About four months ago, the Lord laid on my friend Allie and my hearts to host a girl's retreat. So here I am, the night before...excited, ready for it to happen already, overwhelmed, fulfilled, and hopeful. I really feel like God's going to do some major things in these girls hearts. And I pray that right now. I don't know how God has done it, but what started off as a simple idea, has turned into 80 girls and women attending and helping. God is ridiculous!
I'm finishing the last bits of my teaching, here in the wee small hours of the morning...and wanted to share a bit of what God's been putting on my heart for these girls, and for myself.
As I was thinking about some of the things on teenage girl's minds and what I think society speaks to them about so often is this idea of 'change'. Things like "Be the change". They hear it constantly, and they long for it. As superficial as things around them may feel, they truly long to be a part of something greater than themselves. And this is how God has created us. Whether we realize that it's God or not. God has created us as women with passion and purpose. We long to be a part of something bigger because it's in our make-up. We were not called to the mediocre. We are called to something beautiful. Called to something great. God has formed the heart of a women with three things...beauty, passion, and purpose.
So here we are, ready to let the passion of our heart and purpose of our beauty (that which bears the image of Christ) to be let loose...but for that to happen, there has to be wholeness. What is wholeness? Wholeness is letting Jesus touch every part of you...not holding back. Allowing Him to have everything. Allowing Him in all of the questions of our hearts, our longings, our hurts, our dreams & hopes. Through wholeness in Christ there is a quiet confidence, a freedom to be unique when we are surrounded with a tidal wave of pressures and standards. Freedom to be true. That in our abiding in His love, comes our wholeness.
The constant question of a woman's heart, even from the time we we're little is "Am I lovely? Am I enough?" Most women doubt very much that they have any genuine beauty to unveil. It is our deepest doubt. Beauty is essential to God. Beauty is the essence of God. Stasi Eldredge writes, "Woman is the crown of creation- the most intricate, dazzling creature on earth. She has a crucial role to play, and a destiny of her own. And she too, bears the image of God."
I think about my childhood hero, Amy Charmichael, a revolutionary missionary to India in the late 1800's. She truly lived out of an overflow of wholeness in Christ. Because of this, she was free. She knew that God had clothed her in beauty, driven her with passion, and created her with purpose. It was because of her confidence in the Love of Jesus, and how He had created her, that she went into the world and God used her to change it! How can you tell someone about the love of Christ, if you aren't even confident in it yourself? But when we are clothed in His love, our beauty is released.
The glorious things to which He has called us to are set into action. Dripping with excitement and passion. As we as women walk in this, our hearts bearing the image of God Himself, we live in freedom and become a part of something bigger than ourselves.
Beauty is powerful. It is tenacious. It matters. And you possess it! So what is your passion and what is your purpose, beautiful one?
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