Deepening our hearts sounds like a no-brainer, right? Who wouldn’t want to deepen our hearts, grow closer to God, enhance our relationships? Well, when we find out the method He uses to do the actual deepening, we may be a little more hesitant.
To possess true beauty we must be willing to suffer. Wait…what? Yes, ladies, that is scary and makes me want to run too, but we must be willing to suffer. “Why?” you ask? Well, the better question is “Why not?” As our authors state, “If Christ Himself was perfected through His sufferings, why would I believe God would not want to do the same with me?” Sometimes God leaves us in the painful places. Not because He doesn’t love us, but because He does love us. His main purpose is not to make us happy, but to grow and restore us in an eternal weight of glory. Cultivating this beauty will likely require waiting and tenacity. It is in this time of waiting when we turn to our relationship with the Lord.
During the wait we must not sit idle. Along with spending time with God, we need to be kind and gentle with ourselves. We need to feed on beauty. We need to laugh, rest, refresh. As women, we tend to put everyone else before ourselves, and we need to stop that. We are important, and we need to start treating ourselves as such.
Unveiling our beauty is not just a simple matter of putting on a nice outfit and some makeup. It is hard, and it takes work, but ladies…the results are SO worth it! Remember: unveiling our beauty is our greatest expression of faith because we have to completely trust Jesus.
Unveiling our beauty is our greatest expression of hope, because we put our hope in our growing beauty through our relationship with Jesus.
Unveiling beauty is our greatest expression of love, because we are able to love like Jesus, with a sincere, inviting love.
Faith. Hope. Love.
Be blessed, sisters. Never forget how beautiful and loved you are!
LET’S PRAY:
Lord, I ask You to come along side of us. We know You love us, and sometimes love means pain. We trust that with these struggles comes a life more amazing than we can ever imagine. Give us the grace needed to turn to You when we are unsure or feel as if we are faltering. Help us remember to pamper ourselves because we deserve to. We want to live confidently and fearlessly under Your guardianship. Thank You for always being by our side. In Your Holy Name we pray. Amen.
YOUR ASSIGNMENT:
What are some of the ways you pamper yourself, or take some “me” time? If you had one day to do whatever you wanted to, what would you do? Let’s share!
About Michelle Graziano
I would love a full day where I could meet friends for coffee and sit out on the patio swing reading a book…ahhhhhh 🙂
Oooo reading for pleasure is a luxury I miss, and doing my crafts…coffee is always a must 😉