As a young girl, there were times I didn’t feel beautiful at all. In fact, when I was 12 years old I went and hid under the dining room table and just cried one night. I didn’t think anyone liked me. I thought I was ugly.
My mom came over to comfort me and shared this verse:
“Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.”
– Proverbs 31:30
She encouraged me to grow my inner beauty and love for Jesus because that is beauty that not only shines through, but it is the only beauty that lasts.
You are beautiful because you were created in the image of God. You are His precious daughter. And there are some things you can do to develop your inner beauty so that it shines through, no matter how old you are.
Develop a life-long relationship with Jesus. When we accept Jesus into our hearts, he gives us his Holy Spirit to help us become more like Christ. But it doesn’t happen automatically. We need to study what God’s Word instructs us to do as well as what it says about us. Then lean on Christ for strength, wisdom and direction in life.
Let Jesus shine through you. Matthew 5:16 says, “Let your light shine before men that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in Heaven.” Reflect Christ through your faith and the way you love your life. I want to have “JOY OF JESUS” lines around my eyes that come from a faithful life of following Jesus and reflecting Him to others. You will see the difference as you get older. 2 Corinthians 3:18 says, “But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.”
Make Sabbath rest a priority every week. In the book Captivating, Staci Eldredge shares that inner beauty flows from a heart of rest. My nature is being a driven go-getter, so it’s taken years for me to really embrace rest. God’s Word tells us that He created the world in 6 days, and He rested on the 7th day. If He rested, then I should too. If you don’t take the time to rest, you will burn out and that will not be pretty.
Most of us are wounded because of hard experiences with some people in our lives and mistakes we ourselves have made. The result is often feeling unloved, not valued, and anything but beautiful. Those experiences can motivate us to either try too hard or simply quit and not try at all. But that won’t allow us to experience the abundant life Christ died for us to have.
Jesus is the healer of our all of our wounds when we turn to him. He wants to give us beauty for ashes (Isaiah 61:3). He wants us to be a crown of beauty in the hand of God (Isaiah 62:3). So every morning when you look in the mirror, remind yourself that the face you see is the face of a woman Jesus loves.
“I have loved you with an everlasting love.” – Jeremiah 31:3