True Beauty...

We recently joined a Life Group with our church and have started a study called Living Crazy Love by Francis Chan.  This weeks lesson is called "Profile of the Lukewarm" and it asked us to look up several verses and make notes of our thoughts, challenges, etc. that come to mind when reading these scriptures.  About 10 scriptures in I read this:

"Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence.  Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean.  Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites!  You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean.  In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness."  (Matt. 23:25-28)



I realize God speaks to all of us differently and we each take different thoughts away from scripture.  I know this scripture is talking about hypocrites and professing to be a Christian yet living another way....

....to me though, it said so much more.  I have struggled with an on again off again negative body image for at least the last 18 years.  I've gone through phases of addictions to exercise and can easily obsess and have anxiety about food.  As I read this scripture I was drawn to the part of the cup and dish being clean on the outside, yet the inside is full of these undesirable things.  I began to analyze myself.  Realistically I've spent years of my life trying to gain this positive body image that I thought would come from a certain look, a certain weight, etc.  I was absolutely overcome by how much time, energy and thought have I spent on trying to attain this image and still come up unsuccessful.  I was completely broken by the thought of..... what if I had spent that same time, energy and thought on cleaning my inside to look more like Jesus.  God breaking us right where we are can be painful yet bring a sense of freedom.  This morning at church our preacher said..."An unexamined life is an ineffective life."  It takes digging in and really looking at ourselves to bring out the person God truly created us to be....a TRUE beauty!

~~I don't think this waiting period of adoption is a waste.  I think God is molding Jason and I into the parents He wants us to be for this particular child.~~