“From Zion, perfect in beauty, God shines forth.” Psalm 50:2
One morning, I asked my husband if he thought my vest went well with my shirt, a question I’ve rarely asked him over the decades of marriage. He said, “Yes, I think it looks great, but just remember, God made man out of dirt, but woman He fashioned out of man’s rib, so you may not want to take my word for it.”
My husband made a valid point. God did beautifully design us and perhaps that's why many of us seem drawn to fashion in its many forms. Genesis 2:22 describes what took place in the Garden of Eden: “Then the Lord God made a woman from the rib He had taken out of the man, and He brought her to the man.”
Because God is the ultimate Master Designer, when it comes to beauty and fashion, the best place to look is to Him. He’s the perfectly beautiful one, but often we don’t think of God in this way because the definition of beauty on Earth has become sorely distorted.
Over the years, my prayer has been asking God to make me beautiful from the inside out. Even though I enjoy dressing in beautiful clothes, shoes, and jewelry, I know it’s not enough because true beauty isn’t something that’s worn on the outside.
Well, this process hasn’t been easy, and I most certainly didn’t realize in the beginning that beauty is directly connected to my heart’s condition. Needless to say, I was pretty clueless about what it would involve because I had no idea what my heart was hiding on the inside.
Let’s just say I didn’t really know what deep cleaning meant until I started praying this prayer. As Jeremiah 17:9 explains, “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?”
The process really started to kick in when my husband was called to pastor a church in Hawaii, a place everyone seems to want to go, except me. It was absolutely not where I wanted to be at the time. It meant leaving our lives in Southern California behind, a place I had prayed and asked God to move us to, a place I was praying we wouldn’t have to leave.
Although I wasn’t exactly leaving California kicking and screaming because I had reluctantly decided to submit to God by submitting to my husband, it still felt like God was gently dragging me to Hawaii, my heels leaving a sad foot trail behind me.
Still, as Psalm 51:10 asks, I was asking God to give me beauty from the inside out, not realizing how connected it was to my heart, but God knew exactly what it would take to accomplish that in me. As David prayed, I had asked God to “Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.”
Being led by God to a place I didn’t want to be surprised me when, to my horror, it started bringing out the worst in me in a very uncomplimentary way, with immature behavior, bad attitudes, and more. And I was the pastor’s wife! How could these horrible things be inside my heart and I not know it?
Like dredging out the hidden gunk and buildup hiding in a sink’s dark drain, to my surprise and disgust, God started cleaning out the buildup hiding deep within my heart. It was stinky, not pretty, and definitely not fun.
All the while, God promised as in Ezekiel 36:26, “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.”
Becoming beautiful from the inside out is a lifelong process, one worth the often eye-opening and painful deep cleansing it involves. As Proverbs 31:30 encourages women, “Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting; but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.”
As I’m still learning, true beauty comes only from God, from the inside out, rather than something humans can create from the outside, no matter how hard they try. It’s directly tied to our heart’s condition.
1 Peter 3:3-6 describes how “Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as elaborate hairstyles and the wearing of gold jewelry or fine clothes. Rather, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight. For this is the way the holy women of the past who put their hope in God used to adorn themselves.”
We can be assured, too, that God will answer us when we turn to Him, as He cherishes a beautiful heart. As Ecclesiastes 3:11 explains, “He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.”
Let’s Pray:
Dear Father,
I look to You, the One perfect in beauty, to make me beautiful from the inside out. Cleanse my heart from all unrighteousness and make me new.
In Jesus’ name,
Amen
Photo Credit: ©Getty Images/jacoblund
Lynette Kittle is married with four daughters. She enjoys writing about faith, marriage, parenting, relationships, and life. Her writing has been published by Focus on the Family, Decision, Today’s Christian Woman, kirkcameron.com, Ungrind.org, StartMarriageRight.com, and more. She has a M.A. in Communication from Regent University and serves as associate producer for Soul Check TV.
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