i realize I have let mundane things of the world get in the way of my relationship with Christ. I am trying to use my God-given talents to praise Him. My vanity encourages me to draw pictures of pretty princesses and Victorian ladies. I like fashion design. I want to draw Queen Esther and other Bible glamor girls.
How does drawing these pictures praise and glorify God, exactly? How is God lifted up by your drawings of "Bible glamor girls"? How do you reconcile doing so with a verse like the following:
1 Timothy 2:9-10
9 likewise also that women should adorn themselves in respectable apparel, with modesty and self-control, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly attire,
10 but with what is proper for women who profess godliness—with good works.
2 Corinthians 5:12-16
12 We are not commending ourselves to you again but giving you cause to boast about us, so that you may be able to answer those who boast about outward appearance and not about what is in the heart.
13 For if we are beside ourselves, it is for God; if we are in our right mind, it is for you.
14 For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died;
15 and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.
16 From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer.
I am trying to illustrate the Bible, which is very difficult! Maybe I could just draw one scene or story. I like movies with fantasy and magic, usually children's movies. I like romance, but I don't have a boyfriend or husband. I like fairytales, folk tales, legends, mythology. But I have discovered the shallow lies that come with vanity and beauty,
I've always loved the fantasy genre. Even now. Sadly, these days, there is nothing worth reading in this genre, taken over as it is by "woke" ideology, "grim-dark" antihero cliches, and values and beliefs fiercely opposed to my Christian worldview.
Anyway, I wonder how, on the one hand, you want to draw "Bible glamor girls" and on the other acknowledge "the shallow lies that come with vanity and beauty." If you understand the latter, why try to do the former? Don't they seem, to you, to be at direct odds with each other?
God created the Earth beautiful. The garden of Eden must have been magnificent, all those fruit trees with flowers on them. Flowers, butterflies, birds, cute little cuddly furry animals, mountains, waterfalls, rainbows, sunsets, beaches, majestic trees, all of these things God created for us to enjoy.
Which are all a reflection of
God Himself, right? All the beauty we see around us in Creation is a manifestation of the beauty
of the Creator. We gotta' be careful not to get so focused on Creation, reveling in its wonder and beauty, that we cease to see the One who made it all.
Why would I be so foolish to go against the Lord when He has done so much for me? My Lord and savior Jesus Christ died on the cross to save me from my sins. Jesus saved me from myself. I draw near to him by praying and reading the Bible. More importantly I think about Bible verses, I meditate on the Bible. The Lord has answered the desires of my heart. I go to him when I am n trouble or just to praise Him.
Well, you may come to know more about God through Bible reading, and you establish a good spiritual practice by praying regularly, but the only way any of us come to know - really know - Him is by taking a place of humble submission all day, every day, before Him (
Romans 6:13-22; 1 Peter 5:6; Micah 6:8). You can read the Bible 'til your eyes fall out of your head, and pray 'til your lips drop off, but if you aren't surrendered to God as a "living sacrifice" throughout each day (
Romans 12:1), your reading and prayer will have little value.
We can only truly walk with God as an inferior, as His vessel, or branch, or bond-slave, not as a near-equal. Yes, we may come "boldly to the throne of grace," but it is always to a THRONE we come, not a table at Starbucks, or a comfy couch in the living room. So long as one thinks to deal with God apart from full submission to Him, one will find oneself resisted by Him. This is because there are only, really, two states in which one may approach God: rebellion or submission. To the one living outside of God's constant, direct control, living unsubmitted to Him, God stands in staunch opposition:
James 4:6-7
6 But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”
7 Submit yourselves therefore to God...
1 Peter 5:5-6
5 Likewise, you who are younger, be subject to the elders. Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another, for “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.”
6 Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you,
You aren't your own, you see, if you're a born-again child of God.
1 Corinthians 6:19-20
19 Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own,
20 for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.
2 Corinthians 5:14-15
14 For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died;
15 and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.
Colossians 3:1-3
1 If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.
2 Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.
3 For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.
God made you for His purposes and until you are living in fulfillment of those purposes, your life will never be what God made it to be. What's more, you can't really know, love and enjoy God when this is so. What a sad state of affairs this is, don't you think?: To miss out on the joy and fulfillment of being what you were made to be, never really knowing the One who made you. Very sad. This doesn't have to be, though. John the Baptist showed us the way to truly walk with God:
John 3:30
30 He must increase, but I must decrease.
