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Beth Moore says she felt a little like the Old Testament patriarch Jacob when she first sensed God calling her into full-time ministry to speak and write Bible study materials. She's referring to the way she wrestled with God until her point of surrender.
"I'd been leading a church aerobics class for 12 years, teaching Sunday school, and had begun to do some speaking," Moore says. "I felt God kept telling me, I'm calling you out for something different. And I kept telling him, 'I'll leave my aerobics class when I don't like it anymore!'
"Well, one morning, I got up to teach, and my hip was out of joint," Moore says. "I felt the Holy Spirit say to me, Am I going to have to break your leg to get you to listen to me? Let it go! So I pulled away from the aerobics, and the Lord began to show me what he had for me."
What God had in store for Moore was a platform much larger than she ever imagined. Since she released her first Bible study in 1995, A Woman's Heart: God's Dwelling Place, Moore's study materials have become wildly popular, as have her speaking engagements.
Today, her weekend conferences draw as many as 10,000 women, and her books and workbooks, including A Heart Like His, Breaking Free, Jesus the One and Only, and Beloved Disciple, have exceeded more than 5 million copies in sales.
Married and the mother of two grown daughters, Amanda, 24, and Melissa, 21, Moore says her aim is to encourage believers to know Christ intimately through studying his Word. TCW recently caught up with Moore to chat about her family and the way she approaches ministry.
You and your husband, Keith, recently became empty nesters. What's life like now for you two?
It's been wonderful, because Keith and I share a precious friendship. And we both love dogs! We have three, and we dress them up in hats for their birthdays and have a party. People think we're nuts, but we have fun with them—and with each other. I always tell young women, "Pay attention to your husband, honey, because when it's all said and done, he's what you've got left."
How would you advise busy Christians who have trouble making time for consistent Bible study?
The most important thing God ever taught me is to pray for what I lack. I've had to pray that above all else, he would give me a love for him, and a hunger and thirst for his Word. So if you lack the time or the motivation, pray for it. There's nothing God wants more than for us to have a heart that loves him. It's his top priority.
And has God answered that prayer in your life?
In my twenties, I was a Sunday school teacher, and I was pitiful. I just didn't know God's Word. So I prayed about it and signed up for a Bible doctrine class at my church that I just knew would be the most boring thing I ever attended.
Instead a man walked up—a former football player—who threw open the Bible and practically wept as he taught it. Never before had I met someone who had such a passionate relationship with God through the Word.
I told God, "I don't know what this man has, but I want it." And God began to birth that passion and hunger for his Word in me. As I continue to study the Bible, it's literally become life for me.
Bible teacher and author |
Copyright 2003 by the author or Christianity Today International/Today's Christian Woman magazine.
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