Janna Shoultz: welcome to episode forty four of Faith talks. Well, I’m flying solo today here in Indiana, and today we’re going to be talking about something. I’m actually every other Wednesday night with the girls here at Tabernacle. We are doing just different topics on things that girls struggle with. And one of the ones I was preparing for this Wednesday, um, is just the topic of the fear of your self appearance or your self image.

You could say, um, and I was reading some different books thinking about it, and I thought, you know what? This is something that I think more than just different girls here struggle with. I think that would be something that would apply to everybody. And I really don’t think it is just when you’re a teenager. I think it also can continue into adulthood with so many different things.

Um, but anyway, we’re going to just explore into that a little bit. And I’m using just a couple different things. I’ve read some of the things are things I’ve heard my mom just different truths or passages my mom talk about. Um, and then just different books that I read. Um, so we’re going to just start out in Ezekiel sixteen.

Um, so I don’t know about you, but in the heart of every girl is the desire to be wanted, to be desired, to be, you could say, sought after. And you think about how little girls are so captivated by princesses. I think you go in, you know, every other girls room, and that’s their theme of their room. There’s princesses everywhere, and they’re getting their poofy dress on and their crowns. And I remember as a child just absolutely loving that.

Um, and I’d have a little princess stickers and stuff like that. And that’s just something that’s inside of a girl’s heart, too. They want to be sparkling. They want to be beautiful. They, you know, eventually they want to be won by a dashing prince.

And that’s just something that, um, we dream of. And that’s something that God gave us. And I’m going to start here in Ezekiel sixteen, where, um, God is the king and he’s dressing his princess, which is you. So let’s just look a little bit at, um, how he dresses his princess. See here, um, verse ten, I clothe thee with broidered work.

I shod thee with badger skin. I girded thee with a fine linen, and I covered thee with silk. Now, that sounds like quite the outfit. Um, especially the badger skin with the silk. I’m not sure how that all look, but, um, we’ll keep going.

Here. I deck thee also with ornaments. I put bracelets on thy hands and a chain on thy neck. I put a jewel on my forehead and earrings in thine ears. And a beautiful crown upon thy head.

Thou wast decked with gold and silver. Thy raiment was of fine linen, silk, broidered work. And then it goes on, and says, and thou wast exceedingly beautiful, and thou didst prosper in the kingdom. And thy renown went forth among the heathen for thy beauty. For it was perfect through my comeliness which I had put upon thee, saith the Lord God.

So you can see here just the picture of God is having a delightful time of dressing his princess. He’s he’s got different jewels and raiment. And then it even says, verse fourteen, that, you know, it was perfect, but whose comeliness was it through? Is through the Lord’s. For it was perfect through my comeliness.

For I had put upon thee. So you can see these different things put on this princess were not things of her own, but they were things that the Lord gave her. And the Lord had delighted in her. And I think the wrong window to go out with this is to think, oh, you know, God just wants me to look frumpy, or God just wants me to not care about what I look. That’s not at all true.

God wants you to be beautiful, and he wants you to have that beauty on the inside as well as the outside. And but then, look, let’s see what happens in verse fifteen. What happens to this princess? But this is God talking. But thou didst trust in thine own beauty, and thou place the harlot because of thy renown and poorest out.

Thou fornications on everyone that passed by. And it goes on to talk about even more further into that. So you can see this princess here. She did not live out the life that God had given her. Instead, she decided that that beauty God had given her.

She used the beauty for her own purposes. She trusted in her own beauty instead of trusting in the Lord instead of trusting in the Lord. And I think of how the Bible talks about in other passages, how young men often trust in their own strength instead of the Lord. I think it’s often equal with young ladies, and that they don’t trust in their strength necessarily, but they trust in their beauty instead of trusting in the Lord. So I like that passage because it shows that beauty and, um, clothing and it isn’t wrong.

But if you’re trusting in it, therein lies the issue. And Satan, I think, uses this wrong desires to just ruin a lot of women in our day. And you’ve you can just see looking around, um, just the attack there is on women and, um, we’re going to be talking about today. So a couple this is from one of the books, um, this one’s by Mark Atterbury, but this is just talking about some myths that when you look in the mirror, here’s some myths, here’s some wrong thinking that often happens. Okay, so this is the first myth.

What you see is who you are. What you see is what you are. And let’s think about the story of Jezebel. So think about Jezebel. Her husband had died Ahab.

And God chose a young man, Jehu, to be the next king. Well, Jehu was told to destroy all of the family of the king, so he was told to destroy Jezebel. So here comes Jehu in his chariot. And I’m sure Jezebel was told, you know Jehu is coming in his chariot with his men. They’re coming to kill you.

Okay, so what would you do if you’re queen? You’re told that this, you know, army or group of people is coming to kill you. What would you do? I mean, personally, I think I would hide in the closet. I would, you know, put a bunch of stuff in front of it, maybe get all my guards and be like, you know, stay in front.

Maybe I’d hide. Maybe I’d bake a cheesecake and put it out so he’d be distracted, you know? I don’t know, but that’s not what Jezebel does. What does she do? It says she paints her eyelids.

She fixes her hair and she sits by the window. Isn’t that so interesting? Can’t you just see her focus here? Her focus is completely on herself. You can.

The book said. You know, she. Maybe she’s thinking if I go. If I go out, I’m going to go out looking good. You know, she.

I’m sure she looked good. She was the queen. She had everything that a queen could have. But what was she focused on? Her beauty, her enticement.

She wanted to entice Jehu. Coming. But you know what? Everybody looking up there, including Jehu when he came, didn’t say, oh, wow, look at this beautiful queen. He said, you know you’re wicked.

And God killed her. So at the end of the day, which what you are on the inside is what really matters. Not not what you painted on your eyelids that morning. Um, we were at the ranch this summer, and there was a message Brother Shetler preached just on us. Specifically, he preached some different things to young men and then some to young women.

But one of the things for the woman was just that, um, virtue equals value. And a lot of times you can think, oh, well, you know, if I’m really good at sports or if I’m really good at an instrument, or maybe if I’m, you know, really good looking or I have lots of friends, or maybe if I make a lot of money, then I am valuable. You know that girl over there? She looks so good. She has a good family.

She’s valuable. But you know, that is not what the Bible teaches. And that’s not what Jesus says. Your your character, who you are on the inside. Your virtue is really what is truly valuable at the end of the day.

Um, the second thing to to think about just the wrong pattern of thinking can be, well, what I see in the mirror is what others see. You know, we are really good at nitpicking. Nitpicking. Sorry. It is late at night and my words are all tangled up.

Um, we are good at nitpicking at ourselves in the mirror. I’m sure somebody out there has looked at themselves in the mirror and thought, oh, my nose is just too big. Or maybe you look in the mirror and you say, you know, my, my legs make me look like a hippopotamus. I don’t know what it is for you. Maybe it’s your eyebrows.

You know, I think all of us have something. Um, I have freckles, okay. And so I have many times, especially in junior high. That seemed to be the time, um, looked in the mirror and been like, oh, I wish I didn’t have freckles. Okay, now my husband loves my freckles.

So was that worry all really needed to happen. No, not really, but I had a, um, someone I knew who had a long, slender nose, and they always thought like, why is my nose so big and slender? I don’t like it. Well, come to find out who they married eventually. That was their favorite thing about the person was their nose.

So I say that to say we need to stop nitpicking at the different things in the mirror, when really probably everybody else doesn’t even see that. You’ve probably all heard somebody say, oh, I’m so fat, and you’re looking at them and you’re like, okay, hun, you’re probably like one hundred and ten pounds. Like, you don’t need to say that. And it’s just case in point, a lot of what we see in the mirror as an issue, other people might not literally even notice. Um, and let me just read this part from the book.

It says, I believe one of the best and healthiest things you could do for yourself would be to give up the microscopic scrutiny of every square inch of your body and the whining and complaining that go along with it. I also believe God would appreciate not having to listen to you diss his handiwork. Remember, that nose you hate is a one of a kind original designed by the master artist himself. So that’s just a little humorous, but, um, think about it. When God was fearfully and wonderfully making you, he created those ears that you have.

Or he created that chin that you have. Um, I read a quote once, not from this book, from I don’t even remember where, um, and it said the problem is not how quote unquote bad you think you look or. Sorry, let me say that again. The problem is not how quote unquote bad you may look, but instead how insecure you are with how bad you look. And the idea is, you know, if you don’t look like a ten out of ten, no one really cares.

But if you are insecure with how you look, that is going to come across to everyone. Um, so it’s just something to think about. What you see in the mirror is probably not what other people see. Okay, a third kind of misconception. I’m kind of rephrasing these all, um, and adding stuff, but, you know, you could think, well, if I don’t look good enough, you know, I’m never going to get married.

Okay. Well, I want you to think about this. Think of a popular girl, maybe in your school or at your church or somewhere who was really pretty on the outside, but not pretty in the inside. Okay. Think about that.

Often those people that you’re thinking about don’t have long standing relationships, and it’s easy for us to look at maybe somebody you’ve always been jealous of or something and think like, oh, if I could just have what they have. But honestly, often really pretty girls don’t have long relationships if they don’t have a pretty inside because, you know, okay, the outside might draw a guy. That’s very true. It might. But a guy doesn’t just want a pretty outside.

If he starts to get to know the girl and he’s like, oh my, she’s a drama queen, or oh my, she’s so selfish or she’s cruel. She’s not kind to people. He’s not gonna stay with her. He’s gonna run. Because no guy wants to live with a woman who’s not beautiful on the inside.

So that is, you can think maybe the outside is the only thing that matters, but it’s really not the inside. So much more important. Um, and yes, I know there’s some where it’s like dashing, dashing boy meets dashing woman. And here they go. But you also, I know each one of you has probably seen at the grocery store or something, you see, you know, maybe a guy who’s more good looking and a lady who’s not, and you’re like, oh my word.

How did they get together? Well, you know what? Probably her beautiful inside is what spoke to him. And at the end of the day, that’s what really matters. Um, so don’t let Satan lie to you, saying that what you are on the outside is going to determine whether or not you’re going to get married.

That is a lie from Satan. And and Jesus talked over and over how the heart is what matters. So let’s just look at some applications. First of all, um, embrace reality so it can be really easy to want to copy other people. And I’m not saying if you go to church and you see somebody wearing a dress and you’re like, oh, that’s really cute, I want to get a dress like that.

That’s not always wrong. But there is a point and I, I would say there’s been times in my life, especially in high school where this was true of me. Um, it can be easy to get somebody that you really look up to and almost make them your idol. You say, oh, well, they wear this. Well, in order to be like them and be successful, I need to wear this.

Or, you know, they always chew gum. So therefore I’m gonna always chew gum. And it’s it’s really easy to try to live somebody else’s lives. I think as girls with social media and different stuff, it’s so easy to do this. Um, here’s just a little story from the book.

The author is saying, um, I imitated specifically talking about this group of women, their teaching styles, their mannerisms, and their dress, all because I felt that if they were successful, then I needed to be like them. What an idiot I was. One day, as I was wrestling with my fifth pair of pantyhose and I was complaining about the men who invented them. I heard the Spirit of God laughing at me. I felt that God was asking me what I was doing.

I assured him that I was getting dressed so I could go to church, and I was putting on pantyhose because my two heroes wore pantyhose, and I needed to be like them in order to fulfill my destiny on earth. The father quickly assured me that he didn’t need me to be like them. They were fine being themselves and he didn’t need anyone else to do their jobs. He did, however, have a job for me to do on the planet, and he would empower me as soon as I was comfortable being who he created me to be. I think that’s so good.

It’s so easy to try to mimic other people or try to be other people when that’s not what God wants. God is literally waiting for. Okay, Jana, I want you to be comfortable with who I created you to be. And I have a mission and a job and people for you to impact just how you are. Um, I think of the verse that says those comparing themselves among themselves are not wise.

Don’t compare yourself with others. It’s so you’re going to get all the funny words tonight. Others. Others. It’s so.

It’s so unwise. And it really, at the end of the day, is so frustrating. If you live your life, if you live your life like that. Um, let’s look at the second one. Build your looks.

We’ve talked about this some from the inside out. First Peter three three to four talks about the inward beauty and not outward adorning. Adorning whose adorning? Let it not be that of outward adorning, of plaiting the hair, of wearing of gold, of putting on apparel. But let it be the hidden man of the heart.

Um. And it talks about the meek and quiet spirit which is in the sight of God. A great price. You know what is valuable to God? Inward beauty.

You know, in heaven, I don’t think we’re going to be walking around saying, oh, I know that person over there looks better than this person, or this person’s skinnier than this person. Or have you seen those girls eyebrows? You’re not gonna hear that in heaven. Um, what’s going to matter in heaven is the inward beauty that you had on earth. And girls, if we can just get our eyes off of ourselves here on earth, it will be just for being here.

And also make what is in heaven so much more real. You know, if we’re living for people here in a good way, I’m saying if we’re pouring our lives into people and people are getting saved, they’re going to be in heaven with us. If we’re spending hours on our makeup and our hair, that’s not maybe it’s going to be in heaven, honest, but it’s not going to matter in heaven. So, um, put your focus on that inward beauty. Thinking about someday, um, A marriage relationship.

You want to be someone who is worth discovering that when a guy really starts to get to know you, he doesn’t say, oh well, she looked really nice, but oh, there’s nothing to her. She’s so shallow. You want to here and now seek deep, deep relationships and talk about things with. Maybe it’s your peers. Maybe it’s your family, especially your parents.

Talk about things that matter when you get together with your friends at church. You know, I have been in so many teen girl conversations where they’re talking about, you know, have you tried this lipstick? Because this one actually really plumps your lips more. And, you know, this one doesn’t smear. And I’m not saying, don’t, you know, share tips.

Great. Share your tips. But, um, don’t make your whole conversations focused on stuff that doesn’t matter. Um, you you want to have those deep relationships, and those will serve as a foundation to your marriage because you want to have that deep relationship with your husband one day. Um, and then the third thing is just be modest.

Insecurity really can show itself in dress, and it speaks a message to those around. Let me just read this little part, um, from the book here. When I see a woman dressed in modestly, I wonder if she’s trying to fill a void in her life. Is she feeling insignificant and crying out to be noticed? Is loneliness driving her to pull out all the stops in an effort to snag a companion?

Do the lustful stares of strangers help her to stave off the whispers of a tattered self-esteem? Perhaps not in every case, but it’s. But it isn’t unusual for inner struggles to produce highly visible attitudes and behaviors. I thought that was so good. Um, and often I’ve noticed that the the more immodest a lady is that’s really speaking insecurity to those people around here and the different possible, you know, future mates out there, guys who are looking for a wife.

Um, and first Timothy two nine talks about women adorn themselves in modest apparel with shamefacedness and sobriety. That and then it goes on to say, you know, not that you’re focused on braiding your hair or gold or pearls. Not that any of those things are wrong, but it’s like Ezekiel, if you put your trust in them, it’s gonna it’s just gonna completely skew the direction of your life. Um, I’ve also heard this before in modesty. If you’re immodest, yes, you may grab a guy’s attention, but so do monkeys at the zoo.

Um, you see the monkeys, you know, you’re like, oh, wow. Look at them over there. What are they doing? Oh, my. But does anybody go to the zoo and want to take a monkey home with them?

No. And the same thing with guys they might be drawn to or like, provoked in some way to look at an immodestly dressed woman, but they don’t want to. At the end of the day, they don’t want to take that one home with them. Um, this is from the book. You have a choice.

As a woman, you can become. You can work to become what culture says you ought to be, or what God says you ought to be. Ultimately, your choice and your future will be determined by what you believe when you stand in front of your mirror. So this is just one other thing I was thinking about, is realize that beauty is temporary and character that inner beauty is eternal. So think about it sixty years from now, say you’re fifty, sixty years from now, you’re going to be seventy five.

And chances are you’re not going to be focused on, um, your outside beauty. You’re going to probably have wrinkles, you’re going to have sagging things that were not sagging before. Um, but that if you worked on creating inner beauty and developing virtue and character. When you were, say, fifteen, that’s going to still be there when you’re seventy five. And the people you were kind to and touched and spoke of Jesus to when you were fifteen will still be impacted when you’re seventy five.

Um, Proverbs twenty one twenty one says, A pursuit of godliness never ends, but a pursuit of beauty does. You know, and you might say, well, if I focus on beauty or my routines or my eating correctly. And don’t get me wrong, I’m all about eating healthy. But an obsession with it, um, can be unwise too. But even if you can delay all that, say you can delay your aging.

You know it’s not going to last forever. And like Solomon says, you just need to accept every season of life and don’t don’t wish yourself back in one season. I think we’ve all seen maybe a lady in her sixties or 70s, dressing like a teenager, trying to maybe ignore the stage of life she’s in and trying to still be what she was forty years ago. And you know, that’s sometimes like us. Sometimes we try too hard.

Um, I was really curious when I was just thinking about this. I was like, I wonder who the longest living lady is in the world. Like in history, I guess, as we know it, obviously there’s probably more back in biblical times, but the oldest lady to date is Madame Jeanne Calment. She’s the longest living human in history. She died at one hundred and twenty two years old in one hundred and sixty four days.

She died in nineteen ninety seven. That was the year I was born. Um, okay. Let me read this from a little article I found. Many have wondered what Jeanne’s secret was that allowed her to live such a long life.

One might assume this French woman was incredibly active with a strict diet to maintain world class physical health, but this couldn’t be further from the truth. Jean smoked a cigarette every day till she was one hundred and seventeen. She claimed to eat two point five pounds of chocolate per week and had a drink every night. We believe or no. She believes, that her secret to a long life was because she had what the French call joie de vivre, or a joy of life.

I probably totally mispronounced that. But Jean loved life. She took up fencing when she was eighty eight. She rode her bike every single day until she was over one hundred. She lived.

I guess that wouldn’t have been every single day. But she wrote it every single day until she was under it. She lived alone and maintained her independence till she was one hundred and ten. So think about this lady. What’s the reason she lived to be one hundred and twenty two?

Okay, I think some of it’s genetics, but it wasn’t because she was stressing over, you know, never eating ice cream or Health. Now, I am not advocating drinking or smoking or anything like that. But this lady, she enjoyed her life. She, you could say, focused on joy and inner, um, not necessarily inner beauty, but just, you know, who she was inside and didn’t stress about the outside. And here she lives to one hundred and twenty two.

So I thought that was kind of an interesting just little story to end with. So just as we kind of wrap up for today, I just want to ask you a couple questions just for you to reflect on, um, some of these were ones the book mentioned, some of them just ones I thought of. Um, but first of all, do you, you know, with our theme this year on fears, do you have a fear about your looks or how you appear? Um, do you feel anxious about your looks? Is there something about yourself that you’ve always hated?

Think of that one thing, you know. And then have you ever thanked the Lord for making you the way he did? He made that thing that you don’t like. Maybe you have a health issue. He allowed it.

You won’t have it in heaven. But he allowed it for some reason on this earth. Think about this. Do you ever have a tendency to compare yourself to other women? Maybe somebody who doesn’t have that flaw that you have.

Have you ever prayed and asked the Lord about that? Asked him for forgiveness for comparing. And ask him for wisdom and strength to appreciate yourself for who God made you to be. Think about this. Do you agree that character is the greatest beauty secret of them all?

Think of some people who maybe have become more beautiful in your eyes as you’ve gotten to know their character. I know I can think of several people and then think of this one. The book had this one. I thought this was really good. Up to this point in your life, have you worked harder on your looks or on your inner qualities, and then think through what are some specific inner qualities that you can cultivate that would make you more beautiful?

Speaking of the inside, you know, so often we might focus on, oh, I want to have better hair or I want to have a more, you know, toned legs. There’s all these things that, you know, girls might seek for. But how often do we actually sit down and think, you know, I want to have more faith? God, would you would you teach me how to have more faith? That’s something I’ve been asking the Lord.

Would you grow my faith? He’s already put me in some. Just different impossibilities in this life stage of. Okay, God, I don’t see how this is going to work. He’s growing my faith in a in a new way.

As of late. And that’s that’s wonderful. That’s what I want. But have you asked God to grow your faith? Or maybe you say, you know, God, I don’t feel like I have much mercy.

People come to me with their problems, and I just don’t. I don’t have compassion. Lord, would you teach me what it’s what it’s like to have mercy and compassion. Lord, would you teach me about love? Would you grow that in my life?

And so think about an inner quality that you could really focus on. Maybe. Maybe you see someone who has joy all the time. They’re just very joyful person. Maybe you should go up to them and say, you know, how do you how do you have so much joy in your life?

What’s what’s God been teaching you? I think if we would focus on those inner qualities and inner beauty, we would just be absolutely blown away about how fulfilled we would feel, how we would feel that we are just who God made us to be and not be comparing with others. So I just encourage you, um, to do that this coming month to focus on those inner qualities. And as always, maybe, maybe go talk to your mom about anything in the podcast that you learned or were convicted about, or maybe take some time to pray with her and just say, you know, mom, I want to focus on those inner qualities. Um, but I just encourage you to take a step of faith this next month in developing your inner qualities of who God made you to be.

So just remember this week as you go about your day. Faith doesn’t just talk. Faith walks.