Beth Moore - A Memorial In The Middle - Part 2
Listen, I’ll never forget doing this. A couple of years ago I was reflecting back on a time of my life where, honestly, I was breaking free from a really long, long hold that the enemy had had on me. And he just brought me so much defeat in my heart and in my mind over it and just, I come from a background of victimization that started very early on. It was so integral into my personality, so much a part of who I was. Not only did I not have any boundaries, I did not even know how to voice the word «no». I don’t know if some of you can enter into that with me, but it was almost not even in my vocabulary. I would go as far as to say that it was not. Especially if it was a strong figure of any kind, an authoritarian type of personality that, to this day, a bully just makes the hair on the back of my neck stand straight up.
That personality drives me crazier than any other and it just freezes me, it just freezes me. And it makes me feel like I have to remind myself, you do get to say no to a bully. And you get to say it loud, and you get to say it proud. You get to look at them straight in the eye and go, «You know what, you don’t tell me what to do». I am too old to be bullied by you. Anybody know what I’m talking about? Just, no, not bullied, not bullied. My God is my boss. My God is my boss and my God is not a bully. Anybody? My God is not a bully.
So that whole thing, and God was breaking that hold over me, and I, literally, he was breaking some areas of bondage where I had some, just, behavioral addiction to certain things and just like, ugh. Some of you know what I’m talking about. And he came rip-roaring into my life and took about a year or two to go down really deep and completely kill a very self-destructive part of me that just needed desperately to be crucified with Christ so that that woman that was looking for self-destruction continually would no longer live but the Spirit of Christ would live through my person and I could live in some semblance of consistent victory. Anybody got that with me? That’s what I’m talking about.
And so that work, when you’re going through that kind of thing, listen, I was living, I mean, I was living off of him every second of every day. I was so having to concentrate on the scriptures because the enemy just like, I mean, my mind was just tormented because he knew he was about to lose his hold on me, and I mean, he came for me with everything he had. I know somebody is in exactly that situation this weekend. I mean, even when I would go to the grocery store. I would be pushing my grocery cart and my spiral of my scriptures, my scripture memory, would be in that first little seat of the grocery cart so that I could push that thing through the grocery store and not take my eyes off of it. Those nights, there were so many nights when Keith was out of town during that era of time that I literally, I slept with my Bible wide open on my chest.
Sometimes I was just so tormented at night that I would put the whole thing over my head and go, «Lord, help me». I mean, seriously, it was a time when I thought either God is about to make my mind, or I’m about to lose it. I’m about to lose it. And praise God, he brought forth the victory. But I found myself a couple of years ago, I said to him, «Remember that? Remember that? When every second, every second, remember that? When I couldn’t even go to sleep without just clutching my Bible»? Well, in no time at all I was thrown back into a circumstance when I was almost right back to that place. Not in that same kind of defeat, but in a really big crisis. And I thought, you know what? I’d romanticized that time. It was not as fun as I think I remember it. Anybody?
It was good, it was powerful, it was life-changing, but it was hard and it was beautiful and it was ugly and it was gorgeous and it was gory, because the road is not the romance, Jesus is, Jesus is. He doesn’t want us fixating on an experience. Our attention is to the person of Jesus. The job of the Holy Spirit, we’ll see it over and over again, is to wean our passion off the path and place it on the person of Jesus, to wean our passion off the path and put it on the person of Jesus. The middle is the peak of your vulnerability. Does anybody get that with me? The middle is the peak of our vulnerability. For the children of Israel, it was the peak of their vulnerability because here is the what?
Tell me again. Here’s the east. And then here they are and they’re coming across. Well, when they’re in the middle is when they look up to this side, they look down south, and they see the water’s heaped up. They look up north, see the water’s heaped up. And they’re walking across and they don’t know when those waters are gonna break. Vulnerability. And you know what? It’s even the peak of vulnerability if it’s a good transition. Say, for instance, a dream is really being fulfilled. Say, for instance, you’re writing a book, or working on a huge project, maybe something you felt called all these years to do, and you’re right in the middle of it. Right in the middle of it is when you begin to think, «Huh, I don’t know if I’m gonna make it to the end and I don’t know if it’s gonna be as good as I hoped it was going to be when I get there».
Anybody? Like, if you’re in the middle of a very big project, the middle is where you’re most tempted to quit, because if you’re like me, especially in our attention deficit culture that we live in right now, when we’re in the middle and we start getting bored, we wanna go to a new river. Anybody? I want a new look, I want something new to do. No, this is the peak of your vulnerability, whether it’s something hard or whether it’s something wonderful. Because here’s what I’m going to tell you. Even in a long-term project, because I threw out the example of a book, even in a long-term project like that, here’s the thing. I can almost promise you, see, it’s just easier for us to keep dreaming. It’s one reason why we don’t just get to it and do it. Could I just be frank with you for a couple of minutes here as just your big sister here?
One reason we just don’t get on with it and do the thing that God gave us with vision so many years ago is because as long as we’re just dreaming about it, it could be fabulous. It’s in our dreams. Oh, it’s so good. Oh my word, it turned out good. Oh, I mean, just like, everything, it’s just spectacular. We’re afraid if we actually start living it and doing it, I’ll tell you this from personal experience, it’s always wonderful to dream about a book, but when I get to the end of it, even when I can nod over it and think I gave it everything I had, my heart is splattered all over it from the first page to the last, I can still tell you, every single time I’ll look back at it and go, «It was better in my dreams». Anybody know what I’m talking about?
This I can promise you. You’ll get to the end of that project and you won’t have turned out to be as good or brilliant as you hoped, but Jesus will turn out to be better and more brilliant than you have ever dreamed. That is the point, that you will be able to look at that and go, «You used this and did that»? Because he is the one that gets the glory, not us. The peak of our vulnerability. Somebody here in this room is in the middle of a business merger, and I say this because it’s something that God, I mean, you trust God with your entire life. He’s part of your business, he’s part of your recreation, and you’ve really prayed this through and you believe this is of God, you’re in the middle of a business merger.
Somebody else is in the middle of medical school. The middle is vulnerable. The dam breaks, you’ll drown. Somebody’s in the middle of an enormous project. Somebody is in the middle of a divorce, in the middle of filing for adoption. Anybody? In the middle of planning a wedding, in the middle of chemo, in the middle of college or seminary or law school, your dissertation, in the middle of writing that book we were talking about, in the middle of bankruptcy, in the middle of a high-risk pregnancy, in the middle of counseling, in the middle of moving, in the middle of rehab. Anybody? And then the terminology of Ezekiel 37, «In the middle of the valley; and it is full of dry bones».
The middle represents to us being mid-stride in one of the biggest transitions of our entire lives, big mid-stride in a titanic faith walk. The middle is psychological, situational middle school. How many of you have a middle schooler? Your middle is like your middle schooler, with all its insecurities, all its anxieties, all its acne, somebody, with all the wondering who your real friends are. That happens when you’re in the middle of something big, like trying to learn the clarinet and sounding like a honking goose. That is middle school, with all the fears that you’re not gonna be able to work the combination on your locker, and that if you ever do get it open, some bully is gonna stuff you in it.
That is what it’s like to be in the middle. The middle, you know the middle because it’s where much, if not everything, is at stake. What will happen in the middle? Because I hope to prove to you so much of the making of who you are is what happens right here in the middle of your passage. We keep waiting to get over here and to be this person God has called us to be, but he’s training us here in the middle where the waters are heaped up to the south and the waters are heaped up to the north, and any moment now we’re afraid they could come crashing down on us. The middle of what you’d never choose can land you on a shore you’d never trade. This is the strange beauty of the middle.
How many of you can say from your own testimony, this side of it, that you would never have chosen that path in your entire life, but it brought you to something you would not trade for all the world? Who could say that to me today? You see that testimony? See, that’s the weird side of it. The mystery of it is, was that the only way I could get here? I look back on that horrible season of my life, soon after what I recorded in that journal, and I think about the depression I went through and the despair that I went through and the deep surgery of heart and mind God did on me, and I look back and I think to myself, couldn’t there have been some other way to get to the other side? And I’ll never know the answer to that. Only thing I know is this: it was the way I came. And whether I fumbled my way there, failed my way there, sinned my way there, or walked with God all the way there, in his sovereignty he said, «As bad as that was, I will be better than you ever dreamed I could be».
See, this is key because somebody’s here right now. You may say to me, «I am going someplace new, I’m in a transition all right, but I promise you I did not choose it. I have been thrown into it and there is nothing that looks like a land of promise on the other side. It looks like a land of disaster and trauma to me». No telling how many people could say that in this room, and I get it, I get it. You may say, «Listen, I didn’t put myself in this transition. A breakup put me here, a divorce put me here, a death or a loss put me here, a financial disaster put me here, an affair put me here. What’s ahead for me is no Promised Land».
Somebody’s just convinced that that is true. «No Canaan, it’s nothing but a desert». But I beg to differ with you based on the authority of the Word of God. Because let me tell you, if you belong to Jesus, any place you plant your foot, if you’ve been pushed there, shoved there, or jumped there, any place you plant your foot, my God is fully able to fulfill his promises to you there. You get to decide, you get to decide, will you receive the power of his Word by the power of his Spirit and take him at his promises? Listen, no matter where you are, as bad as it may be, if you will believe his promises, it becomes your Promised Land. It doesn’t matter what puts you there.
On that ground, if you just say, «You have made me promises, Lord, Your Word’s full of them. I’m gonna recount some of them to you, Lord. You said this. You said this about me. You said that absolutely nothing could separate me from you. You said that I was gonna be more than a conqueror. You told me, Lord, that my way would be the way of great fruit bearing, that my life would matter, that I was chosen and called. And so Lord, I don’t know how I got here, I don’t wanna be here, this is the last place I would ever wanna be, but as long as I am here, fulfill your promises to me right here».
And girlfriend, that becomes your Promised Land. Wherever you let him fulfill his promises to you becomes your Promised Land. And let me tell you, if you do not walk by faith, it doesn’t matter how beautiful the land may be where your feet stand, you will not bear much fruit. Whatever put you there, it may be the last place you’d choose to land, but it will become a shore that you would never trade. It’s the oddest thing. The place we wouldn’t want to go is the very place so often we realize we were foreordained and sent for the great glory of God and the good of people. I jotted something down in my notes and I’m just gonna say out to you. You just really, this isn’t great news to anybody that hasn’t heard it, but let me tell you, it’s the way of the cross and it’s a beautiful thing because this world is full of pain, it’s full of pain.
We live on a broken planet, fallen as early as the Garden. But this, I promise you, you have no idea what the pain you have been through has to do with your passion. You have no idea. Listen, you don’t grow a holy passion in a lukewarm heart. You just don’t do it. You and I, I would believe that almost anybody in this room would want to have holy passion burning in their veins. I believe it. We want holy passion. We want it, we want it. We wanna feel something. We wanna know that what we’ve been called to matters. We want to know that there’s purpose for us. We want to know that we bring something to the mix in the uniqueness of our own relationship with God that nobody else has. We want to believe all of those things. But somehow we think we’re gonna get a holy passion sitting in room temperature, and it’s not gonna happen.
There are reasons why you feel strongly about things. It doesn’t always have to come from pain. But it always comes from something you feel strongly about. Case in point, you know why I do what I do? You know why 30 years later I still do it? You know why I still wanted to do it this morning? You know why I still wept over it this week? Because let me tell you something: Jesus Christ saved my life. He saved my life. And I want you to understand something. If you’re thinking, well, that’s what he’s about, is he just, like, takes failures, in a worldly sense, I had a lot going for me. I was a very successful student. I was very, very successful, socially, in school. I was in lots and lots and lots of organizations.
I would have excelled in many ways that the world would count some kind of advancement. But I am gonna tell you, I cannot fathom that I would still be alive today. I cannot fathom that I would have made it to 40. I was going to self-destruct. I was turning on myself, setting myself up one time after another for disaster after disaster after disaster. I could pick out in a crowd who would do me wrong and I would befriend them. Somebody knows who I’m talking about. Some of you have honestly, you have had the same kind of man in your life five different times because something in you is attracted to something that will hurt you. I would have destroyed my own life.
And I’m gonna tell you something. God took his Word, after his Son saved my soul, his Word changed my mind and he began to set my feet on a path and taught me how to walk. And I have wobbled and I have wavered, but I’m gonna tell you something. My God, my God, has performed such a miracle in me that sometimes I look up at him, and I’ve said this so many times and I can barely say it to you without crying, and this is what I’m talking about with your own stones of remembrance, I can look up at him and I can just say to him, I’ve said it so, so often, «Jesus, just, only we know. It was just you and me, it was just us, nobody».
See, you know, if you let all of your experiences with God be secondhand, they always have to be with the group, a group’s a beautiful thing. We’ve gotta have community, we’ve got the corporate body of believers. But if that’s what your whole life is about, when are you gonna build up your own memories with him? «Jesus, you remember when you and me were there? When it was just you and me? When I couldn’t turn to anybody about this? When nobody else knew? When it seemed like everybody else fled and it was you and me, you and me»? You build up these memories right here, right here. You know why I brought all these journals? I ceased practicing where I wrote out letters all the time.
That was long-handed and just took forever. It’s just notebook after notebook after notebook that I just date and I write down what I feel like he’s speaking out of his Word and different prayer requests and people I’m praying for and some things I’m going through, and I look back at this and it’s just life in the middle. There’s some big deals in it, really big things that happen, but most of it is just life in the middle. Praying for Jackson and Annabeth at school. Keith on the road to West Texas. My church. My pastor’s sermon. My neighbors, «Lord, I don’t know if they know you». Just life in the middle. «I’m tired today, I’ve got a really sore throat».
Just life in the middle. But you know what? I have not been exemplary, but nobody has lived my relationship with Jesus for me. Me and Jesus have had our thing, and I am saying, do you and Jesus have your own thing going? Because when you look around and you keep wishing you were this person or you keep wishing you were that person, all they have on you is that they have their own thing going with Jesus. Once you have your own thing going with him and you have taken him up on his promises to you, when you are living out the fullness of his promises in you and you are living out your calling, you will not be jealous of other people. You will be fulfilled in what you have been called to do, you have been called to do.
You got your own thing going and you build up memories. I got 30, 38 years of memories with Keith Moore, 38 years. That’s what marriage is. Not done it secondhand, firsthand. He and I, listening to our praise tapes together. I’m fairly certain 25 years ago was the first and last time we sat on the couch and had such a good time listening to my praise tapes together. But he and I got some memories. Me and Jesus have been in the middle of some stuff and we have built up some memories together. Some of them I testify, some of them ain’t nobody’s business but mine, amen.