Read His Words Before Ours!
Ephesians 2:1-10
Isaiah 64:5-7
Ephesians 1:3-14
“Your smile isn’t right”
“Your hands are shaped wrong”
“How are you so stupid”
Pencils thrown in my direction.
Fury on his face.
Household items hurled angrily.
I was an un-ending disappointment to my father.
The verbal and emotional abuse that poured from my earthly dad as a child and teenager, rang in my ears into adulthood, tightening its grip on me. Those words were the only soundtrack I could hear. The chorus to every song sank its chords deep into my soul,
“You are not enough. You are not enough. You are not enough.”
The song is much quieter now, even silent the majority of the time, praise Jesus! I’ve walked through a lot of rebuilding and practiced listening to God’s truth over my dad’s lies, but even as I type these phrases, my hands shake, my heart-rate speeds up, and my body literally trembles with old fear.
I am not enough…. The haunting rhythm beats again.
For the vast majority of my life, I fell prey to this deadly song and I ran from it as intensely as I could. I became an over-achiever. I hated leaving things undone. I was forever looking over my shoulder, waiting for punishment. I berated myself incessantly. Everyone was against me (in my skewed perception). I had become my own worst enemy and I couldn’t look in the mirror without seeing flaws, both big and small.
I lived in constant fear knowing that I would never be enough.
Never pretty .
Never wearing the right clothes.
Never confident.
Never smart.
Never attracting the right kind of people or having the “fun friends”.
Never truly good, outside or inside.
But then, oh gloriously, like the first rays of dawn spilling into a darkened sky, I began to understand the gospel.
“As for you, you were dead in your trespasses and sins.”
I had been right. I was not enough.
“And all our righteous deeds are like a filthy garment; And all of us wither like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.”
I never had been enough.
None of my strivings to reach “good enough” would ever get me anywhere. I was the hamster spinning on his wheel.
But the gospel doesn’t end there; that’s just the beginning because….
Jesus is enough!
Paul goes on to say in Ephesians, “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our sins, made us ALIVE together with CHRIST, for it is by grace you have been saved.”
Oh the bliss, the sweet joy that began to sing satisfaction into my heart!
I was not enough, nor never would be, but Jesus was and always will be.
I could stop beating myself up to be more!
I talk to my daughters about the three enemies of their beauty because I face them all the time. Whether it’s battling the image of being flawless, fighting the urge to always compare ourselves to peers, or combating our own criticisms, the enemies of beauty are relentlessly pursuing a treasure we are too quick to relinquish.
Sisters, we must stop allowing the enemy of ourselves to defeat our beauty!
It took time, it took grace, it took intentionally listening to the voice of truth, but
when Jesus became my sufficiency, He transformed my beauty.
I could look confidently in the mirror again.
I could enjoy myself, my body, my abilities, my thoughts, my smile, my face, and my hands.
I was beautiful,
not because I was enough,
but because my Heavenly Father was all-sufficient
And more than just the physical, my inner woman grew in graceful beauty as well.
I became friendlier, less judgmental of myself and others, I stood on the truth of who I was in Christ and I wanted others to have that foundation too. Eventually, ministries flourished, my marriage was renewed, and the Lord even grew this GT Community from the strength that was mine in Him.
Restoring our beauty can start by shifting the focus from us onto the only One who could ever be enough.
You Are Beautiful Because Jesus Is Enough!
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