March 24, 1999
Hair-raising experience teaches Moore
___By Mary Speidel
___SBC International Mission Board
___RICHMOND, Va. (BP)--Seated in a waiting area at the Dallas-Fort Worth airport, Beth Moore fixed her gaze on her open Bible as she memorized a Scripture passage.
___Like the other travelers around her, Moore, a popular Bible study teacher and author from Houston, tried not to stare at an elderly man slumped in a wheelchair nearby. His matted gray hair flowed down hisback. His fingernails were overgrown. His clothes hung loosely from his emaciated frame.
BETH MOORE, a popular Bible teacher and author, shares a poignant story from her own Christian pilgrimage during Spiritual Emphasis Week
___March 2-4 at the Southern Baptist International Mission Board. (BP photo by Denise McGill)
___As Moore studied her Bible, she felt the Holy Spirit speaking to her about the man.
___"PLEASE, Lord, don't make me witness to him," Moore argued with God.
___"I don't want you to witness to him, Beth," she sensed God reply. "I want you to brush his hair."
___"Brush his hair?" Moore retorted. "You've got to be kidding, Lord!"
___Moore tried to ignore the impression and continued her Scripture memorization. But God wouldn't leave her alone. Finally, she slammed down her Bible and walked over to the man.
___"Sir, may I have the privilege of brushing your hair?" she asked softly.
___"Speak up," he said. "I can't hear you."
___"Sir, may I brush your hair?" she repeated, nearly yelling.
___The man agreed. As Moore, still angry with God, searched for a brush in the man's suitcase, "a miracle of God came over me. I have never been so overcome by the fruit of the Spirit," she recalled.
___When she finished brushing the man's tangled hair, she knelt in front of his wheelchair. "Sir, do you know my Jesus?" she said.
___"Oh, yes," he said. "When I met my bride, she wouldn't marry me unless I gave my life to him."
___The man explained that he'd recently had open-heart surgery in another city and was flying home to his wife, who'd been too weak to visit him in the hospital. He hadn't seen her in months. "Before you came up, I was sitting here thinking what a mess I will look like for my bride," he told Moore, author of a popular women's discipleship series.
___This poignant account was one of many real-life stories Moore shared March 2-4 during Spiritual Emphasis Week at the Southern Baptist International Mission Board in Richmond, Va. During Bible studies based on Romans 12, Moore challenged IMB employees and missionaries-in-orientation to seek a deeper walk with Christ in order to fuel their global ministries.
___She urged them to heed the Apostle Paul's advice to present themselves as "living sacrifices" to God and to depend upon God's "resurrection power" to keep from burning out in Christian work.
___In an interview at IMB headquarters, Moore said she developed a love for international missions while growing up in Girls in Action at First Baptist Church of Arkadelphia, Ark. At age 18, she felt God's call to full-time Christian service while serving as a GA camp counselor in Arkansas. Yet later she began to wonder why God gave her a passion for missions but didn't call her to serve overseas.
___As she prayed about the matter, "God began to make it very, very clear to me that my mission service is to encourage those who serve in global missions, to help them keep that flame hot and keep abiding in his love."
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