Monday, November 17, 2008

Romance-Beauty Connection...More than you think!

Longing for Romance 11/17/2008 (Ransomed Heart On-line Devotional)

We are made for intimacy with God, not just knowledge about him. There comes a time in the life of every believer when propositional truth is no longer enough. It will always remain central, the foundation for our faith. And sometimes it is all we have, and we can run far and long on it. But women long for romance. We are wired for it; it’s what makes our hearts come alive. The path of our restoration as women, the healing of our feminine hearts, that path takes us into a deeper experience of God and his Lover’s love for us.

A woman becomes beautiful when she knows she’s loved. We’ve seen this many times – you probably have, too. Cut off from love, rejected, no one pursuing her, something in a woman wilts like a flower no one waters anymore. She withers into resignation, duty and shame. The radiance of her countenance goes out, like a light that has been turned off. But this same woman, whom everyone thought was rather plain and unengaging, she becomes lovely and inviting when she is pursued. Her heart begins to come alive, come to the surface, and her countenance becomes radiant. We wonder, “Where has she been all these years? Why – she really is captivating.”

Think of Fran in Strictly Ballroom, or Tulah in My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Remember Lottie in Enchanted April, Adrian in Rocky or Danielle in Ever After. Their beauty was always there. What happened was merely the power of romance releasing her true beauty, awakening her heart. She has come alive.

This doesn’t need to wait for a man.

God longs to bring this into your life himself. He wants to heal us through his love to become mature women who actually know him. He wants us to experience verses like, “Therefore I am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the desert and speak tenderly to her” (Hosea 2:14). And “You have stolen my heart, my sister, my bride.” (Song of Songs 4:9) Our hearts are desperate for this. What would it be like to experience for yourself that the truest thing about his heart toward yours is not disappointment or disapproval but deep, fiery, passionate love? This is, after all, what a woman was made for.

(Captivating 112-113)

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