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Beth Moore to college women: serve God in your generation

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CHICAGO (BP)–Carrying the torch lit by her late 92-year-old mentor, Bible teacher and author Beth Moore said she came to light the torch for the next generation during a special edition of Living Proof Live March 10-11 designed exclusively for college-aged women.

“As our generations overlap, God holds [the older] generation responsible to pouring our lives into the younger,” Moore said to the 1,500 college women at the Pavilion on the campus of the University of Illinois. During the event, guest worship leader Christy Nockels of the group Watermark gave a devotion and offered insight on how to have the appropriate worship posture before the Lord.

Sponsored by LifeWay Christian Resources, Moore’s focal passage spoke of King David’s dedication to serving God’s purpose in his own generation. “For when David had served God’s purpose in his own generation, he fell asleep; he was buried with his fathers and his body decayed,” Moore said, reading Acts 13:36 to the crowd.

Just as David served God in his own generation, “You have been called to serve God’s purpose in your generation,” Moore told the women, who represented more than 24 states and Canada. “You and I have a little turn around this planet earth,” she said as she walked up and down the aisles of the Pavilion hugging women in the crowd. “Our life is a vapor … we must be extremely intentional about serving God in our generation.”

Referencing Acts 13:36, Moore laid out four ways the young women can live out God’s purpose for their lives in their own generation.

First, Moore explained that God’s purpose is highly personalized. “God has thought your life through,” she said. “God thinks about you.” Moore explained that the word “purpose” in the Greek deals with God’s thought process behind His plan.

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She explained that in His omniscience, God knows how each life will turn out, but has a specialized plan for each person. “Nothing in this life is haphazard,” she said, referencing Jeremiah 29:11: “For I know the plans I have for you.’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”

Second, Moore explained that God’s purpose is progressively revealed in each person’s life. “He won’t tell us [His plan] in totality because He is about relationships,” she said. Moore said that through His plan, God reveals certain aspects of His nature at the appropriate times.

“He wants us to be faithful to Him in the here and now,” she said, advising the young women to be faithful in what God has given them to do at this stage in their lives.

Third, Moore said God’s purpose is perfectly timed. “You have been assigned to this generation, and if this generation screams one thing to us it’s relevancy,” she said.

“You have been called to be relevant to this generation,” Moore said, warning of pitfalls that go along with being culturally relevant.

“If Christianity is the narrow way, then relevancy is like walking on a tightrope,” she said. “It’s tricky because it’s easy to fall to the right or left.”

Falling too far left leads to carnality, she said, explaining that while young women must relate to matters of culture in order to remain relevant, they must guard their minds to matters of carnality. Christians must be connected enough to know how to minister in modern culture without it affecting them, she said.

Moore also mentioned that falling too far right on the relevancy tightrope leads to hyper-spirituality. “We will be irrelevant when we become self-pious,” she said, citing the example of how the Jewish leaders poured over Scripture but did not believe in Christ.

Moore encouraged the women not only to know Scripture, but to let the Word of God dwell in them while they extend hope, healing and grace to others.

Fourth, Moore explained that God’s purpose is supernaturally empowered. “God has specifically gifted you,” she said, citing the diversity of spiritual gifts found in 1 Corinthians 12. The Spirit is active in each gift and distributes to each one as He wills, she said.

After all the centuries have come and gone, “there have never been more carnal days, and yet here we are,” she said. “This is our charge and this is our time,” she said. “The most important thing that can happen in your life and mine when it’s all said and done, is that we served God’s purpose in our own generation as relevant Christians.”

Conference attendee Amy Thompson, 20, a sophomore at Texas State University in San Marcos, Texas, said Moore’s explanation on God’s personalized purpose encouraged her to continue following God’s plan for her own life.

“College is a hard time for girls and Beth helped me see that this generation needs Christians to show not only what they are against, but what they’re for,” Thompson said. “It’s so amazing that God’s plan is highly personalized for everyone and we need to be in fellowship with Him in order to follow that plan.”

Brittney Thomas, 23, a graduate student at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, said she identified with Moore’s teaching on God’s progressive plan for each person’s life.

“Looking back at my life, I can see how God reveals His plan in His own timing,” Thomas said. “I was in the 1997 Paducah school shooting where the gunman shot my best friend and four others as we prayed before school. Until then, I didn’t know how to handle a hard situation.

“From that one instance in my life, God has progressively revealed why it happened and He has used that terrible situation to help others. I learned to live in the here and now and be faithful to God as He reveals His plan for my life, just as Beth Moore is teaching us.

“It’s so good to have a Bible teacher like Beth Moore to help you see the biblical truths and how they relate to your life,” Thomas added. “This conference gives girls a different look at our own generation. We often hear all the negative about this generation, but this conference helped me see that we are here for a purpose and we can make a difference in the world.”
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