. Beginning January 1st 2017 – and the 1st and 15th of every month of 2017.  At 9am, you will find a blog post (also on Facebook ) asking for your memory verse. A suggested verse will be included just in case you need a little help.

Note:  Please give us 24 hours to post your blog comment before you assume it got lost. We still moderate all blog comments and the amount we get on SSMT days necessitates a slower pace. Thank you for your cooperation!

2. You are to comment:

  • with the verse you’ve chosen to memorize for that two-week period
  • within twenty-four hours of the post going up
  • name, city, verse and translation

Here is a sample comment:

Beth Moore from Houston, Texas: “May you be strengthened with all power, according to His glorious might, for all endurance and patience with joy.” Colossians 1:11 ESV

Always add your translation because so many of your sisters will want to know where you found the wording for your entry.

3. THIS ONE IS KEY! As often as possible, choose a verse that means something to you in your present season or circumstance. This is the reason why we don’t all memorize the same Scripture. We’re not all going through the same things.

4. Write the verse by hand in your spiral either shortly before or after making your entry. Again, that’s a recommendation and not a rule. I’ve discovered that there’s something about writing it with your own hand and picturing it later in your own handwriting that helps it sink into your memory bank (I’m not entirely sure why).

About your SSMT spiral!

2 Options for you!

1. Print your SSMT 2017 cover from home.
(I took this picture with my phone standing on the shore of Galveston Bay, mesmerized by that sky. You can find a lot prettier beaches but I’m not sure our wide-open Texas sunsets can easily be surpassed.)

There are two sizes to choose between for your spirals.  Click on the size cover you would like to print for yourself then adhere it using any of the methods we suggested. You can certainly use regular printer paper but cardstock works perfectly:

5X3

6×4

2. Or, Order the spiral from LPM.

Our Siesta Scripture Memory Team 2017 Celebration will be in January 2018. I’m telling you about it now so that you can have it for a little extra incentive. Our main incentive is the will and good pleasure of God, of course, but He Himself authored great celebrations in His Name so feel free to be excited at the thought. Also, I want you to have plenty of time to start saving your money for your transportation and hotel. We do not charge for the event. Your entrance fee is your well-used spiral. More information still to come.

How you qualify to attend the 2018 Celebration

*Clock in by first name and city at least 20 out of 24 times. (But please make your goal 24 out of 24!) Let me reiterate that you can be late with your entry on a 1st or 15th of any month but, by the end of the year, there has to be a record in the comment sections of you signing in at least 20 out of 24 times on a SSMT post. Make sense?

*Bring your spiral to the celebration. Again, that’s your ticket in.

*If you’re planning to come to the celebration, be prepared to say any 10 of your 24 memory verses to another Siesta (of your choice) during the designated time at the celebration. (We get in pairs.) Some of you will be tempted to let this be a deal breaker but don’t back out! Siestas are really sweet and patient with each other and we are notorious for giving each other hints. We can even act out charades if necessary. If you’re one of those who genuinely struggles with memorization, just tell your memory buddy up front and she’ll give you all the grace you need.  Tell her the gist of the verse as accurately as you possibly can. She’ll be able to tell that you are well acquainted with it and that the goal was accomplished even if you can’t say the verse word-for-word.

*Register for the event when the time comes. (September 15, 2017)

Whew! Have I exhausted you?? I’ve worn myself out. We just want to answer as many of your questions up front as possible.

I want to say something to you before I wrap up this diatribe: this community means something to me. I love it because I love you. I think about you on an ongoing basis. So does my staff. You are a huge part of this ministry. Thank you for the privilege to serve you and to embark on another wild journey with you. May Christ find such delight here that He astonishes us with His presence, favor, and power.

So, welcome to Siestaville: women walking alongside women on our way Home, stirring up excitement toward that great day. SSMT is one way we do that. AND IT’S A WHOPPER. Let’s do it, Sisters, starting this coming January 1st! I’ll talk to you again about other things before then but I don’t want the New Year to take you by surprise.

I love you.

Beth

 

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Proverbs of Ashes in a World Burning Down

In my Scripture reading early yesterday morning, I chased a rabbit trail that landed me in a cul de sac with Job 13. I got so preoccupied I was late for work then, once I got there, still couldn’t keep my thoughts from circling around that curb. In the corner shadow of more substantial themes, the Book of Job gives impressive credence to the adage, “With friends like these, who needs enemies?” God bless them, they started out well but time took its toll and the temptation to offer explanation for human suffering became intolerable. When in doubt, after all, what better coping skill could there be than dogmatism? To the reader’s measurable relief, chapter 13 marks the spot where Job indelicately invites his friends to shut up. Unroll the scroll to verse 5.

“Oh that you would keep silent, and it would be your wisdom!” Then a little further down to verse 13, “Let me have silence, and I will speak, and let come on me what may.”

The show stealer in the chapter is the temerarious declaration the pummeled mortal makes in reference to his God. “Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him.” (13:15 AV) The HCSB says it like a boxer spitting blood from a busted lip through broken teeth: “Even if He kills me, I will hope in Him.”

But one of the things I love best about Spirit-breathed Scripture is that the Spirit reserves the right to animate a passage that has never attracted our attention before. For me yesterday morning, it was the first half of the 12th verse. Job, to his friends:

“Your maxims are proverbs of ashes.”

For all we know the man made the statement sitting in a heap of ashes like he’d positioned himself in Job 2:8. Of course, it’s easy to miss the ashes in that early scene because we’re too disturbed by him scraping his loathsome sores with a piece of broken pottery. When these words come out of Job’s mouth in 13:12, one commentator suggested he may have gathered some ashes in his palm and blown them into the wind in case his observers were inclined to miss the point. Ashes symbolized loss, grief, mourning and death to the ancients and at times were the wares of sorrowful repentance. The idea probably germinated with God’s words to Adam after the fall in the Garden when death was born.

“For you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

Mourners commonly practiced demonstrating their profound grief by wrapping their waists in skin-rawing sackcloth and covering their heads in ashes. At least it showed. Don’t you sometimes wish our shattered hearts would at least dignify our suffering enough to show up? Tamar, Mordecai and Daniel displayed their anguish with ashes but here’s the irony: so did Job’s three friends. Yep. At the very first glimpse of him.

And when they saw him from a distance, they did not recognize him. And they raised their voices and wept, and they tore their robes and sprinkled dust on their heads toward heaven. And they sat with him on the ground seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his suffering was very great. (Job 2:12-13)

 But then Job opened his mouth and released his lament and they opened theirs.

And their maxims were proverbs of ashes.

I never noticed the wording before because maxims had yet to be promoted to our primary means of communication. Shoot, a good maxim today could bring you a whopping ten thousand likes. We’ve developed such an appetite for maxims, we’re bored to oblivion by actual messages from our pastors. We demand twenty minutes of strung-together maxims or we’re staying home and surfing podcasts. Give us tweetables. Quotes we can stick on a picture and post.

And I’m neck deep in the middle of it splashing around in my floaties while people are down at the bottom of the lake drowning. This is not a rant for more meaningful maxims. It’s just a reminder to me today that my aphorisms don’t mean a flying flip in a frying world. Nobody’s likely to thank me in heaven for that life-changing tweet. I love Twitter. Good grief, I love all the things. And, man, do I ever appreciate a good aphorism. It’s fun. Quippy. Can even make people think.

For five seconds.

Mind you, five seconds is better than none. But let’s take it for what it is then get to the real business of ministering to the mournful. They are crowded around us, blinded by the darkness, flailing, feeling around in thin air for somebody’s warm-blooded hand. And sometimes the mournful is you. Me. Sometimes the mournful zips itself up in our ruddy skin and makes it hard to get out of bed. And, Good Lord, no wonder we’re depressed. We’ve turned social media into a spiritual discipline. We’ve made a diet of cheese puffs, bloating our souls with air and calling ourselves healthy.

Ashes.

The thing is, I can’t get the Oakland warehouse fire off my mind. That’s where this whole thing started. I don’t want to get it off my mind right away anyway. That community and those terror-stricken families will need prayer for a long time. I know that because my family has lived in the ashes of murderous flames for decades. I know that because the evening before the news broke out about the fire in Oakland, my husband brought up the fire in his childhood garage over supper with our daughters.

We know the story by heart. I knew it by our third date. Keith and his big brother were knee-high, plump-faced preschoolers playing in the garage when a slender river of gasoline rolled underneath the water heater and ignited. Both boys were burned. Both boys rushed to the hospital. Both admitted. Both treated for several days. Both desperately prayed for. Both were impossible to imagine living without. One went home with his mommy. The other went home with Jesus.

A couple of years ago, Keith and I were sitting with his parents at a picnic table on the porch of a burger joint we often frequented. The men were sitting on one side of the table and we women were facing them from the other. When Keith got up to fetch our order from the carry-out window, my father-in-law leaned across the table and, in a tone dripping with tenderness, said to me, “Baby, today is the anniversary of Duke’s death.”

My eyes immediately shot to my mother-in-law. She did not say a word. She couldn’t. Even all those years later. She reached in her pocket for a tissue and blotted her wet eyes. I can hardly write these words without doing the same. I hugged her, squeezed her hand, picked at my food like she did then sobbed all the way home. Every loss etches an absence. But tragedy threatens to carve an abyss.

Especially a fire. Its destructive force doesn’t just dent, cut or bruise. Fire has the capacity to consume. It has the capacity to take something teeming with life and vitality – a church, for instance, or a home or, God help us, a life – and reduce it to ashes. Something weighty into dust in the gust. I think maybe that’s what makes such vivid imagery of ash: its cold reduction of something to almost nothing.

Forgive me for being so graphic. I don’t do this often. But, the thing is, we are the Body of Christ commissioned to flesh Him out through the ministries of His Spirit to this graphic global darkness. We flip on our screens or open our feeds daily to news of tragedies somewhere on this aching orb. Unless we’ve let our hearts grow cold to shield us from the harsh elements, we shake our heads and shed some tears and at times drop faces to palms and sob. We summon Jesus to hold the hurting and to comfort them in a way that is otherworldly. In a way that is deeply personal because, if we possess a whiff of wisdom, we know that no two hearts process loss the same way. In the wording of Proverbs 14:10, each heart knows its own bitterness.

No two losses are exactly the same. And not all tragedies are equal. There is no one-size-fits-all remedy for the pain-ravaged.

Our maxims are not only a waste of breath. Of electronic space. They are offensive to the suffering. Sometimes even things we know to be true are better left unsaid for a long, long time. In the presence of those suffering, we say less and do more. We still our tongues and loose our hands. We mute our volume and vacuum their dens. We save our words then spill them like a dam breaking before God. Because He’s the only one whose feet don’t fail in a tidal wave of suffering. He’s the only one who really knows the whys and hows and wheres and whens. And He won’t tell us now. But He’ll tell us then.

Yesterday morning it was the word “ashes” that took me on that rabbit trail. I kept thinking about what I’d read in a news article about the first responders carefully, “reverently” removing the ashes from the Oakland warehouse. “Reverently.” That was the description the writer used and I appreciated it even if it made me want to wail. So I looked up every time ashes are found in the Scriptures. I found this among them.

The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me,

because the Lord has anointed me

to bring good news to the poor;

he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,

…to comfort all who mourn; to grant to those who mourn in Zion—

to give them a beautiful headdress instead of ashes.

(Isaiah 61:1,3)

This section had long-since been dear to me but that’s the beauty of research. That’s the beauty of looking to scholars God has equipped with spiritual gifts of knowledge. You learn something brand new. I’ll let Dr. J.N. Oswalt tell it to you the way he told it to me in New International Commentary on the Book of Isaiah: (emphasis his)

“In 60:17 the prophet promised the best (gold) for the better (bronze), but here the Servant/Messiah promises the best for the worst…The picture of the mourner, with ashes on the head, wrapped in sackcloth, with a spirit crushed by despair, is replaced by the picture of a party goer with a beautiful headdress, smelling of costly oil, and wearing a garment of praise.[1] 

 There is a wordplay in the Hebrew that makes it especially spectacular. The peʾēr, “beautiful headdress,” replaces ʾēper, “dust.”[2]

If anybody at all is still reading, I’m almost done. Just take this part of Isaiah 61 in one more time.

to grant to those who mourn in Zion—

to give them a beautiful headdress instead of ashes,

the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the garment of praise instead of a faint spirit.[3]

Instead of, instead of, instead of.

I want to be there on the scene for at least a few thousand rounds of “instead of.” Sometimes we see those things happen right here in this earthly realm but other times it’s too late. Their tragedies took their lives. I want to see Jesus replace the ashes on the heads of the grief stricken in this lifetime with the headdresses of deliriously happy party-goers. Yes, party-goers. Don’t even try to talk me out of that. I want some parties when I get to heaven. I want to see some people shake a leg who’d suffered paralysis here. People dine in style who’d starved to death in squalor here. I want to see Jesus unwind the awful sackcloth from those who’d mourned on this earth and spin them around in garments of praise.

That’s what I want. I want to see my mother-in-law in a party hat laughing her head off. And I want to meet my brother-in-law. And sit cozy by a fire and never get burned.

Because this life is the hint of hell for a whole lot of people. But there is a God in heaven weaving eternity from an endless string of insteads. No proverbs of ashes from His lips. Just straight up promises.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[1] Oswalt, J. N. (1998). The Book of Isaiah, Chapters 40–66 (p. 567). Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.

[2] Oswalt, J. N. (1998). The Book of Isaiah, Chapters 40–66. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.

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LIT: An Event for Women in Their 20s & 30s with Fire in Their Bones to Teach, Speak or Write

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I’m ecstatic to announce an all-day Saturday event on February 11, 2017 specifically designed for women in their 20s and 30s who feel called by God to serve this generation through teaching, speaking or writing. The passion to do this event welled up in me continually as I wrote the Bible study on 2nd Timothy called Entrusted. (Released September 1, 2016) The final words of the Apostle Paul, penned to his beloved son in the faith, sketch a relationship on the sacred page of stunning mutual love and support between two generations. Over the course of five weeks, the curriculum holds the spotlight on doctrines imparted and dynamics shared between those two servants of Christ, inviting us to step into the paradigm they represent. If God ordains the order of each generation from the beginning to the end of time, and Scripture says He does, then we can safely assume He also has purpose in the generations He causes to overlap. Each generation – the younger and the older – has the privilege to profoundly impact how the other flourishes.

God timed the writing of Entrusted after two decades of publishing experience and three decades in active ministry. The Paul-Timothy paradigm threw open the door of opportunity to share some things I’d learned, often the hard way, in my journey with Jesus. I’ll echo the same disclaimer here: There is so much I don’t know, so much I don’t have, but whatever is mine to give is yours to have if you want it.

Because I wrote the study to apply to Jesus followers with any spiritual gift mix, I tried to avoid the trap of overemphasizing the ones most familiar to me. All the gifts are vital and all believers are called. I kept wishing along the way, however, that I had a little extra time with young women who feel led by the Holy Spirit to speak, teach or write simply because those are the areas of my exposure and experience.

And that’s where the idea for Lit emerged:

Making the most of a Saturday – from morning through evening – to pour into women in their 20s and 30s who have completed the 5-week study Entrusted and desire to zero-in specifically on speaking and writing gifts. I’m going to have to ask you to trust my motive here. I’m not trying to sell you a Bible study. I have a couple of different reasons for making it a requirement. First, space is limited and I want to insure that those who come are serious about the Scriptures and convinced they want to press on and pay the price of self-discipline to grow into their callings. I’d rather have 100 with fire in their bones than 500 who are mostly just curious. Nothing is wrong with curiosity. It’s just not what this day is set aside to satisfy. Secondly and most importantly, making Entrusted a prerequisite means that we come together on the same page. We can hit the ground running on that Saturday morning and make the most use of our time. Entrusted involves the fundamentals of becoming a mighty servant of God, of grasping the gospel message and using our diverse gifts to share it. If we all come together with those basics already in our arsenal, we can launch straight to the next level.

And we’re going to have a blast. I’ve asked my friend, Christy Nockels, to lead worship and invited a cross-section of my speaking/teaching/writing friends and colleagues to join Christy and me that evening for a panel and Q&A. I love and respect so many female teachers and authors serving our generation and wish we had a week to expose you to all of them. The ones who will serve on our panel that night were sought out because each brings something different to the mix.

Before I give you instructions for our first-come, first-serve registration, here’s a glimpse of the schedule so you can see if it appeals to you:

Our very special guests joining me that evening for the panel are Jennie Allen, Christine Caine, Melissa Moore, Christy Nockels, Priscilla Shirer and host Amanda Jones.

REGISTRATION OPENS Friday, Nov 25th at 9 a.m.   Cost $25.00 (to help cover expenses).

Space is limited and our aim will be to fill the room evenly with young women in their 20s and in their 30s.  But please don’t delay, if either decade does not fill up by December 1st, registration will open up the remaining space.

Requirement: 5 week Bible study Entrusted completed by that day and brought with each attendee as her ticket for admission. Please no exceptions. (Both workbook and DVD sessions recommended but only the completion of the workbook is required.)

The registration page will include hotel information, along with a full FAQ section to help with any questions you might have.

I can already tell you this will be one of the most fun gatherings I get to be part of all year. I cannot WAIT.

I believe strongly in what God wants to do with you young women.

So much love to all of you. I’m honored to be your big sister and servant.

Beth

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The Scandal of Election 2016

On Tuesday, November 8th, we will elect the next president of the United States. Each one of us who chooses to exercise our right to vote will mark the ballot having weighed not only every option but the realistic consequences of the option we’re choosing.

The gravity of it this go-round is like lead weight in feet of clay. The voting booth is a house of mirrors where we are forced to face ourselves all by ourselves. We have before us the rulers we’ve demanded. And, of course, none of them can save us. None of them can “save our country,” whatever that now means. None will keep all their promises, even if they mean to. Want to. We’re reduced to damage control. It’s a heck of a way to cast a vote but most of us, myself included, will do so nonetheless.

In our uncivil war we are weighing the sins of our candidates like jagged stones stacked on our personal pan-size Scales of Justice. Once we’ve properly reaffirmed everything we already believed, we congratulate ourselves by hurling the stones at anyone who doesn’t see our enemies the same way. We simultaneously demonize and deify those of other opinions, telling them they’re idiots while holding them personally, publicly responsible in advance for all the inevitable transgressions of their candidate. Meanwhile we are collectively committing a sin ultimately more consequential than anything the media can uncover on our candidates between now and Election Day.

If “we” does not include you, I’m not talking to you. No need to get offended or defensive. If we are not you, this is not about you. It’s about the rest of us.

We have misplaced our faith. Our blood-curdling fear has given us away. And unrelieved, force-fed fear is making us crazy.

Buried beneath our panic is systemic disappointment but it makes us feel weak and pathetic so instead of owning our disappointment – in our country, our candidates, our options, our leaders, in one another and, God help us, in ourselves – we rage. Mad feels better than sad. It’s painful to long, in the words of Hebrews 11:16, for a better country and embrace the hard, cold fact that we are strangers and exiles on earth. (Hebrews 11:13)

Grieve, mourn, and weep, James 4:9-10 says. Turn your laughter into mourning and your joy into despair. Humble yourselves before the Lord and he will exalt you.

But who wants to do any of that? So we rage.

We have become not only like the world but like the world at its social-worst: lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive…ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. (2 Timothy 3:2-5 ESV)

 Yesterday’s America, in all its honor and shame, is in ashes but, rather than exercise the faith and obedience and earnest prayer to see God raise some beauty from the heap, some gold from the fire, we keep trying to glue ashes back together. And they won’t stick. Yesterday’s America has become an idol to us. It has no more breath in it and the thing about idolaters is that, sooner or later, they become like their idols. (Psalm 135:18)

God could do something new but we’ve lost our hope. We want back what we’ve seen instead of believing Him for what we haven’t.

Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful. (Hebrews 10:23 NIV)

We are driving drunk on rage, swerving all over the road, fenders dangling and headlights shattered from our collisions with one another. Any means to our end. It’s okay to lie to shove people to the truth. To bully, harass and threaten people publicly and relentlessly into doing the right thing. To twist the facts to straighten this mess out. To pull the covers off our opposition and throw them over our candidate. Our witness to the world has become the crimson-faced hysterical screams of armageddon after Jesus said “Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” (Luke 12:32) We are so void of vision that all we can see is a big fat “T” in the road ahead. It’s right or left. There is no other way.

Poor, poor God. He’s down to His last two options. And poor, poor us for having such a poor, poor God.

We are called to be people of faith in a God who never needed a man-paved road to get anywhere. A dead end means nothing to a God of resurrection.

This is what the Lord says— he who made a way through the sea, a path through the mighty waters (Isaiah 43:16) can also make a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland (Isaiah 43:19).

When the Word became flesh, He didn’t even bother parting the sea to get to His boatload of followers engulfed in the storm. Divine feet made a floor out of suds.

“Jesus is not running for president,” someone said to me recently.

And, of course, she was right. He’s running the universe. But she’d never know that by us. And this is the cue where we roll our eyes because, after all, we’re talking about reality here. This isn’t Sunday School. We have to think practically especially on an election year. Placing the whole of our faith, the totality of our future, entirely in the hands of God is naïve in times like ours, we reason. Save it for church, providing you can find one where faith’s welcome past the mat. It doesn’t apply in the real world. It’s Theology for Dummies. Grossly naïve.

But the Bible has a different definition of naiveté. In the Scriptures placing trust in human flesh and blood is pitifully naïve. There, imagining God limited to human options is the epitome of naiveté.

Do not put your trust in princes, in human beings, who cannot save. When their spirit departs, they return to the ground; on that very day their plans come to nothing. Blessed are those whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord their God. He is the Maker of heaven and earth, the sea, and everything in them— he remains faithful forever. He upholds the cause of the oppressed and gives food to the hungry. The Lord sets prisoners free, 8 the Lord gives sight to the blind, the Lord lifts up those who are bowed down, the Lord loves the righteous. The Lord watches over the foreigner and sustains the fatherless and the widow, but he frustrates the ways of the wicked. Psalm 146:3-9

 Come November, we cast our votes. But if we cast our confidence into our candidates, woe be unto us.

Unbelief is not just the absence of faith as if it leaves a vacuum. It’s the substantive presence of spiritual infidelity. It’s not just an omission. It’s a form of rebellion. What we are doing with our candidates is idolatrous. In theological terms, adulterous. When this inch of history is recorded in the annals of heaven, it will not be the scandals of our candidates that slacked the jaws of angels. It will be the unbelief of the church.

Remember what I accomplished in antiquity! Truly I am God. I have no peer; I am God, and there is none like me. Isaiah 46:9

 We are meant to look back to what God has done in the past so our faith is set aflame for what He can do in our future. The gospel didn’t come to us in seats of government. It came to us in a stable reeking to high heaven with cow manure. God didn’t plant the Savior of the world in the womb of a governor’s wife. He planted the Christ in the womb of a peasant-girl in the middle of nowhere. The same one who’d get to bear the reputation that she’d done something naughty and gotten herself pregnant.

Jesus never once sat on a throne here. The closest He got was the back of a donkey. God did not blaze a trail with the gospel galloping on a horse through the halls of government. He did it through cheap sandals flapping on the grass. Through the mouths of ordinary, law-abiding citizens who had the guts to defy the order to keep their mouths shut.

So they called them and charged them not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus.  But Peter and John answered them, “Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge, for we cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard.” (Acts 4:18-20)

“and the government shall be upon his shoulder.” Isaiah 9:6

 It is the world’s way to associate power with people at the top but the power of the gospel is at the bottom. In God’s hierarchy, the way up is down. Divine power comes from on high, not up high. The kings and queens of Planet Earth still have to bow low for power from the loft.

We’re terror-stricken like our entire future is dependent upon what happens on November 8th. What happens that day is momentous. The ramifications are profound. We cast our votes prayerfully. Carefully. We plead for wisdom. But the church of Jesus Christ doesn’t rise or fall on the fleshy back an election.

 We have our God. He has His people. And we are not a few. We don’t even have to fully agree with one another to be a colossal force for the gospel. All we have to do is agree with God that nothing is too difficult for Him and that no amount of mortal elbow grease can back His throne into a corner. He cannot be overruled. And it is He alone – I cannot say this loudly enough – it is He alone who truly loves the world. To think we care more than He does is remarkable hubris.

Whatever happens in November, the responsibility for the gospel is coming back to us. It’s not the government’s job. Seed spreads best ground level. We are only as powerless as our passivity. We still have voices to raise at deafening volume for the vulnerable. We still have knees to drop in contrition and desperate need for intervention. We still have feet to run to the aid of those in crisis like single mothers who need support. Like under-served school kids who need tutors. Like neighbors who are being ostracized. Like homeless who need help with shelter. Like teenagers who turn up with unwanted pregnancies. Like the hated, mistreated, forgotten, overlooked, unheard. Paul didn’t tell the government to overcome evil with good. He told us to.

We have convinced ourselves the end of the gospel is near while Jesus stated in no uncertain terms it would be proclaimed throughout the earth before the end of this age. We are convinced government has the power to gag God while 2 Timothy 2:9 says the word of God cannot be chained. Difficult days are ahead. We cannot endure them faithlessly. Opposition is inevitable no matter who makes it to the White House. At some point we’ve got to quit looking to leaders to fight for our faith. Faith we haven’t fought for is faith we don’t possess.

Legislation is not the only way we effect change. We seek it. We fight for it. But, if we don’t get it, it has never been God’s only means to change. Issues we care so much about – like protecting the lives of the unborn, like relief for the poor, justice for all, eradication of racism and inequality – don’t tumble off the table because the wrong person pulled up a chair to it. None of those are born of human concerns. They are God’s concerns. To oppose those things is to oppose Him.

He could have taken simple routes to His will along the way, like putting it straight on Pharaoh’s heart to free the Hebrew slaves. He didn’t. He chased Moses down in the far side of the desert where he’d hidden because of his sin. And God made sure that the only route out for the people of God was the miraculous. He can also place the godly beside the godless in the highest places of government like He did Daniel, if we still have Daniels who are willing to stare down the throats of ravenous lions and entrust themselves to a maker never out of options.

God can turn Pennsylvania Avenue into the road to Damascus, for crying out loud. He can soften the hardest heart. Transform the vilest offender. Thank God no sin is too great for the power of the cross. Oh for grace to trust Him more.

We need our faith back. Without it we cannot stand. Without it we cannot please God. (Heb. 11:6) Without it we can’t grasp joy. He still counts our faith as righteousness. (Romans 4:23-24) We live by faith. We love by faith. God foresaw this day and scheduled our births and our deaths within it. He entrusted us with the gospel and the gifting to share it. Imagine the great cloud of witnesses in Hebrews 12:1 gathered in the unseen stadium to watch our generation run our race. Can you picture them cheering from the stands, “Vote Trump!” “Vote Clinton!” “Vote _______________________!”?

I think they’d tell us to run valiantly by faith drenched with hope because this race ends well.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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A Huge Thank You & the LPL Chinle AZ Recap to show fruit of your prayers!

Living Proof Live Chinle 2016 | Recap from LifeWay Women on Vimeo.

Beloved sisters, no words can convey the depth of my gratitude to you for countless prayers and thousands of scholarships that God used to make Chinle LPL a reality.  My four days there, face-to-face with so many Native American women – hearing their stories, their hurts and their hopes and getting to hold some of them in my arms – landed on me in a way I never want to get over. God is stirring up the dust in that native soil. I deeply hope He has plans for LPM to continue to invest in the faith of  Native American women. If the statistics we heard over and over are accurate, the reservation is only 5% Christian so the harvest in plentiful. We want to be part of seeing to it that the workers are not few. Women came from all over the reservation in Arizona but they also popped in from other parts of the United States all the way to Florida. I did a roll call during the first session to see how many tribes were represented in the room and, after about ten different names were yelled from the audience, I finally just said, “On the count of three, everybody shout the name of your tribe!” The sound stood the hair up on the back of my neck. I’ll never forget it.

The women we served stole my heart. They would have stolen yours, too. You would so love these sisters. And the best news of all is that, out of the bounty of Christ’s grace, we had many more sisters in Jesus when we left than when we arrived. One of the churches offered to have outdoor baptism for anyone who desired and even had changes of clothes and towels (well, and pastors!) ready and waiting right after the conference. It was one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever beheld in my life.

You helped make it possible. Keep that in mind as you take a few minutes and watch the recap.

I love you so dearly. You women are my entire ministry life. I want so much to serve you well. Please pray that I will. Please pray that I’ll please Christ and continue to grow in Him and love Him more than anything I can see or touch in this temporal realm. May He continue to capture all of our hearts.

Beth

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God’s Audacious Kindness: Let’s Give Away 40 More

 

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***CONGRATULATIONS WINNERS***

Comment #543– Nanette Price

Comment #190­– Caity

Comment #292– Lacey

Comment #426– Paula Rockwood

Comment #299– Sandy

Comment #236– Nita McAdoo

Comment #158– Anna Deaton

Comment #151– Karen

Comment #326– Dodi Timbrook

Comment #320– Vicki Clement

Comment #161– Susan Beckman

Comment #300– Debbie M

Comment #329– Louise

Comment #121– Jenn Nahrstadt

Comment #347– Pamela

Comment #512– Karen Burton

Comment #253– Hernsa

Comment #367– Stephanie

Comment #227– Donna Shrader

Comment #6– Sarah Stevenson

Comment #52– Geri Fitzgerald

Comment #240– Heather M

Comment #136– Leslie Jordan

Comment #323– Candace Ottoson

Comment #508– Sharee

Comment #346– Laura Zielke

Comment #421– Carol

Comment #435– Kelli S

Comment #413– Debra

Comment #427– Susie Ashworth

Comment #463– Karen Pope

Comment #141– Olivia

Comment #280– Kelly

Comment #216– Lisa Suit

Comment #278– Janet

Comment #108– Rebecca M

Comment #196­– Kym

Comment #572– TPM

Comment #109– Lauren

Comment #68– Pamie Peterson

Hey, you guys! My good friend Jennifer Lyell (trade book publisher at B&H Publishing) got word to me yesterday that Audacious had just received this award. A lump instantly jumped in my throat. I want so much for Jesus to get glory from it and to woo some hearts searching far and wide for a love that lives up to its press. I’ve never once written a book that meant little to me but a few of them were born out of such peril or passion, they are particularly dear to me. This is one of them.

If I just got one shot at saying what I think makes life here on this rocky planet worth all the heartache and worth pushing past the fear, the message tucked in this short book is what I’d want to say. We’ve given away more copies of this book than any we’ve ever placed on a shelf at Living Proof because it’s just straight to the point.

Jesus.

He is everything. Worth everything. To be swept up in the bold love of Jesus is life as we were born to live it.

So, it just seemed fitting to us to celebrate this grace by giving away 40 more copies: 20 hard copies and 20 audios. If you haven’t read Audacious but would like to, please by all means leave a comment to this post as your entry in the drawing. If you’ve read it but know someone who hasn’t and you think it’s worth recommending, tell her to hop on here and enter the drawing. You can’t beat free!

We’ll do a really fast turnaround because it’s just more fun that way. We’ll only leave the post open for comments until 3:00 CST today (Tuesday) then we’ll close it, do the random drawing and post the winners by 5:00 CST.

We love you guys and have a blast serving you!

Beth

 

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Timehop: Treasure in an Old Desk Drawer

Hey, you guys! My daughter Amanda shot a text to me this morning with this blog in her Timehop and we both smiled as we reread it, remembering when. Maybe somebody could use the encouragement five years later. So much love to all of you!


June 21st, 2011

Last week I was looking through the drawers of an old desk in our den that has become a catch-all of sorts through the years. Maybe you have one of those, too. It’s where you stick everything you really want to keep but have no time to file. I was searching for a picture of our house the year we bought it so that I could work it into a decoupage of our many years here. Ultimately, I found the picture elsewhere but I stumbled on a treasure while rummaging around in that drawer that sent me into a tailspin of memories.

First, the back-story because I bet some of you can relate.

I well remember being in the throes of family life and wondering from season to season whether or not we’d even make it. Or, if we made it, would we be glad we did?? Life is hard as it is. It’s even harder when two people have as many problems as we did. Both Keith and I brought heaps of issues into our marriage. Some we fell victim to. Some we inherited. Some we created. Some we earned through our own sinfulness and stubbornness. Some we passed right on to our beloved children, God forgive us. Like many of you, the odds were stacked against us and I knew – I’m saying I absolutely KNEW – that Jesus was the only way we were going to make it. Furthermore, He was not likely to do it without us.

The quandary was how we were going to head a certain direction if my man didn’t necessarily want to take the lead. What happens, sisters, when you (who are moms) feel strongly that your children need to be led a certain strong (Biblical) direction but you do not want to usurp your husband? And he’s not feeling so led? Even as I pose that question, I know full well that our simple blog format is not big enough to come up with crystal-clear, no-fail answers to those loaded questions. Yet, it’s part of our family story and a part my man does not mind me sharing. He’s never been much for bull. Or pretense, if you like that word better. Keith walked the aisle as a public profession of faith and was baptized right before we got engaged and, as clearly as I knew, that’s all that mattered. That might explain the timing. Grin. It was real. But it was also a prerequisite.

My man is a believer in Jesus Christ. He bears fruit of the Holy Spirit’s activity. He has often prayed over me and over our family with a power that left me bug-eyed and bereft of natural explanation. But he has still been very much his own man with his own idea of how he wanted to practice his faith. He was a maverick. He’s still a maverick. The harder you push him, the slower he goes. He sets his own pace or he walks alone. He is also God’s chosen man for me…and my chosen man before God. I cannot imagine my life without the likes of Ivan Keith Moore.

Rewind 15 or so years to those days when we had young adolescents under our roof who not only needed human direction (which both parents gave), they needed divine intervention. So did their parents, and in the worst way.

I did lots of reading in those days just like I do now. I’d read about how many godly homes practiced what they called a “family altar time.” They prayed together on a regular basis and maybe the parents even led in a family devotion. We didn’t do anything like that except when we were in a full-on crisis. (I am so thankful that we did it then, needless to say. I don’t want to be harder on us than our history really calls for.) We did a little more moderate version of “the family that prays together stays together.” Keith and I prayed at mealtime with our kids and, then, on numerous other occasions when something called for an extra measure of attention. I guess one of the most spiritual things we did along the way was simply ask for forgiveness when we were idiots to them or in front of them.

I’d long-since been practicing a morning quiet time and certainly prayed for my family members then but I knew that the greater victory in our family was somehow going to involve all of us…some how, on some level. I’d learned through the years that guilt-tripping your husband into spiritual leadership wasn’t going to bear much fruit or last over the long haul. And let me just go ahead and say the embarrassingly obvious. Would the man ever have done it consistently like I thought it should be done???? Could he have lived up to whatever expectation I had? I assure you, this man got more than he bargained for when he married. He had not signed up for all of this.

So, what was a woman to do?

I was stuck on the whole family altar thing. I’d convinced myself that it was the key. (I’m not saying it was. I’m just saying that I believed to the bone that it was.) “Family altar” was the buzz phrase of all the families that seemed to be doing it right. (It’s interesting how spiritual terms have fads, isn’t it?)  So I figured out how we could have an adaptable experience without Keith being forced to take charge of it or me taking authority over him in the eyes of my children (or, as importantly, in his own eyes).

I got an idea.

I set up a little altar area on the hearth in our den. It had a journal for recording any prayer requests that members of our family wanted to share. It was solid gold to me. Sometimes they’d write “unspoken” and you know what that does to a nosy mother. What they didn’t realize is that, most of the time, Mom had already figured out that “unspoken” request. I also set out an age-appropriate devotional book on the hearth.Here is a picture of our makeshift “family altar.” The only reason I have this picture is because our dogs loved to lay on the cushion that I’d set out. We used to say they were having their quiet times.

I also got up earlier than the rest of the household in the morning and chose a verse for that day for our family. Most often I’d select it from my own time with God but sometimes circumstances dictated the choice. I’d write the Scripture with a Sharpie on an index card then lay it out on the altar. Everybody in our family was invited to kneel at that altar one at a time when they first got up in the morning. (Well, OK, only Keith was really “invited.” The girls were strongly urged. As their mother, I could full well take that authority over them.) After they read the verse, they were asked to sign the index card.

So, this is what I found the other day in that old desk drawer: Scripture card after Scripture card after Scripture card after Scripture card.

Some of them were signed by all four of us:

It was okay to be a little silly and even throw in an occasional nickname. Keith alone knows why he tagged Amanda as “Rooter” when she was a little kid. Most of our nicknames have morphed into much weirder tags in recent years.

A number of times Keith opted out and that had to be fine, too.We weren’t his boss.

On occasion, it would just be two of us:

Or another two of us:

Sometimes I’d add a little extra encouragement because it would break my heart wide-open with love to see those young teenage girls taking their turns at that altar in their jammies.

One girl obviously didn’t get to see that encouragement that morning.Laughing. I love them both so much.

It was a very imperfect shot at the whole thing. In fact, I can’t convey strongly enough that I hope you’ll receive this only as a simple short story in the lives of God and a family of four Moores. It’s not meant to be an example of a discipline you should take up. It was too messy to turn into a science. It’s just what worked for a season for us. We still made it on the grace of God alone.

I glance back over my shoulder at those turbulent years and recall a home bulging with hormones and woes, fears and foes, maybe too many yeses and not enough nos. Like every woman, I wish I could cut and paste our family story into all that sparkles and nothing that stinks. Like most women, there are a few things I wish I could blot out. Maybe more than most women, I have some sizable regrets. But, that day last week when I went looking for a photograph in that old desk drawer, I found a whole handful of our family life, held it close to my heart, and remembered.

Deuteronomy 4:23 “Be careful not to forget…”

1 Chronicles 16:12 “Remember the wonders He has done…”

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