Not long ago I saw something on social media that had a particularly troubling effect on me as a fellow follower of Jesus. Of course, we see deeply disturbing things on social media everyday. Things that trouble us not only as Christians but, for crying out loud, as fellow humans. Things much more troubling than what I’m about to share with you today. I may comment on those things and cry out to God about those things but I’d less likely write a blog post about them. Other voices are more qualified. My concerns and the kinds of things I write about are more inclined toward matters involving the community of believers in Christ. I love the community of faith so much. Called to discipleship, it is the focus of my life passion and has been for thirty years. I only have one small desk from which to watch our world so I miss a lot but, among the things in my eyeshot, I see so much cause for praise. So much good. I see stirrings of revival. Outbreaks of evangelism. Demands for justice. I don’t know how anybody truly awake in the believing world could claim that nothing good is happening in Christianity.

But the reason I’m writing today is that I’m seeing a burgeoning trend out there that is toxic, dangerous, and slanderous. Nothing about it carries the scent of Christ.

It’s a witch hunt. Only, instead of witches, it’s heretics and false teachers.

I’ve been watching the witch hunt for several years and seen the usual targets and been one of the usual targets. The lists are growing by leaps and bounds and list-makers are proudly joining ranks. This is part of our brave, new world. And everybody’s game, especially anybody vaguely outspoken. An addition was made to the list here recently that was so absurd that it would have been laughable had it not said so much about where this whole trend is heading.

I’ll leave out the names of other targets and speak firsthand from my own experience. After all, the thing that troubled me on social media recently was personal. It was an attack not made behind my back. It was said where I would see it.

The tweet referred to me on my feed as “false teacher @BethMooreLPM.”

Nothing was new about seeing that. I also regularly get called a heretic.

As unpleasant and bewildering as it is, that’s not the part that particularly disturbed me. The part that got me is that it came from 22 year-old young woman.

Twenty-two.

Maybe she started young and really had done enough of the Bibles studies or read enough of the books to support a doctrinal evaluation like that.

What is more likely is that she believes it because it’s what she’s heard from someone she respects.

Or maybe she’s seen evidence with her own eyes through segments of video-teaching taken out of their original context and strung together in such a way to suggest a representation of an entire thrust of ministry.

I don’t know exactly how she came up so confidently with that label so early in her adult Christian life but somehow she did.

The tweet didn’t make me mad. It made me sad. I wanted to ground her and give her a homework assignment. Lest you go looking for her, I deleted the comment from my feed when I knew I was going to write this post. We’re not going to respond to unkindness with more unkindness. That’s not God’s way. Anyway, the odd thing of it is, I loved her immediately. My calling is discipleship and my focus is women. I want women plugged into churches. I want them continually sitting under pastors, shepherds, and teachers. I love to hear that women are studying in group environments but I also want them to study for themselves. Not just get spoon-fed what to think and not only about the Scriptures and the local church but also about the larger community of faith and those who serve within it. About the responsible use of voice. About what qualifies as a heretic. About mutual respect for their own brothers and sisters in Christ. About fair evaluations. Due diligence.

I’m still very much on my journey, too. Such a long shot from arriving. I’ve woefully regretted things I’ve said and some things I’ve taught. All of us are on a learning curve in this culture entrusted to our care. But, as we learn and as we operate in these public forums where everybody has a voice, come, let us reason together.

There is a mighty wide pond between “I line up with him/her” and “He/she is a false teacher.” Let’s think about wading through it. That’s all I’m saying.

In a massive cross section of Christian voices on social media, the bottom has dropped out of an entire line of reasoning and way of relating to one another.

We’ve jumped straight to terms like “false teachers” and “heretics” instead of expressions that very likely represent the differences more accurately. Such as…

I strongly disagree with _________________________ about _______________________________.

Or even,

I believe __________________________________ is unsound about ____________________________.

Disagreement is not a qualification for declaring someone a heretic. Even vehement disagreement.

As well, getting something wrong doesn’t automatically make a person a false teacher. If that were so, we’d all qualify at one time or another. There are vital elements that need to be considered, taught, and discussed among us in our Christian environments like what constitutes proper criteria for making claims of heresy and false teaching and what is orthodoxy? How do we wisely oppose and confront? How does Jesus say to handle it? What really are the deal-breakers?

Of course there are false teachers! Of course there are heretics! Of course they must be questioned! Of course, people should be warned! Of course teachers of the Scriptures must be held accountable for what they’re teaching!

My concern today is the disturbing trend of throwing dangerous labels around because of what we’ve heard and not what we’ve investigated fairly and properly. I realized several years ago that one of my most outspoken critics has never even cracked open one of the Bible studies. Not one. Doesn’t want to either. All there is to the entire ministry from his perspective is this: “she claims special revelation from God.” And, based on his summation, I equate these “special revelations” with the Word of God.

Are you kidding me? He can say that from a distance but I do not believe he can make that claim close up. If he can, I’m the one that needs grounding.

We are the Body of Christ. We are brothers and sisters. Even when we are utterly convinced the other person is wrong and we have doctrinal ducks in a row to prove it, we are never to treat one another “as an enemy, but warn him as a brother.” (2 Thessalonians 3:15) Yes, we must hold one another accountable and hold ourselves accountable. We question one another. We by all means keep discussing and debating and entering into healthy disagreements.

But we stop short of labeling one another things like false teacher and heretic until we’ve done our homework.

This isn’t a polished post. No time this particular day to make it so. But I offer it to you with one simple hope: that we’d be among those who take pause. Among those who consider ethics of speech to have an important place on our Christian platforms. Among those who think before we speak.

It’s hunting season out there. Let’s be careful how we hunt.

Addendum: 

Brothers and Sisters, I wrote this in a comment as I closed that portion of the post but it could easily get lost in well over 300 entries. I thought I would add it here as well:

Hey, Everybody. I so appreciate you stopping by. You guys have really kept me busy this weekend moderating all these comments and entering into discussions both here and elsewhere. I have a taping this coming weekend and need to prepare four different teaching sessions toward it. It will keep my hands full every single day. We also have our big Scripture memory post coming up later this week here on the blog so we will be very occupied with those things. For that reason, I am going to need to close the comments at this point on this post. I’m the only one moderating this post and I am out of time. My attentions must now turn to preparation for the taping.

I do want to tell you something though. This comment line has had value in my life and ministry. I want you to know that and I want to thank you. I am a thinker and you have caused me to think and to pray and to worship and to read and to reflect and to remember and to reconsider. Those are always good things. I love to learn and I promise you that as long as I live and breathe, I will seek to keep learning.

It is doubtful that I will ever satisfy my harshest critics but I want to be a loving fellow-follower of Christ. Just as they do not line up with me, there are distances that I cannot go with them. I believe God can be more willing to reveal Himself in our day than some of my brothers and sisters do. I believe the New Testament well supports such a stand. It is easier and more controllable and comfortable just to say that He does not and it cuts out so much of the risk but I don’t believe we can control the Holy Spirit like that without ultimately quenching Him.

We must test everything and hold fast to what is good. We all must stay in God’s Word, study it hard, pray, fast, memorize. The God-breathed Word recorded on the pages of Scripture is our Truth, our authority, our standard by which all else is measured. Nothing equates with the Scriptures: no word of knowledge, no prophetic message, no insight, no revelation, no dream, no vision. Nothing. That doesn’t mean they can’t be valid. The New Testament says they can. But they must never supplant or be placed on the same level with the Scriptures. The Word of God is how we test everything else. We also must keep subjecting ourselves to accountability and stay attached and approachable to a sound body of believers in a local church.

And as we do, may God pour His Holy Spirit upon us. Profusely. Extraordinarily. Miraculously. We need Him and want Him desperately. May He renew wonders in our day. May He anoint us powerfully and shield us protectively.

In John 5:39-42 Jesus confronted a group of leaders with words that have long since made the hair stand up on the back of my neck. He told them that they “diligently study the Scriptures” but went on to say, “you do not have the love of God in you.” It is possible to be a diligent, devoted student of the Word of God without having an ounce of His love in our hearts. Brothers and Sisters, let that be far from us. How we treat one another matters. Let’s not grow cold to one another even in our disagreements. Faith, hope, and love. These are the things that remain.

I am honored to serve you and it has been my honor to host you this weekend here at the blog. Stay the course, everybody. Don’t grow weary. Jesus is so worthy. And it won’t be long until we see that glorious face.

In the bonds of His love,
Beth

All of us at Living Proof Ministries joyfully wish you and yours a very Merry Christmas!
Praying His abundance all over your 2015!

Three years ago today, I came the closest I’ve ever come to having a full-throttle panic attack. Melissa was in the passenger seat of my car while I was at the wheel and she started frantically turning every air conditioner vent on the dash straight toward my face. “Breathe, Mom. It’s going to be fine!” I’d worked like a crazy woman for three days packing up our house for this move so it shouldn’t have caught me off guard but suddenly the reality of that huge moving van right in front of us with 27 years of our lives stuffed into it nearly did me in. I wanted to pull up beside it, roll down my window, and yell, “I changed my mind!”

I’d raised my babies in that house, stood at that mailbox and waited for the school bus with them, buried three beloved dogs in that backyard, danced with my man on that linoleum kitchen floor, fought with him in that den, fallen head over heels with the Scriptures in that tiny dining room, pulled trashcans forty million times to that curb, cried as many tears and thrown my head back with as many laughs…all in that one house. We’d bought it at a foreclosure price and still struggled to pay the mortgage but not one day did we take it for granted. Our very best friends helped us move into that house. Our oldest kids were 5 and our youngest 2. Our kids played together in that house too many times to count. We were inseparable in those days.

I loved it so much. I declared over and over that I’d never leave that house. But I did.

Three years ago today, we followed that moving van down a highway on the outskirts of Houston then down one bumpy dirt road then another that my man had cleared himself in order to move us in. He’d had to dig a water well, have telephone lines and electric lines put in, and bulldoze enough trees out of the way to tuck in two houses: his parents’ and ours. They’d lived in town beside us. We wouldn’t have moved without them. Most of my neighbors at my house of 27 years had lived there for decades, too. We loved those people and they loved us. Our preschoolers had played together then graduated from high school together. We could holler at one another across the fence. We had a new fence now and new neighbors who, as you can see, were set in their ways. They only had one word to say to us when we got here. “Mooooooooooooove.”

We also had snakes.

Several different kinds.

So this became our fashionable footwear.

Big Pops and Memmaw soon got a rooster and chickens. It took us a while to get used to them and them a while to get used to us. Big Pops and Memmaw enjoy the eggs but I just can’t eat them. Something about eating eggs from a chicken I know personally doesn’t sit well on my stomach.

We’ve had a few unexpected visitors drop in.  Some of them were particularly delightful.

It helped that our kids started liking it out here. The Jones live in the suburbs about 20 minutes from here and we knew they’d adapt well because their kids were at the perfect age for tadpoles and hoot owls but our city girl, Melissa, lives smack downtown in Houston, Texas almost an hour away. She was the least enthused about our move. Some might even say slightly pouty. One day a few months after we moved, she succumbed to a sudden bout of sentimentality and went back to our old neighborhood to go for a walk there like we’d done thousands of times. She’d even planned to shed a few tears. She called me on her cell phone when she got back in the car and said, “I don’t like it here anymore. Y’all aren’t here.” And that very moment, her heart shifted to the country. These days she makes the trek constantly. She’s fallen in love with these woods and these neighbors:

Living next door to Big Pops and Memmaw means that we have ample time with all four generations. When Jackson is grown, he probably won’t remember that we ever lived anywhere else. Not even that house where we raised his mommy.

Needless to say, I’ve spent a lot of time with Big Pops myself. Here on the gator. This is only one of three John Deeres on the property. Big Pops planted his behind on a tractor the second we moved in.

We’ve put a lot of miles on this thing in three years. Here with my two girls and our good friend, Crista.

The idea came to me for Bibby’s Secret Closet here at this new house. The kids never know what surprise Bibby’s gonna pull from it.

We often have our pastor and his wife over for dinner. We make it our goal to be their favorite church members.

It’s amazing how much he looks like my son-in-law.

Annabeth loves having her birthday here. She says she’s always going to have it here. We’ll see. But we’ll take it for now.

We have a tiny little sliver of water not far from us that you could call a creek if you were in a particularly generous mood. It’s got some sand by it that the kids really like. Be blessed that this is not a scratch and sniff picture because the creek doesn’t always smell all that good, especially if it hasn’t rained in a while. But if your nose is slightly stuffy, it can be pretty fun.

Don’t think there’s not plenty of excitement in the country. Keith was Superman to this baby hawk with a broken leg that we found on this branch down from our house one day. Flies were already all over it when Keith rescued it and took it in a box to the only vet clinic in Houston that takes this sort of patient. Keith kept tabs on him with the vet and, sure enough, he made it.

Several months later a hawk swooped down and ate one of Memmaw’s chickens. I couldn’t help but think, “Seriously?? After we saved one of your very brethren???” But not long after that, Queen Esther helped herself to a chicken and Geli (our birddog) followed suit and has thus far made a picnic lunch out of two. Well. Maybe three.

Geli begs to eat out. She likes her food to be organic. Here she had a bad hankering for a double-meat rabbit burger. Cut the bun.

We find all sorts of critters in our backyard. We host raccoons and rabbits constantly but we also have possums. I used to hate possums because of their pointy little teeth and the way they hiss but somehow, now that we live out here, I feel like I can’t hate them as much. I feel compelled to be a good possum steward. This was our favorite backyard drop-by of all. We got up one recent Sunday morning to this sight and nearly died.  Two more were just on the other side of the iron fence.

Three years is long enough to have lived through some losses. Remember those beloved dogs I told you we’d buried in the backyard of our house of 27 years? We’ve been forced to start a pet cemetery here in these woods now and we are not anxious to populate it. With many tears we recently laid the Jones’s faithful, dearly-loved golden retriever, Beckham, to rest.

He was, without a doubt, the happiest dog in the whole USA.

My man and I are coming up on 36 years of marriage in a few weeks. You can’t live together that long and not have a lot of ups and downs. Well, maybe some people can but they are not us. Not by a long shot. We’ve ridden a roller coaster together, my man and me. But we are so glad we stuck it out. We’ve had the happiest season of our lives out in these woods. We loved our home in town so much but, heck, sometimes you just need to move somewhere new. This was from Thanksgiving a few weeks ago. Keith put a fireplace on our back porch and, if it’s lit, our family doesn’t get three feet from it. South Texas has the kind of climate where you could spend the whole winter on your back porch as long as you had a little firewood.

Just last week our long-since adopted family member, Travis (Cottrell), was out in the country with us and he snapped this picture right before he left. He loves Keith Moore and Keith Moore loves him. I’m mad now that Trav wasn’t in the picture.

So, three years to the day later, we’re making it out in these modest woods. These acres would not be beautiful to everybody but they’re beautiful to us. Life has been brand new out here. I won’t kid you. It’s been an adjustment. A lot less eating out. A lot more cooking. A lot more driving to work. The cars stay filthy. The raccoons won’t stay out of the trash. Fed Ex never can find us. But we don’t mind. Because it was time to make a move. For us, it was out where the dawn breaks to the crow of a rooster.

My heart is filled with gratitude to God as I glance over my shoulder at the last several years. He knew this was just where we Moores needed to be. Out here in the sticks.

It turned out to be the season for moving in the tightest part of our social circle. Our very best friends of 34 years bought a new house, too. I don’t think they’d mind me showing you a picture. You know, they’re the ones I told you about earlier. We raised our kids together. They love their new house.

We love it, too.

CONGRATULATIONS WINNERS!
Watch for an email today from Living Proof so that we can arrange shipping of your gift! Happy Monday!

1.    #714-Nicole T
2.    #1042-Jennifer Winner
3.    #1326-Patty Dalton
4.    #873-Kathy Isaacson
5.    #1150-Jennifer Nelson
6.    #542-Emily Stokes
7.    #695-Dea Windsor
8.    #39-Vicky D
9.    #247-Janet from FL
10.    #17-Natashajk
11.    #646-Janet Worthy
12.    #1209-Patti Byrd
13.    #982-Tina Ritter
14.    #391-Tona Hawkins
15.    #340-Karina Allen

————————————–

Hi Everybody! Sabrina here! (waving)

Just in case you are wondering something like, “wow, I can’t remember ever hearing from Sabrina”, you are so very right!  I have never been on the blog before today.  So why now??? Well, I am pretty jazzed about something and want so much to share the excitement with you all.  LPM has a new resource that is on the printing press at this very moment.

With all glory to God, have a look at Breath.

Y’all, Breath has been new life to me. Here is the deal: a few co-workers and myself do several reviews for editing and design – so we watch it a lot (smile). Every edit review was a fresh breath from God. Actually, I would get so wrapped up in the teaching that I would forget I was editing (laughing).

This lecture study is on the Holy Spirit, “The Life of God In Us”.  The companion booklet includes Beth’s listening guides, along with 6 written lessons by Melissa Moore. These articles give deeper insight into Beth’s lectures with expanding applications but they also offer an opportunity to glean from the fresh research of an amazing young teacher. Beth’s six sessions were filmed live with our local Houston Bible study group.

Thank you for praising God with us about this series and believing God to meet each person who seeks Him through this teaching.

We expect shipment in about 1 week, however if you are too excited to wait until the DVD sets arrive, the digital downloads are available now.

SO, your comment to this post will be your entry to the drawing.  We are so excited to share five copies of each new resource item shown below, so there will be 15 winners!

“Portraits of Devotion”

This is a 366-day compilation devotional. For those of you familiar with the Personal Reflection Series (90-day devotional journal drawn from the lives of Jesus, David, John, and Paul), this unites them all into one beautiful book.

LPM’s DVD set “The Great Escape”

The Great Escape was recorded at a Living Proof Live event in Bossier City, LA.
You can preview The Great Escape here.

LPM’s DVD set “Breath”

You can preview Breath here.

Since it is the season of giving, if your name is selected in the random drawing and you prefer to ship your gift directly to someone on your gift list, please know it would be our joy.  This post will remain open until 4:30 CST on Friday, December 5th.  Winners’ names will be posted first thing Monday morning, the 8th. If your name is drawn, watch for an update to this post. We will also notify you by email to get the mailing information for yourself or your recipient.

Of course we are glad to help with any of your gift needs. You can browse in our online store here.  Please note LPM’s last day to ship is 12/17.

With much love and many Christmas blessings to you!

Sabrina

I’m thinking today about the capacity to remember. With divine deliberation and unclouded foresight, the Creator chose to fashion the mind of man with memory. To be able to recollect – to re-collect images, experiences, expressions, numbers, dates, conversations, consequences, and encounters – is the champion quality of the well-functioning mind.

Maybe being around my family so much in recent days has sparked this subject in my thoughts. I cannot laugh with my daughters across the table at a restaurant without remembering them as little girls. I cannot kiss my father-in-law on his silver brow without recalling him as a man bigger than life in his mid-forties the first time Keith introduced us at a professional hockey game.

Like many of you, I have at times completely abhorred the capacity to remember. I still have flashbacks of staggering and disturbing moments in my childhood. I remember a scene in my home in my young adolescence that still causes the hair to stand up on the back of my neck. A song from the 70’s can still stir up the ache of a break up with a first love. To me, perhaps the worst of all dimensions of memory is regret. Regret is the excruciating recollection of all the decisions I could have made a different way. It’s the acrid memory that no one else assigned me. It’s mine alone to own. That I find the hardest of all. I have hated the capacity to remember so much that, at times in my life, I’ve held my head with both hands and yelled, “Stop it!”

But today I’m thinking to myself that all the torturous memories I’ve stacked up like past-due library books on the bedside table of five decades are worth the capacity to recall moments that make life on this earth worth the trouble.

Like the first time a handsome, jet-black headed young man reached across the front seat of a sports car at a stoplight and held my hand. He held it again this morning.

Like the first time I got to be all alone with a child I’d carried for nine months and I unwrapped the swaddling, leaned over her and whispered with tears dripping from my chin, “Hi there. My name is Mom.”

Like the time I took the training wheels off the smallest-ever bike and gave my baby girl a push and watched her take off down the pavement, pedaling furiously and perfectly, with blond locks of hair dancing behind her like banners in the sun. I’ve been chasing after her ever since.

Like the first time that same child threw a three-pointer. And that time I did a double-take and realized she’d shaved her legs…about 2 years too early.

Like the look on her big sister’s face when we walked outside her favorite restaurant on her 16th birthday and a new car was in the circle driveway with a large bow on it. Thanks to her grandparents who’d owned it and saved it for her.

Like this morning when I played on the swing set out here in these Texas trees with an eight year-old and a five year-old who have an uncanny resemblance to my oldest.

Like innumerable times I’ve laughed with friends until we couldn’t sit up. And prayed on our faces until we almost couldn’t get up.

I could keep going and maybe I will on my own but it would be over-indulgent here. I just want to say today that memory is a gift. An exquisite one. An excruciating one.  The same capacity that invites us to replay something beautiful can recount the deplorable in startling color.

The point of this is to say that I, for one, think it’s worth it. Even with all my regrets and amid all the flashbacks. Despite all the disappointments and heart-sinking disillusionments.

To remember is among the dearest of all human capacities. A sliver of Imago Dei. Over and over on the sacred page we find the words on which we hang our hope. And God remembered.

To be thankful is, in itself, to remember.

So, today, Lord, I want to say to You that I am thankful. Because I remember. I remember the ditch You pulled me out of. I remember the hopelessness I’ve felt and the fears that I had no future. I remember a time when I wanted to go to sleep and never wake up. And I remember that the sun came up the next morning and the next and the next, glistening without fail on a heap of fresh mercies. I want to say that You have been right all along. And that life is such a gift. And it is precious. And passes with such haste. What we can hope is that there would be no waste.

And, to those of us who love You, who are called according to Your purpose, You have promised that to be true.

We are grateful today, Lord, precisely because we remember.

We remember how good You’ve been to us when life has been awful.

We remember the light through the cracks in the door when we tried to lock ourselves away in the darkness.

We remember that You would not leave us alone even when we begged You to.

We remember Jesus.

We remember Him crucified. Raised. Ascended. Seated. And interceding.

Thank You, all-wise and benevolent God, for the capacity to store up collections of Your kindnesses to us through the courses of our lives.

You are good. Your love endures forever.

Help  us remember.