Behold Her Beauty in His Radiant Light

Come bask in Donna Miller’s beautiful essay, “Behold Her Beauty in His Radiant Light,” as she shows us where we truly belong.

You are stunningly beautiful BECAUSE you reflect God Himself!

Donna Miller

Imagine God asking you this today:
“Who told you that you were anything less than who I created you to be?” Donna Miller #worthy #beauty #beautiful

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Behold Her Beauty in His Radiant Light

Dear Sister in Christ …

Imagine, for just a few minutes, entering the throne room of God.

He smiles and speaks your name as He motions for you to come closer.

What thoughts are going through your mind as you draw near to Him?

Do you hold His steady gaze or have you already lowered your eyes?

Do you run to Him with joyful abandon and climb up into His lap?

Or do you drag your feet, searching the room for somewhere to hide?

If you felt uncomfortable in His presence, you are not alone! I’ve been there myself.

Can you think of a woman in the Bible who felt she needed to hide from God, too?

Yes, her name was Eve.

The very first time she opened her eyes here on earth, Eve found herself in a beautiful garden, enjoying intimate fellowship with God and Adam. Genesis 2:25 tells us they were naked and felt no shame. This vulnerable and unbroken intimacy with God was His original design for us and it was all Eve knew prior to the fall.

Then the enemy entered the scene and everything changed. Satan’s strategy was to immediately attack God’s Word and sow doubt in Eve’s mind about God’s goodness (Gen 3:1). Prior to this moment. Eve never lacked for anything. Yet, Satan convinced her that God was withholding something good from her. So, she took a bite of the forbidden fruit and offered some to her husband.

But did it bring the good she was hoping for? No. Instead, it filled her with shame and confusion. Innocence was lost and guilt flooded in. For the first time, she and Adam hid from God. In Gen 3:11, God asked them this question: “Who told you that you were naked?”

The LORD knew every detail of Eve’s encounter with the serpent and He was there when the enemy slithered into our lives, too, filling us with lies and shaming us into believing we needed to hide from our Creator.

Imagine God asking you this today:

“Who told you that you were anything less than who I created you to be?”

What would your answer be?

For me, I struggled into my mid-thirties with an eating disorder that was set in motion in my teen years when I was reminded, on a daily basis, what a huge disappointment I was. After leaving home, I took with me this intense shame about myself and I continued to starve myself on a regular basis. Beauty was an elusive goal for me. I could never lose enough weight or work out hard enough to attain it. I was an empty shell of a person, more superficially concerned about how my jeans looked than being authentic and discovering God’s love and purpose for me.

The broken way in which I was beheld in my teen years became the filter through which I beheld myself for years. Whenever the enemy sent someone new to speak condemnation over me, I received it as confirmation for the deeply embedded lies I already falsely believed about myself. I learned to have an unhealthy fear of failing and disappointing people, so I put a lot of pressure on myself to perform because I believed I had absolutely nothing else to offer.

But then I received God’s Holy Spirit and He invited me to step into His light, which was scary at first because everything in me wanted to run for cover. Because He is our Creator, the LORD is our true Beholder in life and the only One qualified to instruct us on how we should view Him, ourselves and the world around us. His heartfelt desire has always been to return us to the sweet place of intimate oneness with Him that Eve enjoyed before the fall.

Do you know where this intimacy can be found? We find this intimacy with God in His beautiful light. Psalm 104:2 tells us that God is dressed in a robe of light. He wraps Himself in light as with a garment. And guess what? 1 Thessalonians 5:5 tells us that we are Children of Light.

When you imagined stepping into God’s throne room, you were being welcomed into His warm, healing, and redemptive light where you belong. If you felt uncomfortable with God, the enemy has been working on you, my friend, just as he did with me and our sister, Eve.

The enemy works hard to spin his deception in an attempt to block God’s truth in our lives and to sow doubt in our minds about His goodness. To be fair to Eve about her infamous apple, can we think of times we ourselves were convinced God was withholding something good from us?

You know those times when we were convinced someone else was prettier, smarter, stronger, or more qualified than we were? How about the other times when we felt all alone, believing we were forgotten and undeserving of love? And what about those prayers that got answered in her life but not in ours?

Yes, the serpent wants us to believe that God holds back on us! But as blood-bought Daughters of the Most High God, we are fiercely loved and absolutely belong in His marvelous light (1 Pet 2:9). Our beautiful God, who did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up for us all, will also graciously give us all things. (Romans 8:32) 

In His light is where we will thrive and discover that the fullness of our true worth and beauty are found in our reflection of Him. Ephesians 2:10 tells us that we are God’s masterpiece and I like to imagine He is painting us with translucent watercolors that beautifully reflect Him and His light. In His light, we find our safe place to abide, dance, live, move, breathe and learn from our mistakes as we grow up in Christ. 

The enemy won’t follow us into God’s light, where his lies and strongholds will be exposed and dismantled. So he calls to us from the shadows, hoping his lies will still trigger some shame in us and send us running back to him. It will take humility on our part to submit to God and resist the enemy so he flees from us (James 4:7).

In fact, humility will be the key ingredient for us to thrive as children of light. Humility allows God’s beauty to radiate through us the strongest. Like sun catchers in the window, glistening in the warm glow of the sun, we are beautifully absorbing and radiating the redemptive light of the SON. 

Humility helps us to cooperate with the Holy Spirit as His healing light begins to draw out the poisons the enemy has infected us with through the years. 

Sweet humility is our dearest friend, helping us to …

*Be still and relax in God’s love and grace rather than striving for the illusion of perfection. 

*Be content with His riches rather than focusing on and comparing all that we see as lacking.

*Be free to forgive the one who beheld us in a broken way, praying they are set free, too.

*Be willing to not despise our weaknesses so God can be made strong in them on our behalf.

*Be delighted with God’s acceptance of us so we can stop hustling for our worth with people.

Psalm 34:5 tells us that those who look to the LORD for help are radiant; their faces are never covered with shame (NIV). The NLT version tells us we will be radiant with joy. I love that, don’t you? I can’t think of a better beauty regimen than abiding with God and allowing Him to help us to thrive in His light. 

You are stunningly beautiful BECAUSE you reflect God Himself! The enemy cannot touch this truth so don’t let him engage you in any more conversations that speak contrary to God’s word. Yield yourself to HIS Word so you can effectively wield His Word when the enemy comes around with his accusations, just like he did with Eve: “Did God really say that?” (Gen 3:3) 

Why yes, God speaks His truth over us and teaches us to do the same! It’s time to stop having any more conversations with the enemy of our souls. You have God’s permission to abandon the enemy in the shadows where he belongs. You, sweet friend, are free to live, love, create, dance, dream big and sing to HIM a joyous new song as you thrive in His radiant light. 

Climb up into HIS lap and lay your head on His chest to listen to His heartbeat. 

Then slow your heart rate way down to beat in rhythm with His …

This is where you belong, my beautiful Sister in Christ!

Hugs and prayers, Donna xx 

MEET THE AUTHOR – Donna Miller

Donna currently resides in middle Tennessee with her sweet hubby of 40 years. They have two beautiful Daughters and four G-Babies that they are crazy about. Her heart is to see women fall deeply in love with Jesus and to be set free to live a thriving, purpose-filled life in and through Him. She would love to connect with you on https://www.instagram.com/donna.m.miller/.

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How does God see you?

Behold-Her Beauty seeks to help women see themselves as God’s beautiful daughters. 

My whole life changed the day I realized that God sees me as His beautiful daughter. Not the distorted, flawed images I perceived nor what others thought of me, especially not what the world told me.

The benefits of seeing ourselves as God’s beautiful daughter are revolutionary and freeing. We no longer find our worth and approval in the world because God values and loves us.

Today, right now, know that you have permission to be beautiful as you embrace your already God-given beauty and live as God’s beautiful daughter.

• We are God’s masterpieces. God created each of us, His work of art, in Jesus Christ for good work, which God prepared beforehand (Ephesians 2:10).

• God made you in His image. “So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.” Genesis 1:27 NKJV

• God chose you; you are His treasure and the apple of His eye. “But we are bound to give thanks to God always for you, brethren beloved by the Lord, because God from the beginning chose you for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth.” 2 Thessalonians 2:13 NKJV

Embrace your God-given beauty and live without shame, bitterness, and self-condemnation.

I have put together 10 ways to reclaim your God-given beauty.

Start today by meditating on the Scripture in each declaration section. I like to write the Scripture verse in my journal and then pray about what God is teaching me. Then, do one of the action steps in each section.

You have permission to be beautiful. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and our Beholder is God.

I would love to connect more with you and give you my FREE gift – The Behold-Her Beauty Manifest: You Have Permission to Be Beautiful. You can also sign up HERE for my newsletter and receive the FREE Manifesto, recent blog posts, book reviews, giveaways, and personal details only delivered to my lovely email tribe.

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