Unveil Your Beauty

As I sit here listening to the rain fall, I am contemplating the beauty of this world. What is beauty? Am I beautiful right now with snot constantly coming out of my nose? Is there inner beauty and outward beauty? Or is beauty just beauty?

As I stare off into a painting, I start thinking about the group of teenage girls I teach every Sunday evening. I absolutely love these girls. We have just finished a Bible Study called "Captivating" by John and Stasi Eldredge. In this Bible Study, we have been talking about the core desires of a woman's heart. One of the core desires is to Unveil Beauty. Think about it. Every woman wants to be considered beautiful. It's something we long for and deeply desire. Unveiled beauty is something women all appreciate. We have inherited this from our Father. God enjoys beauty. Just look how He created Earth before we started messing it up. The oceans, the mountains, the sky, the sun, the trees, the animals, the flowers...well, I could go on and on about the beauty that God created. We get that core desire to be beautiful and add beauty from Him.

Have you ever been to a fancy party where everyone is dressed up in their best? Have you ever taken a moment to listen to the women speak to each other? It's nothing, but compliments. "Wow. I love your dress." "Your hair looks beautiful tonight." "Those are gorgeous earrings." We love beauty and we notice it. It's the part of God that He gave to women. You do not hear men talking like that do you? Imagine going to a fancy party and hearing the men say, "Your cuff links are stunning! I love how you did your hair tonight." Men usually do not speak like that to other men. Women want to unveil a beauty to the world. It is that simple.

Stay with me...I'm going somewhere with this.

One of my goals as I teach this to my class of girls is to help them realize that they are beautiful. Being a teenage girl is difficult. Believe me, I was one. You are going through awkward times with awkward things happening to you, and you just feel ugly. When you look in the mirror, Satan attacks you with whispers of lies..."You're too fat. Your nose is too big. Your ears are too floppy. You're too pale." We as women start believing these lies. If you hear a lie enough, you start believing it as truth. So I try to encourage these girls and help them realize that God doesn't make mistakes. He is perfect. So when He created you, He made you perfect... perfectly beautiful. Why is it you can say lies over and over and start believing them, but when you say something of truth over and over, you have the hardest time believing it?

I am 27 years old, and Satan has attacked me with lies all of my life. I look in the mirror and think, "Ugh!" I know it is not just me. I know it is all women who feel this way from 2 to 99 years old. I don't think I understood how beautiful God thinks I am until this morning.

I went last night with a couple of friends to a thing called "Sips n strokes". It is pretty much a fun, laid back paint class. They give step by step instruction on how to paint a certain piece of art. So here I am about to paint my first piece of art ever. I am not an artist, but they made it very fun and easy. Although everyone in the class got the same instructions, there was not any paintings that ended up exactly the same. They were all different. We all had our own unique twist in it where our personalities came through. When I left the paint class, I was so proud. I thought my painting was beautiful. There are some mistakes I made, and some places where I went a little crazy, but that is why I like it so much. It is so me.

My brother came over this morning, and I just had to show him my masterpiece. This was our conversation...
"Phillip, look at the painting I did last night!"
"Nice. What is it?" He was obviously thrilled to be viewing my painting.
"What is it?!? What does it look like?" I was a little annoyed that he didn't know what it was.
"Well, it looks like orange trees."
"Yeah, that's right."
"But they look like they are on the ocean."
"It's like a dream world, Phillip."
There was more to this conversation, but this is a good place to stop.

What really bothered me is that I believe my painting is beautiful. It is just like me. It has character. It is a masterpiece. I am so proud of it. How could Phillip not see that? If my brother had said anything horrible about my masterpiece, I would have fought him. (Lucky for him, he didn't because I would have won.) This is where God grabbed my heart. I realized that this is what God thinks about me...about all of His children.

When He made you, He said, "It's ready! She/He is absolutely beautiful. She is not like any other I have made before. She has character. She has pieces of me all throughout her. She is stunning. This is one of my masterpieces. I am so proud of my work." Oh my goodness! God is proud of the way I(You) look. Have you ever thought that before? He goes into battle everyday for you. He is ready to fight Satan for you and for your beauty. He is ready to whoop some tail for YOU. When Satan whispers those lies in your ears, God is saying, "How can you not see the beauty I have created? You are beautiful."

The amount of passion I have for my painting that I created made me realize that God has even more passion for His creations...you and me included. We have to decide which voice to listen to now. Are you going to listen to Satan's lies or are you going to believe the truth? God is waiting for you to unveil the beauty that He created you to be. Believe it! You have a beauty to unveil!

I am 27 years old, and I am just now really believing that...God made me beautiful.

The next step, I must unveil His beauty, but how? How do you unveil His beauty?