Living Out the Beauty of the Gospel

Dannah Gresh: On this edition of Revive Our Hearts Weekend, beauty and the gospel, and how we can live it out!

Mary Kassian: It took many years before I actually came to really an appreciation of saying, "It's not only good and right. It's also beautiful."

Portia Collins: I challenge you to usher your babies to the throne of grace.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: Women who have been transformed by the power of the gospel can themselves become transformers. What might that look like?

Dannah: And that’s a question we’re going to try to answer, today on Revive Our Hearts Weekend. I’m Dannah Gresh, and I’m so glad you’ve joined us today. 

Okay, if you’re a woman, you know we get bombarded with advertising messages that are focused on our physical appearance. And how often do we believe those messages? We can probably answer that question by looking at how many products we purchase and store in our homes and carry in our purses are intended to help us be more “beautiful” . . . whatever that means.

I have got soo much stuff on my side of the bathroom sink. It made me wonder, Do you? So, I did some research. The average woman has eighteen “decorative cosmetics.” You know, lipstick, blush, mascara, highlighter. And she owns on average twelve bottles of nail polish (yeah, that’s about right for me) and seven-and-a-half skin care products and six or so hair products. That’s like forty-two lotions and potions to keep us pretty!

But if we’re only dealing with external beauty, we’re missing the point! I have long asked tween and teen girls, "Did you spend more time today in front of the mirror making your outside beautiful or more time in the Word of God grooming your heart." I hope the latter is true for you!

Because you see, it’s possible to be beautiful on the outside but not-so-much on the inside.

Proverbs 11:22 says, 

Like a gold ring in a pig's snout
   is a beautiful woman without discretion.

And do you know the ultimate reason we do both—care for our external appearance and focus on the beauty of our hearts? It’s to try to make Jesus appear as beautiful as possible to others! 

Let’s talk about living out the beauty (not of our own bodies, but) of the gospel.

We’ll start by listening in on a conversation taken from a video series called True Woman 201: Interior Design. This is Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth talking to Mary Kassian about a concept we read about in Titus chapter 2. 

Nancy: It is amazing how we all want to be beautiful and the lengths that we will go to in order to make ourselves presentable, and we've experienced a little bit of that over these last days.

Mary: I think that God has wired us as women to have a desire for beauty. And that's not a bad thing. It perhaps can be misguided when it's all put on, external beauty.

Nancy: Sure.

Mary: But I think that part of our wiring is to love beauty.

Nancy: That's a really important word, because we want to see that the true woman displays the attractiveness of the gospel. In fact, Titus says, "She adorns the gospel."

We've been looking at this passage in Titus 2, and it gives us three "so that" clauses in these instructions to men and women and different demographics in the church. After talking about older women training younger women, it says, "So that the Word of God may not be reviled" (v. 5).

And then it says in verse 8, "So that an opponent may be put to shame having nothing evil to say about us."

And then in verse 10 I love, "So that in everything they may adorn the doctrine of God our Savior." And that's the point.

Mary: That is the point: how we do life, how we do life day today, how we do life as a woman adorns the gospel of Jesus Christ

Nancy: It can make it beautiful.

Mary: It makes it beautiful, or it makes it ugly.

Nancy: Right.

Mary: It shows it to be unattractive.

Nancy: I mean, the gospel is beautiful.

Mary: Christ is beautiful.

Nancy: Christ is beautiful, but we affect how others view Christ and the gospel.

As we've looked at these different elements that we find in Titus 2, we've explored them, we've studied them, we've put them under the microscope, I think it's important to say that when you let the Grand Designer, God Himself, into your life, let Him have His way and begin to shape and reshape, that what He does, the work He does, first of all, it's functional.

It works. Life works better when you let it work according to the way it was designed to work. But it doesn't just work better.

Mary: No. It's also beautiful. I think that's something both you and I have come to appreciate over the years. I know that as a young believer, younger believer, as a younger woman, I always thought God's Word was right. I had a sense that it was true and that God was God and that I wasn't God. So I had a basic respect for God's Word.

But I know when I bumped up against passages like this about womanhood, I just had this sense, this emotional response to it that, "Yes, I'll do it. God's way is right." But it took many years before I actually came to really an appreciation of saying, "It's not only good and right. It's also beautiful."

Nancy: Yes, it is. I've been on much the same journey myself. Some of these passages, especially about womanhood that rub the culture the wrong way, they rub our own flesh the wrong way.

Mary: I've been rubbed the wrong way by some of these passages . . .

Nancy: . . . as we've worked through them. And yet, when you see how they bring freedom, how they bring blessing, how this is for our protection, you begin to see these ways of God really are beautiful. They're good. They're beautiful. As we embrace them, our lives become beautiful and become a beautiful reflection of God whose beauty we've been embracing.

Mary: And we adorn the gospel. That's an amazing phrase. I love that phrase. And there's another phrase here in this passage that kind of hints at that a little bit. We talked about older women teaching the younger women, to teach them good things. And actually, the word in there is good and beautiful things. There's an aspect of attractiveness about what we are transmitting to the next generation. So the idea of beauty is contained in there as well.

Nancy: So I think our presentation as older women. We want to be presenting to these younger women a vision of biblical womanhood that is winsome; it is compelling.

Sometimes I think they've rejected something that they've never seen how beautiful it really is.

Mary: Exactly. They've just rejected it because of this emotional response of really how we've been conditioned to think by culture that a woman who is amenable, a woman who has a soft disposition, that that's an ugly thing, or that's a weak woman. That's how we've been trained to think as women in this culture. But that's not truth according to God's Word.

Nancy: So the Scripture says that as we behold Christ in His beauty, we take on His likeness. We are transformed into that same image. We are changed from glory to glory, 2 Corinthians 3 says.

Then our lives reflect to those around us—to our families, in the work place, in the church—the beauty and the wonder of who Christ is, and they say, "I want to know Him! I want to be more like Him!"

Then together we will become this beautiful Bride for Christ, whose Bride we are. (5:11)

Dannah: So Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth and Mary Kassian have been showing us that women can adorn the gospel—make it look more beautiful—to a watching world. 

By the way, Mary will be on our daily program, Revive Our Hearts, this coming Monday and Tuesday, talking about how we need to be confident women. She qualifies it, though, by saying, “It needs to be the right kind of confident.” Be sure to tune in if your station carries Revive Our Hearts, or you can listen to the Revive Our Hearts podcast.

Did you know your parenting can also be a beautiful picture of the gospel? Here are my two cohosts from our weekly videocast Grounded. We’ll hear Portia Collins first, then a quick response from Erin Davis. 

Portia: You know, as a mom, the single most important thing that has informed my mothering is grace. Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not just saying grace because it sounds like the right thing to say. I'm saying grace, because it's what I've experienced from my heavenly Father. 

It often shows up naturally as I mother my daughter, my Emmi. Y'all know her and love her. She is far from a perfect child. Yes, she is smart; she's cute as a button. And if I've got to admit it, she packs a sassy punch. 

But some days are rough; she doesn't listen well. Her growing independence often leads her to get into something that she has no business doing. I could set the expectation for her to be the most perfect child and never do or say anything wrong. But honestly, I'd be setting her up for failure, because she'd never hit that mark. So instead, I give her grace, through love, mercy, chastening, teaching, and forgiving her over and over. Here's the thing. I cannot withhold something from my daughter that I've been freely given, and experienced time and time again, from my heavenly Father. 

I want to take a minute for us to listen to what God says in His Word in Romans, the third chapter, and we're going to look at verses 22 through 24. It says, “The righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.”

You know, the kind of righteousness that is pleasing to God is righteousness that comes only by grace, through faith in Jesus Christ, we just read it. There is nothing that you can do to justify yourself or earn favor with God, absolutely nothing. It's all grace. And you know, although we'd love for our children to be the model of perfection, and their behavior, and their learning and everything else in-between, the truth is, they'll never be perfect. They're sinners, just like us. They need to say, “Grace that we have been freely given.” 

So every day, I challenge you to usher your babies to the throne of grace. And you know what? We can take this even further. Not just your babies, but usher your husband to the throne of grace, usher your coworkers to the throne of grace, every member of your family needs grace, model grace-filled living with them every single day. 

And in doing so, that is how you begin to teach them the gospel every day. 

Before I finish, I want to share a quick storytime. Y’all know I love storytime. So, buckle up. Yesterday, my sweet sister Erin and I were chatting via text message about some work-related things. And specifically, we were talking about something that had fallen off of my radar. As always, she was so kind and gracious to me. And I responded to her kindness and her graciousness by thanking her for her grace. And here's what she said that really stuck with me. She said, “I'm the servant with the greater debt. Grace is all I've got.” Y’all know, I wanted to throw my shoe, because she is exactly right. As servants with my long rap sheet in Christ, grace is all that any of us have. But guess what? Grace is all that we need. Cling to that truth this week.

Erin Davis: Oh, man, I'm getting my own shoe locked and loaded because that is its grace. It's grace. It's grace. What do we want you to take away from this episode? You can live out the gospel in your family by being a grace giver because you certainly are a grace partaker; we all are. 

Dannah: Amen. We all are. Erin Davis there with Portia Collins reminding us that it’s all about grace. You can tune in to our weekly videocast, Grounded, either by watching live, every Monday at 9 a.m. Eastern (that would be on our Facebook page or YouTube), or by listening to the podcast each week, usually on Wednesday. 

You’re tuned to Revive Our Hearts Weekend. Today we’re examining ways women can live out the beauty of the gospel. What would your unbelieving friends say about Jesus from looking at your life? That’s worth thinking about, isn’t it?

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth discussed that very concept with two of her friends, Kimberly Wagner and Holly Elliff, in a series that walks through each phrase of The True Woman Manifesto. 

Let’s listen together.

Nancy: We’ve said that as Christian women, “We desire to honor God by living counter-cultural lives that reflect the beauty of Christ and His gospel to our world.” Now, I find that inspirational. I find it motivational. I find it gives vision, but what is that going to look like?

We’re women in different seasons of life, and what are some of the ways—there is no way we can exhaust that here because women are different—but what are some of the practical ways, what might that look like for a woman to reflect the beauty of Christ an His gospel to our world?

Let’s take it from theological speech, which is the foundation, to flesh it out just a little bit. You’re women in different seasons of life. You’re ministering to women. Give us some pictures of what practically that might look like for women.

Kimberly Wagner: It’s making tough, hard choices according to Scripture. For me, and I’ve shared this before on Revive Our Hearts, but, for me, it’s going beyond just seeing it in Scripture or having head knowledge of it. It's taking it home in how I treat my husband and how I treat my children. I’ve shared how, in the early years of marriage, because I was such a strong, opinionated woman and would state what I believed in a very dogmatic sense without applying a lot of the truth of Scripture, the sanctifying aspects—graciousness, gentleness, humility, kindness . . .

Nancy: It all makes a difference in how we express those opinions.

Kimberly: It does. 

Holly Elliff: Transformation, I think, is a word that comes to mind when we think about not just the True Woman conference and the kick off of that, but the reality of what needs to happen now that these truths have been put in place. As I live those out, though, it is not something I just sign my name to. It is something I choose to do in the walls of my home so that, whether I’m at a True Woman conference or standing in my house, my life is the same. It’s not that we live in this True Woman bubble where . . .

Nancy: . . . we’re going to start selling those—True Woman bubbles.

Holly: If there was one, I would like one.

Nancy: You’re never going to have one with all those children and grandchildren.

Holly: I know, but what it means is that, as we live real life, just like our lost neighbor who may be dealing with the same life issues, we have a different platform from which we view life. It affects the choices we make; it affects how we relate to each other, how we relate to that lost neighbor. We’re living before them the example of the Christ life that God intends for us to have.

Kimberly: Our lost neighbors should be able to look at our lives and say, “I know she loves her husband by how she treats her husband. I know she is intentional in loving her children and training her children.” They should be able to see and recognize those things within us so that we do have a witness of the power of Christ.

Nancy: That’s interesting. I found myself asking myself recently, when responding to pressure and circumstances that were out of my control, “How is my response to this situation any different than a woman would respond who didn’t know the Lord?”

Kimberly: It should be.

Nancy: It should be, but a lot of times it isn’t. That’s where this Manifesto, this document, calls me back to those moorings. It’s not that something in this Manifesto is any different than what’s in the Scripture. It’s that it calls me back to those markers, the sovereignty of God, that sovereign ruler thing that we’ve been saying over and over again in this first part.

If we will counsel our hearts according to that truth, that He is God and we are not; that He has the right to make the final decision, then that is going to affect the way that I handle stress and sorrow and bad news, and good news for that matter. So many times I find myself reacting in ways that are so natural rather than supernatural, and that’s where I say, “This is not true woman behavior. This is not true child of God behavior. This is the same way that anybody in the world would respond naturally if they didn’t have the power of God and the Word of God, which I do have, so I can respond differently."

Holly: None of us are ever going to be perfect women, but we must be women who are consistently looking more like Christ. The longer we live, the more we move along in our lives in each season so that God is more and more glorified as we live. That’s part of the purpose that we’re here—to be conformed to the image of Christ is why we’re still here on earth.

Nancy: What we’ve been saying is that women who have been transformed by the power of the gospel can themselves become transformers.

Dream with me for a few minutes here and just let’s kind of imagine what kind of impact an army of true women could have in their communities, in their homes, in their culture, in the darkness, in the paganism, in the wrong-headed thinking. What difference could this band, this remnant of true women make? What might that look like?

Kimberly:

• Long marriages
• Fruitful, happy marriages
• People living with purpose in their lives
• Singles living with real purpose and serving others
• Churches that are lighthouses to their community
• People of integrity, of graciousness that keep their word
• Homes so affected by the wives or mothers

Nancy: It’s really the woman that sets the temperature.

Kimberly: When that kind of transformation takes place and begins to affect a whole nation and culture, people will know that our God is God. That’s why I get so pumped about this, because I want people to know that God is God. He is who He says He is. He is powerful. He is able to transform. His Word is truth. And the culture will know that.

Holly: And that’s something we cannot possibly do on our own. We have to first know for sure that we are in relationship with Christ, that there’s been a moment in our life where we have come to Him and said, “I cannot run my own life. I don’t even want to. I want to lay my life at the feet of Christ. And would You take over? Would You take control? Would You forgive me of my sin? Would You do for me what You’ve done for millions of others and give me a new life? Because the one I have I’ve been living in my own strength, I cannot live my life on my own.”

Becoming a child of God so that then we do have the ability to access everything He’s already prepared for us and the ability to live this life not because we put it on like a coat but because from the inside out we reflect Christ.

Nancy: Perhaps what Holly just shared reflects your heart, and you’ve been listening to this series. Maybe you’ve been listening to Revive Our Hearts for a long time, or maybe you’re a new listener. But you have realized that you do not have that kind of relationship with Christ.

Anything else we talk about on Revive Our Hearts is not going to make a whole lot of sense to you and it certainly is not going to be within your ability to live out until you start by coming to Christ just as you are and saying, “I need You. I’m a sinner. I need a Savior.”

So even today repent of your sin. Believe the gospel. Place your faith in Jesus Christ. Let Him come into your life, take over your life and begin the process of making you a true woman of God. If that’s what God has been saying to you today and you’re responding to Him in your heart wherever you are right now—in your van, in your workplace, in your home, listening on your iPod, reading this transcript on the Internet, listening on the radio—then let me encourage you if you have said, “Yes Lord,” to contact us.

Let us know that God has been drawing your heart, that He has brought you conviction and has brought you to faith in Christ. We’d like to rejoice with you but would also like to send you some resources that will encourage you with your walk with the Lord.

And then just a word to what may be true of many of our listeners who do have a relationship with Christ but are trying apart from the Spirit of God to live a life that you cannot live. Let me just encourage you to cry out to the Lord and say, “Lord, I can’t do this. I cannot be the wife, the mom, the single woman, the woman in the workplace, the friend, the sister, the daughter. I can’t be the woman You made me to be. I need You to be giving that control in my life, to be giving me Your power and Your grace to live out Your life in and through me."

Ask the Lord to give you a fresh hunger for Christ so that you can behold Him, and beholding Him, be transformed into His likeness and then be able to reflect that likeness to others.

Dannah: Holly Elliff, Kimberly Wagner, and Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth have been talking about the impact that your life, my life, the life of any follower of Jesus ought to have on those around us. 

The world ought to look at us and say, “Wow! I want what she has! She’s full of joy,” or “He has an amazing attitude even when his life stinks.” But that will only happen as we become more and more like Jesus, as we ourselves fall in love with Him. 

This weekend for a donation of any amount, we’ll send you a book by Allie Beth Stuckey. It’s called You’re Not Enough (And That’s Okay). In this book, Allie helps us escape the toxic culture of self-love and get our eyes on the only love that will transform us, God’s love. Again, you can request Stuckey’s book You’re Not Enough (And That’s Okay) when you contact us with your donation.

You can give a gift by calling 1-800-569-5959, or go to ReviveOurHearts.com/weekend and click on today’s episode on "Living Out the Beauty of the Gospel." 

Well, what are you wearing? We’ll talk about how we’re dressed, next time on Revive Our Hearts Weekend, and I’m not talking about skirts and jeans.

Thanks for listening today. I’m Dannah Gresh. We’ll see you next time for Revive Our Hearts Weekend.

Revive Our Hearts Weekend is calling you to freedom, fullness and fruitfulness in Christ.

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