Anti-Senioritis Prescription

Observe the average highschool graduating female. Her life is not a simple one. Twelve months ago, she was a carefree junior. Now with graduation looming on her horizon, she's trying to finish her studies and highschool commitments with the same amount of enthusiasm as when she started. Geometry, Government and Geography.... she tries to grin and bear it. On top of her studies, she's fighting to stay immune from senioritis.

Senioritis is one of those rampant diseases ignored by the World Health Organization. Victims' symptoms include apathy, lack of ambition or vision, and an acute desire for entertainment rather than hard work. The average highschool graduating female is prime for contracting this disease.

Then calculate the holiday season into the picture. The aftermath of Thanksgiving includes more than excessive tryptophan. Graduating females also must grapple with post-holiday stress caused by well-meaning questioners about her future: "Do you have any plans for college?" "Have you decided on a major?" "Are you going to get a job?" "Are you going to live at home?" "When are you going to start dating?" "Do you have a special someone?" This seventeen, eighteen or nineteen year old female is now expected to come up with answers to these life-altering questions.

What's a girl to do?

While we don't know exactly what questions you may be facing, here's some wisdom we've gleaned that we hope will help you out:



Decision-Making

Carole Mayhall, in her book, Come Walk With Me, is writing specifically to women who are pondering whether to work outside the home. However, her advice on decision-making can be applied to a plethora of situations:

"May I (gently) suggest that when a wife and mother--one who is serious about obeying God--asks, 'Should I work outside the home?' she is asking the wrong question. The first question a woman should ask is not, 'Do we need the money?' Neither is it, 'Can I pursue a career at the same time as being a homemaker?' nor, 'Will it be fulfilling and something I want to do?' Often if the answer is yes to these questions, she plunges ahead. Instead, she should ask, 'Is this God's will for my life?'
You may be thinking, but doesn't God lead through circumstances? Sometimes, but not always or primarily. God leads mainly through His Word (Psalm 119:105), through peace of heart (Philippians 4:6-7), and through the counsel of other people (Proverbs 15:22). If circumstances line up with the direction you get from these three primary channels, then they're an added bonus and may help you be assured of what God's will really is."

And what about our feelings? How much should we depend on our emotions to guide our choices? Nancy Leigh DeMoss wrote in Lies Women Believe,

"The Truth is that, due to our fallen condition, our feelings often have very little to do with reality. In many instances, feelings are simply not a reliable gauge of what is actually true. When we allow them to be tied to our circumstances--which are constantly changing--rather than the unchangeable realities of God and His Truth, our emotions are prone to fluctuate wildly... If we want to walk in freedom, we must realize that our emotions are not necessarily trustworthy and be willing to reject any feelings that are not consistent with the Truth."

What About My Dreams?

Everybody has dreams for the future. The world tells us to "dream big" and chase after what we want until it becomes ours. However, the danger with dreams is that they're often "me-centered;" they tend to revolve around me wanting to "become great" and not God's glory. Pride grows in dreams like mold on old cheese.
In response to dreams, think about C.J. Mahaney's thoughts on pride from is book, Humility:

"[Jesus said,] 'But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all.' (vv.43-44).
We always want to pay careful attention when that word must appears in Scripture. 'Must' points us to something that's required, something that's indispensable. 'You want to be great?' Jesus is saying. 'Well, here's what has to happen. What's required is that you become a servant to others; it means nothing less than becoming the slave of everyone.' .... A profound and historic reversal is taking place here--one that has to occur in each of our lives if we're to have any possibility of becoming truly great in God's eyes.... [We become truly great by] serving others for the glory of God."

God-honoring dreams for the future stem from a heart solely focused on serving others and spreading God's fame.

Have you received wisdom from godly counselors about decision-making, or have you found any Scripture passages to be particularly helpful in this area? Please share it with us!

Thanksgiving

John Piper wrote an insightful chapter on the heart of gratitude in his book A Godward Life. Should our thankfulness to God be rooted foremost in Himself, not His gifts? It's something to keep in mind, as we celebrate this Thanksgiving.

"Jonathan Edwards has a word for our time that could hardly be more pointed if he were living today. It has to do with the foundation of gratitude.

True gratitude or thankfulness to God for his kindness to us, arises from a foundation laid before, of love to God for what he is in himself; whereas a natural gratitude has no such antecedent foundation. The gracious stirrings of grateful affection to God, for kindness received, always are from a stock of love already in the heart, established in the first place on other grounds, viz. God's own excellency. 1

In other words, gratitude that is pleasing to God is not first a delight in the benefits God gives (though that is part of it). True gratitude must be rooted in something else that comes first, namely, a delight in the beauty and excellency of God's character. If this is not the foundation of our gratitude, then it is not above what the "natural man," apart from the Spirit and the new nature in Christ, experiences. In that case "gratitude" to God is no more pleasing to God than all the other emotions which unbelievers have without delighting in him.

You would not be honored if I thanked you often for your gifts to me, but had no deep and spontaneous regard for you as a person. You would feel insulted, no matter how much I thanked you for your gifts. If your character and personality do not attract me or give me joy in being around you, then you will just feel used, like a tool or a machine to produce the things I really love.

We do well to listen to Jonathan Edwards. Does he not simply spell out for us the Biblical truth that we should do all things-including giving thanks-to the glory of God (1 Corinthians 10:31)? And God is not glorified if the foundation of our gratitude is the worth of the gift and not the excellency of the Giver. If gratitude is not rooted in the beauty of God before the gift, it is probably disguised idolatry. May God grant us a heart to delight in him for who he is so that all our gratitude for his gifts will be the echo of our joy in the excellency of the Giver!"

Excerpted from John Piper, A Godward Life (Sisters, Oregon: Multnomah, 1997), 213-214.


Notes
1. Jonathan Edwards, Religious Affections, The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Vol. 2, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959, orig. 1746, p.247.

Christmas Is Sooner Than You Think

This year, I'm going to take a tip from the Boy Scouts and prepare myself a little more....for Christmas. (Yes, I do think it's crazy when stores begin selling Christmas trees and ornaments before Thanksgiving; I'm not referring to the entire economy following in my pre-Thanksgiving Christmas preparedness. But for me personally, planning ahead is a practice I need to adopt.)

I love giving gifts to family and friends that I've made myself. Knitted scarfs, bags, hats, dishcloths, you name it. However, waiting until the last minute to throw these gifts together is only the recipe for sloppy work. So, I'm starting early this year. Here are a few patterns that have set my creative juices a-flowin'.

• A really easy knit bag pattern.
• An easy knit bag pattern.
  
• A harder to knit clutch pattern.
• Linda over at Craft Apple is one of those people with so much talent, you wish she'd sell the excess to let the rest of the world catch up. (And she's modest about it to boot.) She continually posts new craft ideas on her site. Be sure to take a look at the free pattern for her "Lindie Bag."
  
• A dishcloth with a teacup pattern.
  

Note to crocheters: I'm sorry. I don't crochet! However, if you have found a pattern online that you enjoy, please do leave a link in the comment section.

Regarding Lindsey...

One of your favorite Beauty from the Heart contributors is turning sixteen today! Congratulations, Lindsey!

Challenging This Brave New World

Huddled in dimly lit room in Germany, a man struggled to arrange wooden tiles on his desk. He stroked his beard thoughtfully as he squinted in the candlelight. Finally, he placed the tiles on a bulky, homemade contraption. This was it—the invention that would make or break the destiny of Christendom, making books available to all. Words inked by Gutenberg’s printing press would revolutionize Europe, and to this day, every library and bookshelf owes its existence to that man. In 1997, Time-Life magazine declared Gutenberg’s invention to be the most important of the past one thousand years. No invention since Gutenberg’s printing press has been more influential; until, perhaps now.
No, we are not on a continent struggling to emerge from the Dark Ages. Most can read and we now take books for granted. However, as never before in history, virtually limitless information is brought into our homes via a single tool: the internet.

In years past, it was only an elite few—politicians, monarchs, and lately, the press—who harnessed the ability to broadcast information on a large scale. Now that responsibility has been placed in the hands of any man, woman, or child able to click a button. Everyone has access to this updated version of Gutenberg’s printing press. It's so easy and potent. Yet the greatness of any invention is not the object itself, but how it changes the world through its existence. A printing press doesn't matter unless people's minds are changed for the better from its books.

At Beauty from the Heart, we've tried to use our influence, however limited, responsibly. We're trying to do our part to spread the message of Biblical womanhood to Christian teens, trying to challenge our peers to consider the beauty of their calling as women of God; but we can only do so much on a website.

Unless Biblical womanhood becomes more than a concept to us, but a way of living that is applied every day, our influence is nothing. If we only take what we've learned and tuck into in our brains to catch dust, have we truly learned anything? Or do we live what we believe? Do we lovingly share this truth with the feminism-indoctrinated girl we know who suits up for football practice, ready to tackle male players? Do we share what we know of purity with the nine year old neighbor who brags about her latest "boyfriend? Do we assume our nation is doomed to extreme immorality, and stop praying for revival? Action is how change happens. I have a dream, that by God's grace in using willing hands, something can be changed.

Ignition

What turns a quirky fashion statement into a fad? And what transforms a fad into something timeless? What causes a book to reach the bestseller’s list, while other equally well-written books gather dust on library shelves? From feminism to yoga, activities and ideals once held only by fringe radicals have become the norm. We all would like to know: Why and how? Malcolm Gladwell’s book, The Tipping Point, attempts to answer these questions. Gladwell writes of the Hush Puppies, once a little-known shoe brand that inexplicably gained worldwide recognition:

“In the case of the Hush Puppies, the great mystery is how those shoes went from
something worn by a few fashion-forward downtown Manhattan hipsters to being
sold in malls across the country. What was the connection between the East
Village and Middle America? The Law of the Few says the answer is that one of
these exceptional people found out about the trend, and through social
connections and energy and enthusiasm and personality spread the word about Hush
Puppies.”

What caused the Hush Puppy fad? According to Gladwell, it was surprisingly simple: a small number of people actively spread the word.
In the 1960’s and 70’s, a new wave of feminism swept over America. This wasn’t your grandmother’s “Votes for Women” campaign. This movement threw orthodoxy out the window. Men were labeled “oppressors” and feminism became known as the “women’s liberation movement.” The movement redefined womanhood and pushed Biblical perspective into the shadows. It was unconventional and extreme--and it transformed North America.
Yet, like the Hush Puppies’ rise to stardom, the feminist movement’s success was not due to political action or protest marches. Its success can be traced to a group of people who simply spread the word.
In 1968, film editor and feminist Kathie Sarachild brought a new strategy to light. The best way to promote feminism, she found, was to form “consciousness-raising groups.” Small groups women would gather together for annual meetings in which they would each share experiences of “oppression” and discuss common difficulties they faced. One scholar noted, “Feminists agreed that consciousness-raising, or ‘speaking bitterness,’ was the most potent, effective tool in the mobilization of the feminist movement.” (Mary Kassian, The Feminist Mistake)
This should be no surprise. In Proverbs 12:18, Solomon speaks of the tongue’s power: “Reckless words pierce like a sword, but the tongue of the wise brings healing.” Here, Solomon ranks words with an instrument of war. What more piercing weapon exists than the tongue? When it has taken thousands of soldiers to change cities into minefields, fewer words have changed the face of empires.
Yet there is one factor that pulls an ideology into popularity which researchers often miss; ultimately all is controlled to the One causes mouths to open and shut. He is the One who allows a movement (however temporarily) to ignite or fade into the footnotes of history.
While feminism may be a dominant philosophy of our time, in the end “…the Most High rules the kingdom of men and gives it to whom He will.” (Daniel 4:32) Perhaps I may live to see this ideology discarded as a new “ism” claims the spotlight, but at the closing of the day, His Word will prevail.
What ignites a dream into a movement, and a movement into a revolution? Feminist researcher Margaret Mead once said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.” I would add that all changes have occurred only because God allowed them---and He always has the last word.

Reposted from April 2007

Fashion-Smashion

Once upon a time, I remember when it was complimentary if someone told you they liked your skirt or your necklace. It meant they found your good taste worth remarking about. Now, I think the sentiment behind many compliments has died by method of overkill. The traditional greeting of "Hello, how are you?" is too often replaced by, "Hey! You look so cuuuute! I love your shirt!"

I have nothing against compliments when they are sincere, but I do confess to missing the good ol' "how are you" which considered the friend's wellbeing--and not only their clothes. I wonder, what the perspective of a Christian young woman should be concerning fashion. How much should we care about what we wear? Is it worldly to have an interest in styles?

The other day, a study of Proverbs 31 revealed a characteristic of that virtuous woman that I had never noticed before.The Proverbs 31 woman is said to have clothed her family well--in scarlet, to be exact. She is also spoken of dressing herself in garments of purple. Purple, being the most expensive color to produce, and was the symbol of royalty. Does this mean that the Proverbs 31 woman is of the same caliber as a queen? Or do these verses indicate that she dressed herself and her family creatively, with fine taste? I'm not sure; but I do think that if God saw it appropriate for the Proverbs 31 woman to dress in this way, we can't entirely label the fashion-conscious as being "worldly."

At the same time, those would never dream of appearing out of doors in an outdated pair of jeans are missing the greater, wider world that exists. There is a commendation greater than the praise of their girlfriends. There is a deeper beauty than can be found in the right outfit. As Shakespeare said, "There are more things in Heaven and earth...than are dreamt of in your philosophy." The apostle Paul suffered shipwrecks, beatings, and imprisonment, all for the sake the of the truth he had found. He said, "Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal." (2 Corinthians 4:16-18)

As long as the human race wears clothes, they will matter; but as far as caring deeply about them, life is simply too short.