True Woman 101 - Week 7: Total Makeover

Nancy: I counted on my sink counter this morning twenty-seven products.

Mary Kassian: Oh my.

Nancy: And that didn’t include what was in my makeup bag. These were just the ones that were sitting out—I mean, what price, beauty. Right?

Mary: Well, sadly, the older you get, the more you need.

Nancy: Well, I’m at twenty-seven at latest count.

Karen Loritts: Golly, and remembering which things go on which and which layer and . . . aaaaah!!!

Erin Davis: First you spackle, then you prime, then you . . .

Mary: And then you’ve got to take it off at night.

Karen: Put your face in the jar, right?

Holly Elliff: Well, if you’re a mom, and you have a bunch of kids at home or a bunch of little kids . . .

Erin: Forget about it.

Holly: You don’t spend a lot of time on makeup. Actually, Erin told me I had to tell this story.

Erin: Every mom doing this study is going to love this story.

Holly: I was driving two hours away from my house to speak at a women’s event. About thirty minutes away from Little Rock, I realized I had no makeup in the car, and I had no makeup on.

Karen: Oh.

Holly: I was going to put it on as I drive.

Nancy: Holly, don’t be telling that part because that’s dangerous.

Holly: All my kids know I do that. Anyways . . .

Erin: She just does it at the stop lights.

Nancy: Is it legal? That is the question.

Holly: Probably not. But anyways, I had no makeup in the car, and I was running late, which is also normal. So I had no time to stop and get makeup.

Mary: Where were you going to speak?

Holly: I was driving two hours away to speak at an event.

Mary: Oh, to speak.

Holly: Yes. I was speaking at an event, and I had no makeup.

Mary: Oh, that is scary!

Holly: Yes! So I am praying, “God what in the world am I going to do? I have on no makeup.” So I am searching my car, and I find a box of washable Crayola markers. 

Erin: It gets better! I love this story.

Holly: Between my house and the moment I stepped out of my car to go speak, I had put all my makeup on with the washable Crayola markers.

Mary: Do you have a picture?

Holly: No! Eyeliner, eye shadow, lipstick, blush. And you know what? I looked pretty normal. It was scary.

Erin: The problem was it was washable, so if water had gotten on your face, it would have been like a rainbow that somebody cut out.

Holly: Oh, that’s true.

Mary: Hope you didn’t cry.

Holly: I had never been so grateful for Crayola markers.

Erin: I love that story.

Mary: That is hilarious!

Holly: I know.

Nancy: Oh, my goodness.

Erin: Creative beauty.

Nancy: Let me ask you this. Clearly, we are women into beauty and products and things. We have our tips and our products that we all think are really great. Why are women so interested in beauty?

Mary: Culture?

Nancy: I mean, guys would not be sitting having this conversation, right?

Karen: No.

Erin: You mean they don’t talk about Dream Whip?

Karen: We hope not!

Nancy: Blonde Glam.

Karen: I don’t know. I think we are just born with it. You can go to a little toddler at church and little girls are always touching each other’s hair. They are always doing something, trying to model something that maybe they’ve seen their moms doing at home. But it’s something that they think we need to be doing with our face, by looking a different way.

Nancy: I love the story of my little niece (she’s not little anymore). When she was seven or eight, when we were all together at Christmas, on my bed she left me a note on a little scrap piece of paper: “Dear Aunt Nancy, I love you. I want to do your hair for your radio show.” She’s thinking hair . . . never mind that you don’t need it for radio, but she’s thinking that way.

Mary: Very cute.

Erin: I think that our desire for beauty is God given.

Holly: I think there is a built-in thing going on there.

Erin: We've been talking about how we display, we put on display God’s glory. I think maybe we miss the mark, often we miss the mark, but maybe that desire to display beauty comes from God.

Mary: I always think the physical speaks to the spiritual. So when you see something in the physical world it gives you some spiritual truths or insights into spiritual truths. There isn’t always a perfect correlation, but there is something to be learned. I think if we truly reflect, as women, the Bride of Christ, the relationship of the Church to Christ . . . There is something about wanting to be beautiful for our Groom. There’s an innate desire of wanting to be seen as attractive. I think that’s why women are so drawn to beauty.

Nancy: So even in women who don’t know Christ, it’s a whisper of the gospel and the image of God in them to have that. They have that desire.

Holly: To pursue that. Probably, again, distorted by the world and our culture.

Mary: Very, very distorted.

Nancy: And the enemy, Satan, wants to make physical beauty everything to us.

Erin: Well, Satan has always had a beef with beauty. If we study his story, he was beautiful. It was part of his hang-up. So it doesn’t surprise me that that’s an area where he trips the rest of us up.

Mary: It’s such an area of pain for women. When we talk about beauty, it can be very, very painful. I think the reason it is painful is because we do have an innate desire for it, and when we don’t see it physically, it can be a source of pain for us.

Erin: We tie it to our worth, which I think is maybe a difference between men and women.  When my husband wakes up with a bad hair day, I don’t know that he thinks it is a reflection of who he is as a man. But as women, how we look or maybe more importantly, how we perceive other people think we look, we tie to our value and our worth.

Holly: And that’s why don’t hear too many women like Nancy saying, “I can’t wait to be a godly, old woman.”

Nancy: Well, let me explain that. That’s been my goal since I was a little girl. I’ve had this image since I was a little girl of a godly, old lady. I always said, “That’s what I want to be.” And I have found that the getting old part comes easier than the getting godly part. But God has put within us, as Christian women, this desire to have true inner beauty. An evidence of belonging to Christ is that we want to have an inside that’s beautiful to Him.

But Satan is always switching price tags on things. He makes things that are cheap seem valuable. He makes the things that are valuable seem cheap. And he has made external beauty, which is valuable but not ultimate value, seems like the thing you’ve got to have and if you don’t, you’re not worthwhile. And then he diminishes the value of spiritual beauty.

I’ve been thinking about it this week while we’ve been doing some of this videotaping. I mean, I’m just true confessions here. I have spent more time this week working on hair, makeup, wardrobe—things for cameras—than I have in the Word. Now, that’s not typical, but it just makes you stop and think, Where are my priorities, not just this week, but in my life and our lives as women?

So we don’t want to diminish that God is a God of beauty. He made a lot of beauty in this world.  It’s a beautiful day outside here today. But we want to talk today about the kind of beauty that is of ultimate importance and that lasts. Because, as we all know, physical beauty is diminishing. We talked about beauty products.

Mary: Gravity is not our friend.

Nancy: One of my friends in beauty products is concealer. I mean, I still remember the day that a friend said to me when I was getting ready for a photo shoot: “Have you ever considered using concealer?” I didn’t even know what it was, but I’ve been using it ever since.

Karen: Concealer, primer, patcher.

Nancy: So in the physical area, the older you get, you have to patch and conceal. And yet there is an inner beauty, as the Scripture says, that as we get older, it can get more radiant, more beautiful. It’s enduring.

Holly: It’s a perfect contrast between the temporary and the eternal because all of this is temporary, but there is an eternal out there that the Lord wants to shoot us toward.

Erin: And isn’t that hopeful for all of as women who are trying to find the fountain of youth, whatever it is? The Lord promises us a version of beauty we can hold on to because no matter how many ab crunches we do or how much concealer we buy, we can’t hold on to it. But God gives us hope as women that there is a version of beauty that you can hold on to.

Karen: I just think back in Genesis when God just plumped down old Adam out of the dust, but He took a minute to fashion Eve. What a beautiful design He took, He shaped.

Erin: He crafted

Karen: And He just said, “This is what real beauty is.” And when Adam saw her, she wasn’t clothed. She didn’t have her makeup on. She didn’t have the right jewelry on. She just radiated the beauty that God had taken the time to fashion. We need to get back to that.

Nancy: Okay. We have no idea what Eve looked like. 

Erin: Well, we know she was the most beautiful woman around. There was no one to compete with, which is kind of nice. Right? There’s no standard to look up to. She won first place in every beauty pageant, right?

Nancy: Okay. Think of a woman you know or have known that you think of as really beautiful—and I’m not just talking physically beautiful. But someone you think of as just a beautiful woman in terms of things that matter. Who is she? And what was she like?

Karen: I can think of my Junior High Sunday School teacher, bless her heart, Mrs. Borne. She was working in the mission that was not too far from my home there in Philadelphia. She and her husband couldn’t have any children. She never wore makeup. People probably would say she was matronly looking, but she was so beautiful, so quiet. I was just drawn to her.

Nancy: Why?

Karen: She just walked with God. You could just see her walking with God. When she spoke, the words just pierced my heart. When she would tell me, “Karen, you’re being a little bit too loud.” I just understood what she was saying. And when she was praying and she’d pray over me, I just felt as though God just came down and sat right in the lap of Mrs. Borne.

Looking beautiful, she didn’t look it on the outside. She would not get a second look by anybody, but when she spoke and when she gave you attention, you just saw God walking in the flesh.

Holly: I would have to say my mother-in-law, Jewel was her name. She was just gracious. She was a precious woman. She was gentle but very honest. So there were moments when she would just come over to me, and she’d put her hand on me and say, “Holly, let me just share this with you.” But it was done in such a gentle, sweet way that I could hear it.

So what came through was her spirit. The Spirit of Christ just came through her. She was also funny, had a wonderful sense of humor. She was just a precious woman. She’s with the Lord now, but she was a huge influence on my life as a young mom. When I would get so frustrated, she’d go, “Holly, I know. Let’s have a little chat.” But not in a way that was demeaning or rude or judgmental. It was all out of love, and I knew that.

Mary: I had a lady named Pearl Purdy. Pearl was married to this massive guy who used to be an RCMP officer in Canada, and she was just the teeniest woman—she was smaller than you, Nancy. She was just this little, petite thing. I used to call her “my pearl,” and she really was a pearl. She was an old woman, so she was in her 70s or 80s.

What I remember about her was just how welcoming she was and how she just drew people in to her home and her life and impacted them. We were teenagers when Brent and I met. She was in my life for a number of years, attending my church, but she would always invite those young folks in for dinner.

I remember Brent and I weren’t even married, and she invited us over to play. So we went over to Pearl and Harry’s place to play shuffleboard. We’d go down into her basement, and she would give us slippers, and we’d put them on and play shuffleboard. But it was incredible because here you had this older couple, and Pearl, who was, really, in the latter part of her life, was more beautiful than ever.

She took care of herself as best as she could, but certainly her physical beauty was fading. But really, the beauty that just shone just welcomed in our family. And she mentored more women by going over and playing shuffleboard, and then we’d just sit around and talk to Pearl. She was an amazing woman.

Nancy: And why in the world would young adults want to go play shuffleboard if it weren’t for the attraction of being drawn to that.

Mary: It’s so attractive. Everybody wanted to go over and play shuffleboard with Pearl and Harry.

Nancy: Isn’t that something. It’s just the power of that spirit in a woman. It’s magnetic.

Karen: It’s just a well.

Mary: It’s deep—so deep.

Karen: A well of wisdom and love and caring. You’re sort of drawn to that.

Mary: You just look in the eyes, and it just kind glows. It’s amazing.

Nancy: Anyone in your life, Erin, that you think of that way?

Erin: I would say my sister. It’s interesting because we’re twins, and so we look a lot alike. And I’m sure it’s not that I’m drawn to her features, but my sister Nicky seems to have been born with a gentle and quiet spirit. The Lord is going to have to work on me until I die to get me to have a gentle and quiet spirit. So I’ve always been drawn to that in her. I’ve always watched how other people are really drawn to that gentleness that I don’t have. She is a good-looking girl, as my twin, but I think I’m just more drawn to the gentleness that she always seems to have.

Nancy: It’s interesting that as we talk about the qualities that have been attractive to us in other women that have been kind of magnetic—the gentleness, kindness, softness and welcoming—it just reminds me of the passage we looked at in this week’s study, 1 Peter chapter 3, which tells us what God considers beautiful in a woman, what makes God look at a woman and say, “Whew! She’s beautiful.”

Mary: That passage is certainly not . . .

Nancy: We’re not into political correctness here.

Mary: Yes, we’re not into political correctness, for sure.

Nancy: Let’s just read the passage here. It’s familiar, but I think there’s such power in the Word. These kinds of passages help me recalibrate my own thinking.

I’m in 1 Peter 3, and the context of this whole book has a lot of themes related to suffering. In that context, he’s talking about marriage, wives and husbands. It's where you have men and women and there are differences. Sometimes those differences, when they’re not redeemed, can cause pain to each other. That’s kind of in the context here.

But right in the middle of that, he addresses this whole subject of beauty. He’s saying,

Wives, be [subject] to your own husbands, so that even if some do not obey the word, they may be won without a word by the conduct of their wives—when they see your respectful and pure conduct (vv. 1–2).

So there, again, it’s something of value—respect and purity.

And then he says, “Do not let your adorning be external—the braiding of hair and the wearing of gold [jewelry], or the putting on of clothing” (v. 3). Now, clearly, those things aren’t wrong or we’d run around without any clothing.

Holly: Those are the things we’ve been doing this week.

Nancy: But in the context here, he’s saying: “This is not your focus. This is not what’s primary. This is not what really matters most. But what does matter:

Let your adorning [let your beauty] be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God's sight is very precious (v. 4).

Karen: Oh boy. Such a powerful word.

Mary: I want this in my girls.

Nancy: Okay, let’s talk about these. There are three qualities that emerge in this passage. There is gentleness, quietness, and then that term that, Mary, you introduced me to—amenability.

Mary: Amenability, and the reason that we brought it into the study is because the "submission" word is often way misunderstood. I think not only is it misunderstood but misapplied. People don’t understand what it means, and also women tend to think that it's for married women.

But I think that there is a softness about womanhood and a receptivity about womanhood that is in a woman’s spirit long before she get married. It’s in who God created us to be. Actually, if you dissect the word amenable up—"amen" really means “yes.”

Nancy: Yes, so be it.

Holly: The “yes-ability.”

Mary: The “yes-ability.” It’s an agreeability, right? It’s that character of spirit that you’re leadable; you’re not stubborn like a mule; you welcome input; you welcome someone giving you direction.

I think in this passage it comes through that that’s really a characteristic of womanhood. It shows up in a married woman’s life in her propensity to submit to her husband. But it shows up in general in womanhood just by her agreeability.

Holly: It could be daughters relating to their parents.

Erin: It could be a woman in the workplace relating to her boss or in friendships or to brothers.

Mary: Oh, do we have to be amenable to our brothers?

Holly: Yes.

Mary: Oh my. Jacob and Andrew, you heard it here (those are my brothers’ names). But just to have that spirit, that propensity. Now, I don’t think that means that every woman just has to be a "yes woman" to every man.

Nancy: In fact, there are some things we should not be responsive to.

Mary: There are a lot of things.

Nancy: Like Eve was responsive to the wrong thing.

Mary: And we are not to be weak-willed woman where we are responding in the wrong way.

Nancy: As in 2 Timothy 3, yes.

Mary: But just to have a spirit where you are wanting to engage.

Holly: It reminds me of the story in Anne of Green Gables where there’s the neighbor there who is cantankerous. She is described as being full of prickles and barbs. Remember that? So we’re talking about a woman who is the opposite, who isn’t prickles and barbs. 

Nancy: You don’t want to be a cactus.

Holly: Yes, a cactus.

Nancy: Nobody wants to hug a cactus.

Holly: That’s not the way she approaches people or comes across.

Erin: I love how you defined it, Mary. I feel like so many women and young woman misunderstand this issue and become automatically prickly and barby—not Barbie the doll, but barby, like sharp.

I have been blogging about on LiesYoungWomenBelieve.com, and I got this comment: “I’m a little confused and worried by something. The Bible does not give men authority over women.  It gives husbands and fathers authority over their wives and daughters. Is that what you meant? Some random guy or even a guy friend has no authority over me, right?”

So she is bristling at this idea of what it means to be amenable. She wants to put it in a very specific box and say, “I will be open to this in this context at this time, but now I am fifteen, so I don’t have to practice that.”

Holly: And that’s what makes understanding this so critical.

Mary: It does make it critical, and she’s right. She is correct in that she does not have a responsibility when a guy says, “Well, this is what I want you to do.” She doesn’t have a responsibility to do that because she is not under that man’s authority. However, there is a general sense in terms of our womanhood and our manhood where God gives men the inclination to provide guidance in their environment, and He gives women sort of a responsiveness and receptive amenable spirit. (I am just falling in love with that word—amenable.)

Nancy: You’ve made me love that word.

Karen: When my daughters were in college, Lisa would sometimes call home in tears because of something in the dorm, on the dorm floor—girls were always cat fighting.

Mary: Girls don’t cat fight—do we cat fight?

Karen: Girls do cat fight. My boys would say, “Oh my, stay out of the way when women are upset about something.” How terrible to say that, but my girls would get so frustrated that things would happen and girls couldn’t get along, and this infighting, this wrestling with each other.

Erin: I bet if we traced many of those arguments, they would be over pretty minor things. But there’s this thing that rises up in us, like, “I’m not going to listen to you. I’m not going to be teachable.”

Karen: That’s right. And then I tell you and then another friend.

Erin: Then it gets nasty.

Karen: Yes, very nasty. And when you have a nasty woman, it just has an evil . . . well, I call it an evil spirit. She can do a whole lot of damage to community, churches, families, and everybody says, “Let her have her way.” But that’s not what God says.

Nancy: I remember thinking as a younger Christian woman. I’d see these women with very quiet, reserved personalities, who seemed very godly to me, and just thinking, If I am ever going to be a godly woman, I’m going to have to have a personality transplant. Because that’s not how I’m wired. But really, we’re not talking about personality.

Holly Elliff: That would be contrary to Scripture because we know that God built us as we are. He tells us that. He loved us and fashioned us and designed us and planted us at birth the way that He wanted us to be.

Erin Davis: He created our inmost parts including the core.

Holly: The volume of your voice or the personality He put in you.

Erin: Thank you Jesus. That’s right.

Holly: So it’s not a bad thing. But it’s also something that God wants to grow us into. Philippians says, “Let your manner of life bring glory to God.” So it’s about understanding who you are but then seeing that under God’s direction and provision in your life. And when that happens, then those parts of us (my husband calls me “spunky”) that maybe wouldn’t fit perfectly with the gentle word here become more like Christ as we more and more allow Him to do that—and it is a process that’s lifelong.

Mary Kassian: I wouldn’t want women to think that as we become godly we all turn into the same cookie-cutter personalities.

Holly: No.

Mary: That’s such a misconception because people think, I need to be gentle and quiet.

Erin: Well, I think there are some other great words that we can use, and the Lord doesn’t need the Erin Davis translation. So I’m not trying to change what’s here. But there are others— receptiveness, responsiveness.

There’s a version of gentle and then there’s a way of being gentle with others and being gentle in relationships and gentle in communication that is not like, “Oh, handle her with care,” or “Be so gentle with her,” but being gentle with others. So maybe there are some other words that we can use to describe it.

Mary: Let’s just clarify this because the word “quietness” really means “an absence of turmoil.”

Holly: It’s a spirit term not necessarily a volume term.

Mary: Exactly. It’s like sitting at Nancy’s house the other day. Nancy has that beautiful river running by her house, and that river had not a ripple on it. You know how it gets in the evening sometimes when it’s calm? Just this peaceability about it. So that’s kind of the quietness, the calmness.

Nancy: As opposed to churning.

Mary: As opposed to bubbling, riled up, agitated. I think you can be a very exuberant woman, and you can be a very boisterous woman, and you can have a lot of fun as a woman, and you can be an extrovert, and you can still have that spirit about you where you’re not churned up, agitated where you have that peaceability of spirit.

Nancy: Now, my quiet friend, here, is trying to get a word in edgewise.

Karen Loritts: I wish I could practice gentleness. But I was thinking there is a difference like when I sat under Mrs. Borne or Mrs. Ponder, the ladies that really mentored and discipled me through the years. You can see that their gentleness, their quietness, even with their various kinds of personalities, it was controlled. They were under the control of the Holy Spirit. The way it came out in their individual temperaments, it still had that quietness. And you embraced and accepted it because it was Spirit-controlled instead of person-controlled.

Mary: You still saw Jesus.

Karen: You saw Jesus. And even Mrs. Ponder who was completely different than Mrs. Borne, she would just nail me. But she was controlled by the Holy Spirit, and she had that gentleness. You could tell when she got into groups especially with men or with other women, you could see when the Spirit of God was taking control of her and where God was in the room.

Nancy: Well, you’re making a good point here, because sometimes I’ll do a lesson like this or get to a passage like this and I’ll come away saying, “I’m going to be a gentle and quiet-spirited woman if it kills me.” And it may. So it’s not something we can do. This is the work of grace and the work of the Spirit in our hearts. This is not, “I’m going to be godly.” We start by saying, “I’m not godly.” It’s not a self-improvement plan. It’s Christ in me.

Mary: You know the gentleness part? I love the image of gentleness because elsewhere in Scripture it uses the same word as a mother dealing with a fussy child, that same sort of an attitude. So you’re putting up with other people’s fuss, and you’re putting up with other people’s stuff without getting ruffled over it, that’s really what gentleness is.

Nancy: Sometimes it’s also translated “meekness.” We have so many misconceptions of that word. But the essence of meekness is yielding rights, not demanding rights. 

Holly: There is such strength in there.

Nancy: But the person who has a gentle, quiet spirit does not have to be angry or fearful because they are relinquishing control to the Spirit of God and realizing, I don’t have to control circumstances, and I don’t have to hyperventilate when they are not to my liking.

Mary: Exactly.

Erin: The mother/child imagery really helps this to be understood. I mean, there’s a woman of a toddler who is a strong woman. She is rarely a quiet woman.

Nancy: Is this is a testimony here?

Erin: Yes. I have two very small children. And if they’re throwing a hissy fit, you throw a hissy fit right back at them and that thing is just going to escalate. Things are going to get nasty. But you can approach them with a gentleness that can calm that situation. And dads have a very different way. But a gentle mother in the face of a child in any situation is a real unique version of womanhood. So I think that imagery of mother and child is really good.

Karen: I had this really interesting situation when my oldest daughter walked into her womanhood. She would come in to the dinner table and just be snippy and snappy and just kind of nasty. You know what? I had to take her out later on and have a talk with her.

I said, “You are a believer. You are a follower of Jesus. And just because it’s your time of the month, it doesn’t mean that the Holy Spirit takes a vacation. You have got to look at your calendar and gear yourself up knowing that that time is going to come. And you have to be gracious. You have to watch your mouth. You have to ask the Holy Spirit to take over. Otherwise hormones, they’re not going to heaven.” We can’t give our girls a pass on that. Right?

Well, it got better, but I wasn’t going to let her have a pass on that thinking that the Holy Spirit takes a break at that time of the month.

Holly: I remember talking with a woman who runs a woman’s prison ministry. They literally just walk those women through the Word. It’s a small band of women prisoners who are able to go through that program. But it’s phenomenal what they teach those women. But one of the first things they teach those women is that as women we cannot be driven by our emotions. We must be driven by the Spirit of God being strong in us and governing every word and every thought and every deed. That’s their foundation. That’s where they start because without that understanding, God can’t accomplish everything else He wants to do.

Erin: Here’s a lesson I’m just now learning which is, feelings aren’t facts. They’re just feelings. Now, gentleness is a choice. I may feel something inside, but gentleness is a chosen behavior. Quietness is a chosen behavior. Feelings are just feelings.

Holly: And in those moments when your two-year-old is just going crazy, it’s a hard choice.

Erin: Yes, I’ve had a few of those, and it sure is a hard choice. Absolutely.

Nancy: Did you women always, I think I know the answer to this question, but I just want to hear you respond. Did you always, since you knew the Lord, just desire to be gentle, quiet, amenable? Did you always think of this as an attractive quality, because we’re talking about true beauty here? Or how are you coming to see it as something attractive and valuable?

Holly: It is an ongoing process for me. Every time God drops something new into my life, it is a moment of surrender to still keep a quiet heart or gentle spirit.

Nancy: But what makes you want that? What makes that attractive?

Holly: Well, now what makes that attractive to me is that I have seen what happens when I don’t make that choice.

Erin: It ain’t pretty.

Holly: No. It’s not pretty. I know the difference it makes in my relationships with my children and with my husband and with what God is calling me to teach other women. So I know now that I cannot look like Christ if I don’t make choices that allow His Spirit to be in control. If I’m in control, the result is not what we see in this passage. I know that now. Now, it doesn’t mean that I don’t have to still go back and make those choices to surrender.

For instance, on the day of my daughter’s wedding, I found out my dad had gone into intensive care. My mom who had Alzheimer’s and was there for the wedding, could not go home to Nashville. She was with us and has never left. That was five years ago.

I have to tell you that that first year that Mother was with us, I wrestled with the Lord and with maintaining a quiet heart and a gentle spirit because it was unexpected, and it was tough. It wasn’t on my calendar at all. So God does that. He drops things. Karen, I know you’ve had things like that in your life where God drops things into your life that you’re not ready for.

Mary: I think what makes it attractive for me is Jesus makes it attractive. But I think it is a continual process of reminding myself and always looking at the big picture. I'm reminding myself constantly; I'm asking myself the hard questions:

• Am I truly valuing what Christ values? 
• Am I loving what God loves? 
• Am I cultivating what’s precious to Him? 
• Am I pursuing it?

Nancy: And how do you pursue it? Let’s just talk about it because it is a process. It’s a journey, as is all of sanctification. It’s all life long—until we see Jesus. So what are some practical ways this kind of spirit can be cultivated?

Karen: I know for me, when we were in various ministries and we transferred from one ministry in Texas to another ministry in Georgia, I didn’t do very well. I’m a nester, and transition and all that was really bothersome to me. We had two little babies, two little children.

I knew that I needed to find a home church and also some godly women that would be my prayer shield; that would step up and help me to be the woman that I needed to be because I didn’t have that growing up. All my role models were back in Pennsylvania. I was living down in Georgia.

So God sent me two incredibly godly women in our church, and I gave them permission just to build into my life. They modeled all the things that I wanted to be. They were the visible model where I wanted to be because I didn’t have it in my mother. I didn’t have it in my family. They would call me up, “Karen, go get your Bible.” Or I may have looked at my husband a certain way? They would nail me on it.

Nancy: Well, those godly role models are huge, but then you also said another one. “Go get your Bible.”

Karen: Yes. Go get your Bible. I would write the date when Mrs. Ponder would say that to me. I could always go back when I was mad after she talked to me, “I’m going to do it my way.” I could go back to that Scripture, and in the quietness of the evening the Holy Spirit would work on me, I would look. It was those things. Then they prayed for me. They prayed for me when I didn’t want to pray, when I was mad and upset and bitter, they prayed for me. They prayed me out of a lot of stuff that God was helping really to get me.

But having those people in your life, giving them permission to speak truth into you. Then having the guts and the courage to say, “God, I want to do it Your way because I need to have joy. I’m not happy right now, but I need to have joy. And when I lay down at night, I need to be at peace with You and with myself.”

Mary: I did something very brave and that is to pray and ask God to increase the sensitivity of my conscience. I asked the Holy Spirit to give me an elbow in the ribs when He saw that happening in my life.

Nancy: When you weren’t having that spirit?

Mary: When I didn’t have a good spirit. And let me tell you, I don’t know how many times I’ve just been conscience stricken. And through that process, realizing how far I have to go and how much sin rears its ugly head and having God convict me and then having to repent for it. It really isn’t fun when you have to say, “I’m so sorry I’ve had a very clamorous attitude here, and I need to ask your forgiveness.” So you just need to go blow it a few times like that and have God convict you.

But I found that to be very helpful because God says if there’s stuff that He wants us to have, we need to ask for it. So if we ask Him for it and ask Him to make us sensitive to it, we’re going to start seeing more of that coming out of our lives.

Holly: Well, and it’s a good gift. I mean, Scripture tells us that the Holy Spirit is a good gift that God gives us so that we can go to His Word and understand it, and He can interpret it to us. As women are praying for us, we suddenly have ears to hear and eyes to see what might not have made sense to us six months before. But when God brings the truth, those people lifting our arms often help us be able to apply it to our life.

Nancy: I think we can’t underestimate the power of the Word—the power of the Truth. “Sanctify them by Your truth,” Jesus prayed, “Your Word is truth.” I just see if we are pumping the world’s models and spirit wholesale into our minds—through the entertainment, the people we are around, the things we are reading—that’s the attitude we are going to develop. You become like the people you spend time around.

You want to be like Jesus? You’ve got to spend time around Him, the Living Word, in His written Word. I’m thinking of that verse in 2 Corinthians 3, verse 18 that says, “We all, with unveiled faces, beholding as in a mirror, the glory of the Lord, we are transformed . . .” I love that word.

Mary: ". . . from glory to glory." I love that!

Nancy: “Transformed into the same image from glory to glory.” There is that process there; there’s that progression. But you spend time in God’s presence in His Word. And I can’t tell you how often . . . When I am feeling catty or all that churn is going on inside of me, it’s amazing when I get into the Word and I meditate on it and I behold Christ and I get my mind renewed by His Word, He changes me. Because I hate being obstreperous. I don’t want to be that way.

Holly: Obstreperous?

Nancy: Yes, it’s contentious, obnoxious, loud. I so feel the frustration of, “Lord, why am I acting this way?” And again, it’s not necessarily loudness, it’s spirit. It comes and I say, “Lord change me.” And His Word does that.

Erin: That’s a good point. I would just say to young women that maybe before we can get to that point of more time in the Word, there are some things we have to cut out of our current time. There are some influences that need a radical amputation. And this notion that you can swim in the waters with worldly beauty; that you can be as wrapped up in that as everyone else; that you can love the things of this world and not have it impact your thoughts on beauty, it’s a bold-faced lie.

And so as a young woman, or as any woman, but I see this more in younger women. We don’t make wise choices about our media, about what we intake about beauty messages, and then we get all tangled up about true beauty. So there needs to be some choices made. I’m going to read the Word more. I’m going to read this, watch this, listen to this a whole lot less.

Karen: I also think, Erin, that those of us that are in the body of Christ that may be a little bit older and we see some of these young women, we need to help, go down and help them, because I didn’t know a thing [at that age].

Erin: Absolutely. Can I just tell you what young women don’t have the words to tell you? They want you to speak truth into their lives. They don’t know how to ask you. They think you don’t have time. They say so often to me, “I know you’re busy, but . . .” I say, “I’m not too busy. Let’s talk about it.”

So they don’t know how to ask you, but they are so drowning in this issue of beauty, true beauty, identity, who am I, and they don’t know how to ask you. And so, find a younger woman and make this your goal to learn true beauty together. She wants to know.

Karen: That’s right.

Nancy: Okay, we’re unfortunately out of time on this discussion. But I want to take it back to one more Scripture. Young, old, just the contrast here between the world’s system of beauty and God’s system. You know the verse, but we need it again and again.

Proverbs 31:30: “Charm is deceitful, and beauty [physical beauty] is vain.” Beauty is not sinful, but it just isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. It’s deceitful and vain. It makes you think that you have everything when you may have that and have nothing if you don’t have an inner heart that’s beautiful.

But here’s the contrast. “A woman who fears the Lord [a woman who has reverence for God, a woman whose bent, her inclination is toward God, her priority is on God’s priorities for her life, that woman who fears the Lord] is to be praised.”

And then it goes on and talks about the reward. We want that reward. And that doesn’t mean we start to look dowdy or frumpy or don’t care—that’s another extreme. But the goal is not to be unkempt or ugly. Taking care of ourselves, a wife for her husband, those are good things. But the ultimate true beauty of the true woman comes from a heart that fears the Lord and a heart that says, “Lord, I trust You. I’m willing to let You be sovereign over my life and my circumstances. I’m going to be amenable by Your good grace. I’ll say ‘Yes, Lord.’”