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My Identity: What does God say about me?: Beautiful

In 2 Corinthians 5:17 the Bible reads that we are “new creations” if we are followers of Christ. Have you ever wondered about the way God feels about you? We can be very hard on ourselves at times. We often struggle with our identity. This week, we’ll turn to God’s Word to find out how He views us and how we can find our identity in Him.

 

Beautiful

“I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.”

Psalm 139:14, NIV

4_Beauty_Quote_THURSDAYDo you struggle with self-image? I think it’s a common struggle for many of us. When I meet women through my ministry for single women, this is something we often talk about. It’s also something I personally battle. I struggle with comparing myself to others and then mentally listing my faults as I see them.

In my book, Truth, Lies, and the Single Woman, I wrote about the standard of beauty. For the guys out there, you can substitute “attractive” for beautiful. It’s so easy to let external forces determine our self-image. If someone tells me I’m pretty, I suddenly feel beautiful. If someone mentions that I look tired, I feel like an ugly duckling. During my single years, if a guy paid attention to me, I felt beautiful. For years, I allowed my standard of beauty to be determined by others.

It’s important to remember that God is the One who sets our standard of beauty. In today’s verse, we learn that we are “fearfully and wonderfully made.” God created you exactly the way you are for a specific purpose. He wove you together. You are his masterpiece. He ordained all of your days before the earth was ever formed. God also knew the parts of yourself that would cause you sadness and struggle.

In Truth, Lies, and the Single Woman, I challenged my readers to try something each morning. For one week, when you wake up each morning, I want you to look in the mirror and say, “God created me in His image. He designed me exactly right because He does not make mistakes. I am beautiful.”

Of course, we’re not only talking about outward beauty. The Bible indicates that our beauty should come from another source. “You should clothe yourselves instead with the beauty that comes from within, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is so precious to God” (1 Peter 3:4, NLT).

Today, remember that you are created in the image of God. Let’s honor our Creator by loving the person He created and cultivating the inner beauty of our spirits, not just our bodies.

Seeking Him,

Allison

God is Teaching Me About… Beauty from Ashes

From giving Him my all to giving up control, join me this week as I share some things God has been teaching me lately.

 

Beauty from Ashes

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“The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn, and provide for those who grieve in Zion—to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair.”

Isaiah 61:1-3, NIV (emphasis mine)

Over the past few years, God has pointed me to the verse above about giving beauty instead of ashes. When I first read these verses, I only focused on the beauty. I truly believe God takes our ashes and turns them into something beautiful. I accepted this promise from God, and I kept waiting for the transformation.

Eventually, I realized the process is not quite as glamorous as it sounds. In order to transform them into something beautiful, God must first make the ashes … by burning away those parts of us that aren’t like Him.

“See, I have refined you, though not as silver; I have tested you in the furnace of affliction.”

Isaiah 48:10, NIV

“In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.”

1 Peter 1:6-7, NIV

If we’re followers of God, He is continually refining us through fire and making ashes. I take great comfort in the certainty Elisabeth Elliot finds in this process. In These Strange Ashes, Elliot says, “Of one thing I am perfectly sure: God’s story never ends with ashes.”

It never ends with ashes. If there are still ashes, God isn’t done yet. He is creating beauty along the way. I’m finally starting to see some of the beauty, but it’s nothing like I expected. In many ways, it’s so much better.

God is the Beautiful One, and He’s making us more like Him.

Humbly learning these lessons,

Allison