I'm sure noticing many advertisements and labels that shout out “Renew your youth! Reduce those lines and wrinkles! Guaranteed success or your money back! Become a new you!” I’ll admit, I’ve yielded to their promises and purchased some of those products. I’d like to say that, as they promised, I look ten years younger from their “magic potion” – but, NOT!
The truth is I AM okay with my age, and I’m okay with these lines that seemed to have come from nowhere...quickly. I’ve earned every line and crease with every chapter of every story I’ve lived. Those stories make up who I am. And I wouldn’t trade my stories, and my years, for anything. I’ve lived long enough now to see (even the tough years — the ones I didn’t think I’d survive) how God used every one and every experience to bring me to a place of deep assurance and sweet peace today. God showed Himself strong through it all. And my trust in Him grew.
To be RENEWED from the inside out is purging all those "unsightly" ways, attitudes and emotions from the inside so that our outside reflects God’s beauty. My Mom always said “Beauty is skin deep….it’s what's in your heart that makes you beautiful.” I think about Saint Mother Teresa. She had more wrinkles than anyone, but at 85 she was younger and more vibrant than a 20-year old as she loved and cared for hurting humanity. From the inside out....she was extraordinarily beautiful.
When we realize WE ARE BEAUTIFUL because the marvelous, exquisitely beautiful ONE lives in us, and when we embrace THAT BEAUTY and let it shine through our eyes, speak through our mouths, hug with our arms, love with the love of Christ, then we will be RENEWED and the fountain of youth will be flowing out of us to a hurting world.
Proverbs 31:30 "Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting; but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised."
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