Tag Archives: beauty

Declaration & Praise: Day 1

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” – Genesis 1:1

“I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.” – Revelation 22:13

It begins with You, God, and it will end with You. You stood at the first, and You will be standing at the finish. Before I was, You were, and when it’s over, it will be You that I see, You that I stand before, You that I will worship.

I praise You, creator God, for all that Your hands have made, and I echo Your “it is good”. Beauty is from Your hand, poured out on us. Everywhere I look I can see Your creation shouting Your existence and Your goodness.

Colors, fragrance, brilliance, flashes of light, rolling thunderous sounds, the spray of salt water, the babble of every stream, stars that blaze across a midnight sky, the trumpeting of the elephant and the silent spinning of webs, and the people of every tribe and tongue – it’s all by You, through You and for You and the evidence of You.

Today, I will open my eyes to You. Creator. Good. First and Last and always. I worship You today.

raise the bar

I was reading the story of the widow’s offering from Mark 12, and I really thought that’s what I would write about. But then I kept reading.

“As Jesus was leaving the temple, one of His disciples said to Him, “Look, Teacher! What massive stones! What magnificent buildings!” Mark 13:1

And all I could think was “we’ve set the bar way too low”. Impressing humans isn’t all that hard.

Got a lot of money? We’ll give you the best seat in the house and oddly enough, we’ll give you free stuff. Because you’re rich and we’re impressed and it makes perfect sense that dinner would be on the house.

Beautiful? Wanna know how impressed we are by your beauty? We will stop eating. Stop. Eating. And we will get cut on, injected, plumped up and rearranged so that we can look like you. Because you’re pretty. And we find that impressive.

Good at your job? So good you’re famous? Well then we’re gonna need your autograph, mister.

And if you’re a star in the sports world…forget about it. We are your best friend. We’ve got your back. Cause you hit that ball like a boss and that impresses us.

If you move us at all, you too can become the next best thing. The preacher, teacher, worship leader we all rave about and secretly wish we could be.

There’s a reason that the bar the world has set for impressiveness is so low. They don’t know God.

The Body of Christ has no excuse for a low bar. 

“Lift up your eyes and look to the heavens: Who created all these? He who brings out the starry host one by one and calls forth each of them by name. Because of His great power and mighty strength, not one of them is missing.” Isaiah 40:26

We know this God. He lives in us and we belong to Him. He is our Father and we are His children.

He has always been and will always be. He owns heaven and earth. He spoke the world into creation and formed a man out of dust. He can make mountains melt like wax and He gave the seas their limits. Demons tremble and darkness flees from His presence.

He hung every star and He knows their name and He knows the number of hairs on every head and every time a bird falls, He knows.

He brought water from a rock and rained down food from heaven. He keeps the snow and hail in storehouses and He knows where the lightning begins. The sun and the moon, light and darkness…they all obey His commands.

He can feed 5,000 people with a few fish and some bread and have leftovers. He walks on water, tells the storm to calm down and brings the dead back to life.

He stepped out of heaven to take the punishment for our sins. He died for sinners so that He could call them friends.

And because death could not hold Him, it will not hold us.

There is no power like His power and nothing, nothing at all can stand against Him. Nothing is too hard for Him. His Name is above every other Name and in that Name the blind see and the lame walk.

He pours out His Spirit and we dream dreams and we prophecy and we call Him Abba. Papa. Father. He pours out His Spirit and we are changed and we know what we never knew and we see what we had never seen.

He is clothed in splendor and majesty and the heavens and the earth declare His glory and rocks are ready to praise Him if we won’t. Rocks will praise Him if we won’t.

His throne is in heaven and ten thousand upon ten thousand angels encircle Him, crying “Holy!”. And all of heaven is waiting and the day will come when they will wait no more. The seals will be opened and the horses will be called forth. The day of reckoning will come upon the earth.

And those who are His will see their salvation at last.

Beloved, we should raise the bar for what impresses us.

don’t fit in, stand out

“Then Moses said to Him, ‘If your Presence does not go with us, do not send us up from here.   How will anyone know that You are pleased with me and with Your people unless You go with us? What else will distinguish me and Your people from all the other people on the face of the earth?'”  Exodus 33:15-16 

I remember when I was a little girl, one of the most important things to me was that I “fit in” with everyone else.  I tried hard, but could never quite get there.  It took many, many years to discover that I was not the strange misfit I thought I was, but was instead uniquely made by God (just like everyone else). And yet,  in some deep place in me there remained the desire to fit in.  And if I couldn’t fit in, then at least don’t make me stand out. 

What compels young girls today to abuse their bodies in an attempt to achieve a ridiculously thin look? Or a woman to get multiple surgeries and injections in her frantic effort to defy the aging process? The need to fit in with the world’s view of beauty.

What is underneath the corporate ladder climbing that makes a  man a stranger to his family? The need to fit in with the world’s view of success.

What causes a woman to hide the fact that, despite all outward appearances, her marriage, her family, her world, is quietly falling apart?  The need to fit in with the world’s view of  womanhood.

Moses understood that fitting in with the people around them was far from God’s heart for His people.

“I will make a distinction between My people and your people.”  Exodus 8:23

“Then you will know that the LORD makes a distinction between Egypt and Israel.”  Exodus 11:7

“And you will again see the distinction between the righteous and the wicked, between those who serve God and those who do not.”  Malachi 3:17-18

Beloved, God’s heart is to make a distinction between you and those who do not know Him, and to have you live by a different set of definitions.

Redefined beauty…

“I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.”  Psalm 139:14

“Your beauty should not come from outward adornment…Instead, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight.”  1Peter 3:2-4

A redefined path to success…

“All a man’s ways seem innocent to him, but motives are weighed by the LORD. Commit to the LORD whatever you do, and your plans will succeed” Proverbs 16:2-3

A redefined womanhood…

“A wife of noble character who can find?
   She is worth far more than rubies.”  Proverbs 31:10

“Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting;
   but a woman who fears the LORD is to be praised.” Proverbs 31:30

Throughout His word, we are called to be different. In the New Testament, God’s people grieve, pray, fast and war differently. We don’t worry about what others worry over, and we don’t chase what they chase. His heart remains consistently insistent that His people be distinguished from all other people.

So stand up, stand out and refuse to fit in. Live a life of distinction.