Reflecting on a 43-year journey with her best friend, Beth Moore told her Twitter followers about Jesus’ faithfulness and steadfastness. In a June 22 post, the author and Bible teacher credited Johnnie Haines, whom she calls JJ, with helping to raise her kids, save her marriage, and launch her career in Christian publishing.
“We had so many problems,” Moore wrote. “But through thick and thin, Jesus just kept carrying us. Nothing flashy about it: Women who were young once, writing in their prayer journals and underlining Scripture. Women in their late 60s now. Writing in their prayer journals and underlining Scripture.”
I’ll tell you a story this morning, you with the time to read it. It’s a story involving my bff and me. We met 43 years ago early in our marriages when our firstborns were babies. We both needed part-time jobs but somewhere we could take our kids. We each applied to teach…
— Beth Moore (@BethMooreLPM) June 22, 2023
Beth Moore & BFF: Time With Jesus ‘Was Our Way’
Beth Moore, whose memoir “All My Knotted-Up Life” released earlier this year, described meeting Haines when both were mothers of babies and needed part-time jobs. They ended up team-teaching a class of 2-year-olds at a local Mother’s Day Out program. “Within two weeks we had a bond that to this day is thick as blood,” Moore wrote.
The author described times when Haines talked her through marital crises. “To this day, my friend and I text on my and Keith’s anniversary,” tweeted Moore. “Because it took all three of us and Jesus for Keith and me to make it.”
Despite some differences in opinion, Moore emphasized that she and Haines have something vital in common: Both women start their days with Jesus and in his Word. “It was our way,” Moore said. “Just getting up early in the morning, reading scripture and praying then going on with our day, doing our best at trusting.”
Even amid disappointments and prayers that seemed to go unanswered, “we developed a relationship with Jesus that was dearer than any bond with flesh and blood,” Moore continued. “We found Someone, each in her own journey, no amount of trouble or success or busyness could ever take from us.”
Although Moore has some “deep regrets” and has “made many mistakes,” she said she’d never change her approach to daily time with her Savior. “Jesus kept me at him,” she concluded. “Only one thing in my life has never unraveled. Jesus, my anchor within the veil.”
Friend Helped Launch Beth Moore’s Writing Career
In a 2014 blog on Moore’s Living Proof Ministries website, Haines reflected on their longtime friendship and “Bible study backstory.” When Haines served as women’s ministry director at a Houston-area church, a Bible study group needed a teacher. Moore stepped up, “prepared and taught faithfully,” and soon attendees “wanted homework of all things,” Haines wrote.
