As we said previously, men and women alike need to know that we are "the beloved" of God. But masculinity and femininity have differing needs along these lines.
I believe that men need to know that they are significant, that they have something unique and important to contribute.
And women need to know that they are attractive, not just physically, but personally. Women long to hear from their father, boyfriend, husband, and, most importantly, from God!, the words that Mary heard from the angel at the annunciation: "You're beautiful with God's beauty. Beautiful inside and out" (Luke 1:26).
Let's interact on this... What do you think? Is this true in your experience? Ask a friend to read this blog and share their experience.
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All of us seek the affirmation that we are loved and that we are beautiful and important to our earthly fathers and from our heavenly Father. I desire His pleasure in me as much as I desire to please Him in my faithwalk. I desire to hear Him tell me that I am His daughter and that I am loved. And in knowing that my Father, my Creator loves me, I feel beautiful and my heart spills over with joy.
ReplyDeleteMy Mom and Dad raised three daughters, me being the oldest. It was always wonderful to hear our Dad call us "his girls." I had a wonderful father and I knew he loved me and my sisters and my mother so very much. And I also knew that he loved his heavenly Father and that Jesus was his Savior. When I became a Christian at age twelve, this love he had for Christ became even more important to me. When my father went home to be with the Lord, I felt that my Dad was somehow paving the way for me and I had no reason to be afaid because he was in Heaven with the Lord and at peace. This was his legacy of love for me.
I began praying for the mate that God wanted for me at age fourteen. I knew if I were to be blessed in my marriage that the answer lay in our Father's heart. As a young girl, I was idealistic and I had a very long list of what I expected in a husband. And at the top of the list he had to love the Lord and would be a man who would share a Christian home with me and our children. I asked specifically to know my husband when I saw his face for the first time. And almost five years later when I met my husband, our Father let me know he was the one He had sent to me when I first saw his face. I had also dreamed that he would be in the ministry and years into our marriage, my husband Marvin surrendered his heart to God to preach the Gospel of Christ.
As a woman who has been a wife for over 42 years and a mother of two sons, it has been important for me to know that God was with me always and that I was loved beyond all my understanding. I gave our children back to our Father when I was carrying them beneath my heart because I knew that He could take care of them much better than my husband and I could ever do. This giving over of my children to our Father was such an intimate, joyous and peaceful experience for me. And I asked that He would help them to know Him when their hearts were tendered and He did.
As a young girl answering the still, small voice of our Father to come to Him for salvation, I felt His warm smile upon me after rising from my knees beside my bed to go to sleep in peace at last. I knew I was beautiful to my Lord because I felt His love and His pleasure.
As a young wife and mother, I knew the joys of marriage and motherhood and I knew I was loved and blessed by our Father. I felt beautiful as a young wife to my husband and I would cry with tears of joy when our boys would tell me how beautiful "mama" was to them. I was being blessed with riches beyond my dreams.
I am now much older and much has passed between my Father and I over these years since I first gave my heart to Him. Through the loss of our son Matthew in 2004 to suicide, with my heart broken, I still knew that our Father was with me and that He still had a special purpose and plan for my life. My husband is disabled from health problems yet He blesses me each day with this man He created just for me. I am told everyday in words and many ways that I am loved and that I am beautiful as it touches my heart and it makes me smile. Beautiful to God and to my dear husband, even through the tears.
My husband and I live each day, sometimes through a thick veil of tears and grief but always through the joy of just being in love and being together. I know our Father is still answering the prayers of that young, fourteen year old girl. And I feel loved and beautiful in my heart where He resides.
So, yes, we as girls and women want to know that our fathers, boyfriends, husbands and most of all our heavenly Father loves us and tells us we are beautiful in His sight. We are not blinded by the inevitable passages of time that bring age upon us, we are aware of those wrinkles. But beneath the wrinkles and the sore knees, we have eyes that sparkle with the joy of knowing we are beautiful to those we love and to our Father inside and out.
There is so much more to beauty than what the media tells our young women today. It is a harsh world and we need to be helping our young girls to be aware of their inate beauty in our Father's eyes because that is where their ultimate worth begins. We as women are here just as men are, created with a specific purpose and plan that is uniquely ours given to us by our Father. They need to know of how much worth they hold in His heart of hearts.
So, yes, we are happy as women, we are special and we feel special because of our gender. Being created a woman is a most beautiful gift because we hold the privilege of bringing life into this world. In our femininity, we are special, we are joyful, we are loved for the complex creatures we are. And I say that with a smile. We know that we are unique in God's eyes and that He has made each of us, all of us, wonderfully and beautiflly created in His image and that image is love.
Thanks for sharing Jan. You are a beautiful woman of God! You bless so many with your heart of compassion. May you always know that you bring pleasure to the Lord.
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