To say the least, it has changed my life. If this topic interests you, check out her book, Authority to Tread.
This past friday, I spoke on Beauty at the Titus 2 class through One Voice at our church. I enjoyed it immensely and know the Lord showed up. I attached my notes below if you would like to see them. :)
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Beauty
PRAY
Webster says that beauty pleasurably exalts the mind and spirit. If we come back to the meaning of beauty, we will notice that beauty affects inward senses…not outward. So today, I want to redirect my efforts into pursuit of a beauty that exalts the minds and spirit.
I was in Dillard’s with Melissa Perkins. We happened to come upon a manikin …or so I thought a manikin. You see, I assumed it was a manikin because it was standing where all of the manikins have stood in the past. This object was still and posed as though it were a real manikin. However, I couldn’t help but notice that this manikin looked a little different. I walked a little closer….closer…closer. I begin to become enthralled with figuring this out. I literally put my face two inches from the leg. I called out, “Boy Melissa, this manikin has a lot of meat on her!” I, for a brief second, consider looking up the dress of this object. Thank goodness, my attention was pulled elsewhere. Melissa and I begin to walk away browsing at clothes that we would never pay that much money for! Out of the corner of our eyes, we see it start to move and talk to people. Needless to say, I darted behind the nearest rack of clothing and began to laugh hysterically! I then realized all the crazy stuff I had done to this live person! Oh my.
Well, the point of this story is that so often we want to step up and into a silhouette of what we would all love to believe is beauty. Wouldn’t it be so easy for beauty to be captured by makeup, hair, and clothing? That woman had stepped out of her own authenticity and stepped into a shallow object that displayed things of this world that so many have begun to believe is beauty. This sweet lady had begun to hide behind a display of clothes, jewelry, and makeup. I don’t know about you, but I can think of many times where I attempted the same to escape insecurities that my own appearance had shown.
I have had a revelation from God that it is time for us to define beauty in the world. I can almost see God looking down on so many of you passionate women that are still in waiting for a husband. I can see how lovely you are and how blessed a man of God will be to have you. But you know, the inward pull and search for beauty doesn’t end when that one special man finds you. If beauty isn’t an understood reality with your individual relationship with the Lord, then how could we expect a man to make us feel what we have not yet even found in God? As a married woman, I have recently learned the danger of expecting your husband to fulfill what should ultimately be a God-role.
So, let me share with you what the Lord has shown me about encompassing and exhibiting real beauty.
As I begun to ask the Lord to reveal to me what He would have me to say, He clearly brought me to the story of David in 2 Samuel 1. In 2 Samuel 1, we see the story of how David deals with the death of his enemy, Saul. We also see the picture of how he copes with the death of his best friend and the son of Saul, Jonathan.
An Amalekite messenger comes to David at his camp to inform David that Saul and Jonathon have been killed. Let’s remember that David is Saul’s successor and Saul had, at one point, had even hired 3,000 men to kill David. David’s response was that he would not kill Saul, but he would let the Lord decide. So the messenger began to inform David of Saul and Jonathan’s death. Saul had been in battle and was speared by his own sword along with his son. However, his life was hanging in the balance. Biblical theologians believe that in the “inconvenience of his clothes; that his coat of mail which he had for defence, or his embroidered coat which he had for ornament, hindered him, that he could not get the spear far enough into his body, or so straitened him, now that his body swelled with anguish, that he could not expire. Let no man’s clothes be his pride, for it may so happen that they may be his burden and snare.”
So the messenger was at the scene in close proximity to Saul. Saul then pleads with the Amalekite to finish killing him as his life was hanging in the balance. The Amalekite then finishes the death of Saul and esteemed himself in being the messenger to David. He then takes the crown and bracelet from Saul as proof to David. “The Amalekite produced that which was proof sufficient of the death of Saul, the crown that was upon his head and the bracelet that was on his arm. It should seem Saul was so foolishly fond of these as to wear them in the field of battle, which made him a fair mark for the archers, by distinguishing him from those about him; but as pride (we say) feels no cold, so it fears no danger, from that which gratifies it. These fell into the hands of this Amalekite. Saul spared the best of their spoil, and now the best of his came to one of that devoted nation”
David then mourns and demands everyone around him to pay respect in mourning for the lives of Saul and Jonathan. “David showed ultimate beauty in honoring Saul’s death with lament and fasting. He also proved that his own life was in pursuit of hiding the fault’s at who once was his very enemy, Saul. David takes Saul’s death personal and bears no bitterness. David celebrated that which was praiseworthy of Saul and as Saul’s body became one with the earth again, so did his reflections upon the personal injuries Saul had inflicted upon him.
David realized that Saul’s life was victorious in the protection of Israel and understood that Saul’s fall was not to degrade the successes of his life.”
Jonathan was very dear to David’s heart, although his enemy was Jonathan’s father. 1 Samuel 18:1 says, “And it came to pass, when he had made an end of speaking unto Saul, that the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul.” David, in the process of mourning, wrote a song about what had taken place, ordering all of the people to know it and have their children know it. Here is where beauty arrives on the scene. “The beauty of Israel is slain on your high places! How the mighty have fallen!
o The word beauty in the Hebrew means glory or honor. What a statement to bestow the entire nation of Israel’s honor and glory to befall on Saul and Jonathon, although Matthew Henry’s commentary states that David is specifically talking about Jonathon through the statement. I can’t help but notice that the beauty David is describing is of how his relationship and association with Jonathon was one that elevated the mind and spirit.
As God has revealed this story of beauty to me, He has also directed me to Matthew 6:25-33.
V. 29 - What God is saying is that there is nothing that anyone can do to clothe themselves in what compares to what the Lord will add unto us when we simply exist and live as ourselves, who He created us to be. Notice that when David wrote the song about Jonathon, calling him the beauty of Israel, the true meaning from the word beauty was glory or honor. Therefore, even Soloman in all his beauty was not arrayed like one of the flowers of the fields.
V. 32 – All these things meaning all of the attributes just describe as what you will be clothed with…beauty.
Beauty for Ashes – “Let us now, like Cinderella, sit down among the cinders(of our old perception of beauty) for awhile in order that we may come forth from the ashes with something better than glass slippers, adorned with a beauty which shall befit the king’s courts! The fairy fable which has often made our childhood smile shall now be actually realized in our own souls—yes, we shall see how far the Truth of God outshines romance! How much grander are the facts of God than the fictions of men!” -Spurgeon
