I didn’t get all my homework done before this last session. This always happens to me — I start out with a bang, then I get distracted by family life, and it gets harder to stay motivated.

Thank you so much for your comments — they mean a lot! Particularly, this from Tina, who wrote:

As I had my quiet time with the Lord this morning, He is placing on my heart the need for a Beth Moore Bible Study in our church. I have both Believing God and Daniel as I have continued them on my own.

I just googled “Beth Moore Bible Study” and it led me to your site! Praise God, I am ENCOURAGED as I read your blog and the comments from others!!

I truly feel like I am so NOT the one to do this, but I can’t get away from it! LOL! Please pray the Lord will show me … I have tried this before and was very discouraged because of lack of commitment from the ladies. They feel it is too much homework and they don’t have time for once a week meetings. God Bless You!

Tina, and anyone else who feels this way, if God is nudging your heart to start some kind of study like this, please go for it! Even if you have a VERY small group, or you have women who come once or twice but can’t commit, you just never know what a difference that one time might make in their lives. And the word will spread. (or I should say THE WORD will spread!)

It also helps to have a convenient meeting place that provides childcare (like our church does). And food! Hey, we gotta eat breakfast — why not eat with friends, free for an hour or two from childcare responsibilities?

You could also hold the group meeting in the evening and hire a teenager to watch everyone’s kids in a playroom or other area. I was in a group once that met from 8-10 pm! These were mostly homeschooling moms who couldn’t get out during the day — yet our husbands could babysit at night.

Our group’s discussion leaders always tell us please don’t let the homework commitment hold us back from showing up — we really just need to get together. I’m sure there are many of us in the room who come to the group with blank homework pages — but that’s OK! In a different season of life, we may have more time to commit to learning.

I am praying for you!!

OK — back to our group…

Our discussion this week focused on how we could raise children who don’t get caught up in our materialistic culture. There is one woman in our group who I absolutely admire. She is a mentor to me because she is just a little bit older and MUCH wiser, as her daughters are now college age, and they’re both wonderful godly young women.

She said she and her husband started taking their girls on mission trips (overseas) when they were as young as ten! Her husband has a medical ministry in a certain third-world country, and their whole family has participated in his work over the past decade. She said nothing has impacted her children more than seeing how impoverished people really live.

When our children complain about how they wish they had this or that, one woman says she tells her kids, “There will ALWAYS be some people who have more than you do and some who have less than you do. Just be thankful for what you have.”

In the video, Beth focused on the 4th chapter of Daniel. This is when Nebuchadnezzar has this dream about a tree, and he’s once again so disturbed by it, only Daniel can interpret it for him. We learned about the absolute splendor of ancient Babylon, and how Nebuchadnezzar’s prosperity kept him from acknowledging the one true God (even though just the chapter before he was amazed at the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego).

After the dream is interpreted, a year passes, and the king becomes insane for a period of seven years. You can read about all this in Daniel 4:28-37. During this time, he lived like an animal out in the wild, eating grass, and “his hair grew like the feathers of an eagle and his nails like the claws of a bird” (v. 33).

Beth opened up about the difficulties she went through in her personal life during a dark time in her early 30s. I would really like to read her book, Get Out of That Pit, to know more specifically what she’s talking about. I think many of us could relate — being a mom with young kids can be a struggle mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Yet God is working in our lives during those years to make us more dependent on Him to meet our every need.

At one point, Beth reminded us what a privilege it is that we have enough money to be able to buy a book, and enough education to know how to read it. Wow. How often I forget what a privilege it is to be able to read! One of my favorite quotes is attributed to Horace Mann, who said, “A house without books is like a room without windows.”

I think each of us in the group left with a sense of awe, wondering how we might be able to be used by God to help those who live in poverty.

Lord, please make us aware of ways we can reach out to help others in need. You have a unique purpose for each of us. Help us to become more aware of our gifts and our passions — so that we can follow the calling you have placed on our hearts. Put people in our path who remind us what a big world we live in and what we (and our children!) can do to make a difference. Amen.