Thursday, February 26, 2009
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It's no wonder many American women are unhappy with their looks. They're comparing themselves to the magazine pictures of these flawless models. Of course, that woman doesn't really exist. She's the creation of hair stylists, makeup artists, wardrobe specialists, special lighting and hundreds of continuous-frame photos, from which one good one is selected and then airbrushed to remove all the imperfections. Nobody looks good compared to that mythical icon - including the real girl in the picture! But with our obsession with a certain definition of beauty, the word "makeover" has become more and more popular. They even have TV shows that have been totally devoted to transforming a woman thought of as "average" into someone much more stylish. It just takes some time backstage with the hair, makeup, and wardrobe magicians. And with the split screen showing her "before," out steps this glamorous "new woman" with her makeover!
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "A Makeover for the Woman You Love."
There are husbands who've been doing makeovers for a long time; making their wife more beautiful from the inside out. Changing makeup and hairstyle, and clothing - oh, that's the easy kind of makeover and it's totally superficial. But the Bible makes it clear that a husband has the power to contribute to an internal makeover in the woman he loves; a makeover that will eventually show up on the outside. The true beautifying of a woman doesn't come through a makeup or wardrobe artist. It comes through the love of God, expressed through the self-sacrificing love of a husband.
That is the makeover miracle God describes in our word for today from the Word of God in Ephesians 5, beginning with verse 25. He says, "Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her." Instinctively, a man likes to be the center of everything. But with Christ in his life, he has the potential to be something so much better - to love as Jesus loved. Jesus set aside all self-interest, all self-protection, and all self-seeking for us. He forgot about Himself, thought only of us, and sacrificed everything in the love that took Him to the cross. The high calling of a husband is to let the woman he loves taste that kind of love through his love as, several times a day, he sets aside what he needs for what she needs, what matters to him for what matters to her. Love, Jesus-style, is not a four-letter word. It's a nine-letter word: sacrifice.
Listen to the result of Christ loving us that way and ultimately of a man loving a woman that way. "Christ gave himself up for her, to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the Word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish. In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies."
The selfless love of a husband can, over time, help a woman feel safe enough to deal with her weaknesses, to pour out her soul, and in so doing, to cleanse her soul. God's love through a loving husband can set her free from the fears and the scars of the past that have defined her for so long. His praise can restore her sense of worth. His listening can offload what weighs her down.
His attentiveness can free her to trust him with all her needs and to respond to him without reservation. It's a beautiful thing. You can tell a woman who's being loved like this. She glows. She's radiant. She's being loved as God intended, and by just being what God intended for him to be, her husband ends up with a wife with a glowing new beauty. And it starts with the man.
Our wife, in so many ways, is a mirror of the way we love her or don't love her. God has always planned marriage to be a powerful makeover tool, not because you're trying to change the person you love, but because you love them so much that something beautiful just happens.