I penned the creative writing below a number of years ago as I reflected on my own miserable season of sifting by Satan. I was wrecked almost beyond repair by what I’d experienced because I’d never been taught that a believer could love Jesus deeply with a pure heart and serve Him with sincere devotion and yet be flabbergastingly seduced by the enemy. 2 Corinthians 11:3 had said it all along but I’d missed it.

But I am afraid that just as Eve was deceived by the serpent’s cunning, your minds may somehow be led astray from your sincere and pure devotion to Christ.

I loved Jesus. I wasn’t looking for trouble. But make no mistake. Trouble was looking for me. By God’s grace, I’ve been called to teach. After what I experienced, I made it my goal to teach anybody who would listen what can happen, how to avoid it and how to find the way back if you didn’t. I love the Body of Christ. I want us to make it. I don’t want what caught me off guard many years ago to catch you off guard. Redemption for me is warning you so you can learn in the Bible classroom what I was forced to learn on the most despairing field trip of my life. I want us all to know what can transpire if we’re not alert, fortified and accountable and how critical it is to be on vigilant guard over our souls. I want my brothers and sisters warned about what can happen if we self-treat our woundedness, brokenness and stress and the unmet needs and wants of our bodies and souls in the dark instead of letting Jesus treat them in the light. I also long for people to know that we can never fall so far into a black hole that Jesus can’t pull us out. We can never be so addicted that Jesus can’t deliver us and set us free. We can never be so messed up and used up that God can never use us again. We can never go so far from all that is holy and right and true that the Father would no longer welcome us home with a fresh clean robe and kisses.

Fortification starts with knowing we can all be had.

____________

“My name is Had. You may know me, but you may not know my new name.  You may have no idea what I’ve been through because I do my best to look the same. Oh, I’m scared to death of you. I used to be just like you. I once held my head up high without propping it on my Bible.

I was well respected back then. I even respected myself. I was wholeheartedly devoted to God, and if the truth be known, somewhere deep inside I was sometimes the slightest bit proud of my devotion. Then I’d repent because I knew that I was wrong, and I didn’t want to be wrong. Not ever.

People looked up to me. And life looked good from up there. I felt good about who I was. That was before I was Had. Strangely, I no longer remember my old name. I just remember I liked it. I liked who I was. I wish I could go back. I wish I’d just wake up. But I fear I’m wide awake. I’ve had a nightmare. And the nightmare was me. Had.

If I could really talk to you, if you could really listen, I’d tell you I have no idea how all this happened. Honestly, I was just like you. I didn’t plan to be Had. I didn’t want to be Had. One day I hadn’t, then the next day I had.

Oh, I know now where I went wrong. I rewound that nightmare a thousand times, stopping it right at the point where I departed the trail of good sense. The way ahead didn’t look wrong. It just looked different. Strange, he didn’t look like the devil in that original scene. But every time I replayed it, he dropped another piece of his masquerade. When he finally took off his mask, he was laughing at me. Nothing seems funny anymore. I’ll never laugh again as long as he’s laughing.

If only I could go back. I would see it this time! I’d walk around the trap camouflaged by the brush, and I would not be Had. I would be Proud. Was that my old name? Proud? I can’t even remember who I was anymore. I thought I was Good. Not Proud. But I don’t know anymore.

Would you believe I never heard the trap shut? Too many voices were shouting in my head. I just knew I had got stuck somewhere unfamiliar, and soon I didn’t like the scenery anymore. I wanted to go home. My ankle didn’t even hurt at first. Not until the infection set in. Then I thought I would die.

I lay like a whimpering doe while the wolf howled in the darkness. I got scared. I pulled the brush over me and hid. Then I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I had to get out of there or I was sure it would kill me. I didn’t belong there. I refused to die there.

I pulled and pulled at that trap, but the foothold wouldn’t budge. The blood gushed. I had no way out. I screamed for God. I told Him where I was and the shape I was in. And He came for me.

The infection is gone. He put something on it and cleaned it up instantly. As He inspected my shattered ankle, I kept waiting for Him to say, ‘You deserved this, you know. You’ve been Had.’ Because I did and I know and I have. He hasn’t said it yet. I don’t know whether He will or not. I don’t know how much to trust Him yet. I’ve never known Him from this side. My leg still hurts. God says it will heal with time. But I fear that I will always walk with a limp.

You see, I wrestled with the devil, and he gave me a new name. My name is Had.”

–”Had” by Beth Moore from the book When Godly People do Ungodly Things

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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Congrautaltions!! Watch for an email from Lproof.org to arrange shipment of your gift!

_____________________________________________

Hey blog friends!

Do you ever have one of those days so full of celebration that the joy doubles to an overflow?  I like to call this a swirl day, because it is fast with a lot of movement, a lot of fellowship, a lot of laughs, a lot of love, it is full – complete joy.

I am pretty sure LPM is set to have this kind of day today and we would love for you to join in!

Happy Happy Birthday Beth Moore! 

We are so glad you were born!

I seldom call her Beth, usually I call her Gp, sometimes sister, and occasionally Beth-le’-ham.  smile.   One of Gp’s favorite birthday gifts is giving gifts.   So, the LPM team would like to invite you to join some of the celebration swirl today.  Your comment on this post enters you in the drawing for these gifts.

Anywhere you have an Internet connection, visit mywsb.com, and you can access Bibles, commentaries, study Bibles, reference works, and more online. Once you’ve added a book to your library, not only is it available on myWSB.com, but it will sync to the WORDsearch® mobile apps. Save your work in either of these places, and you’ll be able to access it no matter what device you happen to be using.

We will receive comments until Friday morning at 10am CST.  Once the names have been randomly drawn,  the post will be updated with the winners’ names.  If you are a winner, watch for an email from Living Proof to arrange shipping (or emailing) of your prize!

Wherever you are today, whatever your plans are for this day, we pray for His joy to fill you, to strengthen you, and to delight you in His unending love for you!

with love,

sabrina and the LPM Team

Hi, everyone! Sabrina Moore here! All of us on staff at Living Proof are tremendously familiar with our blog community but you may not be familiar with those of us who work behind the scenes. I’m the LPM ministry director and have served with Beth for many wild years. (Same last name but no blood relationship except in Jesus.) I’m so happy to share something with you that we think is pretty delightful.

The great folks at Tyndale Publishing developed a fun webpage we can’t wait for you to see!  

Why is this web page fun???

Well, for starters the web page introduces Beth’s debut novel. Wait for it……….

The Undoing of Saint Silvanus, releasing September 20, 2016

That sounds fun to me!  Beth is one of my favorite story tellers. She peppers her Bible teaching with living-color stories and you would not believe some our lunchtime stories.  Girlfriend is live!  So, a fiction novel from Beth?  I can hardly wait.

Now,  just in case there is the slightest chance you are anything like me and maybe thinking, “September? Really? I am so going to forget in 4 months. I’ve already forgotten my items for next week!”  No worries – we will remind you.  However, Tyndale has a few other items on their webpage to help occupy the time until it releases.  Hop on www.BethMooreNovel.com and these are some things you can do: www.BethMooreNovel.com and these are some things you can do:

• Read the free chapter sampler!
• Register for the free webcast, Beth’s Big Book Club – LIVE from the Big Easy | January 20, 2017 (registrants qualify for monthly prize drawings). This free webcast is going to be a blast! Beth’s going to do Q&A and share the backstory and lots of fun things about the novel that aren’t in the book.
• Pre-order your book  (super easy – there is a list of select retailers for your convenience).
• Email your proof of purchase to Tyndale at: [email protected] and receive 4 free downloadable prints.

September 20th will be here before you know it!

Oops, I got so jazzed I almost forgot (smile), here is a message for you from Beth!

Spectacular joys come to older ones in the faith as we get to witness the next generation coming of age. By coming of age I don’t mean numerically. There will always be individuals in Christ who hardly grow beyond their salvation and will wonder to the grave why God never came through with that meaningful life they thought they were supposed to receive. But the distractions of the world are enormous, demanding and titillating and, well, the phone and all. That we can be in Christ and immersed in a community of faith but never fulfill our calling is clear from places in Scripture like Colossians 4:17 where Paul told the brothers at Colossae,

And say to Archippus, “See that you fulfill the ministry that you have received in the Lord.”

No need to exhort somebody to fulfill a ministry if it’s not possible to leave it unfulfilled.

There will always be those who are enormously gifted and hold tremendous potential to impact community and globe for the kingdom of God but, like the unfaithful steward in Matthew 25, will bury what they’ve been given until Jesus returns at which point they’ll hand it back to Him looking pretty much like it did when they got it. They lost interest. But they are not my concern today as I write this article. These words are to those of you who are doing what it takes. Who are in the thing up to your necks. You, who are coming of age in your calling, though God knows that, most of the time, if you’re like me, you’re not even sure how you got there. Oh, you could try to tell someone younger what steps you took. You could write a blog post about it. You could do a very effective Q&A on a panel about it. You could even write a book about it but you know dang well deep in your heart that you really had no earthly idea what you were doing. All you can say at the end of the day is that you kept doing something – the next thing – however awkwardly, and perhaps even embarrassingly as you look back on it, to somehow serve Jesus. And, lo and behold, something finally started working. Not all the time, of course, but often enough to realize you might be onto something. You might be onto your calling. This season of your calling. Your works are producing fruit. You have this sense that you are where you are supposed to be for now.

That’s what I mean by coming of age. Though it’s not about chronological age, it often corresponds enough for most of you to be in your thirties and forties.

Man, it’s a gorgeous thing for your older brothers and sisters to behold. To get to cheer you on cheers me in a way I find ridiculously exhilarating. Right here on the spot I could list one hundred different names off the top of my head of men and women doing the thing. Some of you I get the chance to watch close up. Hands on. You delight me to no end. First and foremost, my daughters. My son-in-law. My spiritual sons and daughters. Others from across the room at church and others by phone and face-to-face as often as possible, like my beloved Priscilla Shirer. Good Lord, how I love her. Others of you on social media, which I love, by the way, and on which I’ve made some connections that really do have an ounce of substance to them. Jefferson Bethke, for instance. So many like him. Men and women. These relationships mean something to me. Their names are in my prayer journal. About eight young women communicators and Bible teachers are on my mind almost every day and jotted down regularly in a square in my prayer journal.

And I get to see you prosper in the Holy Spirit. I get to see your life bear fruit. I get to celebrate what God is doing through you. And I get to squirm, rub my forehead and groan – often audibly – as I watch you awaken to the war. That is why I’m writing today.

You didn’t know it was going to be like this.

You had no idea what you’d stepped into.

You think you must have done something wrong to make it this hard. When you started out, it wasn’t like this.

You haven’t really told anyone. Or not very many. Mainly because you’re too embarrassed.

You have no idea that every other person worth his/her salt in the kingdom of the living Christ is either going to go through their own version of the same thing or they are enduring it that very minute.

And it is hellacious.

The enemy comes for you. Of course, some of you aren’t calling it spiritual warfare yet because that’s what the older generation called it and you want to be cooler than that. You had sort-of become convinced that the devil was not that real. Not that specific. Not that personal. Not that aware. And surely God would not allow him to mess with your kids.

And it’s not just the enemy. Your own vulnerabilities erupt into liabilities. Life’s taking a crowbar to every crack in your armor. You are tempted to things you swore you’d never do. That you judged ________________ for doing. Your past comes calling. If you’re married, your marriage, which you’d boasted about publicly, looks like it could go humiliatingly belly-up. Your kids are going nuts. Or maybe it’s you losing your mind. Half the time, you think you are going crazy. You’re getting criticized. You’re getting a lot of opposition. You daydream sometimes that you quit and moved to a remote island with your family, wore loin cloths and drank milk out of coconuts and swam with dolphins. You night-dream that you hung in there in your calling and it slaughtered you.

You have come of age.

What you’re going through is how it goes. I don’t know why on earth we older ones are not telling you more often and with more volume. Maybe it’s because we don’t want to discourage you but it’s so ridiculous because you’re already discouraged. Or maybe it’s that you won’t listen to us anyway.

But this is my shot at it today. You have come of age. You have come of notice to the devil. At the same time, your very faithful God who loves you has made a covenant through the cross of Christ not only to save you but to conform you to the image of His Son. His obligation out of His wonderful grace is to grow you up. And there is suffering in growing up. Among other things, you are forced to face the deceiver and pretender in your mirror.

I’m here to say to you today that it will not always be this hellacious. Oh, trust me. It will ALWAYS be hard. It will at times be horrific. But this season of eyeball-bulging nobody-ever-said-it would-be-like-this coming of age will not last forever. Mine lasted about seven years. Yours could last one. Or ten. That’s all up to God. Well, and you. Your cooperation is required.

It’s all about whether or not you’ll quit. Or whether or not you’ll get sloppy. Whether or not you’ll hang onto the first things that so drove you in the beginning. Jesus. The Scriptures. Holy passion. Holiness. And not just hang onto them but press further and further and further into them. Or will you slip into the black hole of busy-ness and business, of name-making, marketing, position, notoriety, self-importance, celebrity and Instacrap? Now that you are no longer naïve, what will you do with all of this? Will you fight for a pure heart that the world and your own flesh have so polluted that you think you no longer have what it takes or will you just go with it and figure this is how it happens?

And, in the words of Galatians 3:3, what you’d begun in the Spirit, you’ll just do from now on mostly in the flesh. You’ll  get prayer warriors to pray for you instead of also scrapping it out yourself on the floor, fighting with everything you’ve got in the heavenlies, hacking it through, bloody and bruised, defending the ground God entrusted to you.

You’re at the most critical place in your calling. The place of slaughter. The place where either the devil’s going to all but kill you, your flesh is going to destroy you or God is going to crucify with Christ that ego and fear and, truth-told, laziness and raise you MIGHTY.

Fight it out. Do not quit. If you’ve gotten sloppy, stop it. If you’re messing around in sin, repent. Go back to your face. Get that Bible open and plant your nose in it. Memorize Scripture. Learn how to fast and pray. Quit talking about Jesus more than you actually talk to Him. Quit letting your mouth overshoot your character. Become that person you’ve made fun of for taking it too seriously and being so dramatic about it.

You have what it takes. Do it. And I’m going to tell you something. What it will get you is Jesus. JESUS HIMSELF. Pre-eminent in all things. He is the joy. He is the prize in the fight. He is what makes getting hit by the debris in the hurricane worth it. Jesus Himself. He is everything.

I’m writing you today because I’m so proud of you. You’re out there doing the thing. And I don’t want you to quit.

Pay the price.

Good Monday morning, all of you! I had the privilege of serving my church yesterday on Mother’s Day and, after delivering the message, read this silly thing at the end on behalf of moms who resonated. This is not artwork here, folks. I jotted it down in a few minutes while getting my message ready. A mom who came to our church yesterday just asked me if I’d share it with her so I thought I might as well go ahead and share it with any of you who want it. By the way, we applied mothering pretty broadly yesterday in the message I gave. If you have travailed in some fairly serious pain and personal sacrifice to help bring forth some life in somebody, Girlfriend, you have mothered. Listen, if the Apostle Paul could see himself as having labored with the anguish of childbearing (Galatians 4:19) and say he and Timothy and Silvanus had cared for the Thessalonians with the gentleness of a nursing mother caring for her children (1 Thess 2:7), I think you are pretty safe to do the same, particularly if you have labored to see Christ made obvious in someone you care deeply about.

I love you guys. Be encouraged in Jesus today.

Okay. Here’s what I read at the end before prayer:

I once was young when so were you

A newborn then so quick turned two.

You toddled, cackled, climbed and cried

You threw some tantrums. So did I.

You went to school and I was glad.

By half past noon I’d gotten sad

You’d walk in the door, hey what’s to eat?

I fought your phone till time to sleep

You yelled hey mom! a trillion times

Till I would nearly lose my mind

I drove you fifty billion miles

You and every neighbor’s child.

Then one day you had outgrown me

Had your own car and your own key.

And off you went, you’re all grown up

Not my snuggly baby long enough

And now when I could take a nap

I want you back, right in my lap

Did you know I loved you so

Would have given you my life and soul?

Got it wrong too many times

But I was yours and you were mine

So proud of you, you’re doing well

Life here on earth is hard as…hades

Strollers, trikes and bikes, all past

The days went slow, the years went fast

With you all grown this might seem strange

But some things time just cannot change

When life seems mean, not worth the bother

I’ll feed you, hug you, fight for you.

I’m still your mother.