{a better kind of beautiful}
Dear girls,
Stop it.
Stop despising the way you look. Stop critiquing everything about yourself. Stop looking in the mirror only to cringe and tell yourself that you aren't good enough, aren't thin enough, aren't beautiful enough.
Stop wasting time beating yourself up because you don't meet the standards this world pushes us to meet.
This world tells us that we must look and act a certain way. It not only fills our eyes and minds with the picture perfect model-like figure and face, but it tells us what we can do to alter ourselves in order to achieve it.
We have to wear certain clothes, do our makeup in an all out kind of way, color our hair, pluck our eyebrows, lose weight, gain weight...all to be "acceptable", all to be "beautiful".
But the focus is wrong. The focus is wrong, the goal is wrong, the standard is wrong...the result is worthless.
Ladies listen: I'm not here to tell you that you're beautiful just the way you are so that you feel better about yourself. I'm not here to tell you to let go and live in an "I don't care what they think" kind of way. I'm not here to puff up your self-esteem.
I'm writing this as a broken girl living in a broken world who finds herself fighting way too hard to be accepted and beautiful to those of this world. When I wake up in the morning and look in the mirror I am struck by how far away I am from looking like all those girls on IG, the ones who have all the friends and all the likes...and just like that, my heart and mind is latched onto figuring out how I can be better, prettier, all together more "beautiful" and before I know it, I spend all day dwelling on all of my outward-appearance-shortcomings.
I'm writing this out of a realization that this whole thing is a joke and I don't want to keep falling for it.
I'm here to tell you something that we all need to remember:
It's not about us. It's not about the way we look, the clothes we wear, or how popular we are.
And it never will be.
Jesus didn't die on the cross for us to spend our lives altering our outward appearances in order to meet the standard that this fallen, sinful world put in place.
Jesus died on the cross so that we could live a life reflecting His grace and mercy and righteousness.
Jesus died on the cross in our place...He took on the shame and suffering that we deserved.
We broke. We fell. We sinned against the perfect King, and that deserves death.
"But God so loved the world that He gave His only Son..."
"...He became sin Who knew no sin so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God..."
When you look in the mirror tomorrow morning, instead of seeing someone who isn't pretty enough, see someone who is a sinner with an amazing Savior.
Instead of seeing someone who isn't skinny enough, see someone who deserved death, but has received grace and mercy and hope.
Instead of seeing someone who isn't popular enough, see someone who is personally known and loved by the Creator of the universe.
Ladies, we spend way too much time trying to make ourselves more beautiful on the outside. We speak too many words tearing ourselves down because we just can't ever be pretty enough. We dwell on our outward appearance too much. Our days are too full of vain and selfish thoughts. We are too competitive with one another when it comes to our looks.
We must stop it.
We must stop looking at ourselves in the mirror, because on our own, we are not and won't ever be good enough.
So stop it...and look to Christ instead.
We must look to Christ and see a good King Who humbled Himself for our sake. We must look to Christ and see our sin and shame no more. We must look to Christ and see a Savior carrying us through life, giving us exactly what we need exactly when we need it. We must look to Christ and desire Him above all else.
This world is full of fleeting pleasures, so instead of chasing the wind, let's chase Jesus and strive with all we have to be more and more like His perfect Self.
Instead of spending hours in our bathrooms applying product after product to our faces and hair, lets spend hours in His word applying His truths and principles to our hearts.
Instead of obsessing over exercising our bodies in order to obtain the perfect figure, let's obsess over exercising what we read in the bible in order to live out our calling as Christians.
Instead of tearing ourselves and others down with our words and even our thoughts, lets take each other's hands and kneel before the King in prayers of repentance and pleas for strength and self-control.
Instead of competing with one another, let's build each other up and show love in everything we do and say.
Let's live as daughter of the MOST BEAUTIFUL King Jesus.
We can't be beautiful on our own. We can't be perfect on our own. Everyday is a struggle, everyday is full of our failures and mistakes.
And nothing in the world can fix us.
Our hope must not be in ourselves or the things of this world...our hope must be in Christ and His cleansing grace.
Wear makeup, dress in cute and stylish clothes, curl your hair...God gave us these things to enjoy, so enjoy them!
Workout, eat healthy, exercise everyday...because God gave us these bodies, and we must take care of them!
But remember that our outward beauty means absolutely nothing in the end...God sees into our deepest thoughts and knows our hearts better than we know them ourselves...His standards are higher than those of the world, He doesn't judge us based on how pretty our face is or how fit and healthy we are physically...He looks past all of that and into our hearts.
His standards are higher, and His rewards are far greater and everlasting! The joy we can have by knowing and living for Jesus Christ surpasses anything this world can offer!
Let us humble ourselves before our King and repent of our sins. Let us open our hearts and hands in order that He may cleanse us from all filthiness.
Let us live in the light of His grace sisters, and let us share Him with others.
I need to be reminded everyday that my beauty isn't based on what I look like in the mirror, but it's based on the person of Christ and His perfection.
I need to be reminded everyday that my identity should never be rooted in how many likes or compliments I get, but my identity needs to be rooted in the person of Christ and His grace poured over my life.
"...let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God's sight is very precious." (1 Peter 3:4)
"Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these, put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing on another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, giving thanks to God the Father through Him." (Colossians 3:12-17)
So ladies, I challenge and encourage you to:
Praise and thank God that you are fearfully and wonderfully made. That He shed His own Son's blood for your sake.
Look in the mirror of God's word everyday. Study it, write it on your hearts.
Apply the truths you read to your hearts, live out the commands and principles within the pages of the Bible.
Before you put on your new clothes or makeup, put on love and humility and meekness and kindness and compassion and forgiveness.
Spend time on your knees praying to the Lord.
And encourage the girls around you, speak truth into their lives, lead them to the cross, point them to the Savior.
Let's strive to be a better kind of beautiful.
"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, they are a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come!" (2 Corinthians 5:17)
If you have believed and trusted in Jesus Christ as your Savior, you are a new (and beautiful) creation in Him...live like it.
Stop it.
Stop despising the way you look. Stop critiquing everything about yourself. Stop looking in the mirror only to cringe and tell yourself that you aren't good enough, aren't thin enough, aren't beautiful enough.
Stop wasting time beating yourself up because you don't meet the standards this world pushes us to meet.
This world tells us that we must look and act a certain way. It not only fills our eyes and minds with the picture perfect model-like figure and face, but it tells us what we can do to alter ourselves in order to achieve it.
We have to wear certain clothes, do our makeup in an all out kind of way, color our hair, pluck our eyebrows, lose weight, gain weight...all to be "acceptable", all to be "beautiful".
But the focus is wrong. The focus is wrong, the goal is wrong, the standard is wrong...the result is worthless.
Ladies listen: I'm not here to tell you that you're beautiful just the way you are so that you feel better about yourself. I'm not here to tell you to let go and live in an "I don't care what they think" kind of way. I'm not here to puff up your self-esteem.
I'm writing this as a broken girl living in a broken world who finds herself fighting way too hard to be accepted and beautiful to those of this world. When I wake up in the morning and look in the mirror I am struck by how far away I am from looking like all those girls on IG, the ones who have all the friends and all the likes...and just like that, my heart and mind is latched onto figuring out how I can be better, prettier, all together more "beautiful" and before I know it, I spend all day dwelling on all of my outward-appearance-shortcomings.
I'm writing this out of a realization that this whole thing is a joke and I don't want to keep falling for it.
I'm here to tell you something that we all need to remember:
It's not about us. It's not about the way we look, the clothes we wear, or how popular we are.
And it never will be.
Jesus didn't die on the cross for us to spend our lives altering our outward appearances in order to meet the standard that this fallen, sinful world put in place.
Jesus died on the cross so that we could live a life reflecting His grace and mercy and righteousness.
Jesus died on the cross in our place...He took on the shame and suffering that we deserved.
We broke. We fell. We sinned against the perfect King, and that deserves death.
"But God so loved the world that He gave His only Son..."
"...He became sin Who knew no sin so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God..."
When you look in the mirror tomorrow morning, instead of seeing someone who isn't pretty enough, see someone who is a sinner with an amazing Savior.
Instead of seeing someone who isn't skinny enough, see someone who deserved death, but has received grace and mercy and hope.
Instead of seeing someone who isn't popular enough, see someone who is personally known and loved by the Creator of the universe.
Ladies, we spend way too much time trying to make ourselves more beautiful on the outside. We speak too many words tearing ourselves down because we just can't ever be pretty enough. We dwell on our outward appearance too much. Our days are too full of vain and selfish thoughts. We are too competitive with one another when it comes to our looks.
We must stop it.
We must stop looking at ourselves in the mirror, because on our own, we are not and won't ever be good enough.
So stop it...and look to Christ instead.
We must look to Christ and see a good King Who humbled Himself for our sake. We must look to Christ and see our sin and shame no more. We must look to Christ and see a Savior carrying us through life, giving us exactly what we need exactly when we need it. We must look to Christ and desire Him above all else.
This world is full of fleeting pleasures, so instead of chasing the wind, let's chase Jesus and strive with all we have to be more and more like His perfect Self.
Instead of spending hours in our bathrooms applying product after product to our faces and hair, lets spend hours in His word applying His truths and principles to our hearts.
Instead of obsessing over exercising our bodies in order to obtain the perfect figure, let's obsess over exercising what we read in the bible in order to live out our calling as Christians.
Instead of tearing ourselves and others down with our words and even our thoughts, lets take each other's hands and kneel before the King in prayers of repentance and pleas for strength and self-control.
Instead of competing with one another, let's build each other up and show love in everything we do and say.
Let's live as daughter of the MOST BEAUTIFUL King Jesus.
We can't be beautiful on our own. We can't be perfect on our own. Everyday is a struggle, everyday is full of our failures and mistakes.
And nothing in the world can fix us.
Our hope must not be in ourselves or the things of this world...our hope must be in Christ and His cleansing grace.
Wear makeup, dress in cute and stylish clothes, curl your hair...God gave us these things to enjoy, so enjoy them!
Workout, eat healthy, exercise everyday...because God gave us these bodies, and we must take care of them!
But remember that our outward beauty means absolutely nothing in the end...God sees into our deepest thoughts and knows our hearts better than we know them ourselves...His standards are higher than those of the world, He doesn't judge us based on how pretty our face is or how fit and healthy we are physically...He looks past all of that and into our hearts.
His standards are higher, and His rewards are far greater and everlasting! The joy we can have by knowing and living for Jesus Christ surpasses anything this world can offer!
Let us humble ourselves before our King and repent of our sins. Let us open our hearts and hands in order that He may cleanse us from all filthiness.
Let us live in the light of His grace sisters, and let us share Him with others.
I need to be reminded everyday that my beauty isn't based on what I look like in the mirror, but it's based on the person of Christ and His perfection.
I need to be reminded everyday that my identity should never be rooted in how many likes or compliments I get, but my identity needs to be rooted in the person of Christ and His grace poured over my life.
"...let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God's sight is very precious." (1 Peter 3:4)
"Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these, put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing on another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, giving thanks to God the Father through Him." (Colossians 3:12-17)
So ladies, I challenge and encourage you to:
Praise and thank God that you are fearfully and wonderfully made. That He shed His own Son's blood for your sake.
Look in the mirror of God's word everyday. Study it, write it on your hearts.
Apply the truths you read to your hearts, live out the commands and principles within the pages of the Bible.
Before you put on your new clothes or makeup, put on love and humility and meekness and kindness and compassion and forgiveness.
Spend time on your knees praying to the Lord.
And encourage the girls around you, speak truth into their lives, lead them to the cross, point them to the Savior.
Let's strive to be a better kind of beautiful.
"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, they are a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come!" (2 Corinthians 5:17)
If you have believed and trusted in Jesus Christ as your Savior, you are a new (and beautiful) creation in Him...live like it.
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