3 Practical Ways to Encourage Your Wife About Physical Beauty

Nicole Whitacre:

So what can you do? 

First, start by asking your wife or daughter about the beauty pressures they face. Granted, some women may be more affected than others, but beauty issues touch us all. 

Second, study Scripture. Labor to read good resources on this topic so that you can encourage, cherish, and lead your wife and daughter. 

Third, encourage true beauty. Lavish your wife with affection and adoration. Be your daughter’s biggest fan. 

Men who take the time to understand—or at least try to understand—the pressures women face will be able to help them resist the lies from our culture and pursue a biblical vision of beauty. Even if you don’t feel like you get it, I guarantee the effort will be greatly appreciated. 

We know you may not want to be caught dead reading a book with a girly cover called True Beauty, and we respect you for that, but learning about true beauty in order to serve your woman is one of the most masculine things you can do.

Read the rest.  

A Deeper Beauty

Owen Strachan:

Let me put this very clearly: if, however unwittingly and unintentionally, I ever give my little girl the impression that her worth is found in her looks, beauty, and hotness, tie a millstone around my neck. I can’t ever teach my son the American myth that he’s valuable only if he’s a three-sport, twelve-letter athlete who doesn’t stagger after a concussion, and I can’t ever teach my daughter that she’s valuable only if men covet her and lust after her.

Perhaps I am revving at high RPMs here, but really, I can’t think of much else that I could do that would more harm my little girl, or children who are under my ministry.

We dads love our little girls. They are unspeakably precious to us. God has saved us from Satan’s deception regarding women. We cannot value them, as lost men just like us do, because of their figure and their prettiness. We’re not blind to beauty, and as they grow up we likely won’t teach our little girls some sort of “paper-bag” version of their body. We don’t at all want girls to feel any shame about being distinctly womanly. It was God’s mind, not Hugh Hefner’s, that came up with manly and womanly attractiveness. We’re not ashamed about that; we’re not prudes; we should carefully but honestly help our daughters see their womanliness as a gift of God, not anything else. If they grow up to be attractive, we’ll help them appropriately handle that, and we’ll even train them to see their own beauty as reflective of the One who is beauty.

His beauty, though visually stunning, is of course preeminently spiritual. It is the beauty of holiness, the apex of beauty.

In all this teaching, we guard our little girls. We show them that though a sinful world claws at them to define themselves physically, we will never do so. We cannot do so. Their worth is in their embodiment of God’s image. Their worth is, hopefully, in their union with Jesus Christ. We love them dearly, and we fathers will walk through fire and rain to help our little girls, but their worth is not actually found in us. It’s in God, and his good work in them.

That, my friends, is language worth repeating, over and over and over again.

Read the rest.

Thank God That Life is Not as Dull as it Could Be

Now if we ponder to what end God created food, we shall find that he meant not only to provide for necessity but also for delight and good cheer. Thus the purpose of clothing, in addition to necessity, was comeliness and honor. In grasses, trees and fruits, besides their various uses, there is beauty of appearance and sweetness of aroma. . . . Has the Lord clothed the flowers with the great beauty which greets our eyes, the sweetness of aroma that is wafted upon our nostrils, and yet will it be unlawful for our eyes to be affected by that beauty or our sense of smell by the sweetness of that aroma?

- John Calvin, Institutes, 3.10.2.

(HT:  Ray)

Why is Anything Beautiful?

“Christianity’s answer to the question of why creation is so beautiful is that it flows from the character of a beautiful creator. Nature is God’s self-portrait. It is not God, since God transcends what He has created, but it reveals in physical form what He is like spiritually. God creates beauty so we can know what He is like. Since He is and always has been glorious and beautiful, creation reflects this with seeable, tastable, touchable, hearable, and smellable reflections of His glory and beauty. This is what Isaiah heard the angels exulting. The whole earth is filled with His glory, and it is a ‘song about God.’”

- Scott DeWitt, Eyes Wide Open, p. 62

(HT:  DG Blog)

How Do We Raise Kids to Define Beauty Rightly?

Important and practical help here for those raising kids in a world that tells them that beauty is completely external and superficial.

(HT:  T-Wax)

Amazing Time Lapse Video

From Knate Meyers.

Space:




Southwest Skies:

Erasing Hell - A Great Review

Trevin Wax with a very thoughtful review of Erasing Hell by Francis Chan and Preston Sprinkle.  Here is his conclusion:

Chan and Sprinkle have put forth a historically orthodox understanding of hell, demonstrating the biblical foundation for their views. But Bell challenges this understanding by seeking to appeal to a more beautiful vision of God. The tragedy of Love Wins is that the character of God as described by Bell isn’t, in the final instance, much more than a glorified vision of 21st century man.

The problem with the responses to Love Wins is that, while we are experts at critiquing Bell’s vision of God, we aren’t stepping up with a more compelling portrait of God’s magnificence. We are scribbling down our thoughts under Bell’s chalk drawing instead of taking up the paint brush and creating something that reflects the beauty of biblical truth.

We can write 50-page criticisms of The Shack. Meanwhile, men and women like William Young continue to craft great stories. We grasp the issues, but others grasp the medium.

Beyond that, we often appear pedantic in the grasping of these important issues. In the study of the communication arts, there is a part of the brain known as Brocha’s Area which acts like the gateway to whether people actually listen. Surprising or intriguing Brocha is one way to get that door to open – something that art in its many variations is capable of doing.

Erasing Hell is functional, but not beautiful. From a functional point of view, I recommend it. But I think we need to be pushed on the beautiful side of this equation as well. The gospel shouldn’t shut down our imagination, but rather fuel it and direct it toward the beauty that is inherent to the truth. We need more than analysis; we need artistry.

Read the rest.