2017 was the 20th anniversary of Living Proof Live events with Beth Moore. We celebrated all year long, and kicked off the season with a word from Beth herself about this ministry and the heart behind it. If you’ve been to a Living Proof Live event in the last 20 plus years, thank you. If you haven’t, consider this your formal invitation.
None of us on the Living Proof Live team planned to hang around this long. It just never got old to us. There’s no natural explanation for that. Lots of things we dearly love doing eventually lose our priority and interests. And who knows? By God’s own sovereign will, that could happen for us in a matter of months, but, even if it did, what He’s allowed us to experience would still qualify as an anomaly. I hope I can articulate a few reasons why.
He’s kept the blood flowing hot in our veins for this gathering, and it certainly wasn’t because we’re creatures of habit. I’m sanguine to the bone, a thrill-seeker by human nature, and I get bored embarrassingly easily. The only habits I maintain successfully are the ones that have a strange way of staying new. And it surely wasn’t like sameness has been God’s way of dealing with us and nothing else was really changing in our lives. More than twenty years ago, I had two teenage daughters and two parents. These days my parents are long-since with the Lord and those adolescent girls are grown-up, kick-rear-end valiant servants of God. They are not only my babies. They are my best friends and fellow co-laborers in the great gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.
That woman who’d been married just shy of 20 years has now been married just shy of 40 years. I’ve stood next to countless cold bodies in caskets over the last two decades and cradled countless warm and snuggly newborns. I’ve celebrated all sorts of good news and fretted and grieved over all sorts of bad. I’ve sobbed on my face in prayer more times than you want to hear about, and I’ve also jumped up and down in my den and given Jesus air high-fives. I don’t know if He reciprocated or not, but He didn’t wither my hand or anything. I’ve ridden the fickle roller coaster of popularity and public opinion up and down and all around and been called everything from a Christian celebrity to a fraud. And none of it’s been easy, but my God has held me fast. When my joy has waned, He’s always returned it. When I’ve been too wounded to come to my feet, He’s healed me on my knees. When my passion has dulled, He’s always re-torched it.
I ain’t new. I guess that’s what I’m trying to say. And I’m so glad. One thing I can tell you girls for sure is that my life as a woman of God has only grown richer with age, not poorer. My confidence in who I am in Him has multiplied with age instead of diminished—which is no small miracle amid this youth-obsessed culture.
His Word is dearer to me.
His promises surer.
His ways more mysterious.
His wonders, more precious.
The biggest change in my life in the last two decades is that I’ve had twenty more years to watch Christ be faithful. To watch Him be who He says He is and do so much of what He says He can do. I have never loved ministering to women more, whether young or old or somewhere in between, and I’ve never been more convinced that God can do absolutely anything with absolutely anyone. These last twenty years have been vastly harder than I anticipated and vastly better. I’ve cried more than I’d hoped to, but I’ve also laughed. It’s been brutal, and it’s been beautiful. But I’ve not hung in there for either of those reasons. I’ve hung in there because Jesus was in there. I want to be where He is. He is the only one I know worth everything I have.
There’s no explaining still being here and doing this aside from Him. We’ve gotten so much wrong and driven blind half the time. God is simply good, abounding in love, forgiveness, mercy, and compassion.
It is not only my indescribable privilege to serve women at Living Proof Live, it is my unspeakable joy and honor to do so with Travis Cottrell, our worship team, our band, and our LPL event team. I have said so many times that I signed up more than 20 years ago for a seminar but what I got was a son. Travis is as dear to me as any son I could have raised under my own roof. He and Angela and their three children are like flesh and blood to me. That need not be a big deal to you, but here’s the part that should be: I still believe Travis Cottrell when he leads. I know the man. I know his character. I see him off stage. I’ve watched him under every conceivable circumstance and not once have I gotten a glimpse of a poser. He’s legit. Christ is everything to him. Everything to our team. We’ve been halfway to hell and back in twenty years, and here’s what we have to say to you:
It’s Jesus. All Him. He’s life. Salvation. Deliverance. Joy. Abundance. Fruitfulness. He is the Way. He is the Truth. He is our very lives. We will blow it from time to time. You can be certain of that. I use so many words at an LPL that I cannot help but get some wrong, but Jesus is not like me. He’s always right. We may fail you, but He will not. We may not come through, but He always will.
We’ll try to remind you of that in one way or another every time you come to a Living Proof Live. Come join us no matter how new you are to things of the faith or how well-seasoned, whether you’re a young woman or so advanced in years, you can barely hear. I’ll talk loud. Whether you’re fairly well put together or in ten million pieces, you can’t be unwelcome. We’ll serve anybody in any circumstance from any background in any condition or any sin and of any belief system. Just give us a chance and, if we do our jobs right, you’ll forget about us and run headlong into Jesus.
With so much love and anticipation,
Beth
Want to join us at a Living Proof Live event? We’d love to see you there! Click here to find the city we’re visiting nearest you.