Beauty

There's a song played on KLove by Jonny Diaz called "More Beautiful You". It's a great song with a good message for females about God's idea of beauty. It has gotten some heart breaking responses from girls and women alike. It seems that no matter what our age, females struggle with ideas and perceptions of beauty. There are so many emotions that accompany our ideas of how we view ourselves when we look in the mirror. My mother started on me about my weight when I was 13. When I went on the trip to Nashville that I spoke about in a previous post, I was 14. When I left for Nashville I weighed 112 pounds. I ate more ice cream sandwiches and yeast rolls in that week than I have in all my years combined. When I returned home I weighed in at a whopping 114 pounds. My mother hit the roof. And of course I was thinking to myself that if she knew about my sexual activities, she wouldn't even care about my weight....or would she? She started bribing me at the age of 15. It didn't work. Nothing worked. I still remember so clearly all the fights we had about my weight. It continued for years. And it just got worse and worse. My resentment towards her was tremendous. I used to have sick fantasies about starving myself to death and being in the hospital. And right at the point of death my mother would be at my bedside, holding pizza and all the other foods that she hated for me to eat, begging me to eat them. And I would look at her, refuse, and die. And then she would live the rest of her life in guilt and wishing she had just left me alone. Seriously, this was my biggest fantasy for years. I'm ashamed to admit that and admit those feelings about my mother who was so important to me. I am not revealing these things to put my mother down. She loved me and wanted what she considered to be the "best" for me, and in her eyes, that was my weighing 105 pounds. She considered that to be "ideal' for me. This is what some mothers do to their daughters. But there are girls and women who do this to themselves, with no aid of another. It is due, in large part, to what society tells us we should look like. Pick up any magazine. Watch the commercials and in almost all of them, no matter what product is being pushed, the female looks great. And "great" in our eyes is being thin. It's just a fact. And most of us are guilty of it, even though most women loath the very idea! When I was 22, I lost almost every pound that I had put on in previous years. Joshua was 2. I had been dieting and got down to 119 pounds and felt great! I was going out that night to dinner at a girl's house and then to a Memphis American's soccer game with some friends from church. I bought a new outfit and felt so very good. When I came downstairs for Mom to inspect, she said, and I quote exactly: "If you could just loose 5 more pounds!". And once I got to my friend's house, her mother told me how great I looked and remarked that I still had a few more pounds that I needed to loose but hey, "You look great anyway". As much as I hated remarks about my weight and at times felt like I hated my mother for what she did, that side of her comes out in me, even to this day. The other day I saw this girl whom I don't really know very well but who loves the Lord and is so very precious. And what do I think? What is my first thought as I listen to her speak. Am I first and foremost hearing her heart for her Lord as I listen to her and look at her? Am I thinking of how much it must please our Lord for her to be serving Him so faithfully? No. Not at all. I am so very ashamed to admit that my very first thought was that she would probably be more comfortable in her jeans if she could just drop a few pounds! Can you believe that? Is that not horrible? I'm never comfortable in jeans and all I could think about was whether or not she was! And of course I'm thinking that my solution would be for her to drop 5 pounds. I am so ashamed of myself. Could that not matter any less? Could God not care any less about her outward appearance...or mine? Read 1 Samuel 16:7. God says that it is only man who looks at the outward appearance, but He looks at the heart! Did you get that, girls? God is looking at your heart. How does your heart look when Almighty Jehovah looks into it? Are you spending more time in the mirror looking at your face and body than you are looking into your heart to make sure it is right with God, and that He is pleased with what He finds on your inside? Let me tell you something else. Sometimes on Sunday morning, I spend more time preparing my face and body for the viewing of my fellow man than I do preparing my heart for worshipping the King of kings and Lord of lords. I spend more time putting on makeup than I do praying. I spend more time fixing my hair than I do asking God the Holy Spirit to prepare my heart for worship, and to use me to bless others. I spend more time wondering if I should take a sweater than I do praying for my pastor and the sermon and the saving of souls. I only read my bible for a few minutes. On and on I could go but my point is that sometimes, in my prideful, selfish, wicked heart, it is more important to me what my outside looks like rather than my insides, namely, my heart. This is not from God. This is sin. I am in sin, and grieve the heart of Jehovah God every single time that I act this way. And I am in sin when I look upon another and not want to see only what God sees in them. We could drive ourselves crazy if we only think about what other's opinions are of our outward appearance. And we can so severely neglect the thing that is important to the Lord. It's hard though. It's very hard. And I fail so much of the time. I can tend to stay so caught up in what is going on with the outside of my body to even care about if I'm looking and acting more and more like my Lord Jesus Christ. I'm trying to transform the outside of my ever-aging face and body when all God cares about is making me more and more into the image of His precious Son! Child of God, He's trying to do the same thing with you. The more I try to be "pretty" on the outside, the uglier I become on the inside!! And I know it is ugly to my heavenly Husband and my King for me to care so little about what He cares about. He cares about my heart. Beloved, He cares about your heart, the beauty of your heart. And your heart only becomes more and more beautiful to Him and to the world the more you become like Jesus. It's HIS beauty, reflected through you, that draws people to you and that pleases the heart of God. If you only worry about drawing the world to yourself by your outward appearance then you are missing the whole point of what God is trying to do in your life, and what He wants to accomplish through you! Try this: Put the mirror down, and get on your face. Seek God. Let the Lord of life and glory tell you what matters to Him, and what He sees about you. His opinion is the only One that matters, not the world's warped opinion! And when the God of this universe approves of what He sees in you, the beauty of His Son reflected in your eyes, He will look at you and He will call you "beautiful".