By Tom Strode
Baptist Press
Beth Moore shares about parenting during an interview with Russell Moore Oct. 12 at the ERLC national conference in Grapevine, Texas. Photo by Karen McCutcheon, BP
GRAPEVINE, Texas — Beth Moore’s primary parenting goal was for her daughters to know Jesus is everything, the popular Bible teacher told the audience at the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission’s 2018 national conference.
Moore answered questions from ERLC President Russell Moore in an Oct. 12 session during “The Cross-shaped Family” at the Gaylord Texan Resort & Convention Center in Grapevine, Texas, a suburb of Dallas. The three-day event attended by about 950 people was held Oct. 11-13.
“The main thing I was after with them was that I wanted them to know that Jesus was everything,” Moore said of her two daughters, “that He wasn’t just authority and the Big Boss that was just looking for them to mess up. But He was every single, wonderful thing in all of life.
“He was the biggest joy of my life, and I wanted my kids to understand that.”
Moore has taught the Bible in conferences in all 50 states and multiple countries since founding Living Proof Ministries in 1994.
Russell Moore — no relation to Beth — observed her adult daughters “don’t seem to be cynical at all,” in contrast to some children of church and ministry leaders.
“I think that the huge explanation for that is — in just basic terms — the pure grace of God,” Beth Moore responded.
Her husband Keith and she have always dealt with reality and talked openly with their daughters when they experienced hurt from outside, Moore said. She acknowledged both Keith and she came from “such hurt and brokenness” — she as a survivor of childhood sexual abuse and he as someone with extreme post-traumatic stress disorder.
Moore “never acted like everyone else had it together because we didn’t,” she said. “[W]hat [her daughters] weren’t cynical about was Jesus, because Jesus did come through just exactly the way He promised He would.”
