Insecurities? Self esteem? Beauty?

Insecurities is a thing we have been known for as ladies. When I speak to guys they always comment on how we need constant affirmation and do not believe in ourselves. It is a shame that even us as Christian ladies should lack in this area because it shows very much how we do not fully grasp what God has done in our lives. We underestimate who He has made us to be, His investment in us and His view of us. Worse still, is that the devil has used this misunderstanding of oneself to totally destroy a woman’s confidence and power. It might be you grew up never hearing anything positive about yourself, only the negative, of how you are a failure and will not add up to much. It may be that you were in an abusive relationship, never treated right no matter how hard you tried. Or that you have always felt like you were loved the least in your family, that all the attention was on other people. Even in your circle of friends, no-one seemed to really include you and you feel so alone, so unloved.

And you have tried so much to fit in. To amount to something. Let me tell you this though. You can not please people no matter how hard you try. If you judge yourself by how people, including yourself, see you, you will wear yourself out. You can only please God because He looks at you. Really, looks at you, your heart and intentions. And when He looks at you, He sees this beautiful person, who is so clean, so righteous in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:21). He sees His temple, so strong, so sacred in which His Spirit dwells (1 Corinthians 6:19-20). He sees His glory (2 Corinthians 3:18). He sees all the wisdom He has hid in you (Colossians 2:3), all the potential to do great things (Philippians 4:13).  Contrast that with what you think of yourself. If it is contrary to that, please re-read your bible. Do not think less of yourself. Do not just be so conscious of your limitations, inability. If the devil tries to cheat you and call you worthless, be sure to hit back with what God says about you. If you don’t and just listen, you will believe it and the consequences will be low self esteem. You have a responsibility to resist the devil and he will flee (James 4:7). He will not consider leaving, he will flee. So do it. But I hear you say, ‘it is not that easy Ruth…it cant be’. It is, Jesus went through a lot so that you would have easy. Of course, the attacks will come but use your sword which is the word of God. You are standing on winning ground.

I will tell you something I have discovered. For all the times I have felt less sure about my self, that I have felt ugly or whatever, it was because I was concentrating wholly on myself. I would think am just too fat or when I speak, I sound weird. Some of you might think, he doesn’t talk to me because am too this or too that. Oh, if I just changed this then that…it is never really a problem with another. But see that’s where the problem is. As Christians, it is incorrect to look at ourselves as separate entities from God. The Bible says, we are from God (1 John 4:4), we are with God and we are in God (Colossians 2:10). We are one spirit. WOW!!! Isn’t that cool!!! No wonder Paul says it is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me (Galatians 2:20). It is no longer only your strength, your beauty or intelligence. It is His grace, His favour and His spirit, His ability in you. Do not undervalue what He has done. There is noone, NOT ANY ONE who has invested in you as He has. Who has loved you as he has. I know what I am talking about. I spent most of my life trying to impress people, people who never seemed to appreciate it all. To realise that I don’t have to impress God has been to me, a stress reliever. His love is sure and nothing you do, NOTHING!! and noone can make Him care for you less. I do not have confidence apart from God. The thought of writing an exam without the knowledge that He is with me freaks me out…in fact, I can’t do it. It is because of Him that I am. Because what God placed in you is enough, you are enough. Because Jesus is good enough, you too are good enough.

You have to stop looking at you as you and look to yourself as having divinity in you (2 Peter 1:4). Be deeply rooted in this truth and allow Him to train you, develop you and to build you up. He desires to build you up through His word, heal your heart and bind up your wounds (Acts 20:22, Psalms 147:2-3). The bible says, He is the one who can set you up and enable you to stand on highest places (Psalm 18:33). That is, confidence for you. To stand, high, knowing you wont fall. He can give you that. You can be that person who walks tall and holds their head high. Just have hearts that listens to Him.

  
And  if by now, you still think you are ugly…Well, you are wrong….

You know, people marvel at the stars. They have written many books on them, invented telescopes to see them closer. They are just so fascinated with such glamorous particles. They are mesmerized by these particles that our God dispersed across they sky… I can just picture it…Him taking glamour in His hands and sprinkling it across the sky, taking beauty and writing with it across the sky in patterns that man is still, till now trying to uncover. Man knows they are beautiful, knows there is some sort of design to them; who can question that?? Yet he can not understand the complexity of this beauty and creativity.

And then man says, if you get too close to the sun, you will die!! Hahahaha…it makes me laugh really. Because, God has pitched a tent for it in the heavens- Psalms 19:4.  His hands have carried the sun and His eyes withstood its brilliance. He literally, looks scorching heat in the eyes and it knows whose boss. The brightness that blinds the human eye, does not blind Him. These are hands that have touched things that man can not touch, eyes that see much more than man sees…This is the greatness of our God!!

 Then Scientists will tell you that the earth is tilted at an angle of 23.5 degrees but ask them why it tilts and they will have no answer. How can such matters be understood with the wisdom of man? All they know is that it is a good thing because if the Earth did not tilt, countries near the poles would be cold and dark all year round. If it tilted too much, the seasons would be very extreme. Wow!! This is beyond razor-blade precision. Somehow, the earth is positioned just on the right spot!! Just perfect. And we know Him who does perfect things!! Wow!!

And now, maybe you will find this crazy, but it is flowers that do it for me… especially a rose!! Those fragile and thin petals just make me think of how tender and gentle, the hands that created them must have been. To draw the lines on so thin a petal without damage, what amount of care did that need?  And have you seen the way a rose is layered, one petal on top of the other, as if it is hiding a secret, some sort of treasure that can not be forced out of it unless the right environment exists for it to blossom…and when it finally does…I find it breath-taking. Now, I get to see the treasure inside which comes along with a beautiful scent, you cant help but breath it in once, and again…Eh!! The geniusness of our Father!! How did He trap all that beauty and fragrance in that tiny rose bulb??!! I mean even if you’re not a fan of flowers, it makes you think, right?

But what is exciting beyond measure, what is just A-MA-Z-I-N-G, is that the hands that sprinkled glamour, elegance and beauty in the sky, these hands that did so in a pattern that men are still trying to uncover, knitted you inside your mother’s womb!! One cell after another, these hands knit you but unlike stars with more glamour, more elegance and more beauty for He made you in His likeness and we know, God is perfect in beauty (Psalms 50:2).Still more, these hands that touch things that no man can touch created your inner most being. How can you not be unique? Who can challenge God and duplicate you? Who can touch the sun? You are not ordinary!! The eyes that can see what man can not see and withstand any level of brightness or brilliance search you? What audacity does man have, who fails to see or understand what God has created to be lesser than you, to label you as ugly and useless? Can he/she search you with piercing eyes? Ain’t it wonderful that the one who has the audacity to label you, has labelled you priceless. Your price tag is the very life of His son.

And just think, if He placed the earth with such precision, the earth He created for you to have dominion over…how much more precision did He use on you.  You look at your hand, your palm. There are so many lines drawn on them. Why are they there? In that particular order, some seen, some not seen? Even if man were to make a human, I doubt He would have the patience to make the lines…which for all we know might have a purpose. This is the level of patience and preciseness He took to knit you.  And He did it with much more tenderness and gentleness than the flowers.

I don’t know about you but this makes me feel very very beautiful. That everything on me is right where it is supposed to be and looks right as it should look. I can not find errors in His ways for How could He have erred with such hands, with such precision and care, with such a mind? Do you know, sculptors don’t stop chipping at the wood until they feel like it is utterly smooth. Artists will erase their works until in their eyes it looks just right. But what these have is just a little bit of the creativity God has, yet they strive for perfection. Do you think God, who is perfect in Himself would have made an error with you? No way!! God did not stop until you were right as He wanted you to be and His opinion is all that counts for He sees you. He really sees you. And you are beautiful and unique and so much more….

David said, “ I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.” His soul knew this, very well. He understood it. And He said this after He had been talking about being knit together and His inmost being being created (Psalm139). You know, as ladies, we have to know it. We have to understand it. Just memorizing the verse or saying it because David says it does not work. I am saying this out of personal experience. There was a time in my life that I thought I was ugly. There was a time, I was just never happy with how I looked. I even stopped smiling because I thought it made my cheeks look fat. I was so conscious when I laughed because I always wondered how fat my cheeks must look. And I read this verse. I knew it. But now I know, I did not fully understand it. People must have thought I was this confident person but when I was alone, all the insecurities would come back to me…I won’t mention them all but I know you feel me.

But then I understood it. Yes, finally by meditating on it, the Holyspirit unlocked it to me. And I knew, I just knew that when the Bible says ‘marvelous are your works, Oh Lord, it includes me’..because I am His workmanship. I am marvelous!!  I looked at the mirror and said,’ Ruth you are beautiful...it doesn’t matter what anyone says’ And no one can stop me from smiling now, no one!! And the thing is, this is true of every one. You are so beautiful. But you have to understand it for yourself. People will say, it doesn’t matter and it is vanity. My dears, if it doesn’t matter, then why do these insecurities cripple a lot of us? God does not want any weaknesses in you that the devil might use to destroy you. He wants you strong in all areas. So if this is your weakness, do not ignore it or think everyone has an Achilles’ heel and this just happens to be yours. Face it!! You are breath-taking. This is reality!! So next time anyone, including YOURSELF, tries to make you think your hands are too big, or you are too short, you say, ‘ Well, my Father knit them…are you saying He did a bad job, are you seriously criticizing God?????’

You know, while people can appreciate beauty, they can not explain it. They do not know what makes up beauty. They would know a painting is beautiful but if you ask them why, they can not fully explain it. That’s why beauty to people changes all the time and will depend on the person. But God, He knows what beauty is because He created it. He is beautiful, perfectly so. And if you look for explanations in man, you will never understand it. Only God will teach what it is and only He can make you understand that you are beautiful and why you are beautiful. Because like a rose, He has layered you up. You have hidden treasures that will only come out in His environment.  Each day, He will reveal a new facet of you, and make you more beautiful. He will reveal to you and to the world why you are beautiful. And each day, this beauty will increase until we are taken home.  This is the real beauty!!  The one the world searches for but will never find until they turn to the source, the one who sprinkled it across the sky….

So from now on, walk in the light of this word. God loves it when we appreciate His creation, including yourself. Be grateful for you and His ability that is at work in you.....