Are You Beautiful Inside?

1 Samuel 16:5-7 - Samuel replied, "Yes, in peace; I have come to sacrifice to the LORD. Consecrate yourselves and come to the sacrifice with me." Then he consecrated Jesse and his sons and invited them to the sacrifice. When they arrived, Samuel saw Eliab and thought, "Surely the LORD's anointed stands here before the LORD."  But the LORD said to Samuel, "Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The LORD does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart."

 

Samuel had been told by God to stop mourning for the first king he had anointed…for the time had come for Samuel to go and anoint God’s newly chosen king. Samuel was a little scared at first…thinking if Saul found out he was anointing a new king…it would surely bring about his death. But God laid his fears to rest…and told him to bring a sacrifice… tell the people he had come in peace…and he would tell him exactly what to do from there.

 

Samuel invited the family of Jesse…just as God had told him…and beheld the eldest son Eliab… and thought for sure he had picked the right one.  But God told him to never consider only the outward appearance of a man….but to consider more the inner character…as he rejected the thoughts of Samuel’s heart.  One by one God rejected every son that Jesse had brought…revealing that he had left his youngest son out in the fields.

 

As soon as David came to them…God’s great sigh of affirmation…and his great booming voice of authority told Samuel to anoint this young lad as the next king of Israel.  Then the spirit came upon him and gave him power…to become what he needed to be…to fulfill his new task on the Earth…to seek God and become a man after God’s own heart.

 

Samuel was like many of us these days…thinking that God works best with the ones who look the part.  We are drawn to the ‘pretty’ ones… the strong ones…the ones that look the most successful.  But God doesn’t size up a person the way man does…he considers first their heart. God sees us the way we are first thing in the morning…rooster hair going every direction…no makeup…with the true personality we have before the morning coffee. God loves us from the inside out…not the outside in.

 

It is a reminder to me….to be very careful with vanity.  I rarely go out in public without fixing my hair…and carefully placing a face on these old wrinkles that seem to be taking over my face.  I buy the lotions….the whitening toothpaste…and the clothes that flatter my plump figure the most.   I so needed this reminder that beauty is truly in the eye of the beholder…and I can tell the true character of any friend by their heart…not their compliments….and maybe I should worry a little less about my looks…and just let God make me so beautiful on the inside that my outward appearance will shine with his love…and make me more beautiful than any makeup or new hairdo could ever dream of transforming me.