Day 12: 30-Day True Woman Makeover Challenge

Affirming Our Faith

You don’t leave the house with your clothes on inside out, but when it comes to modesty, that’s what you need to do. First, work on the inside—on your heart—then let that be reflected on the outside.

• Your appearance, actions, and attitudes will never make you a Christian. But if you are a Christian, you absolutely will have an appearance, attitudes, and actions that confirm your profession of faith.

• We are not to be in any way that is unbecoming of us as believers—not in disarray, not as exhibitionists, not extreme.

• We need be filled with the Spirit and grounded in the Word of God so that our hearts, emotions, and minds will be well-ordered; then it will be reflected in our outward appearances.

This is just a taste of what you'll learn from Nancy Leigh DeMoss in the series, “The Attractive Christian Woman.

Moving on…

Words of affirmation and touch are my love languages so when someone says something to me affirming it means a lot. When a friend says something encouraging to me, I hear them speaking to my soul saying, "I think you're important and valuable like God says you are." I feel loved. My mom was one of the greatest affirmers with words I know. Because of her example saying kind things comes naturally to me which just recently I realized was something that doesn't come naturally to everyone. I had a friend mention she has a hard time knowing how to compliment others. And  that got me thinking.

Affirming people communicates respect and disarms the question, "Do they like me?" And I'm not sure if you've noticed but when people are comfortable around you, they open up and are more open to receiving what you have to say. Honest affirmation can be compared to preparing the ground to receive the seed of God's Word.

We must learn to affirm our faith in the face of doubt with thoughts that things will work out, things will improve.  We ought to think, write, and say affirmations.  Faith is closely related to trust; it involves a trust that reaches beyond the immediate and every day. To disregard faith in any aspect of life is to ignore an aspect of life that has been significant for most of humanity through the ages and remains so till today. For a Christian, faith is about assurance, confidence, and trust. It is a growing trust in God that is based on evidence of God’s character and experience of. Faith in Christ is a means by which people come into a close relationship with God.

The God kind of faith "calls things that are not as though they were". God's example is Abraham, to whom He said, "I have already made you a father of a great multitude". Abraham was 99 and Sarah was past the age of child-bearing, but God called "things that are not as though they were". The operation of faith that makes the Christian life productive is based on that one principle: calling "things that are not as though they were". The Living Bible says that God "speaks of future events with as much certainty as though they were already past". That is how we must operate our faith in God. That is how we will shape our future. 

 Faith is always a leap into the dark in some respects. If you are on the end of a limb and do not know where to go next, faith is taking that next step. Do you realize that when you take even one step in walking that you put the whole body off balance? You will never go anywhere unless you take a step of faith. It was faith this morning for you to swing your legs out of bed and touch the floor. You had to believe that the law of gravity would keep you in the right position. Everything you do in life is an application of the principle of faith, and in the spiritual life the object of faith is God; it is faith in the God Who calls "things that are not as though they were".

Make a quality commitment today to call "things that are not as though they were". God has not only planned the very best for your life, He has provided the very best for your life. Yet the provision is in a spiritual form, and you need it in a material form. The only way to bridge that gap is to affirm your faith and call things that are not in the material as though they were, and they will be. That was Abraham's first step of faith.