“Let your true beauty come from your inner personality, not a focus on the external. For lasting beauty comes from a gentle and peaceful spirit, which is precious in God’s sight and is much more important than the outward adornment of elaborate hair, jewelry, and fine clothes.”
1 Peter 3:3-4 TPT
“Blessed and fortunate and happy and spiritually prosperous (in that state in which the born-again child of God enjoys His favor and salvation) are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness (uprightness and right standing with God), for they shall be completely satisfied!
Matthew 5:6
“Don’t you realize that together you have become God’s inner sanctuary and that the Spirit of God makes His permanent home in you? Now, if someone desecrates God’s inner sanctuary, God will desecrate him, for God’s inner sanctuary is holy, and that is exactly who you are.”
1 Corinthians 3:16-17 TPT
“Because we belong to the day, we must live decent lives for all to see. Don’t participate in the darkness of wild parties and drunkenness, or in sexual promiscuity and immoral living, or in quarreling and jealousy. Instead, clothe yourself with the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ. And don’t let yourself think about ways to indulge your evil desires.”
Romans 13:13-14 NLT
“Then Jesus called to the crowd to come and hear. “Listen,” He said, “and try to understand. It’s not what goes into your mouth that defiles you; you are defiled by the words that come out of your mouth.”
Matthew 15:10-11 NLT
They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder. If that is true, what do we look like in God’s eyes? He’s the only one who’s able to see beneath the veneer, beneath the makeup and mask we wear to cover up the real us- The us no one knows. Oh yeah, we know how to adorn the outside, but God wants us to be beautiful on the inside first. Have you ever met a drop dead gorgeous girl or handsome man, and then they opened their mouths and you were stunned? How could anyone so beautiful and handsome be so shallow and nasty? On the other hand, have you met someone, not too good looking, but had the sweetest disposition, a true pleasure to be around, the fruit of God’s Spirit on full display? That person is looking good from the inside out.
In New Orleans, theres a funeral home that dresses up the corpse to represent who the person was before they died. I mean, unless you knew that the individual was dead, you’d walk into the funeral home and think they were alive. It doesn’t matter how good a corpse looks, it’s still a corpse. Our Heavenly Father wants us to be adorned from within. He wants our innermost being to be full of His likeness. The verses above gives us an introduction to how we can tap into true inner beauty. Outer beauty is skin-deep, as they say, but the life that is adorned with Christ is a blessed life.
What makes us beautiful in God’s eyes and to those around us? Clothing ourselves with Christ as Paul said in the following verses.
“Rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the flesh.”
Romans 13:14 NIV
When we put on the Lord Jesus, everything about us changes. We can no longer hide nor, should we want to hide, the beauty that is our new life. The Bible says that salvation beautifies us.
“For the LORD takes pleasure in His people; He will beautify the humble with salvation.”
Psalms 149:4 NKJV
The world is obsessed with outer beauty. It’s a billion dollar industry. But true attractiveness flows from the inside out. Children are now being sexualized at an early age. More and more young girls are being made to believe that they need to change who they are on the outside to be accepted. Where are they learning that? By observing most adults. True acceptance of oneself comes from self worth, you’re not born with that, it is learned and taught. All parents, but especially Christian parents, have a responsibility to teach their children to accept who God has made them to be from an early age. They need to learn that true beauty comes from within, from a place where Jesus dwells by His Spirit.
God does not make trash. He makes everything good. He invested His best in us. He breathed His breath into us. We are God’s own workmanship. Self harm, self loathing comes from a place of deep emotional trauma. If a child is told they’re ugly at a young age, even if they’re beautiful they’ll never see it. Why? You believe what you hear the most. That’s where Jesus makes the difference, that’s why knowing and believing God’s Word is vitally important. The way to destroy a lie, is to replace it with truth. Biblical truth.
Wholeness is never found in L’Oréal or Sephora. It’s found in who you are at your core. Your heart filled with the love of Jesus makes you radiant. Makes you beautiful and attractive, to God and to those around you. You’ll never pretend another day in your life if you know who you are in Christ. I shared in one of my earlier writings that as a child I was laughed at and told repeatedly that I was ugly whenever I smiled. It wasn’t until I was in my twenties and someone took a candid picture without me knowing and I was laughing, that I found out that I’d been lied to. I was shocked! I kept saying “I’m not ugly when I smile?” As I grew in my walk with Jesus and His Word, my inner worth slowly began to surface. I had missed out on years of beautiful smiling pictures because of a lie. But God...
I live Ecclesiastes 3:11...He has made everything beautiful in its time. In time The Word changed me. Changed my heart, my truths, my perspective and revolutionized my entire life. My outer man doesn’t define me, my new created inner-man has given me a confidence and self-worth that only Jesus could provide. I endeavor to live the fruit of the Spirit. There is no exhausting it’s benefits. Those characteristics make us beautiful inside and out. It never grows old. Everyone around us is affected, it’s infectious. It can’t be outlawed.
“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law.”
Galatians 5:22-23 NKJV
We are fearfully and wonderfully made. Psalm 139. Breathtakingly so. God didn’t speak us into existence, He took the time to form, mold and shape us individually. Our DNA is unique only to us. Our fingerprints are exclusively ours. Every attention to detail was of the utmost importance to our Creator. Don’t let anyone define you with their words. God’s breath, no one else’s, is in your lungs. You are not one in a trillion. You are your Creator’s and Designer’s original. You are beautiful! Jesus was disfigured so we would possess inner beauty. The beatings He took marred His beautiful face. Isaiah 53. So, child of God, let the radiance of Christ in you, shine through you, let His wrap-around love declare you beautiful from the inside out. Put no confidence in the flesh, the real you is who you are on the inside, Christ in you -not on you-is your true beauty.
Heavenly Father, when life takes us off course, it’s Your Spirit in us that brings us back in focus. When no one else sees our worth You do. You purchased us with the blood of Your Son, You clothe us in His righteousness and gave us beauty for ashes. You make us beautiful in Christ. Thank you for helping us see that who we are on the inside as Your children, is what makes us beautiful on the outside. In Jesus Name.
Written by permission of the Holy Spirit
W. Tennant