Bring the Inside Out
Everywhere I turn, I see more and more advertisements about renewing our youth. “Reduce those lines and wrinkles! Become a new you! Guaranteed success or your money back!
I’ve yielded to their promises and purchased some of those products. In fact, my cosmetic shelves look like a Walgreen’s. I’d like to tell you that, as they promised, I look ten years younger…..NOT!
The truth is I AM okay with my age, and I’m okay with these lines that seemed to have come from nowhere…quickly. Yes-sir-ee! I’ve earned every line with every story I’ve lived.
Those stories make up who I am. And I wouldn’t trade my stories, and my years, for anything. I’ve lived long enough to see, even the tough years — the ones I didn’t think I’d survive — how God used each wrinkle and every experience to bring me to a place of deep assurance, sweet peace and a whole lotta wisdom to boot!
Through it all, God showed Himself strong. And my trust in Him grew. The journey from youth to maturity came quickly. But my journey with God taught me that renewal really is possible, but it’s not the renewal promised in a store-bought product. Renewal comes with yielding to our Creator….and letting Him renew us from the inside out.
Soon it will be Spring cleaning and purging time! But I’m talking about us! We can start today to purge the junk and funk on the inside so that our outside reflects our Lord’s beauty.
My Mom always said, “Beauty is as beauty does! It’s what’s in your heart that makes you beautiful.” I remember all those wrinkles on my mom’s face — but she acted young and vibrant as she loved everyone. From the inside out — she was extraordinarily beautiful.
When we realize WE ARE BEAUTIFUL, because the marvelous, exquisitely beautiful ONE lives in us, and when we embrace THAT BEAUTY and let it shine through our eyes, speak through our mouths, hug with our arms, love with the love of Christ, then we will be renewed, and the fountain of youth will be flowing out of us to a hurting world.
Proverbs 31:30 “Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting; but a woman (and a man) who fears the Lord is to be praised.”