Beth Moore's Litany of Testimonies

By Laura Mott Tarro is pastor at Bethany Covenant in St Charles.

In the Christian tradition, it is common practice to share your testimony. A testimony is a witness to the transformative work of God in your life. Every Christian should have a testimony. Most Christians can share multiple stories of different moments when the living God interrupted their everyday life with a sense of wonder that created a new “before” and “after.”

Beth Moore’s new memoir, All My Knotted-Up Life, reads like a litany of testimonies that sing of God’s goodness and provision.

Moses regularly reminded the Israelites of their own moments of testimony, times when God clearly provided for their salvation. God liberated the Israelites from slavery, brought them safely through the Red Sea on dry ground, defeated the Egyptian army, provided a pillar of cloud and a pillar of fire to guide them, gave them water in the desert, and rained manna and quail from heaven to feed their hunger. Like Moses repeating for the Israelites the history of God’s repeated works of salvation, Moore walked us through the history of God’s journey with God moving her toward greater freedom in Christ. These stories become anchor points in the life of the believer. They are reminders that “hither by thy help I’m come.” Moore shared with us some of her anchor stories and they beautifully displayed the tenderness of her true encounters with the living God.

She described the moment of her baptism with attention to the details a nine-year-old would notice. From wiggling her toes in the water to test its temperature to the shock of the water going up her nose while she was buried with Christ and raised to new life. She recalled the feeling of sitting through the rest of the service with wet hair and everyone smiling their congratulation.

There was also a lot of pain in her story—trauma, actually. She did not shy away from telling those parts. She included in her story the parts that felt like the wind would rip apart her house and the shadows that lived just down the hall. There were stories of hurt and betrayal, abuse and loss. Moore wrote, “All my knotted-up life I’ve longed for the sanity and simplicity of knowing who’s good and who’s bad. I’ve wanted to know this about myself as much as anyone.”[1]

She tells her story with a characteristic mix of humor, humility, vulnerability, and the tender care of a seasoned shepherd. Moore does not take herself too seriously, and she invites us to come in closer with her ability to laugh at herself. On the other hand, she clearly takes Jesus seriously. One has the sense that she deeply wants to paint a bigger picture of the goodness of God, and she is willing to tell the truth about her own life to put God’s grace more prominently on display.

One of my favorite stories in the book was a moment during her college years when she felt God’s call upon her life. She took a group of sixth grade girls to summer camp as a sponsor. Every night she gathered the girls together for a bedtime devotional. In the middle of the week, she got up early to get ready before her girls stirred. She was in the camp bathroom, brushing her teeth minding her own business, when she sensed the Lord’s presence. There was nothing remarkable about that moment. She wrote, “All I have to go on is the conviction of an eighteen-year-old to whom the sense of God’s presence was intense enough to make her grip both sides of the sink until the moment passed.”[2] There was something holy and unique in that moment that signaled a “before” and an “after” in her life. Later that morning, Moore spoke to the woman who oversaw the camp about her experience. The woman told Moore that what she had experienced was “a call to vocational Christian service.”[3] God’s call to vocational Christian service came early in her life, and though she did not yet know entirely what this would look like, she was open to whatever form of full-time ministry God had in store.

For Beth Moore, vocational Christian service began with a ministry that required leg warmers. She began by teaching Christian aerobics classes. It was at this point that God sent two mentors into her life: an older woman who coaxed Moore into more speaking and teaching opportunities, and a teacher of Bible doctrine in her church who equipped her with skills to study Bible commentaries and dictionaries. These mentors identified her calling and her gifts, propelled her into ministry settings, and equipped her to teach and to lead.

Leading and teaching would eventually propel Moore into arena-sized notoriety. With this scale of notoriety came arena-sized scrutiny. As Moore began to speak her mind about topics of racism and sexism within the church, the pushback became overwhelming. It led to the departure from her denomination, the church family that had nurtured her faith, and began a journey through the wilderness to find a new place to experience God’s presence and care.

Every Christian has a story to tell of God’s faithfulness through our wilderness wanderings. Our testimony becomes a litany of prayers that testify to God’s goodness and provision. These stories become anchor points that hold us, “in every high and stormy gale.” In All My Knotted-Up Life, Beth Moore shared her testimony. God called her in her teens to a lifetime of vocational Christian service and this book, while it tells her own story, is a continuation of her teaching ministry. Moore models for us what it means to have a testimony.

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[1] Beth Moore, All My Knotted-up Life: A Memoir (Carol Stream, Illinois: Tyndale Momentum, a Tyndale nonfiction imprint, 2023), 14.

[2] Moore, 112.

[3] Moore, 115.