Good morning!
Welcome to your morning coffee! May our Heavenly Father quiet our hearts and minds. Father, call us closer to your side today. Help us to see the world around us through your eyes. And help us to see ourselves through your eyes. Help us to submit our attitudes, our personalities, our preferences, our wants and desires and opinions, all to you. Help us to entrust our inner selves to you as you comfort us and quiet us and grow us according to your Will and desire. In the name of Jesus, by the power of the Spirit, help us to form our inner selves to your Will. Amen.
Your Morning Song: "Counting Every Blessing" by Rend Collective
Your Morning Scripture: 1 Peter 3:3-4
Do not let your adorning be external—the braiding of hair and the putting on of gold jewelry, or the clothing you wear—but let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God's sight is very precious.
...
I'm not sure what is so different about this morning. I've tried to write and rewrite this opening far too many times. Not that I wanted it to be perfect, I learned that lesson a long time ago. But I wanted to say it plainly. Say it true. Say it honestly. And so without any example or word picture other than this explanation of my lack of one...
I want my "adorning" to be this kind of adorning, that makes God feel this way and delight in what I am doing.
These two verses are not saying that dressing nicely and taking care of yourself are bad things. Far from it. No. Peter, and the Lord, here are saying that the appearance of our outer selves cannot be the standard by which we are beautiful. Notice my very exact choice of words, "cannot" not "should not."
You can try to be beautiful based ultimately on what you do to your outer self. It will not work. Ever. The work we do, the choices we make, attitudes we build up and those we reject, are all like dressing the inner self with jewelry and nice clothes. But in a way that actually works.
This is not only true for women. The obedient work we do on the inner person has eternal value. God is pleased. He declares you precious and beautiful. He delights in His sons and His daughters when we do this kind of inner person work. When we wear gentleness and quietness within and upon our souls.
For those of us who have chosen to live this way, let's not forget God's response. He delights in us. He calls us beautiful. He calls us precious to Him.
And by our obedient, beautiful, precious living we will be walking and talking witnesses to God's way of doing life, from the inside out. The best way. The only way.
May God's understanding
of what is beautiful and good and precious,
be ours.
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