We have a winner for the Peak City Publishing book giveaway!!! Congrats to Stephanie from Diary of a Debutante!! I sent you an email! And remember, all my readers can get free shipping at Peak City Publishing’s website until May 30th, 2013. Just enter the code CRAYONSANDMARKERS at checkout.
There’s nothing wrong with wanting to look good, with nice clothes and money. There are positive examples of well-dressed, beautiful and rich women in the bible (Esther, Lydia, Proverbs 31 wife). The problem is when we take these good things from God and twist them into comfort idols- our priority, the thing we worship.
Not a single one of us can stand up and say “I love every single part of my body. There is absolutely nothing wrong with my body.” Even the most beautiful of women have something that they don’t like about their own gorgeous bods. Negative body image affects all body types, large and small. For some women, its easy for them to move past it and just deal with it. For some of us (myself included), we get consumed by it. How quickly it can become the sole focus of our life, taking our focus off of what truly matters.
The source of our discontentment is usually ourselves- especially our bodies. We’re just trying to hide the flaws that we know too well.
God’s word does not say “Make yourself beautiful. Spend your fortune on clothes and shoes and beauty products. This is the only way to enter heaven.”
Absolutely not.
Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned. Mark 16:16
It uses the word believe twice. And if I could hear Him say it, I bet he put an emphasis on that word. He does not say beauty will save us. He says BELIEVING in Him will save us. The definition of believe is to accept something as true. He longs for us to believe that he is the way, the truth and the life.
The cross is an unlikely location to find beauty. But as we turn and fix our eyes on Jesus, we look away from the false cultural idols, breaking their power. What the cultural media images have destroyed in our imagination, the cross can restore. –Julian Hardyman
If you are struggling with loving your body and seeing your body as a gift from Him, ask Him to help you to let go of the standards of this world. Replace that stinking thinking with prayer. Allow the cross to restore you! The cross is the most beautiful thing we will ever know. The Cross is true beauty.
This is a blog series: Exploring Identity! If you missed any of the others posts, here they are!
Day 1- Known
Day 2- What is Identity?
Day 3- You are God’s Masterpiece
Day 4- Are you hiding?
Day 5- God doesn’t make Mistakes
Day 6- Mankind makes a Mess
Day 7- Turning Heads
Day 8- Getting the Idea?
Day 9- What Jesus Knew
Beautifully said. Struggling with chronic illness, I am often at war with my own body. It’s been hard for me to overcome that. I’m still working on it. Thanks for the reminder of why I need to keep working at it.
Stopping by from SITS. I hope you have a lovely weekend.
misssrobin recently posted…Living with Chronic Illness
What an important message to be the first I am reading this Saturday morning. Congrats on the PhD, too. What an exciting time for you!
Visiting from SITSSharefest!
Julie Jordan Scott recently posted…Free Flow Writing: A “Magic Trick” of Not Only Higher Quantity of Words and Also a Higher Quality of Words