A few weeks ago I talked to our female high school students and leaders about sexuality. I began by introducing them to my daughters through a picture on the screen behind me. I asked them for permission to practice a conversation I planned to have with my daughters when they get a little older. The next three days of my blog will be devoted to what I said.
If you want to see your dreams come true—in terms of relationships and marriage, and I know all of you have an image in your mind of what your wedding will be like, down to the dress and the colors—then you have to be able to answer three questions.
Who am I?
- You are a Masterpiece
First, you need to understand that as women you are the pinnacle of God’s creative abilities. He created you last. You’re the, “Now I’m just showing off” part of creation. Every artist has a masterpiece and for the artist who built the universe, you’re it. I get the impression from the scriptures that God is incredibly proud of “woman.” You should take comfort and pride in your beautiful uniqueness.
And understand this: God implanted a ridiculously powerful magnetic pull within men to be enamored with you. Perhaps you’ve experienced our eyes following you. Kind of awkward I know but we are created to be drawn to you. In our minds, you and more specifically your body are more alluring and beautiful than mountains, waterfalls, sunsets, shootings stars, and anything else that you can think of. God has given you an incredible and special gift and that gift is your sexuality. How you use it is completely up to you. You can waste it or invest it.
- You are Desperately Loved
Not only are you incredibly valuable to God as the masterpiece of His creation, but you are also desperately loved. Jesus became a human, suffered and died and was raised back to life in order to rescue you from your sin and rebellion. God loves you, and I mean you specifically, enough to sacrifice His very life to bring you back to Him. Understand this: you will never be more loved than you are right now. No one or nothing could make you more loved than you already are. You are desperately loved.
Secondly, you need to understand that your beauty is anchored in what God has said about you. Psalm 139:13-14 tells us that God knit you together in your mother’s womb. In case you were wondering, humans are not mass produced. God lovingly creates each one of us individually. He takes immense satisfaction in who you are. He personally constructed your personality and body. Hear this, He purposely gave you the body that you live in and he is immensely happy with it.
- Beauty is NOT Defined by Culture
In our culture, “what is beautiful” is defined by a bunch of fat, gross rich guys who’ve been divorced 15 times, sitting in a gaudy office making a crap-ton of money from exploiting women. If you take your cue from them you will always struggle with not feeling good about yourself.
Each of us needs to decide where we will look when it comes to our identity and value. You can choose to look up or look around. When you look up you listen to what God has said about you then you become grounded in the reality that you are God’s masterpiece—handcrafted and desperately loved. When you look around you are resigned to comparing your body to the magazine rack and internet cartoon women. Computer cursers elongate them, make them bigger in some parts, smaller in others and shade their faces like a coloring book. In our culture, the standard for beauty is a cartoon. This isn’t fair and if you fall into the trap of comparing your body with a cartoon you’ll constantly struggle with feeling good about yourself.
My prayer for you is that you would look up and understand how beautiful, amazing, treasured and important you are. You will never be more loved than you are in this moment. Live in this reality and you will find life.
When you truly understand who you are in Jesus and begin to live out of that identity you become more and more whole and at peace every day. When you are at peace and content with who you are then you are ready to love and be loved by someone else. In other words, when your identity is built around Jesus you will become emotionally healthy enough to pursue your relational dreams.