Get Out of That Pit: Straight Talk on God’s Deliverance
by Beth Moore
Reviewed by Heidi Scanlon
The marketing head for a top Christian publishing house has been recommending books to our family for years. This summer, I asked him what was the most important book he read over the past year. He said, Get Out of That Pit: Straight Talk on God’s Deliverance by Beth Moore (Pit for short). Since he had previously recommended books like Blue Like Jazz, I made sure to add his suggestion to my late summer reading list.
The foundational Scripture for Pit is Psalm 40:1-3:
I waited patiently for the Lord;
He turned to me and heard my cry.
He lifted me out of the slimy pit,
Out of the mud and mire;
He set my feet on a rock
And gave me a firm place to stand.
He put a new song in my mouth,
a hymn of praise to our God.
Many will see and fear and put their trust in the Lord.
Moore identifies three types of pits. And people can “know that they are in a pit when…”
You feel stuck. Isaiah 42:22 describes the pit where people feel trapped and can’t get themselves out. “A big part of what makes a pit a pit is feeling stuck”
You can’t stand up. In Psalm 69:2, David cries out, ”I sink in a deep mire, where here is no standing.” Moore notes that the “enemy of our soul is bent on out destruction.” One way to know you’re in a pit, Moore says, is “to feel ineffective and utterly powerless.” Using Ephesians 6, Moore implores the reader to take a stand against the schemes of the enemy.
You’ve lost vision. Once you’re in a pit it’s hard to see the light. Even if it’s way above you, being surrounded by darkness weakens your vision. Moore says that
“without windows we are convinced we have nowhere else to go” and we stay in the pit for lack of vision.
Reading Pit is a bit like watching that scene from Jerry Maguire where Tom Cruise is yelling at Cuba Gooding Jr.: “help me help you!” Moore is desperate to see us help ourselves by using Scripture to recognize how we got into the pit and using scripture to help us help ourselves out of the pit.
I will say from the outset, small group leaders need to read this book from the pastoral care perspective. It’s a good resource for prayer counseling because not every one who comes to your small group study on Mark or Romans will actually be interested in studying the Scriptures. Some people will come because they are in fact stuck in the proverbial “slimy pit” and are looking for a hand to lead them out. As leaders, we need to recognize the various types of pits people can be in and pray and assist them out when and where we can.
Moore notes that many Christians are in the pit and because of some misunderstanding of the Scriptures, they have come to believe that they should learn to be “content in all circumstances” and should learn to get comfortable in the pit. Moore shoots straight from the start that this is a lie and a misconception and that if one reads the whole of Psalm 40 he/she will find that “staying in the pit” is not what God has intended for us.
A pit, incidentally, says Moore, is not a “physical location”. Although her description could be more developed, she likens the pit to “mud on a set of tires; we drag it along wherever our physical circumstances move us.” She doesn’t exactly say it but I glean that the “pit” she is describing is any area in our lives that we have deemed “hopeless” or a lost cause, or a “no way out” circumstance. It’s an attitude of the heart.
Moore is a self-described pit dweller and escapee. Thrown into the pit because of the sins of another person, Moore spent many years in the pit nursing anger and hatred. Until she realized that God wanted to lift her out of the pit and into His glorious light. But she had to make the decision to take His hand.
Moore says that a common mistake that Christians make is that they “characterize pits only in terms of sin.” She says that in our “Christian sub-culture, we think a pit of sin is the only kind there is.”
Moore coveys she has surveyed thousands of people who haven’t been in a stronghold of sin but have been in the pit. She knows this because they have felt stuck, couldn’t stand up and had lost vision. She notes that “Satan has a lot to lose when we get out of our pits.” She concludes that it’s in his best interest to keep us there.
Moore is a little long on diagnosis and a little shorter on prescription when she describes the three ways that people can get into a pit:
You are thrown into a pit (like Joseph in Genesis 37).
You slip into a pit. Moore suggests, “Yes, you got into a pit, but it certainly wasn’t planned”. Like one glance at pornography, or one flirtation with a married man, or one big purchase on the credit card, or one try of a recreational drug – you didn’t mean to become addicted but you did. As Moore says, “you’d give anything for someone to have thrown you in because then you’d have someone to blame.”
You jump into a pit. “You are well aware that what you’re about to do is wrong, probably even foolish,” but you do it anyway. Moore says getting into the pit
this way is like “hauling off, aiming and jumping square into the bull’s eye of the it.” Think David and Bathsheba. Moore says people in this category even
“jump into the pit because they like the trip.”
Moore’s descriptions of our ways into the pit are evocative. I don’t like that she doesn’t elaborate more on our original taint of sin that leads to our incredible capacity for sin. There could be a little more development on the idea that we are sinners saved by grace.
In her very chatty but direct and loving way, Moore calls us out of the pit. In fact she says it’s God who is calling us out of the pit and that “God will be your complete deliverer or nothing at all.” Moore says that’s the “one rule of divine rescue.” That we are to acknowledge it’s God doing the rescuing. She identifies three primary ways to get out of the pit. She says we must:
Cry out. “Scripture proves that God more often waits until the challenge comes and the hurting cry out [for His deliverance]” as we see in Exodus 3 when God
heard the cry of the Israelites held captive in Egypt.
Confess. “Think sin, but then think wider” says Moore. Moore describes that “confession in its widest sense is out means of baring our hearts and souls before od…agreeing with what god says about Himself and us.” This is an important point because often we get into the pit because we have believed a lie from the nemy about God or ourselves.
Consent. Moore chats, “we’re talking action verb acquiescence here.” The third tep in getting out of the pit is to “consent to what God already wants for you.”
That is “Victory. Out of defeat. Freedom. Period.” First John 5:14 is the Scripture Moore uses to call her “beloved” (that’s us) out of the pit. It’s the simple
confidence that when we approach God believing that He will do anything according to His will – He will. And she adds, “His will is for us to be out of the pit”.
Moore is good at helping us think about areas where there is a perceived a loss of freedom. In fact one may be so captive to fear that he/she can even be buried under the pit. I would like to have heard her describe a little more about God’s amazing grace, but alas a book can’t have everything.
The second half of the title is Straight Talk on God’s Deliverance. I think some readers may pick this book up looking for a “deliverance” methodology. The book doesn’t address the “binding and loosing” we typically think of when we consider this topic. And it doesn’t address oppressive spirits that plague even believers. But it does recognize that God alone is to be our deliverer.
Moore concludes the book with a set of “Scripture prayers” and a “discovery guide”. The prayers are very useful for someone who has no idea where to start in getting out of the pit. Formatted like a “day-of- the-week” prayer guide, the Scripture prayers serve to give the reader a leg up.
The discovery guide is designed to help the “reader interact with Biblical passages.” In other words, to get the reader into the Word. The guide is divided into two parts: 1) reflection questions, and 2) personal application. The discovery guide is well suited to use in a small group.
Overall, I think the book serves as a good tool to give to a small group member who needs help identifying the pit they may have gotten into. I have already given the book away to several people for just that reason.
Of all the books I had to read for school this past year, this book by Beth Moore (which I read this past summer) was a welcomed break from school reading and my favorite faithbuilder book of 2007. I echo your compliments.
Christina Regule
November 20th, 2007