So Long, Insecurity!

Happy Thursday to you ladies (and gentlemen)! :) Today I thought I might share something that's been on my heart all week. It's about beauty: What makes a woman beautiful, in God's eyes?

All this week, while I've have gobs of time for thinking over a lot of issues, I've found that I am often unsatisfied. That I wish I could be somebody else.

A confession: For so long I've assumed that since I'm a young adult, past my teenage years, I would no longer feel blatantly insecure. But lately, especially this week, I have been discovering that no matter what stage of life I am in, if I am not focused on GOD, then I will always be disappointed with myself. Lately...I have not been focusing on my Savior, but on how the World would want me to look and act. Without Him, I'm joyless. I'm unhappy with my family, my blog, my friends, my life...it's all meaningless without Him at the center.

Here's something I read this morning, which really stuck in my mind, considering true beauty:

“When Christ overtakes a woman’s life and transforms her from the inside out, she becomes truly feminine - a picture of elegance, grace, and loveliness blended with sacrificial selfless devotion to her King.”
-- Leslie Ludy, "The Lost Art of True Beauty"

The transformation of the heart is what makes us beautiful.  God transforming us from the inside! That's something that no amount of fashion, worldly advice, makeup, tweezing, or tanning can do. As Daughters of the Living God, we are not to be of this world, but evidence of the God Who has placed us here, with His Holy Spirit. Not to be self-absorbed, but absorbed by Something bigger.

“As long as we live, our self-absorption and our insecurity will walk together, holding hands and swinging them back and forth like two little girls on their way to a pretend playground they can never find. Human nature dictates that most often we will be as insecure as we are self-absorbed. The best possible way to keep from getting sucked into the superficial narcissistic mentality that money, possessions, and sensuality can satisfy and secure us is to deliberately give ourselves to something much greater...[Christ] showed us that giving, rather than getting, is the means to receiving...to find yourself, your true self, you must lose yourself in something larger.” -- Beth Moore, "So Long, Insecurity: You've Been A Bad Friend To Us"

"Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.^" -- Romans 12:1-2

 "Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good." 
-- Romans 12:21

 In Christ is where true, feminine beauty lies. That's what makes us into the young women, wives, mothers, grandmothers, adventurers and business women that He desires us to be.
Having a Christ-Centered heart. 
Wow... praise God that He enables us to do just that.

Leah