Beth Moore's message in a teeny-tiney nutshell. Plus a few things you might not know

So I last reported (at 2 a.m. Friday morning) that I was going to a Beth Moore conference with two of my oldest and dearest friends. Sorry I’m a bit tardy in reporting, but I’ve been a tad under the weather since returning, and life threw a curve ball Monday. (Dern you, life! Dern you!)

Nevertheless – ahem – I present What I Learned At The Beth Moore Conference (followed by BM trivia). Yes. I said BM trivia.

I've had several people ask how the weekend was and what she said. Frankly, it's hard to distill several hours worth of anointed speaking into meaningful soundbites. But I'll try.

Beth's message began with the observation that we probably all have areas in our lives where we don't really trust God.

I trust him with my finances, my marriage, my children …. But I don't trust him with THIS THING.

Apparently, she's struggling with a This Thing, and, out of that, God led her to have each of us consider what our This Thing is.

“The place where you have a steadfast mind,” she said, “is where you trust God. Anyplace our minds are not steadfast, we can find the root of our distrust.”

She spent a good deal of time explaining how we can really know what our This Thing is. Some of us may know automatically. Others may not be so sure. She asked, for example, if we find ourselves with heavy hearts and we can't articulate why. Most of the time, she said, our hearts are heavy in the areas where we don't trust God with something. And the root of that something, that sadness is always found in a wound. (This is excluding obvious external causes for mourning, such as a tragedy or some kind of loss or bad news.)

Is it getting a little complicated? Well, she unpacked her message over two days. But I'll try a bit more.

If we don't trust God with something, it's probably because we were wounded somehow, by someone at some point in our lives -- and we haven’t handed that hurt over to God. Maybe we tried. Maybe we didn't. That wound may have scabbed over, but it didn't become a scar. It's still painful when hit. And wherever we're wounded, that is where we typically don't trust God.


Then there was this: “The very area you are most tempted not to trust God,” she said, “is the place God has most chosen to trust you.”

Do you understand that? His permissive will allowed you to endure some sort of suffering. What he wants you to do is rise up from whatever it is and use it to glorify him. He's trusting you to do that.

"I'll make Satan sorry he ever messed with me," she said. "It'll turn on him."

She gave us another guide for identifying This Thing that we don't trust God with. She called it The Spewing Head. Every time she used this term, which was often, she mimicked the sound of a gushing fire hydrant and motioned wildly, flinging both hands out from the side of her head toward the heavens: spewing thoughts. It was goofy and hilarious and made the point pretty well.

If there's an area in your life where you can't seem to control your thoughts -- you worry yourself to death about something, even if you know you shouldn't and it's pointless -- that’s where your distrust can be found.

Psalm 112:7 -- He will have no fear of bad news; his heart is steadfast, trusting in the Lord. (I needed to hear that one.)

Life, she said, is more about purpose than pleasure. And I’m beginning to get that.

That's the best I can do with her message. Wish you all could have been there, and I mean it. There were somewhere between 14,000-15,000 women in the coliseum. It was amazing. If you ever get a chance to hear her speak: Go.

Now for a list of Interesting Things I Didn't Know About Beth Moore:

1. She's a fan of the (spray-on) Mystic Tan. ("People in my office say, 'Beth, you're so dark.' And I tell them, 'You too can be tan like me.' … "My brother always says, 'Tanned fat looks better than white fat.'")
2. She discovered the hard way, while with daughter, Melissa, that one should not get into a pool after having just been Mystic Tanned. The chlorine in the water is, after all, bleach. ("When I got out of the water, I was dark, dark, dark from the shoulders up. And from the shoulders down, I was white, white, white. Melissa said, 'Mom! You look like a Dairy Queen dipped cone.'"
3. She's been stalked twice, forcing her to hire a private investigator to handle the situation. So it's pretty amazing she opens herself up, still, to people the way she does.
4. From around December to March/April, she had some sort of physical ailment that made her drop weight rapidly (and she SURE doesn’t have any to lose, being roughly the size of my thigh). They thought it might be, among other things, cancer. It wasn't, though she didn't say what it was. It was bad enough, though, that she feels God allowed her to go through the ordeal so that she can use it when she ministers to people. (See the bit about God's permissive will above.)
5. She has a new (first) grandbaby, and she's so crazy about him, she'll answer to whatever word he says following Momma and Dadda. ("If he says Momma, Daddy then bow-wow, I'll be Bow-wow. 'Come here, precious. Come to Bow-bow.")
6. Her oldest brother is an orchestra conductor, and she's watched him at work so often that when she's alone, she likes to crank up the stereo, take a pencil and conduct the music with abandon. ("Have you tried it? You should try it.")
7. The hotel she was staying at (across the road from where a few thousand more of us were located) threw its breakers half-a-dozen times Saturday morning because of all the hairdryers being used at the same time. ("And I'm seeing some fabulous hairdos out there. Honey, I'm from Texas, and we UNDERSTAND big hair in Texas.")

Amen and amen.

Oh, and I also learned Janet (completely devoid of stage fright) can play a mean tamborine when it's thrust on her by a guitar-wielding restaurant troubadour lacking backup.

"Lake House" is a fun chick flick, but it should come equipped with a flowchart. Or a lobotomy. Thinking it through hurts.

And Joye can navigate us on foot perfectly through OKC, but she has no idea why they have buffaloes on every corner or how to pronounce the word frite.

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