Buxom Beauty

Be Real!

One of my friends often exclaims, ‘Get real!’ or ‘Be real!’ when she feels something is being glossed over or denied. 

This is a question of identity. To be real is to be true to yourself, and it is so easy to get muddled about who you really are. You may feel like one person with your parents, another with your kids, another with friends or colleagues or spouse. But you aren’t many people. You are one person, a solid identity, and the rest of the forms are just facades or imitations of who you may think you are expected to be.

As a Christian, my identity is in Christ, who made me unique. He is the one I am living to, and the one I am living from. He has given me gifts which only I can exercise in my own inimitable way, but if I am constantly readjusting who I feel I ought to be then I am unlikely to be true to the person he made me to be. 

I’m not much of a psychologist and I get impatient with trying to be too psychoanalytical, so for me, it’s all about prayer. I need to just keep praying that God will break off, or prune, those parts of ‘me’ which are not really ‘me’, and that he will facilitate and encourage the growth of those unique parts of me which he yearns to see flower. Each of us has a unique fragrance to bring into this world, the fragrance of Jesus mingled with the fragrance of who we are in Jesus. 

This is a lifetime’s work for me, anyway. I want to live true to myself and true to who Christ made me to be. I want to exercise gifts which reveal the love of the Lord Jesus who lives in me. 

We had some ferocious winds a couple of weeks ago. They ‘burned’ some of the beautiful roses which were opening and even forced some not to open at all, but to remain tightly closed until they finally grew black and withered. I don’t want to allow the winds of experiences, the winds of fears of what others think, the winds of others' expectations of me, or the winds of doubt to freeze the bud I am and prevent me from opening out into the fragrant rose God made me to be. 

The roses I’m referring to are a strain called ‘Buxom Beauty’ because they are so voluptuously large and intoxicatingly fragrant. I want my spirit to be a full-blown buxom beauty, voluptuously large and intoxicatingly fragrant with the perfume of my Lord and King Jesus. 

Don’t you?

At the foot of the Cross

God commands that we have no idols before him, but people and situations which are on our minds and hearts often squeeze him off the throne of our lives and out of focus. 

At the start of this new year, it’s so refreshing to take some time with God and prayerfully picture Jesus on the cross. He hung on that cross out of choice, out of love for you and me and the creation. He could have avoided it. He could have called on his legions of angels, or just spoken a word which would have wiped out his enemies forever. But he didn’t. He allowed his blood to be shed so that it could cleanse, heal and restore all who call on his name and put their trust in him.

As you imagine Jesus on the cross, see yourself, bent over with the burden of the concerns you carry. The people who are close to you. Situations of financial need, health concerns, relationship issues, job insecurities, fears for the future, etc. The list is endless for most of us. One by one, lay each burden at the foot of the cross, and see the blood of Jesus covering those people, those concerns. 

Allow him to restore freedom in your life. Freedom to laugh and rejoice in him. Freedom to entrust all these precious people and serious situations into his loving hands.

And then let him arise again in your heart. He is alive! Invite him to fill you again with his Holy Spirit. And step forward into the world with a spring in your step and a song in your heart, a song of praise to the King.

Let your focus be fixed again on King Jesus, and run the race set before you with perseverance.

That’s my plan for 2013. With his grace I might just manage. Blessings.