Part of my struggle has stemmed from what I feel like is every woman’s struggle – the need to feel beautiful. So, knowing that I really just need to see beauty from God’s perspective instead of my own carnal mind’s perspective, I began to ask for insight, and I really feel like He gave me some on Sunday.

My pastor was talking about eating at this restaurant in Cali that’s on the beach and watching the sun set, and what a holy experience that moment was. And I felt like the Lord told me that our inner beauty, the kind of beauty that matters, is like that sunset. You know how some sunsets  just make you stop everything and just stare in awe?! I remember I left late to drive to my parent’s house from Waco one day, when I was in college, and I almost stopped the car and got out to just stare when I saw this sunset that was purple! Yes, purple! It was stunning!

So the juxtaposition that was set in my mind was that the beauty that God intended for us to walk in, the beauty that God intended us to exude is not a beauty that the world sees with their physical eyes. Physical beauty is only a whisper, a shadow of the beauty that God created in us. And that inner beauty has power! Just like we are stunned by the power of a beautiful sunset, we were created to stun others with the beauty that God has put within us.

But it’s not a boastful experience of sharing our inner beauty.   I know the most exquisite beauty that we have comes from the perseverance through trials and fellowshipping in His sufferings. But those “light afflictions” are forming in us a beauty that is of God, the Beautiful One! It is holy. It is pure. It draws people.  The Cross has made our beauty worth boasting about because its roots are in Jesus!

The other day, I sat in on a meeting with two girls from my homegroup who were hashing out their differences because they were both super offended with each other. The homegroup leader just wanted me there because she’s seen my gift of encouragement and thought it would be good in this situation. It was a really stressful meeting! They were both about to either beat each other or run away, and the whole time I was asking for insight, praying to have words of life and unity to speak over them. And then I did. And I know what I said was words that testified to Jesus within them both. But I would not have had those words to speak to them, words that ended up bringing reflection and not regret, if I had not given the past ten years of my life to submitting to the Cross working itself out in my life.  I know that I have a great amount of beauty wrought within me because I have said yes to Jesus so many times in the hard things.

After the meeting, one of the girls, whom I’ve been getting to know, walked me out to my car and just spoke to me of how stunned, in a holy and enlightened way, she was by what I said. But I know that what had happened to her was this: she saw the beauty that God has put within me, and she had the same reaction to it that we do to a sunset – thankful awe.  My beauty was seen!  But it wasn’t my physical beauty that drew those precious women into a greater revelation of Jesus, it was my inner beauty, the awe-inspiring splendor of a spirit given wholeheartedly to Jesus – it drew them, it humbled me, and we are all changed.

Outward beauty is so much lesser than.  How can we hold on to the faint glimmerings of physical beauty when the stunning spotlight of God-bred beauty far outshines it all?