I believe in romance.

I believe in the love between a man and a woman.

I believe that love can be sustained for a lifetime.

I believe in falling back in love over and over.

I believe in making up.

I believe that good marriages are wed of soft hearts and hard heads: a tenderness to love and be loved and a tenacity too bone-headed to quit.

I believe that laughter lasts longer than sex.

I believe that many people marry people they do not love.

I believe that desperation gets confused with affection.

I believe that many couples divorce that could have made it.

I believe that God can resurrect hearts that are stone-cold dead and create love between a couple ex nihilo.

I believe that couples can put in their fifty years like a prison sentence with souls that have been divorced for decades. And that Jesus sees right through it.

I believe some fights are worth having.

I believe that laziness is the leading narcotic of romance.

I believe that neglect is a form of infidelity.

I believe in the power of repentance to jump start a dead heart.

I believe the most important synonym of the word love in a marriage is forgiveness. I believe in working it through, crying it through, even fighting it through, then I believe in putting it behind you. For keeps. Love resists the inundating urge to bring back up the old with every new offense.

I believe that getting godly counseling is an act of courage.

I believe in the immeasurable power of mutual respect.

I believe that cynicism about romance is as unhealthy as believing in fairy tales.

But I do not believe in teaching our little girls that their worth will be measured by the love of a man. Unless that man is Jesus.

I do not believe in staying silent in a culture that says girls are as valuable as they are desirable.

I do not believe it is helpful that our constant go-to compliment to a little girl is how pretty she is.

She is also smart. And strong. And thoughtful. And artistic. And creative. And well able.

I do not believe in perpetuating the myth of happily-ever-after in marriage. I believe in teaching our adolescents that we can have love-ever-after, devotion-ever-after, hope-ever-after, and faith-ever-after but only if we don’t faint-ever-after. We prepare soldiers for real war but leave young couples ill-prepared for real marriage. I don’t believe that realism has to remotely equal pessimism.

I do not believe in teaching our girls that men are gods or devils.

I do not believe in marrying a man who won’t date you.

I don’t believe in making love to a man who won’t kiss you.

For what any of this is worth.

One last thing in case you’re still reading.

I believe that great marriages are great but that a good marriage can also be good. Amid the blur of magazine headlines and blog articles about how to have a great romance, a great marriage, great sex, great kids, great families, great jobs, great relationships, and fabulously great futures with great impact, save a little room in your heart to believe that good can also be good.

Because life’s just not always great.

But, man, it can be good.

Dear Dr. Rainer, Trustees, Employees, and retired LifeWay President, Dr. Jimmy Draper,

Today I will board a plane, God willing, with my dearest loves – my husband of 36 years, our two adult daughters, our son-in-law, and our two grandchildren – to head to Nashville to commemorate and celebrate God’s inconceivable kindness to us in 20 years of Bible studies with you. I will have the chance to express some of my heart to you face-to-face while I am there but I’m unsure of being able to convey all I’d like to say without crying. And what if it spun into serious tears which, while sweet and sentimental, can prove to be embarrassing and awkward in a public address? And what if, on the way home, I had to get furious with myself for not being able to say what I’d flown to Nashville to say? Thus, with your patience, this letter.

Exactly 20 years ago, my husband, Keith, made a few phone calls behind my back to find out when the very first Bible study – A Woman’s Heart: God’s Dwelling Place – would be placed on a shelf at one of your stores in Houston. I was too green a new author to even ask you guys about a release date. I had no idea how the whole thing worked or, for crying out loud, if it would work at all. Keith, however, has never been one for holding back questions. He took me out to dinner without saying a single word about the Bible study then told me that he needed to run an errand on the way home. He pulled up in front of the store, opened my car door, took me by the hand, and walked me into the store. He marched me down an aisle like he knew just where he was going then stood me right in front of the ugliest cover I would ever love.

And we both cried.

As you who were around at that time know, there were never any promises from your side or expectations from ours about a second Bible study or, with the second, a third.

What began as a publishing relationship turned headlong and heart-long into a ministry partnership.

We who have worked together on the curriculum team have marveled over and over again that God would risk anything at all on such a flawed concoction of people. Early on we came to the conclusion that God either has a lot of grace or very poor taste.

His grace was not in vain. I want to boast in Christ for the caliber of people that I’ve had the privilege to labor alongside at LifeWay for 20 years. From Day 1 to this day, every single man and woman I’ve gotten to know (young, old, or middle aged, from customer care to graphic design to editorial to management and so on) has had a heart to love and serve Jesus Christ and an authentic desire to see people come to faith and be discipled in God’s Word.

Every person. Without exception. I mention it because I just don’t think that’s normal. I think that’s the Holy Spirit.

Every single time I had a conference call to run a concept for a new study past the discipleship team, it wrapped up in earnest prayer, placing it before God, asking Him to do with it what He would. Never did you enter into it lightly. Never did you pressure me to write on a particular concept. You always gave me the room to seek God for what He’d stir in my heart in the pages of Scripture for the next Bible study.

20 years is more than enough time to get cynical, to lose respect, and to shift into automatic and just shell out material that doesn’t have an ounce of the Holy Spirit on it.

Because of the unfathomable grace and sustaining power of God through our Lord Jesus Christ, I will board that plane today free of cynicism and full of respect for you. I don’t have a sick feeling in my stomach like I sold my soul to the devil or have been a part of playing people or putting on a big act.

I have had the privilege to do the one thing on earth I feel most called to do.

And I’ve had the privilege to do that one thing with you.

Thank you.

That’s what I’m writing this open letter to say.

Thank you so much for your patience with me through 20 years of growing and changing and going through all sorts of highs and lows and crises and losses and some excruciating learning experiences. Thank you for dealing with the drama. Thank you for standing with me, believing God with me, dreaming with me, serving with me, and for fighting for me. 20 years is time enough to see someone at her best and her worst. We are long past the point where we don’t really know each other. And here we are. Still together. We didn’t have to always see everything the same way for me to be so deeply thankful we’d seen it together. I would not trade a minute of it.

A dyed in the wool sanguine, God used another little element to make this thing work for 20 years. I have laughed my head off with some of you. You’ve got some men and women on your payroll that are among my favorite people on the planet. I have been to the other side of the world and back numerous times with a merry band of your employees, made enough memories for 10 lifetimes, and laughed till I cried. I have eaten pizza on the Mount of Olives with them and walked with them through a foot of sheep manure in fields outside of Bethlehem. The privilege of working with people that you just flat-out like is no small  thing and it is not wasted on me.

I could write for hours and still not convey all that is stirring in my heart toward you but just this one time, I’m going to accept what my editor has tried to tell me for years: Beth, less is more.

So I will end with this and then bid us onward to the future:

Today I set this stack before our glorious and faithful God in His honor alone as a stone of remembrance. As an occasion to look back over our collective shoulders, reflect and say our God has been so gracious to us. For He alone can establish the work of human hands. May this makeshift stone of remembrance made of pages and ink serve as living proof to somebody reading today that, if He could be willing to use someone like me, He is willing to use absolutely anyone.

With so much love for all of you at LifeWay, for those recently retired, and for an unstoppable visionary in a wheelchair who now stands strong and complete in the presence of Jesus,

Beth

In 2002 with Lee and Myrna Sizemore

Jesus, You and I alone know the miracle You have accomplished. We alone know the depths from which You pulled me. Your boundless grace saved me, not just from the enemy, but from myself. The patience with which You have taught me, disciplined me, helped me, refocused me, restored me, redirected me and constantly revived me is astonishing. You just don’t give up on Your own, do You? You, Jesus, are my Prince. You are the single greatest joy of my life. Thank You for the cross.

I had an altogether different agenda for work this afternoon with no plans to blog but the Holy Spirit is stirring something in me with such force that I don’t want to resist it.

The word setting fire to my heart this moment is Colossians 4:2 –

Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving.

Nothing is going to sound new or fresh in what I’m about to say because we’ve all heard it over and over again but sometimes it’s a timing thing. In other words, we’ve heard something a million times but all the sudden, with explanations known to God alone, the thing clicks and the breakthrough comes.

Here goes:

WE’VE GOT TO PRAY.

WE’VE GOT TO BECOME PEOPLE OF PRAYER.

WE’VE GOT TO PRESS IN MUCH FURTHER AND BELIEVE GOD TO BE MUCH BIGGER.

WE’VE GOT TO CEASE LETTING PRAYER BE OUR WEAKEST SPIRITUAL DISCIPLINE.

WE’VE GOT TO STEP IT UP AND WIELD THE SWORD OF THE SPIRIT IN RELENTLESS INTERCESSION.

WE’VE GOT TO GO FURTHER THAN WE’VE GONE BEFORE IN PRAYER. PRESS HARDER. THINK HIGHER. DIG OUR KNEES IN DEEPER.

WE WILL NOT LIVE BOLDER THAN WE PRAY.

THERE ARE PARTS OF OUR CALLINGS, WORKS OF THE HOLY SPIRIT, AND DEFEATS OF THE DARKNESS THAT WILL COME NO OTHER WAY THAN FURIOUS, FERVENT, FAITH-FILLED, UNCEASING PRAYER.

It’s time we quit falling asleep in prayer. It’s time we quit practicing a prayer routine that bores us to tears. It’s time our quiet times ceased to be quiet. There are battles to be won. Works to be done. The kinds which only come through prayer, prayer, and more prayer.

It’s time we quit depending on someone else to do it for us.

It’s time for each of us to see in the mirror one of the most powerful people of prayer we may ever meet.

It’s time we prayed like we believed the risen Lord Jesus Christ, the King of Glory, was right in our very presence. Because He is.

This is what Colossians 4:2 says:

Continue steadfastly in prayer.

Don’t give up several days in. Don’t get all whiny. Don’t get all offended because God doesn’t appear to answer right away. Persevere. Keep praying. Keep believing. There are muscles God means to strengthen. It’s about the means as much as the end. Did God clearly promise in His Word what you are asking for? Then do not shrink back. Or is there a precedent in Scripture for what you’re asking in prayer? Then keep telling Him what it is, asking Him if He’d be glorified in granting your request and, if not, to remove or quiet your desire.

Persist. That’s what Luke 11:5-10 and 18:1-8 are all about.

We are warriors. Victors. More than overcomers. Bloody and bruised, we still get back up. Lip busted, we open back up our mouths – this time the louder – and call upon the Lord who is worthy to be praised and so shall we be saved from our enemies. (Psalm 18:3)

Being watchful in it with thanksgiving.

This is key. We’ve got to keep our eyes wide open. We can close our eyes during prayer if we need to but then, for crying out loud, let’s get those things open and let God see the whites of our eyes, ready and watchful. Let’s expect something, for Heaven’s sake. Jesus promised us in John 5:17 that God is always at work. When we get a glimpse of His activity or the slightest hint of answered prayer, let’s thank Him for it right then and there. For instance, have you been praying for someone dear to you to be set free from an area of tremendous bondage? While you wait for the huge breakthrough, can you see any glimpses that God is at work? Then thank Him for it. Applaud Him. Like Elijah who knew it was going to rain the moment he saw a cloud the size of a man’s fist, believe with all your heart that He who began a good work WILL be faithful to complete it.

We can be so preoccupied looking to the horizon for the huge thing that we miss the glorious mosaic of a hundred scattered pieces of answered prayer right at our feet. God is rarely up to only one thing. Our nature is to look for the big finish. His is to call us into constant and daily communion, working through every circumstance, tweaking and turning and tying and telling. He’s teaching our tongues the art of tasting in a world trained to binge.

We’re looking for the string of pearls. He’s planting one pearl here. Another pearl there. The full stretch of our lifetime is the string. We won’t see how those jewels all came together on the one strand until we study them under the light of His glorious presence. In the meantime, let’s ask God to make us alert and give us eyes to see where He’s working on the way to the divine achievement we’re longing for. And let’s respond with hearts full of gratitude and mouths full of praise.

Continue steadfastly in prayer, being watchful in it with thanksgiving.

The Apostle Paul’s next words represent a concept that is crucial to the well-being of our souls. Colossians 4:3 –

At the same time, pray also for us…

At the same time we are praying and watching and waiting, we will be vastly helped and blessed and connected by praying fervently for other people. Intercession for others becomes a guard against the narcissism of this present culture seeping right through the screen door of our prayer closets. A stunning number of Christians don’t believe in praying for themselves at all. Others have global vision the length of their noses and don’t believe in praying for anyone besides themselves. The counsel of the Scriptures is to pray for others and to pray for ourselves.

But, for the love of God, PRAY.

There is no other way.

We’ve got to wake up and pray.

In Jesus’ Name.

Like those who believe He hears.

Satan wants you to quit praying. He wants you to believe God isn’t paying one whit of attention to you. That He’s moved on without you. That you don’t matter. There’s only one thing to do with that. Pray twice as much. With twice the faith. And a thousand times the thanks.

Get up and pray.

We’ve got one shot at this earthly life. Good Lord, let’s make it count.

Hey, Girls! Just a little something fun to get you flipping through your Bibles if you like this kind of thing! You can also check different Bible-search websites like Bible Gateway to do key word searches. Below you will find 10 questions. Answer each question in your own words AND, below it, write out the entire Bible verse where you found the answer. Needless to say, don’t read any of the comments before you search for your answers! Tickled. It would be a little unseemly to cheat at our Bible study game. Have fun!!!!

1. What king in the Old Testament saw the fingers of a human hand suddenly appear and inscribe to him a message on the wall? What were the four words written on the wall?

2. Who were Uz and Buz?

3. Who in Scripture uses the metaphor of daughters compared to pillars in a palace? What metaphor is used for sons?

4. What did Zechariah, the husband of Elizabeth, write on a tablet and what happened after he wrote it?

5. What verse talks about God’s “everlasting arms” and what is He called in the verse?

6. What extraordinary thing happened on the island of Malta in the New Testament?

7. In the same set of Scriptures you used for #6, what two erroneous assumptions did the islanders make about the Apostle Paul? (Hint: you’ll see that they changed their minds about their first conclusion.)

8. What Old Testament prophet was picked up by a lock of his hair and where was he suspended?

9. What was the context surrounding the man who testified to Jesus that he saw people who looked like trees walking around?

10. What interesting piece of relational information is tucked into a new Testament verse about the mother of a believer named Rufus?

Thanks for playing! I love stuff like this. But, of course, I realize not everybody does. I love you whether you do or not. Talk to you soon! It’s almost time for SSMT Verse 3!