How to make yourself ATTRACTIVE (Part 2)

Since God looks at the heart, as we discussed in part 1, does He care AT ALL about our outer appearance?  I believe He does.  Our bodies are called "the temples of God." by the Apostle Paul.  And the temple of God in Israel was indeed beautiful!  Again, Paul calls man the "glory of God," and woman "the glory of man," meaning the glory of God's glory.  He is speaking of man and woman as they appear physically, in dealing with head coverings.  And Jesus told the Pharisees, who focused on the outer life ALONE to first deal with the inner life, THEN deal with the outer.  So the issue with beauty is priority. 

Secondly, beauty isn't measured by what Cosmopolitan Magazine Or GQ says.  Neither of these give us the standards of our Creator, the only one who can truly define spiritual and physical beauty.

But does He? 
Does God give us a physical standard by which we measure physical beauty?
As I said before, there are men and women described in scripture as beautiful or physically attractive:

1.  Sarah, Abraham's wife (even in her "old age.")
2.  Rebecca, Isaac's wife
3.  Rachel, the second wife of Jacob (so beautiful to him that 7 years of waiting to marry her seemed like 7 days in his eyes.)
4.  Joseph, Rachel's son
5.  Saul, the first king of Israel
6.  David, the second king of Israel
7.  Absalom, David's son
8.  Esther

Yet Christ Himself, the God Man, seemed to have no distinguishing physical characteristics, according to these scriptures:

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.   Isaiah 53:2

There are two senses in which to understand the physical appearance of Christ to those who saw Him:

1.  He didn't "look" like a "king," at least not the king His people expected.  This would be similiar to Samuel's perspective of Eliab.  Eliab (and Saul for that matter) "looked" kingly, or stately.  Tall, handsome, imposing.  But Jesus didn't look like the Hebrews thought a king should look.  It is interesting to note that when Christ revealed His glory to Peter, James, and John on what is called "The Mount of Transfiguration," he most assuredly looked like more than a King:  He looked like God Himself!!  The same is true when He appeared to John in the book of Revelation.

2.  He wasn't striking in any way, physically speaking.  This is significant.  He wasn't exceptionally good looking or exceptionally plain.  He wasn't exceptionally tall or short, big or small.  In other words, as far as how Christ looked, He could go completely unnoticed.  This was on purpose, because in His perfect humility, Christ hid all of the glory of His divinity; the beauty of God that CANNOT be ignored. 

This may discourage some, but it shouldn't at all, unless you WANT to stand out!  Unless you define attractive as every eye on you when you enter the room.  But it wasn't like this for Christ.  It is not like this for anything in all of creation.  Even the sun, in all of it's radiance and glory CAN BE IGNORED.  The sun can go UNNOTICED! 

I've experienced this.  One day I saw a most beautiful rainbow.  It was a full perfect circle right in the middle of the sky!  I tell you the truth, people just kept on as though it weren't there!  I actually looked for others who noticed it, and found no one.  I tried to stop people and get them to look.  Only one person did.  Now I'm not saying I'm the only one who stopped and admired the beauty of God's rainbow.  I'm saying it was clearly being ignored, or going unnoticed.  Who on earth is as beautiful as a rainbow? 

Yet with all of this, I do believe God gives us "secrets" of physical beauty.  I'll show you what I see .......
in part 3! 

(click here to see part 3)