I’m linking up today on my friend Holley’s page. She started “Coffee for your Heart” as a place where we can go each week to encourage each other & I just LOVE it! Today I’m hoping to remind you of just how beautiful you really are~always!

In my 1/16/14 post, I touched on beauty a little, but today I want to dive a little deeper into 1 Samuel 16:7.

My “catch phrase” if you will, seems to be, “I am a daughter of the King, a humble work in progress; flawed & messy sometimes, but what you see is what you get!” I often feel the need to disclose just how flawed & messy I really am sometimes, for fear that people will put me on a pedestal and hold me to a standard to which I will fall.  Friends, I am so broken! I need Jesus; I simply cannot live this life without Him and because of my insecurities, my past failures & my struggles I call myself “one hot mess”! {smile with tears}

Sometimes I feel like I’m living a double life. There’s the life I want to live; where the picket fence is white & the grass is freshly cut. Where I never say a bad word, never think an impure thought & always reflect Jesus in everything I do and say. Then there’s the life I actually live. The one where I get short tempered, I say things I shouldn’t, as Holley says, I am misunderstood, and I fall flat on my face in frustration & self-disappointment.  I don’t have it altogether. I really want to, but I don’t. That my friend is the real me.

I’m just so very thankful:

1. That Jesus looks at my heart & not my exterior. 
   “The Lord does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.” 1 Samuel 16:7
2. That I have the gift of forgiveness & can fall on my face in humility & receive it from Jesus.
   “Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, Whose sin is covered.” Psalm 32:1
3. That Jesus sees who He wants me to be, and loves me where I am.
   “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.” 2 Corinthians 5:17
4. That each day is a new day, with a clean slate.
   “Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassion’s never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.” Lamentations 3:22-23
5. That Jesus promises to make my “hot mess” beautiful; in His time.
   “He has made everything beautiful in its time.” Ecclesiastes 3:11

Knowing that Jesus sees me as beautiful, even when all I see is a hot mess, is pretty encouraging! To know He can look beyond my mess today, into a future where I’m perfected in Him, is truly amazing!  “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” Jeremiah 29:11

So today, go easy on yourself. Keep in mind that we’re all a work in progress & that regardless of how much mud we get on our faces when we fall, He still calls us beautiful!