What do you clothe yourself in?

I was just thinking about "love" and how God IS love and what being a Christian REALLY means.

Romans 13:14...put on the Lord Jesus Christ...

What would that mean? And, what would that look like?

If you become...a police officer...a judge...a nurse...when people see you in that uniform they all immediately know what you are, right?

So, if you become a Christian...people should look at how you "clothe yourself" and see immediately that you are a Christian...true?

So, what would a Christian's "uniform" look like...and how would it be perceived?

I mean, when you look at a police officer's uniform... usually, you don't stand back, mouth agape and exclaim, "How beautiful!" True?

The church is described as "the bride of Christ" and we're instructed to "put on the Lord Jesus Christ..."

So...

Normally, when a woman puts on a wedding gown...(or any kind of fancy gown, really)...and presents herself after getting dressed...the whole room full of people will stop what they're doing and take a deep breath and you will hear a lot of,  "ooooohs" and "ahhhhhs" and fuss over how BEAUTIFUL the woman looks! Sometimes people will even be moved to get tears in their eyes seeing their loved ones all "dressed up." Right?

Even a woman who is not considered to be "beautiful" under normal circumstances...will make everyone simply go "wow" seeing her all dressed up...

Why is this? 

Romans 1 says everything we wanna know about God is glaringly obvious in the Creation around us...so what does this mean that the majority of humans are awed by the sight of a woman all dressed up like that?

Colossians 3:12 ...put on a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience; bearing with one another, and forgiving each other, whoever has a complaint against anyone; just as the Lord forgave you, so also should you. Beyond all these things put on love, which is the perfect bond of unity. 

As the "bride of Christ" if a person puts on Christ...they should look and be so beautiful inside that it would move people to tears...

So, when it comes to church...if the modern church was truly putting on Christ...like them or not...the world would look at them and be struck by their beauty...

Is that what we see in the world? Is that what non-Christians think of when they think of "Christians?" Or, is this what they see?

Protesting and pointing out stuff you think God hates...

Hitting/spanking helpless children in God's name...

Pointing fingers at everyone else's sin...

Do you see beauty here?

Then you don't see Christ.

This is how you clothe yourself in religion.

Religion isn't beautiful because it is focused on "sin"...

Christ, however, is focused on love...and therefore is beautiful...

A person focused on Christ, who IS love, will be beautiful, too...

Loving your neighbor as yourself...is beautiful...

Doing unto others as you'd have them do unto you is beautiful...

Like Romans 1 says...the truth is obvious...

Job 40:10
“Adorn yourself with eminence and dignity, And clothe yourself with honor and majesty."

Ephesians 4:24
...put on the new self, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth.

1 Peter 3:3
Your adornment must not be merely external...but let it be the hidden person of the heart, with the imperishable quality of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is precious in the sight of God...

What do you clothe yourself in? Your church doctrine? Your church? Or Christ?

The truth is obvious...

The voice of self-hatred wasn't me

So, there's this video going around right now that actually changed my life...my future... 

It's the "Dove Beauty Sketches."

If you haven't seen it...it starts off with some women going in and sitting down beside a partition with a man (sketch artist) on the other side. 

The woman is then asked questions about what she looks like and the man draws what she tells him to...

After she's done, another person who was instructed to spend time with her earlier is asked the same questions about her. Now there are two sketches. One is how the woman sees herself and the other is how others see her...

The one that is done based off of what the woman says about herself is not as good. 

The women are then brought back in to see the sketches. This lady's reaction really hit me and made me cry...because it was at this moment I realized something...

As I watched the video, I realized where Dove was trying to go with this...that "you are more beautiful than you think." They were trying to show us that others see us more favorably than we see ourselves and that our view of ourselves is lower than reality. But...what really hit me was...

I realized that if I was to sit across "from you" having coffee and was to describe myself, I'd say things like...that I have a nasty double chin and my eyes look so ugly and weirdly shaped when I smile. My skin is getting old looking. My teeth are all messed up in front from drinking soda my whole life and..." the list would go on. And, I realized that were I to go off to this sketch artist in my normal way of describing myself...that he would not draw an "accurate" picture of me. I would look at his drawing and see that it was "not me."

Being sort of a "perfectionist" in some areas (like formatting my posts, etc.) this really hit me because if I was to instruct him on how to make his final product "accurate" I would have to describe myself completely differently.

See, the revelation for me was not in that others see me differently than I do...it was in realizing that I see me differently than I do.

What hit me was that I don't actually see myself the way I think I do. I already know that the way I describe myself is wrong. What then makes me speak of myself as I do? Why do I think I see myself so poorly? Why do I think that every part of me isn't good enough and doesn't measure up and "is ugly?" 

Because of how I was raised.

I was "taught" to see myself this way. I was taught that I was not good enough. I was taught that when I look in the mirror that person staring back at me doesn't measure up in any way. That's what was pounded into my head over and over, day after day, my whole formative years.

And, that belief that was put on me...that belief that was given to me...isn't me. Those thoughts aren't mine. Yet, somewhere along the line I adopted them as mine. I took them as my thoughts and those thoughts literally almost killed me so many times in my life...

Times that I've gotten SO LOW because I was overwhelmed with feeling inadequate and I was totally focused on all the things I can't do...don't do...won't do...times when I was focused on all the ways me, my body, and the way I live my life are not good enough...those times weren't ME. Those times were "that voice" that was put inside my head. Not me. 

I've been allowing someone else's voice to "possess" me in some sense and I've been believing a lie that that voice is me. The voice of self-hatred is not a voice of "self" hatred at all. It's simply "hatred" and it came from outside of me and it isn't ME. 

I don't hate me.

I don't think I'm good-for-nothing.

I don't think I'm worthless.

I don't think I'm inadequate.

I don't think I don't measure up.

I don't think that nothing I do is good enough.

And, it was in those short 3 minutes of watching that video that this hit me...

And, it was during those short 3 minutes that the 44 years' strangle hold that that other voice had over my life was taken away from it...

Sorry, other voice, but your time of controlling me is over...

Princes and Princesses on the Inside

So, I was just watching, "La Rosa de Guadeloupe" again...and of course it got me thinking... 

La Rosa de Guadeloupe is a Spanish soap, made in Mexico, that I watch to help me learn better Spanish. It's a 1 hour program that has a start-to-finish complete story each day and...it's actually a Catholic show. I'm not Catholic, but, I sure appreciate the stories as each one has a "moral" it's trying to teach. (Sometimes the crazy show even brings tears to my eyes, but, don't tell anyone!)

Yesterday's program was about having beauty on the inside...and of course...it made me think of parenting...

In the program, a girl who was known as, Julie the horrendous! was an "ugly nerd" of a girl who'd fallen in love with a light-haired, blue-eyed popular guy who had a pretty popular girlfriend. He got his license and while fumbling with his cell phone had an accident in his car which left him in a coma.

The popular pretty girlfriend showed up and saw him lying in his hospital bed and made a remark to herself that, "she didn't want to see this." and left. Never to return to his bedside.

The nerdy girl showed up and was caught stroking his face by the mom and the mom assumed that she was the girlfriend. The nerdy girl let her think that and returned to the hospital to read to, groom, and massage the feet of the boy she loved every day.

When the boy awoke he was blind.

By the end of the story, the whole family knows what's happened with the nerdy girl and the popular girlfriend. The boy rejects his pretty popular girlfriend for her lack of anything inside, and tells the nerdy girl that she's the most beautiful girl he's ever known.

<dreamy sigh>

This is what we all know and yearn for, isn't it? For someone to love us for who we are on the inside? Yet, we women rarely encourage ourselves with this because all we see are the outsides.

1 Peter 3:3-4

Your adornment must not be merely external—braiding the hair, and wearing gold jewelry, or putting on dresses; but let it be the hidden person of the heart, with the imperishable quality of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is precious in the sight of God.

So, it made me wonder about how do we encourage this inner beauty in our children? How do we encourage our daughters, especially, to see this inner beauty in themselves first and foremost rather than their external bodies...and how do we encourage our sons to see it as well?

We moms do focus at some point every day on grooming with our daughters and dressing them up, but how do we fill them with that imperishable quality of a gentle and quiet spirit which is precious on the sight of God? How do we "dress our daughters up" on the inside so that God feels that same excitement we feel when we see our daughter all dressed up smiling happily in her princess dresses?

A lot of "religious" parents and parenting books actually focus on "breaking the child's will." They feel that this is the way to raise up a child who is good on the inside. But, the verse doesn't say, "a submissive and passive spirit." It says, "gentle and quiet."

Gentleness and quietness are choices. If gentleness is a precious quality to God it must be so only because the person has a choice to be rough. Gentleness is a powerful choice that a person who can be rough makes out of empathy and love for the person with whom they are relating, and it is, therefore, precious in the sight of God.

A child whose will has been broken has no choice but to be passive and submissive, which robs them of all "virtue" in their choices. And, no matter how complacent someone with a broken will is, they are not doing it out of selfLESSness (which is a choice) but out of selfISHness because it is a self-defensive mode or it's simply a programmed reaction to a situation.

Many "religious" people focus on a few verses in their child rearing which focus on judgment and punishment and demand certain behaviors from their children, but if this inner quality of gentleness and quietness (peace) is precious to God...and if He's said that causing a child to stumble makes Him so mad you'd be better off tied to a rock and tossed into the ocean and drowned! then there certainly must be some significant child-rearing advice in the Bible beyond just a few verses that imply we're to whack our kids, wouldn't you think? Especially since what's in the heart can't be forced. Wouldn't there therefore be verses teaching us how to get to the child's heart?

The 1 Peter verse also tells us something important about focusing on the externals...

"Your adornment must not be merely external..."

"Merely", btw, is in italics in the Bible version that I am quoting. This means that that word doesn't appear in the original text. It was likely added so as to not make it look like God was suggesting we all go around looking slovenly. ;) But, the verse really says, "your adornment must not be external"

We all recognize that we aren't to focus on our externals to make us OK with God. The Pharisees were called, "whitewashed tombs" by Jesus for their external focus.

We aren't "saved by works but by grace."

In Isaiah it calls our good works, "filthy rags."

We parents need to realize that focusing on our children's behaviors is focusing on those external adornments. It's washing the outside of the cup. It's trying to wring out those filthy rags.

But again! How do we focus on the internal?
How do we cultivate an inside that is "precious in the sight of God" in our children?

So, what advice IS in the Bible to parents? So many, "oldies but goodies" that we all know get overlooked in parenting because they don't specifically say, "Parents do this with your children..."

"It is the kindness of God that leads us to repentance."

"Judge not."

"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."

And, if we remember that God is our Father...and we are His children...these verses really tell us how to treat not only our neighbor but our children...

Ephesians 5:1-3

Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children; and walk in love, just as Christ also loved you and gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma.

Ephesians 6:4

Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. (the Lord's discipline doesn't make a child angry. Does your discipline make your children angry? If so, it's not God's way...)

Colossians 3:21

Fathers, do not exasperate your children, so that they will not lose heart.

John 3:17

For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him.

John 13:34

A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another.

1 Peter 2:21+

For you have been called for this purpose, since Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example for you to follow in His steps, who committed no sin, nor was any deceit found in His mouth; and while being reviled, He did not revile in return; while suffering, He uttered no threats (if you guys don't stop it I'm going to punish you!!!), but kept entrusting Himself to Him who judges righteously; and He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross (He didn't punish us), so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness; for by His wounds you were healed. (Parents think kids must "suffer consequences" to learn...but when Jesus suffered through our misdeeds and poor choices we were healed of them...we were not healed of our sin by being punished for them!!!) For you were continually straying like sheep, but now you have returned to the Shepherd and Guardian of your souls.

John 13:15

For I gave you an example that you also should do as I did to you.

This is how God works to get to our hearts to cultivate a gentle and quiet spirit which is precious in His sight. This is how He endures our "naughty behavior" and the fruit He gets. This is how God "brushes our hair" on the inside..."dresses us up" on the inside...and makes us look like princes and princesses on the inside... 

You can either cling to a few verses in Proverbs and judge and hit your children and groom them on the outside only by focusing on the filthy rags...or you can follow Jesus' example and go therefore and make disciples of your children. Jesus said we could be known by our fruits...