Prettiful – Dealing with an Ugly Heart

The heart of a woman is what makes her beautiful. It puts the prettiest women and the most outwardly unattractive women on an even playing field.

Some women are naturally pretty while others have to work harder at outward appearances, but it doesn’t matter how pretty you are, how much make up you put on, how well you dress, or how much stuff you have if you’ve got an ugly heart it will lessen the effects of who you are trying to be. The Bible says, “Smooth words may hide a broken heart, just as a pretty glaze covers a clay pot,” Proverbs 23:26 NLT. The truth is that we all have to deal with our inner-ugliness if we want true beauty.

Dealing with an Ugly Heart

In Part 1 of Prettiful I asked you what ugly things were lodged in your heart.

The reason why I asked that question is because if you don’t deal with the ugly issues of your heart no amount of makeup, cover up, Bible reading, hearing sermons, drinking, smoking, eating, shopping, serving, praying, exercising or whatever form of fix you use it will ever be able change what’s going on in your heart. Even as Christians some things are temporary fixes at best. Let me ask you another question: If you put something clean on top of something dirty, does the dirt go away? The answer is no, it’s just hidden.

If you have ugliness lodged in your heart you need to get before the Lord and deal with it. Until then you will be like a white washed tomb – pretty on the outside and living with the ugliness that Jesus likened to dead men’s bones on the inside.

When I took an honest look at what was going on in my heart I found a lot of ugliness. There were many attitudes and thought patterns left over from my former life, but not only that, there was the date-rape I went through as a teenager, the abortions I had and the feelings I never dealt with, being a teenager mother and having children by different men and my failed marriage was still there. I never took the time to looking into my heart and see what was going on in there. I just kept going on with life. Some things were buried so deep I did not realize they were still there.

Looking the part and being the person are two different things.

It’s funny that even after becoming a Christian I did not allow myself to deal with those issues. They lay dormant in the depths of my heart, covered up with the sinner’s prayer, the blood of Jesus, gifts, service, and a pretty face. I never allowed myself to deal with some of things hat happened to me instead I just buried them. It wasn’t until I began to mature as Christian that I realized that God wanted me to deal with those things because they were still affecting me emotionally. They came seeping out in unnatural behaviors for a Christian. I was skeptical, unforgiving at times, easily angered at times… My pretty face and nice demeanor hid the ugliness of my heart, and it even fooled me for a time.

It wasn’t that the blood of Jesus hadn’t cleansed me nor was it that I was not forgiven upon accepting Christ. Our spirits are born-again when we believe but the heart is all together a different story. It must be renewed according to the Word of Truth. Paul put it this way, “Put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; be made new in the attitude of your minds; and put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness,” Ephesians 4:22-24. 

Before you can truly be beautiful you have to take off your old way of being and thinking and disconnect who you were with who you were now. You are not your past; you are not your pain or the shame that came upon you. and you’re not what you are currently going through.

Beloved, in order unleash the beautiful spirit behind your pretty face is to get into God’s Presence and deal with the ugliness in your heart.