Inner Beauty

Well, I've been thinking about this last few days and I've decided to make a blog out of it...I'm kind of liking this blog thing. Well, not because I like writing so much, but because it helps me to really take what it's in my heart and mind and actually organize it - I'm realizing I process what I've been thinking about a lot better when I blog it. So, I'll probably be doing this more. Again, for selfish reasons. Ha!
I've been thinking about inner beauty and what exactly that is. How does someone acquire it? And what does it look like? Growing up, I was one insecure girl as far as my outward appearances. I was awful at receiving complaments. When someone said I looked pretty, I was so insecure I did not even like the fact that someone thought I was pretty. It was more than shy, it was somewhat of an unhealthy view of myself that later God would heal. Today I am much better at receiving complaments and when I look in the mirror, I like myself. Hopefully I don't like myself so much that I'm into the other extreme that becomes pride, but I am much more balanced when it comes to how I feel about myself than in my highschool years. I like to dress up more and look nice, which is HUGE. And that has to do 100% with what God has done in my own heart. I mean, I dont go around in high heals and dresses every day... I think you know what I mean. And I don't try to look good for the mere sake of someone giving me attention. I try and look good, well...because I know I'm valued and loved, so because I think higher of myself, I treat myself with more respect. Someone who doesn't respect and value themselves will not care about their appearance. On the other hand, they may also try so hard to please others that they will dress a certain way to get attention. I'm talking in an unhealthy way. I think there is a healthy way of wanting to look good, but it comes from the right motives and reasons.
I just want to share with you a part of my testimony of what exactly God has done in my heart. The people closest to me have heard this, but most have not. I hope by me sharing it you will see a picture of who our Father is - the loving God that He is. In my early 20s the Lord began to heal my heart of how I perceived myself. To be honest, I didnt think I was of much value. I loved God, came from a good family, did all the right things. But, there was a wound on the inside of me that formed, I believe, when I was a child. I can't pinpoint the exact time it formed, but I just know that as far I can remember it was been there. This wound caused me to look at myself in a negative way. It's not that I hated myself to the extreme, like suicide or anything. I just didn't feel valued. And, the sad thing is, I didn't even realize I felt this way. I had no idea...until my early 20s when the Lord began to shine His light on my heart and I realized it! It's funny the things we don't even know about our own hearts. There was a lot I didn't realize back then, and I'm sure there is a lot I don't realize now. He is so patient with us that He withholds from showing us everything that needs to change at once. He reveals things in the right time, when we are ready to deal with them.
Anyways, He began to show me in His word how He felt about me. He began to romance my heart with who He was. I began to hear His voice, and I realized it was a sweet voice, which shocked me. I viewed God as the judge, with somewhat of a harsh voice that always pointed out our weaknesses. Because of this, I was really good at pointing out other people's weaknesses. He began to tenderize my heart with His love and all the hardness and religion broke off of me and I began to be healed. No longer did I judge easily, but I could see past people's sins and see good in them. Not only that, but I realized for the first time it was not the religious things I did that made God accept me, but it was the qualities He had formed in me before I was even born. My personality, the things I liked, the way I did things. The very foundation of who I was God liked. This was a major thing for me...God liked me. He not only loved me, He liked me.
He told me that I was important, that I was of value to Him. He told me that he saw me and I was unique to His heart. I was different than anyone else that He had ever made and He desired to hear my voice. He told me I was beautiful. OH NO. Not that God. He REALLY began to tell me that. I began to feed myself on these things every day until I finally believed how He felt about me. It was a process of renewing my mind and changing the things that had been there for years. Song of Soloman 4:1 says "You are beautiful my darling, beautiful beyond words." Ok, so God thinks I'm attractive? What in the world? That's kind of wierd. Then I began to realize He was not talking about my outer appearance (although I don't think he thinks any of us are ugly...). He was talking about my heart, the inner beauty He saw in me. I stopped comparing myself with others and I began to be happy with who I was. I no longer tried to be like someone else -- I realized for the 1st time that just being me was good enough for God. A peace formed in my heart about myself that I had never had before.
It's fascinating to me that Jesus came as a humble servant. In Isaiah 53 it talks about Him like this, "...there was nothing beautiful or majestic about His appearance, nothing to attract us to Him." There was NOTHING about Jesus that was attractive! Yet, when you look at the heart of Jesus, it's the most beautiful heart that has ever walked the earth. Outward appearance was not the most important thing to Him. If it was, He would have came differently. He would have came with the ambition of fitting in, or being seen by others. He would have wanted attention from His outward appearance. He was so humble that He did not care what others thought about Him. Yet there was a strength about Him that allowed Him to walk through the suffering He went through. What was that strength? It was the constant love and communion He had with the Father. His identity was not in what people thought of Him - it was in what the Father thought of Him. This should be our goal. Humility and a heart that is completely grounded in how the Father feels about us. This is so important in our growth and maturity. If this doesn't happen, we will be on an emotional roller coaster our entire lives. We will be like a flower blown and tossed by the wind - whatever someone feels about us will affect us and we will never have the inner peace that God wants for us. It's easier said than done though! It takes someone that is focused on the Father, someone that is willing to spend the time in His presence like Jesus did. He spent lots of His time with the Father - it was His strength - He said it was like food to Him. God's love should be like food to our hearts - we can't live without it! Food only lasts a few hours and then we're hungry again. In the same way, we can't go years or even months on one encounter with God. It is so important we are consistant with feeding ourselves on truth. If not, we will go right back to the old nature, the old habits and thoughts we had before. We've all been there...and believe me, it ain't the best place. God has a better place for us! A place where we are confident in Him!
So, my question to us is...how much time and effort are we putting into our outer beauty and how much time and effort are putting into our inner beauty? What is our character like? Our integrity? How well do we love one another? Are we loyal? Do we gossip and slander others? What comes so easily off of our tongue? It's easy to neglect the inner life of our hearts and focus on the outward life. Now, I'm not saying we should all go around with no make-up and not care what we look like. As a matter of fact, God has put a desire to be beautiful in every single woman. It's a part of our nature. We are supposed to want that. But, how much more beautiful can we be if we allow the nature of God to be formed on the inside of us? It is His beauty that will be seen - His nature that will be formed in us. But, this takes work. It doesn't happen without someone who is going after it. It takes time out of each day sitting in His presence and being in His word. That's the only place where transformation takes place. But, after doing it for awhile, you will see that He begins to take over those places in our hearts...His healing comes and our minds are transformed. His thoughts become our thoughts and that overflows to others where we can love so much better!
So...in leaving you now, I just want to encourage you to be someone that is not only beautiful on the outside, but has inner beauty, a rare and precious quality that only comes from the Lord Himself. People are attracted to our outward appearance, but our lives will be lived with such shallowness if that's all we strive for. Become a person of inner beauty.