“Beauty” is the most essential and, yes, the most misunderstood of all the feminine qualities. We want you to hear clearly that it is an essence every woman carries from the moment of her creation. The only things standing in the way of our beauty are our doubts and fears, and the hiding and striving we fall to as a result. So the choice a woman makes is not to conjure beauty, but to let her defenses down. To choose to set aside her normal means of survival and just let her heart show up. Beauty comes with it.
I Peter 3:3-4 “Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as braided hair and the wearing of gold jewelry and fine clothes. Instead, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit.”
Peter doesn’t mean that beautiful women rarely speak above a whisper, if they speak at all. No. To have a gentle and quiet spirit is to have a heart of faith, a heart that trusts in God, a spirit that has been quieted by His love and filled with His peace. Not a heart that is striving and restless.
“He will quiet you with His love.” (Zepheniah 3:17) A woman of true beauty is a women who in the depths of her soul is at rest, trusting God because she has come to know Him to be worthy of her trust. She exudes a sense of calm, a sense of rest, and invites those around her to rest as well. She speaks comfort; she knows that we live in a world at war, that we have a vicious enemy, and our journey is through a broken world. But she also knows that because of God all is well, that all will be well. A woman of true beauty offers others the grace to be and the room to become. In her presence, we can release the tension and pressure that so often grip our hearts. We can also breathe in the truth that God loves us and He is good.
Living in true beauty can require much waiting, much time, much tenacity of spirit and much suffering. We must constantly direct our gazes toward the face of God, even in the presence of longing and sorrow. It is in the waiting that our hearts are enlarged. The waiting does not diminish us. You know that He does not always give to us what we so desperately want when we want it. He is after much more valuable than our happiness. Much more substantive than our health. He is restoring and growing in us an eternal weight of glory. And sometimes … it hurts!
Do you feel beautiful? Have you made choices in your life and compromised your heart the beauty of God? What would it look like if you stopped hiding the “real” you? Are you hiding in self-pity? Are you living the present by listening to the messages of your past? Are you believing the lies of the enemy?
What would it look like to love without fear? What would it look like to not live in fear? What lies do you believe about yourself? Where is our hope?
Jesus pursues us … He wants to restore our broken heart, He wants to heal our lives, He wants to renew the mistakes, He wants to turn your ashes into joy!
Isaiah 61:1-3
“He has sent me (JESUS) to comfort the brokenhearted and to announce that captives will be released and prisoners will be freed. He has sent me (JESUS) to tell those who mourn that the time of the Lord’s favor has come, and with it, the day of God’s anger against their enemies. To all who mourn, He will give beauty for ashes, joy instead of mourning, praise instead of despair. For the Lord has planted them like strong and graceful oaks for His own glory.
When we practice and live God’s beauty ~ we become radiant ~ because we start to look like Jesus! (He must increase and I must decrease…)
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