How To Get Better Looking

Our world is focused on the outside. It’s all about that first impression. That first-look. The curb appeal. It’s all about the outside, right?

Except this is polar opposite of what the Bible says we should look at.

I recently heard someone say that we should be striving to look better and better on the inside everyday. Say wha? Aren’t our lives often focused on looking better and better on the OUTside? Ha, I know mine sure is! Now I’m not saying I’m not going to brush my hair, brush my teeth, and let my body waste away to nothing. But when I think about my life, it is bombarded daily, with “suggestions” on what I should look like, the size jeans I should wear, how I should do my hair, etc.

What if I started to become just as concerned about what I looked like on the inside, as the outside? Being a heart patient, from the outside, I look just fine. Outside of the scars on my body, one would have no clue. But on the inside, the heart isn’t necessarily “normal.” We pray it gets better and better as time goes on. The point I’m trying to make here is that we can look like we have it all together on the outside, we can look like the standard and live up to the bar our world tells us to live up to, but on the inside, we can be a wreck. I mean an absolute MESS.

If you knew the day God would call you to your eternal home, would you live your life differently today?

How you answer that question, may depend on where the focus is – on the outside or on the inside? Now let me say this. This is something I wrestle with as well. It’s a balance I believe. God wants us to care about our bodies, as they are a creation of His as well. We are to be good stewards over what He created. On the other hand, we are not to neglect our spiritual hearts. How we spend our time, what we spend our time on, are all key factors into where our hearts and priorities lie.

So how do we get better looking? By keeping our focus on Christ.

1 Peter 3: 1b-4 says (from the Message): There are husbands who, indifferent as they are to any words about God, will be captivated by your life of holy beauty. What matters is not your outer appearance—the styling of your hair, the jewelry you wear, the cut of your clothes—but your inner disposition. Cultivate inner beauty, the gentle, gracious kind that God delights in. 

Those verses really made me think about what type of life I live? I get my hair cut. Even highlighted at times. I put a braid in my hair and wear earrings. These things, much like many other things in life, are not wrong in and of themselves, I believe. It’s to the extent and obsession over them, that makes all the difference.

What would God say about how and what we spend our time and money on? Are we captivating our husbands and those around us, with a life of HOLY BEAUTY? I just LOVE those two words. So much simple depth in those two little words. Am I cultivating my INNER beauty everyday? Would God delight in how I live?

Get your hair cut. Wear that necklace! What I am not saying is that these things are bad. Not at all. What I find myself asking my inner heart, is what am I more focused on? A life of beauty or a life of holy beauty?