Originally Posted by Fearnot: Cindy what you wrote to me again was soooo beautiful, and helpful and because it was( so beautiful)... it made me cry. You spent so many of your 'spoons' to take up your precious time, to help me with my sin of vanity.
You did not admonish me for my foolishness, but took my concern and dealt with it in a Godly fashion. I am going to have to read and study those verses, but already what you wrote was a great help, a really really big help!!
Thank you so much, it lifted such a burden off my heart. Oh I do think of others and their needs, but I also am self-centered still and vain, worldy vain ( I guess that is the only kind of vainity there is LOL).
I think you covered basically all my ugly worries, but like Eva the dying issue still is there, but not nearly so much. It used to be 90 percent fearful, but talking with you over the years, it's down to maybe 20 percent fear....fear Jesus won't be there. I know He has promised, and to think He won't is to call Him a liar...and I don't want to call Him that.
But I know I am not worthy, yet He loves me and promises to never leave me. Maybe I think my end will be like my beginning.....the middle of my life for sure was better than my childhood or teen years.
Even now, I am far more happy than what seems right. I have Jesus, FH, my family ( hubby, my daughter, and grandchildren right here...only lacking my son)...I have my own laptop LOL so hey!
You're such a sweetheart Barbara and to me, you're a very beautiful person. I was thrilled when I saw you'd changed your avatar because the new picture shows some of God's joy shining through you and the difference is just incredible! I know you probably won't believe me, but the very first time I saw it, I was just totally shocked. It didn't even look like the same person! This was the person I'd come to know and love and it was and is your smile that made all the difference in the world. I know that hearing one person, no matter how sincere they are, tell you that you are truly a lovely woman, won't make any difference, but I say that with all sincerity and love. If you recall, I never raved over your other avatar. The most I ever did was simply acknowledge it. From that time on though I hoped and prayed the Lord would teach you to smile and make it so you couldn't help it 
I know we've talked about this before, so forgive me for repeating myself, but I wanted to remind you too that even though you and I might use a magnifying mirror to find every little defect on our faces and despair about them, other people don't see us that way, and they don't notice the things that to us seem very very obvious. (Yes, remember, I used to spend hours in front of the magnifying mirror too lol) It was my mother that put her foot down and told me this though. I learned it's best to not even have a magnifying mirror, because that's not giving us the true picture. Like Satan, all it does is magnify our defects, or else magnify our good points and cause us to become more in love with ourselves then God. When you smile, people honestly don't notice your teeth or lack of them, because that's not their focus. Their focus is "all of you", not just one little area. Do you stare at other people's faces when you meet them, trying to find every little defect and see how bad it is? Of course not! For one thing, you're busy talking to them, getting to know them, etc. I don't care how physically beautiful the world thinks a woman is, there isn't a woman alive that couldn't list all their physical defects for you and who would tell you that they don't think they're beautiful at all. Not if they're truthful anyway.
It's actually kind of funny, because I've met women who had the most beautiful hair I'd ever seen. I'd always wanted my hair to look like theirs. When I told them that though, they looked astonished and told me that they hated their hair! 
I've also experienced the opposite. Women who were simply "plain" looking who were such godly women, so kind and sweet and pure, that they just seemed to glow with God's special love and light that made them appear quite beautiful. Nor am I the only person that's experienced these kind of things. You can hear about it from millions of women everywhere. It's not a secret.
Another example which I'm sure you've seen too is how a woman who's filled with sin and continuing to live in sin, appears older and just plain ugly. Haven't you seen pictures of women on TV that were being arrested for prostitution or drugs or both or maybe some crime as well? How old and wrinkled and ugly they looked? Only to hear the reporter say that they were only in their 20's!
Praise the Lord that the opposite is also true! A woman like those I just spoke about, can repent and come to the Lord, and slowly but surely, her body will begin to show that it has a new owner - the Lord Jesus Christ! The wrinkles will fade, the skin will become healthier and more glowing and firm, their eyes will be alive with joy instead of dead like they were before. The transformation is just totally amazing! It doesn't happen overnight, though at times it seems to when you haven't seen them for awhile. Because I support Teen Challenge, who's mission is to bring addicts and alcoholics to Christ, I've been privileged to see this amazing transformation happen over and over again. When the Lord changes us, He REALLY changes us LOL, but it's from the inside out. So the more the inside of a person is filled with Him and submissive to Him, the more the outside reflects His beauty.
But my dear Barbara, the mind, our thoughts and feelings, as you know, are very powerful. If you keep allowing those negative ones in your mind about your looks, then it will obey you -at least to your eyes. However, I KNOW that we can already see Jesus in you and that He's only going to become more and more obvious as time goes on. Because after all, you've already begun living your eternal life, your abundant life! Fill your mind and heart with His Truth and with Him, and your body will follow suit.
So this year, let's not be like Sleeping Beauty's evil step mother (I think that's the right movie lol) the one who was always looking in a mirror and saying, "mirror, mirror, on the wall, who's the loveliest woman of all?" (or something like that)
Instead, let's admit that there's only one person who's truly lovely, and that's our lord Jesus. There is no one more lovely then He is. (and yet we know that when He was here, while He may not have been ugly, He also wasn't handsome. However, regardless of that, when people met Him, they were drawn to Him, and I feel sure they would have seen Him as being most beautiful, for His inward beauty had to have shown through his physical plainness.
Isaiah 53:2 —He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. *
Psalm 27:4 —One thing I ask of the Lord, this is what I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple. *
Just like the ugly or plain woman, who sure looked beautiful to me, so I'm quite sure that if we ask any of the women who followed Jesus, they would tell us that Jesus was the best looking man they ever knew! His goodness shone through and overcame the physical bodies characteristics.
So when we must look in a mirror this year, let's first make sure it's not a magnifying one and then, as we look, say instead,
"may all I come in contact with today,
see the Lord Jesus through all I do and say;
May His love, peace, and joy, from me overflow,
to touch the lives of everyone I know".
Originally Posted by Fearnot: Awwwwww you did it again!!! Such lovely, truth filled, helpful words.
Yes I think it was maybe Snow White's evil step mother, who spent her time looking in the mirror. I always thought the truth of it was, because Snow White was young that she was so beautiful!! That when you are young you are beautiful because you don't have wrinkles, you have a beautiful set of pearly whites, you are trim and fit etc. And when you are old you are none of those things.
But you just jogged a thought, Snow White was actually sweet and caring ( to the 7 dwarfs, so much so that they loved her. At least a portion of Snow's beauty was her tender heart, and visa-versa her step mother was jealous, greedy, mean, complaining, non-smiling LOL
I am afraid to ask because you have devoted such precious time with me on this, and I fear you are doing so in a lot of pain, and I hate adding to it. But be assured, you lifted up a great burden and have given me a lot to chew on....if I had all my teeth LOLOL
P.S. I wondered if you had ever noticed I changed my cover photo. I kind of did it for you, because you said I would look more approachable and therefore pretty. I had been meaning to ask you if you noticed the change we made but then kept forgetting HA!
Please don't worry about me hon, and please ask. I LOVE answering questions. You know that!
I've always thought that the moral of snow white was that beauty is caused by who you are on the inside, not by what you look like, and that the more you concentrate on it, on wanting to be "beautiful" the uglier you get. I looked it up and got these two interesting replies along with a recap of the story:
The moral of the story of Snow White is that jealousy and vanity can lead to your demise.
The moral in the story of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is not to be vain and be blessed with what you have.
A recap-
The Queen is very vain. She has never cared for anyone but herself, and especially not for her husbands daughter. She prefers to spend her days applying makeup and curling her hair, perfecting her image. And her head is made larger with every passing day by the compliments she receives from her enchanted mirror. She never expects that anyone would surpass her in beauty. But one day her brown nosing friend inside the mirror, who can only tell her the truth, gives her title to the young maiden.
Deranged and furious she demands the young girls heart, only when it stops beating will she be content. Her love of her own reflection has driven her to insanity, she would rather take a life than be considered second best. In the end her vanity betrays her, she is so obsessed with wanting to be the most lovely that she distorts her appearance to look like a humble haggard beggar to win over Snow Whites trust. When the young girls seven friends catch the Queen on their property a chase ensues and the Queen dies haggard and ugly.
Her vanity is her own demise.
That's how I remember it too. The queen hated the daughter because she knew the daughter was prettier then she was. What she didn't understand or "get", was that the girl's beauty came from inside her, who she was. She was beautiful because she didn't think about herself or her looks. Instead she thought about others. Because the girl was still growing in her love for others, she continued to get more beautiful every day until finally she was literally more beautiful then the queen. The queen on the other hand, was becoming uglier as she got older. She covered it up with make up though, or tried to. People who didn't know her, thought she was beautiful, but once people knew her, all they could see was how ugly she was. Finally even her mirror had to tell her that Snow White was more beautiful then she was. That of course brought out even more horrible traits in her. All had been there before but now she acted on them and as always, those became even more a part of her and she became uglier then ever. To me, even as a child, the movie taught that it was far better to be loving, kind, helpful, and unselfish, even toward people that didn't like you. Even then it taught me that it's what is inside a person that matters, not what's outside.
By the way, I didn't plan the graphic that's on today's notice
Barbara, the bible teaches that if we look hard enough for something, we'll find it. If we search for evil, that's what we'll find. If we search for people to dislike us, that's what we'll find. If we look for people to always get the short end of the stick, then that's what we'll see, etc. But if we look for people to always be helping others, then that's what we'll see. If we look for good in others, that's what we'll see, etc. The same is true of course for what we see in ourselves. We will see whatever we most look for. Knowing that, and remembering that our thoughts and feelings are corrupted by sin, it's easy to see how we mess ourselves and our lives up by what we look for in ourselves and in others.
For example: let's say that someone gets raped and instead of allowing God to heal their hearts, they become angry and bitter, and before long they wind up hating men in general. As far as they're concerned, all men are rotten and not to be trusted. Now, there's another woman who was also raped but has been healed by the Lord, so she's not bitter or angry and she doesn't hate and distrust men. These two women could have the exact same life experiences over the next year, but if you sat them down at the end of the year and asked them to tell you about their lives for the last year, you'd get two very different stories!
The first woman's story would be all about herself and all the horrible things men had done to her over the last year. Many of the things she relates, never actually happened except in her own mind. She took unrelated events and simply blamed them on the last man she's had any contact with. If her car broke down, it wasn't because it was an old car, it was because the mechanic that last worked on it, did a rotten job. If it snowed and she had to shovel the driveway by herself, it was because all men were rotten, not because she'd been rude and insulting toward the men that lived around her. When she met a man who was shy and couldn't get his words out right because he had a crush on her, she just figured he was rude and you probably couldn't trust him. When it came right down to it, in her mind, she'd had a horrible year. She expected and looked for the worst, so that's what she found.
But the other woman, her story was entirely different. She'd had a wonderful year! Yes, her car had broken down, but then it was old, and she'd had to shovel her own driveway, but then she knew (because she'd cared enough to ask) that the young men in the neighborhood were sick that day. And that poor young man who'd stuttered and didn't know what to say and couldn't get his words out right? Well, she had found a very good friend in him and enjoyed being with him! She looked for the good in others and that's exactly what she found.
I'm sure you've seen that in other people just as I have all my life. The people who have come to believe that other people are somehow out to get them, that sooner or later other people are always going to hurt them, always wind up hurt because it's a self fulling prophecy, they find what they're looking for. Even when it doesn't really happen, they're so sure that it will, they will even make things up so that it comes true, just like in the story above.
See, she cared about other people and focused on them, not herself, while the first woman was consumed only with herself and was sure other people were rotten so why bother? Both women found exactly what they looked for, and that's true in all our lives. That's another meaning of the verse, Titus 1:15 —To the pure, all things are pure, but to those who are corrupted and do not believe, nothing is pure. In fact, both their minds and consciences are corrupted. * The more we fill our hearts and minds with God and His Word, the more pure we become, and the more we will see and experience pure (good) things instead of the bad. This is another reason the Lord tells us to concentrate on these kind of things and not the other: Philippians 4:8 —Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. * "Pure" really describes all those other words. And on top of that, the more we are filled with God and His Word, the more our physical bodies will reflect that as well. In fact, if people really wanted to find the fountain of youth,
Enough of that lol, please feel free to ask anything you'd like!
Originally Posted by Fearnot
Another perfectly wonderful explanation!!! So the queen really was physically beautiful, and perhaps had she not been so caught up in maintaining her beauty, she may have remained beautiful for many more years than she did.
I kind of think that wanting to be beautiful is in a way, wanting ( like satan who also was beautiful at one time) like God.
Because many people in the world put a high price on beauty, they worship it...until the inner ugliness comes out, with selfish demands, hurtfulness in words and deeds.
You made me laugh tho!! What a 'sneaky' (just joking) way to get me to really dig into the word....the more you read the more 'beautiful' you become LOL
I have a 'situation' tho, I probably should ask you about in the 'private' accountability.
yeah, I thought about that afterward, but hon, it's honestly the complete and whole Truth. God never cheats us and He's never been a scrooge or miser, only giving us a little bit here and there. Instead, He's always the opposite of that. He gives us EVERYTHING He can, everything we'll accept and wants to give us even more! For every little thing we do in obedience, He rains blessings down like a flood to encourage us to do yet more, and tells us that He also has rewards in Heaven for us for those very same things!
God tells us over and over that His Word is "ALL sufficient" for us. That in His Word He gives us ALL we could ever need for this life. Many people wrongly assume that He means for our "spiritual lives", but that's not true. His Word is completely and fully sufficient for everything we need for our physical, mental, emotional, material, and spiritual well being! Through the Lord and His Word, He gives us all we need to have an abundant life here and in Heaven. John 10:10 —The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. * Let's look at some other words that mean "abundantly": exceptionally, greatly, extraordinarily, intensely, markedly, exceedingly, excessively, exceptionally, plentifully, amply, richly, liberally, fully, thoroughly, substantially, lavishly, extensively, generously, profusely, copiously, exuberantly, in plentiful supply, luxuriantly, unstintingly, bountifully, bounteously, plenteously. That's the kind of life that God offers us if we will abide in Him and His Word. While He doesn't guarantee us tons of money, great health, etc, He does guarantee us that we will have all we need to live our lives in such a way that even if we don't have tons of money, we'll be able to live our lives free from the prison of fear, worry, anxiety, etc. He says that while Satan may steal things from us, or destroy parts of our lives, like relationships, etc. He will restore them.
Look at it this way, while Satan and sin corrupt and ultimately destroy everything they touch, the Lord heals and restores all that He touches. What Satan and sin kill, the Lord brings back to life. There is nothing more powerful in the this world then His Word. It always accomplishes what He sent it out to do. Therefor why should it surprise us to know that His Word actually affects our physical bodies? If you think about it, you'll realize that there are many scriptures that show how our thoughts and His Word can affect our bodies:
John 15:5–7 —I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. *If anyone does not abide in me he is thrown away like a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. *If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. *
Proverbs 14:30 —A heart at peace gives life to the body, but envy rots the bones. * How can we be at peace? Only through a close relationship with the Lord, which means abiding in Him and having His Word abide in us.
Proverbs 15:13 —A happy heart makes the face cheerful, but heartache crushes the spirit. * same as above
Proverbs 15:15 —All the days of the oppressed are wretched, but the cheerful heart has a continual feast. * The oppressed are those who are still in chains to Satan. Jesus has freed us from those chains and we have no reason to feel oppressed, therefor our days will be like one continual feast for the joy of the Lord is our strength.
Proverbs 12:25 —An anxious heart weighs a man down, but a kind word cheers him up. * When we're abiding in God and His Word is abiding in us, we cannot be anxious, therefore we are not weighed down by it.
Proverbs 17:22 —A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones. * Our spirits are crushed when we don't have the Lord and aren't in a good relationship with Him; but when we are, our hearts are cheerful, which is like good medicine for our bodies.
Proverbs 18:14 —A man’s spirit sustains him in sickness, but a crushed spirit who can bear? * This one shows that when we don't guard our hearts and minds, and allow ourselves to get fearful, anxious, depressed, etc. that we're apt to get sick and our spirits won't have the strength to help us heal.
Proverbs 16:24 —Pleasant words are a honeycomb, sweet to the soul and healing to the bones. * Again we're shown the effect that thoughts and words have on our physical bodies. All our words and thoughts are powerful, but the most powerful of all are God's Words.
Proverbs 3:7–8 —Do not be wise in your own eyes; fear the Lord and shun evil. *This will bring health to your body and nourishment to your bones. * What brings health to your body? Fear of the Lord does and we know that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and understanding. We know that we receive the fear of the Lord as we continue to study His Word with Him daily. As MacArthur puts it, The fear of the Lord is a state of mind in which one’s own attitudes, will, feelings, deeds, and goals are exchanged for God’s. And we exchange them how? By knowing His Word because we can't very well replace our thoughts with His if we don't know His.
But, the bottom line is that it's true that the more time we spend in His Word with Him, always applying it to our lives as well, the more it effects our thoughts, feelings and our deeds, and those affect our looks.
Originally Posted by Fearnot
You know, thinking about what you said,a face in a frown is not it's prettiest, even the most beautiful woman ( outwardly) is not very pretty in an angry rage and yelling tirade!!
A face scrunched up and tense in worry, is not a face at it's best either.
And while a sad face is not necessarily ugly, if it is continually sad, it will make others uncomfortable, because they may have tried to uplift the sad person over and over, to no avail.
But where proverbs says pleasant words are healing to the bones, how far can we take that? If a person has severe arthritis, they are not to really read scripture with the idea of 'healing' their bones are they? Wouldn't that sort of be like the faith healers?
Let's look at another scripture and see what it says. That will help us understand better what God is saying in the ones I posted before. Proverbs 3:5–8 —Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; *in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight. *Do not be wise in your own eyes; fear the Lord and shun evil. *This will bring health to your body and nourishment to your bones. * Let's also look at one of the many that say the opposite: Psalm 32:3–4 —When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. *For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was sapped as in the heat of summer. Selah * In this last verse David is talking about becoming sick when he didn't confess his sin with Bathsheba right away and instead continued to live in it.
We've talked before about how stress affects the body and the many ways it can quite literally make us sick, remember? Stress can cause all kinds of both physical and what people call mental illnesses too. Remember, it can cause some pretty severe physical diseases if the person continues to be stressed, anxious, fearful, etc. and those diseases are quite real, they're not "all in their heads". Because we live with pain, we're both very aware of the fact that any amount of stress can make the pain worse too, or even start a bad flare up if we're not already in one.
Now, remember how we've also discussed that God's Word is totally sufficient for all we need. I'm not saying we should never go to a doctor when we're sick, that would be silly. But we should never "just" go to a doctor. God wants us to rely on Him, not doctors and medicine. For example, in 2 Chronicles 16:12 we're told Asa was really sick but he still refused to seek the Lord and only relied on doctors, and therefore died from it. On the other hand, Hezekiah got very sick and was even told by a prophet that he was going to die from it, but he knew the Lord and prayed. Because of that, the Lord healed him using medicine and added another 15 years to his life. All because he sought the Lord and trust Him. So we see it's perfectly ok to go to doctors and get help from them, but only if we're also constantly seeking God and His Will for our life. God doesn't want us to just seek Him when we're in trouble though, He wants us to have an ever growing, living relationship with Him.
Now, look at that first verse I posted again:
Proverbs 3:5–8 —Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; *in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight. *Do not be wise in your own eyes; fear the Lord and shun evil. *This will bring health to your body and nourishment to your bones. * I should have posted the entire chapter, but you can check it out on your own later. What his is telling us is that we're not to be wise in our own eyes, not to rely on our own knowledge and wisdom etc. We've talked about this a great deal too. Sin has corrupted everyone's reasoning which is why we can't trust our hearts and why we have to take our thoughts captive.
We're told here to trust in the Lord instead of ourselves or other people and to fear God. We know that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and that someone who fears God trusts Him completely and obeys Him. And of course we're also told to shun evil. None of that is new for us, it's all things we're told over and over again. The only "new" part is where it says that if we do all this, it will bring health to our bodies.
Well, if we're fearing God, trusting Him and obeying Him, we most certainly are not stressed or fearful or anxious about anything are we? Yeah, "bad" things still happen to us, including sickness at times, but because we trust God, we don't worry about it. We pray about it, we go to the doctors and we obey the Lord. We also obey the doctor assuming He's not telling us to do anything that's contrary to God's Word. Now all of this presumes that we know God's Word, or, at the very least, are learning to know it, because knowing His Word is the only way we can know His Will about everything. It's His Word that brings us peace instead of fear, calm instead of stress, etc. So it's His Word that keeps us healthy and mentally balanced. (assuming we're reading it with Him, asking Him to guide us and teach us, because if we're trying to understand it with out own wisdom, we'll fail because our "wisdom" is all messed up.
So in that way, yes, God's Word heals us, and keeps us healthy, because it promotes a healthy lifestyle, teaches us God's ways, and keeps us from being stressed and worried, among other things. Also keep in mind that God allows sickness for various reasons, one of which is to discipline us for sin in our lives. That's what He did with David and why David said that his bones wasted away when he kept silent. When David turned back to the Lord, and confessed his sin, he began to get better and was healed.
We can also bring sickness on ourselves through sinful lifestyles such as getting STD's because we messed around with other people instead of our spouse, or cancer from smoking, ruin our livers by drinking, etc. If something like that is the problem (a disease brought on by a current sinful lifestyle or one in our past) there is no guarantee of healing, because God generally allows us to suffer the consequences of our sins even though we're forgiven. For instance, divorce is a sin, and like any sin, it can be forgiven. Even if it's forgiven though, the person and any children that may be involved, will still suffer the consequences of that divorce. See what I mean? I believe we've discussed this before too, didn't we?
But, in general, yes, studying God's Word with Him daily can in fact bring healing to our bodies, as well as make us look more beautiful. Our God is a pretty amazing God and because He loves us, He gives us all this and more. Or rather He offers it to us IF we will meet His conditions. And His condition as always been the same: to study His Word with Him daily and apply it to our lives - or if you'd rather, you could say it, study it with Him daily and obey Him.
Now you know about my physical problems, yet I can honestly say the Lord has healed me many times in many ways. People always ask me how I can spend so much time in His Word every day when I'm in so much pain. The truth is, that as long as I'm in His Word daily, He helps relieve the pain. Well, I hope this helps some, but I have to get going now, so we can talk more later if you want.
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