Find a balance - why do you wear what you wear?

I was thinking today about the way I dress, and why I sometimes put in more effort. What I decided was that it is important for us to find a balance in how and why we dress the way we do. 

It says in the bible that we are God's temple. It says in 1 Corinthians 6:19, "Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own" To me, this means that we should look after our bodies, not only with what we eat but how we dress. We need to treat our bodies with respect, the same respect we would have towards a temple. If we care about something, we put effort in to make it look good. 

However, in thinking like this I also thought about how the bible says we are "fearfully and wonderfully made" (Psalm 139:14). So should we really feel the need to constantly try and make ourselves look better by covering ourselves with make up and putting on the best clothes? 

I think we need to find a balance. We need to be happy with the way that we look and know and believe in our hearts that we are beautiful and God loves us the way we are without the extra make up and fancy clothes, but at the same time, we need to ensure we have put in enough effort to look like we respect the temple of God that we are.

We don't need to dress up in order to please God or to worship and praise God. In the old testament there are a number of times where people would be fasting and praying, and they simply wore sackcloth. We can see this in Jonah 3:5, 2 Kings 1:1 and Daniel 9:3. We don't need to dress up for God, but by putting in effort, we show others that we respect our bodies. 

For me personally, I know I went through a stage where I was unhappy with the person that I was and I tried to change myself by the way I dressed. Changing the way we dress doesn't change the person we are and people can usually see if you are trying to cover your insecurities about yourself. I'm still working on my own balance but I know that I am on my way to finding it. I don't feel so insecure that I will not leave the house without make up. I know that God made me this way and He thinks I am beautiful, but I will always make sure I look respectful. 

Thankful for: Music

I almost wanted to start quoting lyrics to the Abba song when I wrote that, but I wont. Music is a huge part of my life, it always has been since I was young. Obviously being a dancer, we hear music all the time, and then when I started singing, music became a bigger part of my life. These days I find music helps to express how I'm feeling and what I want to say. There are times where I can just put on one of my favourite praise and worship albums and really just spend some time with God. I can, of course, do that without music, but when I can't put my own words together, the praise and worship music helps me. I also find it nice to be able to sit with my guitar and just quietly worship by myself at home. There is some music that really sends out the wrong message to the world, so I make sure I am picky when listening to it, but all in all, I love music and I'm thankful for it!