Tuesday, February 21, 2012
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You know, sometimes it seems like there's a growing number of women who are really attractive until they open their mouth. Maybe that's why someone said, "There are girls you date..." Remember that? "...and there are girls you marry." Oh, our society stresses beautiful hair, and teeth, and eyes, and clothes, and they think that's all that beauty is to a lot of women. But every once in a while, you meet a woman who's got a quality that really makes her special. It's hard to put a name on it, but she's special. It's kind of like a beach ball I saw the other night. You say the other night? Yeah. Actually you can use this beach ball in the dark. It has a light inside.
I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Lit Up From the Inside."
There is a manual on beauty from the Inventor of men and women, and He should know something about it, right? He knows what looks best on a woman, and He knows what most appeals to a quality man. And He talks about it in our word for today from the Word of God in 1 Peter 3. I'll begin reading at verse 2. He talks about - and He's speaking to women - people seeing the purity and reverence of your lives. "Your beauty," He says, "should not come from outward adornment, such as braided hair, and the wearing of gold jewelry and fine clothes. 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."
There's an echo of this in Proverbs 31 - the description of a woman who has everything going her way. It says, "Charm is deceitful and beauty is fleeting" - do I hear an amen? - "but a woman who fears the Lord will be praised." Every once in a while you'll meet a woman who has more than just lip gloss beauty or mascara beauty. There's a glow, there's a freshness, there's a radiance that comes from deep down inside. She's lit up from the inside, and that light is what the men worth having have been waiting for. Oh sure, they'll date women without it, because honestly there aren't many women with that glow. They're rare. But you know when something's rare, it's valuable, and they're almost irresistible.
But if a man finds that outward beauty is backed by a beautiful spirit, oh, he's going to want it. See, man is created by God to want and need that. Men only settle for less because they can't find what they really want and what they really need. That inner glow - that magnet on the inside - first of all comes from purity, this passage says, and then a sense of softness and innocence that's in less and less women these days. Not the hardness that comes from using and being used. And then there's the glow that comes from reverence; a woman who starts her day in the presence of Almighty God.
And then she's a woman who shows respect. She treats people like they're the important one; not like she's the important one. She lives to give attention, not to get attention. Whatever you've been in the past or done in the past, if you're a woman, why not begin a beauty treatment on the inside?
Let Christ do a makeover; He's good at those. And let His radiance and His magnetic glow come through you. You'll be a solid gold woman, beautiful, not because you're made up on the outside, but because you're lit up on the inside.