Bible teacher Beth Moore took her followers to church Thursday morning with a series of tweets that challenged readers to evaluate their relationships.
Run for your life from this thread this morning. Here’s what the Lord is bringing to light in my dark heart. What we resent most about our hardest relationships is what they bring out in us. In easier ones our pleasant self-deceptions of being wonderful blameless people flourish.
— Beth Moore (@BethMooreLPM) October 18, 2018
Whether they live down the hall, the street or across the globe, by nature our favorite neighbors to love are those who bring out our favorite things we love about us. Instead of loving our neighbors as ourselves, we’re prone to love the neighbors who make us love ourselves.
— Beth Moore (@BethMooreLPM) October 18, 2018
If God has placed us in relationships that bring out the worst in us, it’s because indeed HE WANTS TO BRING OUT THE WORST IN US. Permanently out, plucked up by the bloody roots. It’s because He is faithful to us, unstoppably devoted to finishing the good work He started in us.
— Beth Moore (@BethMooreLPM) October 18, 2018
We want others to change so we don’t have to. The more resistant we are to our own personal transformation, the further we’ll withdraw from God & the very people He wants to use to make us most like Christ.
God, help us. Relationships are HARD.
See, this is why prayer is risky.
— Beth Moore (@BethMooreLPM) October 18, 2018
1 last thing. Don’t think we can’t withdraw from God while still strutting all our Christian stuff, talking all our Christian talk & working all our Christian acts. We can still read our Scriptures/say our prayers. Mouths close to God. Hearts 100 country miles away. Cold as ice. pic.twitter.com/YAtiTRKxGi
— Beth Moore (@BethMooreLPM) October 18, 2018
Very important postscript: this thread is NOT in reference to abusive relationships. Those are a different matter entirely. In those, get distance and get help immediately.
— Beth Moore (@BethMooreLPM) October 18, 2018
In a separate thread, she continued:
I’m gonna get flack for this but it needs to be said & I am saying it as much to myself as anyone. Abusive relationships are 1 thing. Those we need out of. But when we start talking cutting off all “toxic” relationships, we may be talking our way right out of the gospel of Jesus.
— Beth Moore (@BethMooreLPM) October 18, 2018
Thank God Jesus was willing to have a relationship with this toxic person right here.
— Beth Moore (@BethMooreLPM) October 18, 2018
Followers responded in a variety of ways, from conviction to encouragement to confusion.
“Abused”. Yes, some people need to realize they are abused. Others use the word as an excuse to bail out. True, relational work is a spectrum from healthy to unhealthy, but We’ve allowed the language of ministry to shift from the NT sacrificial to the modern therapeutic.
— Cris (@Cristotokos) October 18, 2018
Ouch! Necessary truth!
— Tammy Darlene (@Townzz3) October 18, 2018
Where can I send my offering??
— Tori S. Dixon,MS,LPC (@GraciouslyTori) October 18, 2018
I can not thank you enough, Beth, for speaking this beautiful difficult but powerful truth today. I desperately needed to hear it, my heart needed to hear it. It was one of those times God steps on our toes and we say, “thank You Lord”!!! Big big hug xxx
— Beautiful imposs… (@crlksnyfanatic) October 18, 2018
Ugh. This was for me today. Thank you for sharing, Beth.
— GERI CARLSON (@GeriCarlson) October 18, 2018
♀️ me too lady. And I got what you said today so well. I’ll pray it speaks so much to others. We would live in a different world if everyone handled relationships with that perspective.
— α.и.g.ι.є (@angiesarich) October 18, 2018
What do you think? Sound off below!
