Clean, Tone, Moisturize

There are 3 basic steps every woman should observe when it comes to beauty, the building blocks that create the healthy skin needed before any beauty products go on the face. These are clean, tone and moisturize.

To do these things step by step, first you start by cleaning, washing away old layers of beauty products, dirt, oil, and the yucky stuff of daily life that clings to you.

Then, with clean pores and fresh face, toning tightens those pores back down, preventing new polution from too easily settling in and infecting those freshly cleaned places of vunerability.

And finally you follow these steps with a refreshing moisturizer, preferably oil-free especially for young skin, that will help your thirsty face drink in healthy nurishment. It may seem strange to moisturize your face when you have just stripped away your own natural oils, but suprisingly moisturizing actually will help keep your face from a vicious cycle of overproduction of your own pore-clogging oil. Left to tackle the dried out skin on it's own, your face will actually do itself more harm than good in oil production. Sun protection with your moisturizer offers you even more protection against the attack of the emements against your skin!

Believe it or not these same three steps can be applied to our quest for inner beauty. First we must come before God with all the yucky stuff in our life, our unkind thoughts, our unkind actions, our failures of all kinds, and ask His forgiveness. His Son, Jesus Christ is the only perfect person in all history, yet He died a criminal's death to pay the consequences for every wrong I will ever do. By admitting to God that I know I've messed up in life and asking His forgiveness, I am forgiven and made "clean" on the inside, forever!

While His forgiveness in forever I will unfortunately continue to blow it in life, making mistake after mistake. Since forgiveness does not make me perfect in the way I live my life, I need to continue to go to Him and admit to Him when I have made wrong choices. Just as my face feels freed from the grime of life and refreshed with soap and water, confessing to God my failures makes me feel freed and cleaned within too.

As I get to know God and ask Him for wisdom each day to live my life, He will put a greater and greater desire with in me to make better choices. This is much like the toning stage of beauty. The Bible tells me to " put on the full armor of God" every day to protect myself from those things that try to make me "dirty" again. I do this by seeking truthfulnees, righteousness (living a right life for God), remebering the love of God that would allow Him to take the punishment I deserve, and seeking to spend time with God daily.

If I have my "pores tightened down" to keep yucky stuff out, I also need to be "moisturizing" to put good stuff in so that I'm not messing things up more by trying to do it all on my own. How can I "moisturize" my heart? Jesus, who not only died to pay the price for the worst things I could ever do, but who also has power over death and lives again now and forever, calls Himself the "Living Water"! I can't think of any better "moisturizer" than that!!! To apply this kind of protection to my heart, I need to spend as much time with God as I can both talking to Him and listening to what He wants to say back to me.

What girl doesn't love to read a love letter? That's really what the Bible is, God's love letter to us, explaining just what Jesus did, why He did it, and the amazing love that would take all my dirt and make me His beautiful bride. I listen to what God wants to tell me by reading His Word, the Bible. Prayer is simply talking with God and sharing my heart with Him too. This is the best kind of beauty I could ever hope for!