Fat. Ugly.
Those were the two most common words that over 500 Christian women used to describe themselves when I surveyed them for my first book, Enough Already: Winning Your Ugly Struggle with Beauty.
I used to see myself that way as well. In fact, I believe that if you give a woman a mirror and thirty seconds, she’ll tell you everything that is wrong with how she looks.
Yet, I can’t tell you the number of Christian women who are ashamed to admit how much they hate what they see in the mirror. Jesus-loving women will refer to 1 Samuel 16:7 and say, “Man looks at the outside, but God looks at the heart.” That is true.
What’s on the inside is what matters most to God, BUT, it’s not the only that thing that matters to Him.
God created us, so our bodies are a spiritual matter. How you see yourself and what you say about yourself matters to God.
I call this journey our “ugly struggle with beauty.”
While we can blame culture for our ugly struggle with beauty, a big part of the problem is that we’ve allowed culture to steal the definition of beauty and manipulate it into their own warped standard.
Genesis 1 outlines what you need to know about how God sees the topic of physical beauty. Not only does God create our world, but He uses different shapes, colors, textures and smells in His creativity. He cared about the aesthetics of the world that we live in – think about that!
As God creates the different features of our world, we read His feedback on the work that He’s done: “And God saw that it was good.”
Genesis chapter 1:27 reports on God’s creation of humanity: “So God created human beings in his own image.”
Finally, a few verses later in Genesis 1:31: “Then God looked over all he had made and saw it was very good.”
Here’s where it gets interesting …
The word “good” is translated towb in the original Hebrew language. Towb means beautiful.
There are two truths today reflected in Genesis chapter 1 that can should reshape your ugly struggle with beauty so that you can find hope and encouragement.
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God is the creator of beauty, not us.
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You are beautiful because God created you.
You are beautiful because God created you! Your beauty is divinely given and unchanging! This means that even as we age or even as our bodies battle sickness or illness, we are still beautiful because God put His beauty in us and ON us!
This isn’t what our world teaches. Frankly, it’s our fault for letting culture steal what God has created.
But, today, you can begin to take some of that ground back by reflecting on God’s beautiful truth about you as well as all women. Our beauty has never been based on our size, shape or style.
We are beautiful because God has created us. When you live from that truth, you can smile at yourself in the mirror and know that you are God’s beautiful, lovable, capable daughter and worthy of His best instead of beating yourself up for how your body looks or operates.
TELL ME WHAT YOU THINK! What words have you used to describe yourself in the mirror lately? How does the truth in Genesis 1 encourage you?
Reclaim God’s beautiful truth about you! If you’ve been calling yourself fat or ugly, and you know that needs to stop, then check out my first Bible study, Beautiful Already: Reclaiming God’s Perspective on Beauty.
Learn how to see God’s beautiful blessing of goodness and purpose in your body, no matter your size, shape or style.
