Heart Work

Lately, God has been working on my heart. I feel this way because I have been reading a few books that have challenged me and the way I live, and I've heard sermons and messages too. One of my cousins posted this on Facebook recently, and it made me think too.

How does God want us to live? Does He want us to be consumers, to be worldly in the way we dress, do our hair and our nails? I don't think so. I think God wants us to give, spend our money carefully, to be different from the world and more like Jesus. I think about this often with women today. I have been involved in different groups where it seems like having the perfect colored hair and the perfect nails are more important than so many other godly things. I feel like a rarity because I don't color my hair. I have lots of gray hairs, and I don't think I want to spend money to cover them up. This may be because I am "down to earth" and frugal.

But I've thought a lot recently about the role of women in our society. I think our priorities are screwed up! I've been reading a book by Catherine Marshall, A Man Called Peter, about Peter Marshall, his life and his teachings. It has impacted me in several ways. One way was how Peter was encouraging women to stay home while their husbands worked. This was a different time, as he passed away in 1949, but he stated that it is important for women to be home to support their husbands and children, if possible. I know this is not possible for some women who need to work to support their families. But sometimes I think women today are not content to be home, to do without things, to not have everything they want, so they work outside the home.

Don't get me wrong, I like to paint my nails occasionally, and I like to wear pretty things. (Jewelry is a weakness for me, but I make a lot of my own!) I like to have fashionable clothes. But it is not super important to me to "fit in" with the people of the world. I can be in the world, and not of the world. (John 15:19 & 17:14, KJV) I am happy to wear clothing from secondhand stores. Sometimes you have to hunt a little bit, but that is part of the fun.


James 2:5
Listen, my dear brothers and sisters: Has not God chosen those who are poor in the eyes of the world to be rich in faith and to inherit the kingdom he promised those who love him?

1 John 2:15-16
 Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in them. For everything in the world-the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world.

1 John 3:1
See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him.

1 John 4:9
This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him.