{"id":9938,"date":"2013-02-28T00:01:30","date_gmt":"2013-02-28T05:01:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/girlfriendscoffeehour.com\/?p=9938"},"modified":"2013-02-27T23:01:49","modified_gmt":"2013-02-28T04:01:49","slug":"captivating-letting-our-hearts-be-deepened-faith-hope-and-love-pg-144-149","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/girlfriendscoffeehour.com\/wordpress\/2013\/02\/28\/captivating-letting-our-hearts-be-deepened-faith-hope-and-love-pg-144-149\/","title":{"rendered":"Captivating: Chapter 8 – Letting Our Hearts Be Deepened – Faith, Hope and Love (pp 144-149)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Deepening our hearts sounds like a no-brainer, right? \u00a0Who wouldn’t want to deepen our hearts, grow closer to God, enhance our relationships? \u00a0Well, when we find out the method He uses to do the actual deepening, we may be a little more hesitant.<\/p>\n

To possess true beauty we must be willing to suffer. \u00a0Wait…what? \u00a0Yes, ladies, that is scary and makes me want to run too, but we must be willing to suffer. \u00a0“Why?” you ask? \u00a0Well, the better question is “Why not?”\u00a0\u00a0As our authors state,\u00a0“If Christ Himself was perfected through His sufferings, why would I believe God would not want to do the same with me?”<\/em> Sometimes God leaves us in the painful places. \u00a0Not 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. \u00a0Cultivating this beauty will likely require waiting and tenacity. \u00a0It is in this time of waiting when we turn to our relationship with the Lord.<\/p>\n

During the wait we must not sit idle. \u00a0Along with spending time with God, we need to be kind and gentle with ourselves. \u00a0We need to feed on beauty. We need to laugh, rest, refresh. \u00a0As women, we tend to put everyone else before ourselves, and we need to stop that. \u00a0We are important, and we need to start treating ourselves as such.<\/p>\n

\"Unveiling<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Unveiling our beauty is not just a simple matter of putting on a nice outfit and some makeup. \u00a0It is hard, and it takes work, but ladies…the results are SO worth it! \u00a0Remember:\u00a0\u00a0unveiling our beauty is our greatest expression of faith<\/strong><\/em> because we have to completely trust Jesus.<\/p>\n

Unveiling our beauty is our greatest expression of hope<\/strong><\/em>, because we put our hope in our growing beauty through our relationship with Jesus.<\/p>\n

Unveiling beauty is our greatest expression of love<\/strong><\/em>, because we are able to love like Jesus, with a sincere, inviting love.<\/p>\n

Faith. Hope. Love.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Be blessed, sisters. Never forget how beautiful and loved you are!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

LET’S PRAY:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Lord, I ask You to come along side of us.\u00a0 We know You love us, and sometimes love means pain.\u00a0 We trust that with these struggles comes a life more amazing than we can ever imagine.\u00a0 Give us the grace needed to turn to You when we are unsure or feel as if we are faltering. \u00a0Help us remember to pamper ourselves because we deserve to. \u00a0We want to live confidently and fearlessly under Your guardianship.\u00a0 Thank You for always being by our side.\u00a0 In Your Holy Name we pray.\u00a0 Amen.<\/p>\n

YOUR ASSIGNMENT:<\/strong><\/p>\n

What are some of the ways you pamper yourself, or take some “me” time? \u00a0If you had one day to do whatever you wanted to, what would you do? \u00a0Let’s share!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Deepening our hearts sounds like a no-brainer, right? \u00a0Who wouldn’t want to deepen our hearts, grow closer to God, enhance our relationships? \u00a0Well, 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. \u00a0Wait…what? \u00a0Yes, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":9948,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[20],"tags":[144,147,181,218,425,436,554,571,686,723,968,1009],"class_list":["post-9938","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-singles","tag-bible","tag-bible-study","tag-captivating","tag-christianity","tag-girlfriends-coffee-hour","tag-god","tag-jesus","tag-john-eldredge","tag-michelle-graziano","tag-online-bible-studies","tag-singles-bible-study","tag-stasi-eldredge","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/girlfriendscoffeehour.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/Unveiling-our-Beauty.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p39pHp-2Ai","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/girlfriendscoffeehour.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9938","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/girlfriendscoffeehour.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/girlfriendscoffeehour.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/girlfriendscoffeehour.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/girlfriendscoffeehour.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9938"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/girlfriendscoffeehour.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9938\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9951,"href":"https:\/\/girlfriendscoffeehour.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9938\/revisions\/9951"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/girlfriendscoffeehour.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9948"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/girlfriendscoffeehour.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9938"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/girlfriendscoffeehour.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9938"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/girlfriendscoffeehour.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9938"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}