Parent Compass Radio

Natalie Moore: I started taking women's Bible study, two a days, until I didn't feel this way anymore, until I got that trauma and that feeling of nothingness out of me. I'm going to be in the Word.

Ron Moore: I grew up in a Beaver Cleaver type home, totally different from my wife's. I was a late-in-life child, a big surprise. Some people call it an accident, but I prefer to say surprise. My oldest brother is 17 years older than me. We lived in the same area of Oklahoma City all the time through going to school.

I don't even know how many times I've read the Bible through. Let's just say it was a lot. I did my Bible study until I felt like every single Bible study was the same questions revamped. When I was 11 years old, I felt the call of God to preach. I'll never forget that revival meeting where I was wrestled for several nights. I said, "I think God's called me to preach," and went forward and told our pastor.

Natalie Moore: I had a teenager that started having some behavioral issues, mental health issues. I thought, "Oh no, I have seen this before. I do not like the look of this. I am not going back there, God. I should not have to go do this again. I'm not going to do this again." And He's like, "Yes you are, but I'll help you."

The summer that I turned 14, at a youth camp, I had a radical experience with the Lord Jesus, with the Holy Spirit. I just know the Spirit of God breathed on our cabin. I've never been quite the same since. I've had a lot of highs and lows since that time, but I've never been quite the same since.

Natalie Moore: We had a mental health ministry. I said, "Look, I don't know what's going on at my home." And she said, "Well, come to the class and we will help you." And I said, "Okay." It was amazing. They knew exactly what was going on in my home. They knew exactly the counseling and the therapy and the help that my loved one needed. It was unbelievable what the Lord did.

Ron Moore: Shortly after that, I was asked to come preach down on Skid Row. I was a 14-year-old kid, barely 14. I took a little Billy Graham tract. I preached about five minutes with that, and then five minutes on my own notes, and that was it. That's all I had to say in 10 minutes.

Natalie Moore: I learned so much in the class, I wound up teaching the class. We had over 500 family members come through our classes in a 10-year period. It was so cathartic to my heart. I'm finally getting the counseling and the therapy and the talking it out that you need after a traumatic experience, and all that trauma is just evaporating.

Ron Moore: My sister and I had a totally different dad than my two older brothers because my daddy came to Christ about eight years before I was born. From what I understand, he was quite the hell-raiser. I knew a daddy that I always saw reading his Bible. He was in church with us. I just think of the difference that the gospel makes.

Natalie Moore: "Lord, what is happening?" He said, "You're forgiving." I did a word study on forgiveness in the Bible. There's like 70 words that mean forgiveness. "Lord, who do I need to forgive?" He's like, "Everybody." I forgave my mom. I forgave my dad. I forgave my grandmother. I forgave my relative that sat by and watched us get neglected. I forgave everybody that had ever hurt me. And not only that, I forgave everybody that had ever hurt my kids. It's like the dam just broke. The trauma started healing and literally falling off of me. I just became like a different person.

This is my purpose. The comfort that the Lord gave to me, I was able to give to others. If you've been a victim of child abuse, if you've been a victim of a severely mentally ill loved one, there's hope for you still. If God gave you breath in your lungs after this happened to you, there's hope for you. There's an amazing recovery process with the Lord Jesus Christ. As I helped other people and learned more about what had happened to me, my loved one had mental health recovery.

Ron Moore: I had a stay-at-home mom. I never wondered if I was wanted or loved. They gave me a great foundation for life. Out of high school, I was going to go to Bible college. I went to a military cemetery. I had never been to a military cemetery before. I walked around, and I just felt like it was time for me to do my duty for my country.

I fasted and prayed for three days. I felt like the go-ahead that God told me to go ahead and join the Marine Corps. I went home and told my sister. She said, "Where's Daddy's gun?" I said, "Daddy's gun? What do you want Daddy's gun for?" She said, "I'm going to kill you. If I don't, the Marine Corps will. You can't make it in boot camp. You've never been in shape in your life." And I hadn't. I hadn't been in shape a day in my life.

That very first forced jog, I just kept saying, "I can do all things through Christ. I can do all things. I can do all things through Christ." I was able to observe that you're going to make that run one way or the other. You're either going to make it with that drill instructor's boot up your rear, or you're going to make it by putting one foot in front of another. I said, "I think I'll put one foot in front of another."

I'm telling you, you've never been blessed until you're standing at attention and one of the drill instructors says, "Moore, you tell me I'm going to hell!" "Yes sir, if the drill instructor doesn't know Jesus, he's going to bust hell wide open, sir!" It was just a different dynamic.

When I was stationed in Okinawa, I had a spirit-filled chaplain come and heard me preach one night. He said, "Well, we need to get a revival meeting going." So I started going all around the base. I just did one tour. I felt like I had to hurry up and get out because when you're in your 20s, life's just going by so fast. I got to see a lot of folks saved. What a great experience that was.

Natalie Moore: When I was 12 or 13, she met Patrick. He had two, I had two, so we had a blended family. We got married. We were married for about 20 years, and then COVID hit. Our whole family got sick. My husband got sick, all my kids got sick, I got sick. I was on oxygen in the hospital. They told me, "You're probably going to die."

My husband needed to go to the hospital for COVID. They would not take him to the hospital. The ambulance would come to our home, examine him, and say, "We're not going to take you." I don't know why. I'm calling 911 from my hospital room for my husband to say, "Go out and get my husband and take him to the hospital." "No, no." And so my husband died.

My husband was a Christian man. So yes, he did go to heaven. But I felt like, "Okay, that's it. I'm done. Too much for too many years. I just can't take it anymore." And then God said, "You're not done." "Lord, how can I get through this problem? How can You help me get through this problem? How can I rally the troops, so to speak, and how can I get myself back to where You want me to be?"

Actually, my church put on a GriefShare class for us. Then I went to another GriefShare class, which they recommend. And then I thought, "Maybe I should try dating."

Ron Moore: Suddenly I find myself in my early 40s out on the open waves and single again. I just had gotten to the point that, "Okay, Lord, if You don't want it, then I'm going to keep praising You and serving You and loving You." I felt like He did have someone. The Psalmist says delight yourself in the Lord and He'll give you the desires of your heart. I knew that the desire of my heart was to be married. What a journey of God getting me ready, too.

Natalie Moore: There was a man that I had been listening to on my Facebook page named Ron Moore. He did a Morning Cup of Motivation, a three-minute devotional from a pastor's perspective, but it infused humor and it was fun. He's ruggedly handsome. I don't know where that came from. God's like, "Have you considered Ron Moore?" And I'm like, "For what?"

Ron Moore: She commented on one. I looked over at her page and saw that we have a gazillion friends in common. I sent her a Messenger message: "Hey, why aren't we friends?" We went out on a date. We found that we had an awful lot in common. When we finally got together, it was just such a, "Here's my way, walk ye in it." There weren't just two people coming together, but two ministries coming together. Everything I thought that he was when I watched him on his Facebook show, he actually was in real life.

Guest (Female): My reaction was happy because I knew that she was sad because of Patrick passing away. She had healed. She had gone through grief counseling and spent a lot of time in church. I kind of encouraged her to do it, too. I wanted her to date. I thought it was kind of cool when she told me and showed me his picture and everything.

Natalie Moore: We did want to have a biblical dating relationship that would lead into a Christ-honoring marriage, rather than how the world tells us. "Why marry? You're in your later part of life, just live together." We didn't want to do that. We didn't want to set that example for our children. He asked me to marry him. We started planning a wedding. We thought, "Well, we'll just have a little backyard barbecue at a friend's house." She says, "Oh no, we have to have flowers and lanterns and beautiful things, lights in the pool. We have to have music and a DJ, a cake, and all this stuff." And so it turned into an actual wedding. It's like a gift that God has given us later in our lives.

Ron Moore: One August afternoon, knowing that we had a family dinner coming up, I happened to see a farmer's truck by the side of the road selling watermelons. I was so excited to get this watermelon, a big honking watermelon. I put it in the refrigerator so it would be good and cold. At the end of Sunday dinner, I was all excited about doing the manly-man thing: cutting the watermelon, slicing it very precisely, and giving it to each person.

Natalie Moore: She comes out with this Tupperware thing full of these little chunks of watermelon.

Ron Moore: I said, "What's that? What's the watermelon all chopped up?"

Guest (Female): She said, "It's the watermelon I got chopped up."

Ron Moore: I said, "Oh no! It took me 45 minutes to cut up that watermelon." "No, no you didn't. No you didn't." "Yes I did." "I'm the man. That's the patriarch of the family's job, to get to cut up a watermelon."

Guest (Female): We'll know next summer. Don't touch the watermelon. He's been a bachelor for almost 20 years. This is the transition he has to make. It's easier for her because she's just a whatever-whenever type person.

Natalie Moore: I believe there is an order of things. I decided, as a good mercy of my heart and the Jesus Christ that lived in my heart, that I would give him transition time. I'm letting that go. I'm letting that watermelon go.

Ron Moore: It's one thing when you're in your late teens or early 20s when you get married. You're much more pliable, much more moldable. It's real romantic to say, "Oh, we're not going to do things his family's way or her family's way. We're going to do things our way." You say you're going to do things your way at our age, and that usually means one of you is not getting your way. And you may not get your watermelon cut up like you like it.

That's exactly right. I think that's why so many second and third marriages fail, because they just don't want to work at it. They don't want to work at saying, "Okay, maybe I don't have to have this my way on this." He did eat that watermelon, he did.

Natalie Moore: So many people have not been taught about just keeping a flow of forgiveness going. People will let stuff fester instead of keeping a short account of forgiveness or being willing to talk something out. I forget what it was just not long ago. I said, "Okay, the Bible says don't go to sleep before you get this talked down." So we sat up in bed and we got it talked down.

It's the little things, those little rifts in a relationship that can cause a marriage to come apart. You've got to be willing to do those things. Forgiveness is a spiritual weapon. Even since we've been married, we've met other couples that got the direct hit of the enemy's sabotage. They did not put their spiritual armor on, and they are no longer a couple.

Ron Moore: You have to activate the armor of God. By activating it, you have to bring it to your mind. Each piece has a different defensive mechanism, a different strategy. We need to study spiritual armor and understand our power that we have.

From my Marine Corps training, you don't diddy-bop through the streets of Baghdad with your cut-offs and T-shirt on. Because if you do, there's going to be bullets flying, bombs bursting. You're going to catch some of the shrapnel. That is why it is so important that we don't go to our workplaces or wherever without our armor. Because the enemy is there, and you just never know when life's going to turn on a dime. You better be willing to take authority over that Satan in the name of Jesus. Stay in battle mode.

If you'll spend an hour alone before the Father each day before you walk out the door, I'm telling you it would be a physical impossibility for you not to walk out the door filled with the Spirit of God. When you know that you know that God has spoken to you, it's like, "Wow, God spoke to me." We've got the King of kings and Lord of lords who knows us by name. That's what ought to just light the fire under our enchilada.

When we begin to get in our gut of guts who we are in Christ, the righteousness of God in Christ, we're a joint heir with Jesus. We're a child of the Most High God. And we begin to go out and operate where we realize, "Wait a minute. The One who lives in me is bigger than that enemy out there that's trying to bring me down." So he can just sit on it in the name of Jesus. Your family, your marriage, your children, whatever is at risk, you have to start praying spiritual armor over that and fighting in the heavenlies. It is an active job. The enemy has the same strategy for us that he does for every other Christian man, and we start fighting. That's what we're going to do.

Real Christian Families: God is love, and love comes from God. In 1 John, the Bible tells us that God is not only all-loving, but that He actually is love itself. The heart of the Parent Compass television show is to bring the transforming love of God to families everywhere. In every Parent Compass episode, true stories reveal family struggles and how their lives were radically changed by the love of God.

Parent Compass, an award-winning television series, is completely funded by people like you. If you have been touched by God and you want to share God's love to others, would you please pass it on? Jesus tells us to go into all the world and to tell about Him. With your donation, you allow us to take this television show into many different nations and in many different languages, free of charge. And a portion of your donation goes to Parent Compass outreach to feed starving children. Your gift does so much. To make your tax-deductible gift, go to parentcompass.tv/donate. That's parentcompass.tv/donate. And thank you for sending love and hope around the world.