When I was a little girl in the not-so-popular crowd, staying home on the weekends to study while the cool kids were out having fun with their friends, my mom always comforted me with the following words of experience:

“Don’t worry, honey. When I went back to my high school reunion, all the popular kids had gotten fat.”

Ok maybe her advice didn’t go quite like that, but that was the basic message I heard. Peaking in high school was a bad thing. For the rest of us, the best was yet to come.

Well I’ve been reflecting on my mom’s words as my TEN YEAR REUNION approaches. I still can’t believe it! I feel so old. But what I’ve been thinking about even more is how people will look at me. What will people think about my life and what I have achieved. Will they be impressed? Will they think I’m weird because I’m in ministry? (probably) Will they still not talk to me because I wasn’t cool then, so I’m still not cool now?

(And as an interesting side note I should add that I went to the same school with the same people for 12 years, which means that I have a 12 year long reputation bearing down on me.)

Well I’m gonna be honest–my reflections on this upcoming event have not at all been pure. When I show up to the reunion I will be newly married to a guy that I happen to think is pretty hot, so I’ll be super excited to show him off.

And that makes me kinda sad. Of all the things I’ve done since high school, is landing a *hot* husband really the greatest?

Uh, no. Aside from the fact that Ike is an amazing man with a godly heart who is going to be an incredible minister one day (attributes against which his hotness easily pales in comparison) I am also a minister myself, and a writer to young women around the world. I try to serve God and love people to the best of my ability, and I’ve had a lot of really amazing experiences as a result.

But the world doesn’t really care about those things, so I’ve been reveling in my superficial achievements instead.

With all of this in mind, I think that high school reunions can be really useful tools in getting to know ourselves better. Just think for a second–when you imagine your high school reunion, how do you feel? Are you excited to brag about your success in business, how you married right out of college, or that you have a second home at the beach?

Or, are you anxious about your high school reunion because you haven’t been that successful, you’re still single, or you don’t make a lot of money?

Most likely your answer to those questions says a lot about your priorities. You see, high school reunions have an amazing knack for identifying our practical saviors–the one thing that we really depend on for security and satisfaction in this world.

At high school reunions we feel as if our lives are being measured and judged, and we want to be judged favorably. We may have lived a life honoring to God, but that doesn’t sound very impressive to the world, so we we put ungodly pressure on ourselves to measure up. We begin to value those things which God does not value. And while our high school reunions do highlight those misplaced priorities, reunions are not the source of them. They’re only an indicator of a much greater spiritual problem.

So whether you’re still in high school, your next reunion is 10 years away, or you’ve got one right around the corner, ask yourself what you want to be remembered for. In an abstract setting, we usually answer that question with noble aspirations like “Helping mankind” or “Being a great wife and mom” or “Serving God and His Kingdom,” but those generally aren’t the answers we give at high school reunions. Instead visualize yourself within the concrete context of your high school reunion and be honest–what are you excited about, or nervous about? Most likely you will discover an area that needs to be surrendered to Christ.

I will close with an anecdote from my 5 year reunion that always makes me laugh to remember. I was about to leave for a mission trip to Africa when I attended my reunion. I was going to Cameroon to educate students about AIDS, and I was really excited about it. Well during the reunion one of my former classmates, who had since become a golf pro, asked me about my own plans for the future. When I told him I was going to Africa, he looked at me in utter amazement and near disgust as he asked, “Why would you ever want to go there??”

I guess the golf courses in Africa aren’t as good. Ohh high school reunions.

As a minister to women, I frequently work with young ladies who suffer from eating disorders. Though I personally have never struggled with this particular issue, it clearly plagues a large percentage or our present female culture. It is almost indiscriminating when it comes to age group–women from the age of 11 to 50 are fighting their bodies as they listen to the voices of an unforgiving society.

That said, I was not at all surprised to learn that doctors have identified a new form of eating disorder. The disorder itself isn’t really that new, but only recently have we given it a name. It’s called orthorexia.

Orthorexia is a term coined by Dr. Steve Bratman, an individual who was heavily involved in the health food movement until he realized it had become an obsession. And that’s exactly what orthorexia is–an obsession with healthy eating.

Orthorexia entails a fixation with food that is so severe it can lead to malnutrition or even death. In its less harmful forms it is still all-consuming–the individual may avoid certain foods, such as those containing fats, preservatives, animal products, or other ingredients considered to be unhealthy. The orthorexic is so preoccupied with food that he or she orders their entire life around meals–they are constantly planning the next meal so as to ensure that anything less than pure and healthy does not enter their body.

To be clear, orthorexia is different from other eating disorders with which we are more familiar. As Bratman describes, “Anorexics seem to always think they’re fat. Orthorexics know they’re thin, but they want to be pure.”

And in this way, orthorexia is very subtle. The sufferer isn’t overtly starving themselves, so the behavior actually disguises itself as a virtue, especially in our increasingly health conscious world.

In reality, the orthorexic is a slave to their diet.

To read more about this issue, click here to check out an article on abcnews.com.

If you or someone you know might be struggling with orthorexia, I encourage you to go see a counselor or a nutritionist. But I would advise you to speak with a church leader as well, because there is more to this disorder than unhealthy eating habits.

What is interesting about orthorexia is that it doesn’t come across as being blatantly harmful since the goal is to be at one’s healthiest. However, this struggle gets to the heart of the term “eating disorder,” because that’s exactly what it is–a disordered view of eating. An individual has an unhealthy understanding of food or diet that negatively influences their lifestyle, as well as the way that they view themselves.

And that’s why I encourage you to talk with a pastor–this is a diet issue, but it’s also a faith issue. In America, we see people bowing down to the altar of diet all the time, and we see it in one of two ways–either by eating too much, or by over-controlling how little they eat–both use food as a source of comfort and security. In both instances, people use food to prop up some part of themselves that is hurting or needy. And in this way, a fixation on food becomes an all-encompassing lifestyle in which diet becomes our god.

For this reason we must always be guarded about our actions and our motives. Even in trying to live a healthy lifestyle, which is a very good thing, it is easy to supplant Christ as the center of our world. In a culture that is obsessed with how one looks and how one eats, it’s easy to join in the worship of healthy eating.

So before you think that this doesn’t apply to you, I want you to ask yourself how often you think about food and eating every day. Then, ask yourself how often you think upon the things of God. Even if there’s a slight imbalance, so little that you alone know the difference, that is still a kind of eating disorder. It may not play out in the form of obesity or starvation, but any kind of mindset that puts diet as a priority over God is, spiritually speaking, disordered.

Several years ago I attended a convention for religious broadcasters in the United States. I was representing the ministry I worked for at the time, which had a radio segment that aired all over the country. We were at the convention to network, meet other broadcasters, and get the ministry’s name out there.

To my surprise, the convention itself was actually very exciting. I got to meet well-known Christian authors, I saw a pre-screening of The Passion movie, and I had fascinating conversations with ministries from all over the U.S. Overall, it was a great experience.

However, there is one thing about the convention that stands out in my mind, one thing that I will never forget. It serves as a kind of accountability for me in my own ministry today…

Because the convention was for religious broadcasters, there were a number of Christian t.v. shows present, along with their hosts. And let me tell you, the women who hosted those shows were BEAUTIFUL! They walked around that convention hall with perfect hair, perfect make-up and perfect clothes. They were incredibly put together and flawless, these successful Christian women, and that is when the first seed of self-doubt planted itself in my heart.

I looked at those women, who were smart and driven and had already accomplished a lot in ministry, and then I looked at myself–my hair was flat, my clothes were boring, and Lysa, the president of the ministry, had to help me put on my make-up because I was so pathetic at it. I was far from perfect.

So as I observed those flawless women and then compared myself to them, I thought to myself, “If this is what it means to be a successful women’s minister, then I clearly don’t measure up.”

I still find myself thinking that today. I look at women like Beth Moore, who is not only a powerful writer and speaker, but is also drop-dead gorgeous, and I feel as though I fall miserably short. I believe the lie that the perfect Christian woman has got to be the whole package, which poses a problem for me since I bite my finger nails, I can never figure out how to get my hair to look right, and I’m barely tall enough to see over the steering wheel. The whole package? That, I am not.

On a head level, I think we all know how faulty that logic is. Scripture is full of verses about how God looks at the inside and not the outside. That message is clear. But the reason my experience at the convention was so definitive for me as a women’s minister is that it made me pause and wonder–Do I ever make other women feel insecure about themselves? Do I convey the message that looking put together and perfect is an important part of being a Christian woman? Do I spend so much time primping and looking cute that I compromise my witness? While I may tell young women that outward beauty doesn’t matter, do my actions undermine my words?

Well I recently discovered that Paul talks about this very thing in 1 Corinthians 2 when he explains to the Corinthian church the he did not come to them with “eloquence” or “persuasive words.” This point is significant because Paul was extremely educated and well-versed in the art of rhetoric. He was very capable of speaking articulately and persuasively. But he instead chose to keep it simple.

Why? Because he didn’t want the presentation to distract people from the message. He didn’t want his listeners to be so impressed by his rhetorical gifts that they missed out on what he was actually saying.

And Christian women do well to keep this teaching in mind. We must not let the presentation distract people from the message. This principle can play out in any number of ways, but one of the most salient examples is the way we present ourselves outwardly. If we are trying to encourage one another to focus on inward beauty, but we spend excessive amounts of time on our outward beauty, then we will undermine our message. Rather than spurring women toward the Gospel, we’ll be encouraging their insecurities, self-doubt, and vanity.

Now that is not to say that we should wear burlap sacks and stop washing our hair–it’s definitely ok to look nice! God created us to be beautiful and we should celebrate that fact. But I am writing this as a kind of heart check. We need to examine our motives in how much time we spend on our outward beauty. Are you spending time on your outward appearance for the glory of God, or in order to feel better about yourself? And more importantly, do you spend as much time working on your inward beauty as do you your outward beauty?

I, for one, hope that in my time as a women’s minister, I have never misled women into thinking that being the “perfect Christian woman” means looking flawless and put together. If I have, I apologize greatly and ask for forgiveness. But the truth of the matter is that there is no “perfect Christian woman.” By that I mean that there isn’t ONE standard to which we should all strive. God created us to be unique and diverse because each one of us reflects His infinite majesty in our own special way. If we aspire to fit in a cookie cutter mold, then we’ll erase the unique beauty in each one of us, and thereby steal a little bit of glory away from God. The only standard that we should all be seeking is holiness, so if there is any message that I want my life to convey, it is the importance of pursuing Him. Anything else is just a distraction.

This blog entry was previously posted in February of 2008.

So I might be the only woman in the whole world who feels this way, but I hate it when women’s ministers talk about how we’re all “princesses.” As soon as that word hits the air, I immediately start imagining girls with bad perms in fluffy pink dresses with giant puffy sleeves stuck in a tower somewhere.

That is not the kind of woman I want to be. I do not want to be a wimpy princess woman.

Having said that, my sub-conscious feminist side was jolted the other day upon reading the story of Abram and Sarai. These two kids started out bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, God’s promise of many children and many blessings sitting at the forefront of their minds. They were ready to take on the world!

But as the years went by, no kids came along. Abram and Sarai were getting older and older, and God’s promise no longer seemed so secure. So Sarai decided to take things into her own hands–she compelled Abram to sleep with her servant, Hagar, to fulfill God’s promise. Hagar got pregnant, and the rest is history.

The result was a complete disaster.

To read the whole story just turn to Genesis 16. If it wasn’t already obvious, it’s a great cautionary tale for wives who want to pawn their husbands off on other men. It generally doesn’t go over well.

But what is most fascinating to me about this story is God’s response. Rather than come down hard on Abram and Sarai, He does just the opposite–He reminds them that he will still fulfill His promise to them, even in spite of their unfaithfulness.

How does he do this? By changing their names. He changes Abram’s name to Abraham, which means “father of many nations.” He also changes Sarai’s name to Sarah, which means “princess.”

Now this move leads us to a very interesting question–why re-name Sarai “princess?” After all, she’d just mucked up the whole situation horribly. Doesn’t she deserve a good talking to? Is God simply letting her off the hook? And why “princess?” Aside from the fact that she wasn’t acting very princessy, could He have at least come up with a slightly cooler name, like Xena Warrior Princess or Shera Princess of Power? Not plain ol’ wimpy princess!

However the reason behind God’s actions are significant and profound, carrying great meaning for women today. And not just the kind that involves puffy sleeves. Picture it this way…

In the weeks following the Hagar debaucle, Sarai’s probably pretty down on herself. She’s just sent Hagar away in the wilderness, so she’s realized that the plan did not pan out the way she anticipated. She is a total screw up, and now she’s worried that she might have thrown away all that God had promised.

So what does God do? He reminds her of one unalterable truth: Sarah may mess up fromt time to time, but her identity remains the same. She will always be the daughter of the King. She will always be a princess.

You see God wasn’t talking about the kind of princess who waits all day long for her prince to arrive while she brushes her golden locks and sings to forest animals. The term “princess” is instead descriptive of her relationship to the King.

To think of it another way, it is kind of like being the President’s daughter. Sasha and Malia get extra special treatment and are watched by the entire country, not because of anything they’ve done, but simply because of who their dad is. What’s more, those girls will not cease to be the President’s daughters if they ever misbehave or embarrass him. No matter what, they will always be President Obama’s daughters, and they will receive the honor that is due that position.

It was the same for Sarah, and it is the same for us. Once you accept Christ, you are the King’s precious daughter. You can screw up and be unfaithful, but your identity will remain the same. You will be His sweet princess, not in a wimpy kind of way, but in a way that declares to the world, “I don’t care what you say about me, and I don’t care about your standards of value or beauty. I am the daughter of the most High King and nothing will ever change that.”

If you ever doubt your identity, your value, or your worth, remember Sarah. In the face of her sin God did not condemn her. He did just the opposite, and He is doing it now for you. You truly are a princess, and I mean that in the most non-cheesy, non-wimpy way possible.

If you ever wander into the women’s section of a Christian bookstore, you are sure to find one thing–self-help books.

They may carry spiritual titles and use Scriptural language, but at their core they’re about one thing–helping you. Maybe you don’t like your marriage, or you have a bad relationship with your dad, or someone hurt you in the past and you can’t get over it–whatever the problem, you’re sure to find a book designed just to help you.

Now this isn’t all bad, because wholeness and healing are two very important aspects of the Christian life. Christ healed people, and God tells us to come to Him with our cares and anxieties. That’s Biblical.

However, there is a big difference between the Bible and self-help books. To explain this point, just look at one of the most insecure individuals in the Bible: Saul, the King of Isreal.

Now I don’t know about you, but when I think of Saul I imagine a guy kind of like Biff on Back to the Future. He was arrogant and power-crazed, willing to do anything to protect his position and authority. He was David’s arch-nemesis, the reason behind many of the psalms of lament. So as far as I was concerned, he got what he deserved in the end.

But if you actually read the story, you’ll get a very different picture of Saul. He’s not a man obsessed with power (at least not at first) but instead a man who is painfully insecure. Just check out this exchange between Saul and Samuel:

And Samuel said, “Though you are little in your own eyes, are you not the head of the tribes of Israel? The LORD anointed you king over Israel. And the LORD sent you on a mission…Why then did you not obey the voice of the LORD? (15: 17-19)

Little in his own eyes? That’s not the Saul I imagined. But we get an even clearer taste of Saul’s struggle when he later replies…

“I have sinned, for I have transgressed the commandment of the LORD and your words, because I feared the people and obeyed their voice. (15:24)

That’s right, Saul was wrestling with the exact same struggle as every American, 8th grade girl: insecurity. Maybe he didn’t think he was equipped enough to lead, or that people wouldn’t take him seriously. But whatever his fears, they had a profound enough effect to shape his actions in fundamental ways.

And at this point, the Bible might seem to have a lot in common with the books you find in Christian bookstores. They both grapple with the pain and consequences of a wounded ego.

But you have to read the rest of the story…

Saul immediately apologizes to Samuel and asks God for forgiveness. So what does Samuel do? Does he give Saul a big hug and tell him everything’s going to be ok? Does he tell Saul that God made him to be special and has wonderful plans for his life? Does he give him a pep talk about taking hold of his best life now?

No. Quite the opposite actually:

“Has the LORD as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the LORD? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to listen than the fat of rams. For rebellion is as the sin of divination, and presumption is as iniquity and idolatry. Because you have rejected the word of the LORD, he has also rejected you from being king.”(15: 22-23)

No hugging. No coddling. No “You are special.”

This is where the Bible and self-help books depart ways. The two have very different goals in mind. Whereas self-help books are aimed at the self, healing the self, restoring the self, feeling better about the self, Scripture tells us to forget yourself and focus on God.

And that was Saul’s problem–he was too focused on himself. Maybe not in an obvious, power-hungry kind of way, but he was self-focused nonetheless. And that’s why Samuel didn’t treat Saul as a wounded puppy who needed to lick his wounds–he instead called his insecurities by name: idolatry.

At its heart, that’s what insecurity is–it is a preoccupation with the self, putting the self so central that it supplants the rightful place of God. And that’s exactly why Saul disobeyed God–he cared more about the opinions of others than he cared about God.

That is why the solution to insecurity is not more self-help books–the solution is a more robust theology. We need a system of beliefs that pries our focus off of ourselves and places our sights back on Christ. Therein lies true freedom–we will no longer be in bondage to our own shortcomings and fears because we’ll be so blissfully distracted from them by God.

And that is the irony of it all–to focus on yourself will keep you in bondage to the self. To focus on God will set you free from yourself.

So the next time you’re tempted to check out one of those self-help books, spend some time thumbing through the chapters to discern the book’s true goal. That is where you will find the distinction between Scriptural teaching, and idolatry veiled as spiritual pop-psychology.

I posted the following blog just after Christmas last year, but I thought it would be a great reminder as you go out and get your Christmas tree this season. Whenever you look at your tree this year, consider whether it is a picture of your spiritual life.

Even though the Christmas season ended over a month ago, our Christmas tree is still sitting in our front yard. “Why?,” you ask. Well I blame the garbage pick-up people. Apparently there was some sort of miscommunication between us.

A couple weeks after Christmas had passed, we dragged our Christmas tree to the top of our driveway so that the garbage truck could take it away the next morning. Well when my roommates and I came home the following afternoon, we arrived to a startling surprise. Not only had our tree NOT been picked up, but it had been shoved all the way down the hill of our front yard.

It was so far away from the curb that it looked like a deliberate and clear rejection. It was like they were sending us a message: “We want absolutely nothing to do with this tree. In fact, please don’t come near us again.”

Needless to say, I’m still a little hurt.

Ever since then, our tree has been sitting in our front yard untouched. No one from the road can see it because it’s so far down the hill, which is probably why we haven’t moved it–we don’t have to worry about the neighbors thinking we’re hillbillies who leave our trash in our yard. But we also haven’t moved it because we don’t really know what else to do with it. The garbage people rejected it, so where else does one turn?

(And p.s., if you know the answer to why our tree was rejected–if there’s some kind of North Carolina Christmas tree disposal law about which I am unaware–please inform me)

Now this tale of Christmas tree woe is not the point of my writing today. But seeing that sad, little Christmas tree in our front yard, which browns and withers with every passing day, reminds me of an important spiritual truth.

At the end of the day, a Christmas tree is little more than a dying tree. This reality is obvious now that my tree is dried out and brown, but we don’t really think about that fact at Christmastime when the tree is dressed up with ornaments and lights. In the weeks leading up to Christmas, I would just sit in front of our tree and stare at it because it was so beautiful, but no matter how much we dressed up that tree, we couldn’t change the reality that this tree had been cut off from its roots, and was now dying a slow and sure death.

Oftentimes, my life feels just like that beautiful Christmas tree. I have covered myself with all kinds of Christian decorations–I have a seminary degree, I’m a writer, a college minister, a Bible study leader, and a mentor to many young women. But at the end of the day, those achievements are all just decorations. They don’t really mean anything, because they do not sustain the Christian life. If you cut yourself off from the Source, then you can be doing all the activities in the world, but still be withering spiritually. And sometimes I feel like I am.

That said, I want you to ask yourself–are you a Christmas Tree Christian? Do you feel as though you are piling on decoration after decoration, yet neglecting the source of your spiritual life? Are your roots firmly planted in an ever-growing relationship with God, or have you cut your roots off by neglecting time in Scripture and prayer?

Like a dying Christmas tree, spiritual death is not readily apparent. It could take months, even years, before the lack of nourishment becomes observable. And that makes it easy for us to ignore this part of our spiritual lives. But if left unfed long enough, the death will inevitably come. Our branches will become too dried out to hold up those ornaments, so they will break and drop them. And eventually, we will look just like that poor little tree that sits in my front yard.

If you are feeling that strain on your branches, or if you feel as though your roots have been cut off from their source, take some time for yourself and God. At the end of the day, your Christian activities are nothing more than cheap ornaments, treasures on earth to be burned away. God cares little for the things that make us look glorious, but He cares greatly for a heart which glorifies Him.

Has anyone ever told you to “be yourself?”

I find myself telling people to “be themselves” quite a bit. When applying for a job, going on a date, preaching a message, writing an article, and the list goes on and on, that is the token advice we give. And for good reason–it’s so tempting to mimic other peoples’ styles that we lose our own gifs in the process.

Even so, I’m starting to question the soundness of that advice. Why? Because I believe this advice has one fatal flaw:

Which parts of ourselves were given to us by God, and which parts of ourselves are sinful perversions?

Telling someone to be themselves does not make any distinction between these two identities that we posses. One part of us is striving towards Christ, and another part of us, our flesh, is pulling us from Christ. So just because something comes naturally to you does not mean it is a part of your self that you are meant to cultivate. A quality might be characteristic of who you are, but who you are is a sinner. 

That is why I have found this advice to be of little help. And after reading the following passage from C.S. Lewis, I now see why. Being yourself is the wrong goal and the wrong focus altogether. Lewis writes in Mere Christianity:

“At the beginning I said there were Personalities in God. I will go further now. There are no real personalities anywhere else. Until you have given up yourself to Him you will not have a real self. Sameness is to be found most among the most ‘natural’ men, not among those who surrender to Christ. How monotonously alike all the great tyrants and conquerors have been; how gloriously different are the saints. 

But there must be a real giving up of the self. You must throw it away ‘blindly’ so to speak. Christ will indeed give you a real personality: but you must not go to Him for the sake of that. As long as your own personality is what you are bothering about you are not going to Him at all. The very first step is to try to forget about the self altogether. Your real, new self (which is Christ’s and also yours, and yours just because it is His) will not come as long as you are looking for it. It will come when you are looking for Him.

Does that sound strange? The same principle holds, you know, for more every day matters. Even in social life, you will never make a good impression on other people until you stop thinking about what sort of impression you are making. Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original; whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it. The principle runs through all life from top to bottom. Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and  and favourite wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end: submit with every fibre of your being, and you will find eternal life.

Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. but look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.“

So the next time someone tells you to be yourself, forget yourself. Your self is what you keep tripping over every time you try to impress others. Instead, seek to reflect Christ, and you will experience a freedom of the self that you have never before imagined. 

Imagine, for a moment, that you’re in college and your boyfriend is rushing a fraternity. You two have been dating for awhile, and you really like him a lot. He’s a total gentleman, you get along great together, and He loves the Lord. He even feels called to the fraternity as his mission field, and hopes to be a light in that particular darkness.

But one day your relationship takes a horrible turn. He calls you over to his fraternity house and makes a shocking proposition. Apparently all his potential frat brothers think you are really hot, and they’ve decided that he can only join the fraternity if you agree to sleep with them. So your boyfriend has now come to you, pleading that you will cooperate. “Please!” he begs. “They won’t let me pledge if you don’t do this! I know this is a lot to ask, but imagine the ministry opportunity!”

Sound crazy? That’s because it is.

Think this could never happen? Think again. This is exactly what Abraham did to Sarah in Genesis 12. The couple was traveling into Egypt, and Abraham feared he would be killed because Sarah was so desirable. So what does he do? He saves his own hide by handing her over to Pharaoh. When he should have been protecting her, he instead gains acceptance at her expense.

This is a story that we are pretty familiar with, but the tragedy of it often escapes us. We tend to blow it off as if the moral standards at that time were a lot more fluid. A man prostituting his wife somehow seemed more normal back then.

But if you can imagine yourself in the horrific circumstances I described above, then you got a taste of what Sarah must have been feeling. She was not only abandoned by the man who was supposed to protect her, but she was put in harm’s way for his own selfish gain. What a lonely place that must have been.

Clearly, this story has implications for our marriages, especially for husbands. But there is a degree to which we women should learn from this story as well. It is a story about putting someone in harm’s way to save yourself, and that is something I do all too often.

For example, I can’t tell you how many mornings I’ve spent a great deal of time picking out my clothes for church. Some mornings I have tried on 4 or 5 different outfits before I found the right one! And during this process, a small voice in the back of my head wondered, “Could your obsession with looking nice be a detriment to the women who look up to you? Are you causing other women to feel a pressure to look cute and perfect and put together, since that is the example you’re setting?”

But in that moment, I prefered to prop up my own self-esteem, so I ignored that voice. And in turn, I probably fed the insecurities of many women around me.

In the world of women, we are often about survival of the fittest. I don’t care who I knock down or how I make other women feel as long as I feel good about myself. And in doing so, we perpetuate an unending cycle of bondage to cultural norms, rather than standing up and being different. We feed into an impossible standard of beauty, instead of sacrificing our need to be the best and the prettiest.

And in this way, we have continued the legacy of Abraham. When we should be looking out for one another and protecting one another from a world that measures our beauty according to waistline, we victimize one another all the more by perpetuating it.

Now all of this is not to say that we should rebel against our culture by wearing burlap sacks and refusing to shower. Heck no! We need to celebrate our beauty, inside and out. But we need to ask ourselves why we do it. Are we the type who will NEVER go outside without make-up, who always tell others about all the time we spend at the gym, and who will only wear clothes from name brand stores? If you answer yes, or even maybe, to any of those questions, then you might just have a problem.

Let us instead put an end to this story. Let us be a Church who thinks first of our sisters, and then of ourselves. Let us consider how our actions affect others, and whether we are victimizing our neighbors, as opposed to protecting them. All of our actions, no matter how seemingly innocent, have implications for the world around us. So when it comes to the Christian life and how we live in relationship to others, we should always ask ourselves–Are we selling out Sarah, or are we saving her?

For some reason I have a high number of male friends who really enjoy being naked around one another. There’s nothing weird or sexual about it–they just like the freedom of it I guess.

In fact, some of them consider it to be a valued form of quality time! I even knew some guys in college who lived together and would set aside one afternoon each week for their “naked time.”

As a girl, I really can’t relate. In no way does that sound fun to me. It only sounds awkward. And kinda weird.

With few exceptions, girls are just the opposite of boys in this regard. Unlike our male counterparts, we will do almost anything to avoid being naked in front of other people.

But why is that? Why are guys so comfortable with their bodies, whereas women are not?

This is a question I’ve been thinking a lot about lately. My first instinct is to blame the media–when I look at myself in the mirror, I see a stark contrast between my body and the bodies of the Victoria Secret models. As a result, I can’t help but be ashamed of my body, therefore causing me to hide it.

But this issue cannot be blamed on the media alone. It goes back much further than that. All the way back to the beginning of time…

Think, for a moment, back to the Garden of Eden and the Fall of humanity. What was the first thing that Adam and Eve did when they had disobeyed God? They covered their bodies.

What does this tell us? That there is a very real connection between the way we feel about our bodies and the way we feel in relation to others. In particular, the insecurities we have with our bodies reveal a more deeply rooted issue in our relationship with God.

For Adam and Eve, to be naked before God was to be fully known, inside and out. But after the Fall they didn’t want to be fully known by God, because they were ashamed of what He would find.

That said, when we hide our bodies, we are doing more than hiding our physical features. We are hiding our souls as well. We are afraid of being fully known, for fear of what people will find. We are afraid of being rejected.

Given the fact that Adam and Eve both felt the need to cover themselves, why are women so much more insecure about their bodies than men? Well this is the point at which culture partners with our sin nature to target women most acutely. Due to our sin, there is already a tendency to want to hide ourselves, but culture feeds that fear all the more by attacking a woman’s natural beauty. It mounts shame upon shame.

So how do we fight this?

Well I have one creative solution, but before I reveal it, the first and foundational step is to work on your relationship with God. No person, including yourself, can even give you the wholeness you need to stand before God and others without shame. Only your Creator, the one who granted you life with purpose and intention, and then loved you enough to sacrifice His son, can give you that security.

But in addition to that, I have a little homework for you. I want you to pick out the physical features that you like the least, and start thanking God for them. Pray that God would reveal to you how beautiful those things are. If you don’t like your nose, or your legs, or even your butt (that’s right, God thinks you’ve got a great booty! After all, He gave it to you!), pray that God would open your eyes to the beauty that He sees in them.

For some of you, you might even consider standing in front of the mirror completely in the buff, looking at your whole body, and worshiping God for it. I know that sounds kind of crazy, but your body really is beautiful to God, and we don’t praise God nearly enough for our bodies, so try it!

It may sound a little off the wall, but given that we were created in the gorgeous and divine image of God, I think it’s time we mount a grass roots effort to resist the turn of our culture. And it starts with you.

One of the topics I spend a lot of time writing, teaching and speaking about is beauty. Beauty is a central theme in women’s ministry because all women desire it. And in the face of this desire, women’s ministry fights to protect God’s standard of beauty when culture perverts it.

But having said that, what is beauty? If we are going to resist the world’s understanding of beauty in favor of God’s, we should probably know exactly what we’re talking about. Unfortunately, this is a much harder task than one might initially think. Just pause for a moment and ask yourself: How would you define beauty??

Beauty is one of those ideas on which it is tough to put a finger. We know something is beautiful when we see it, but how does one actually define beauty? After all, what one person calls beautiful, another person might find ugly. Why is beauty defined so differently by so many people and cultures?

Well I discovered the reason for this discrepancy in opinions in the very definition of the word. Wesbter’s dictionary defines beauty as follows:

1: the quality or aggregate of qualities in a person or thing that gives pleasure to the senses or pleasurably exalts the mind or spirit : loveliness

2: a beautiful person or thing; especially : a beautiful woman

3: a particularly graceful, ornamental, or excellent quality

Notice in the first definition that an object is called beautiful according to the pleasure it evokes in the mind or spirit. Now that is quite a tricky definition given its extreme subjectivity! One person might find something to be beautiful because it stirs pleasurable sensations in them, but another person will not call that thing beautiful if it does not stir up the same feelings of pleasure.

So which individual is right? Who is to decide what is beautiful and what is not, if the only measure of beauty is an individual’s personal feelings of pleasure?

Well at this point I decided to turn to Scripture since Webster’s definition was running me in circles. If you search the Bible for the word “beautiful,” you will find that it appears about 75 times. Of those appearances, only two or three are references to men. The remaining 73 references are applied to objects that we more traditionally understand as being beautiful: clothing, jewels, crowns, flowers, cities, and God, but it is most frequently applied to women.

I also found a frequently used phrase, “the perfection of beauty,” which is always used to describe God. What’s more, the New Testament almost exclusively references beauty in the context of service to God. In Matt. 26:10 Jesus asks, “Why do you trouble the woman? For she has done a beautiful thing to me.” And in Romans 10:15 declares, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!” Within these contexts, beauty is directly connected to the glory of the Lord.

With all of that in mind, we have a little bit more information about beauty. We know that God is the perfection of beauty, thereby making Him the ultimate standard of beauty. We also know that women somehow possess that beauty in a unique and definitive way.

How, then, are we to define beauty? Honestly, I’m still not quite sure. It seems to be an attribute that almost defies description or definition. It captures us in a way we cannot articulate, and it transports our hearts and minds to a place that is other-worldly. When we see something beautiful, we know that we are experiencing a taste of the divine, but we may not fully understand why or how.

And perhaps that is why we cannot define it–it is beyond our limited capacity to comprehend. Not until we reach the other side of eternity will we truly grasp the glory of true beauty as God defines it. For now, we must be satisfied with mere echoes of it.

What, then, does that mean for women and their understanding of beauty in the face of culture? Two things. One–while we struggle to pinpoint the basic definition of beauty, we can know that God creates certain things to specifically reflect God’s beauty (such as flowers and sunsets) but women reflect that beauty in an especially unique way. While men can be beautiful (both David and Moses were described this way) the majority of Scripture applies the description to women.

That said, women were created to reflect this attribute of God in their very essence. It is written into our beings. We were created with it, so it is an essence that no culture can undermine. Beauty is never defined by certain physical attributes, but instead as that which best reflects God. Any definition of beauty that sets itself up against the basic beauty and divine image inherent in every single woman is a definition in conflict with the beauty of God.

Two–beauty is anything that brings glory to God. Many of the contexts in which the word “beauty” is implemented involve service to and worship of God. Whether it describes the “beautiful feet” of those who spread the Gospel, or beautiful jewels of God’s temple, they are all meant to point back to God.

As women, that is the only way we should consider “improving” our beauty–by reflecting God all the more with our lives. 1 Timothy reminds us that we should not adorn ourselves with jewels, trendy clothes, or plastic surgery. The only makeover we need is one of the soul–we should adorn ourselves with modesty, self-control, and good works.

So when it comes to being beautiful, don’t seek to change or augment those things that God gave you at birth. He created you the way He did because it was beautiful to Him. The only thing we can add to such beauty is a spirit surrendered to God. Any other definition of beauty only seeks to glorify ourselves and calls God a shabby Creator. Let us instead be women who embrace a true definition of beauty, and evidence that beauty with our lives.