“… For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.”
No matter what the world around you may say, who you are is not defined by what you look like. You are beautiful not because of your outward appearance, but because you are a creation of God. God knew you from before the foundation of the world, and He loved you. Even if you’ve never known how to love yourself.
In today’s world most everyone struggles with self-esteem issues; there’s always something about us that we don’t want others seeing, and so we try to hide those “ugly” pieces of ourselves, ignoring them and pretending for the world’s watching eyes that they aren’t there at all. Maybe it’s your skin that you don’t like; perhaps your hair doesn’t behave the way you want it to; maybe you’ve been told you don’t weigh the right amount, or aren’t in good enough shape; maybe you don’t have that perfect, television commercial smile, shining white, straight teeth. You don’t look like the movie stars on the magazine covers, so you’re told you aren’t good enough. You need to fix this about yourself, change that, rearrange this part of your body. Because society wants you to fit in, wants you to be able to love yourself like it loves itself. Only society doesn’t love itself. The people who live the perfect, Barbie lives, aren’t satisfied with themselves, they don’t look in the mirror and say to themselves, “I am exactly the way I want to be.” They only think: “Not good enough.” And they’ve been taught to believe it.
Don’t believe the lies.
You are beautiful, you are special, you are a unique individual. It’s not in your skin, not in your hair, not in your weight, your eyes, your smile, your hands, nails, clothes, or accomplishments. The world measures success by how much a man has got for himself. God measures success by how much you’ve given to Him. Give up your expectations of self to Him. You are “fearfully and wonderfully made,” and nothing the world says can change that.
Don’t live to meet the standard of those around you. Don’t walk the path of people-pleasing.
“For am I now seeking the approval of men, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ.”
Instead of listening to how society and culture want you to look and behave, go to God, and lay your life before Him. We are called to offer ourselves as living sacrifices to the Lord — that doesn’t mean burning ourselves up or punishing ourselves when we do wrong, it means living out our lives to please Him in our conduct and speech, in our thoughts and hearts. Living for God means you no longer have to be a slave to sin, or a slave to the world and its desires. The world wants you to be as it is; but God wants to give you freedom, and life, life abundant and blessed. Freedom in Christ, is freedom from every expectation and superficial requirement of the world around you, the world that is always yelling “FIT IN,” and never satisfied with your efforts, never satisfied with who you are, because it doesn’t know who it is.
It’s been said that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. But the only person whose eyes you aught to be concerned with, are God’s. And God says, “You are altogether beautiful, my love …”
You are beautiful not because of what you have done, what you have been through, where you’ve come from, or how you’ve struggled. You are not beautiful because of the way you appear on the outside. You are beautiful because Jesus struggled, Jesus bled, Jesus died, and Jesus rose from the grave, for you.
— Joel
post inspired by O.A.