Warm weather is here. It was nice to sit out on the back porch for a while last evening and do a little reading. But with the coming on of warm weather is also the coming off of clothes for many of the young (and not so young) gals. I was reminded that summer is pretty nigh here as I was out running errands. Sometimes it's just plain difficult to try to pay at the check-out counter when you don't want to look below their chin level. We have very little modesty left in our current culture, very little embarrassment of what is showing, very little awareness that just maybe other people don't really want to see what's being displayed.
The sad thing is that it's not just in the marketplace, it's in the church pew as well. Sometimes I pick where I sit based on the exposure in my field of vision. It ought not to be this way. Church, especially, ought to be a place where our Christian brothers don't have to face these temptations.
Modest dress is the outward expression of a modest heart, as we're told in I Timothy 2:9-10:
"... 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, but with what is proper for women who profess godliness--with good works."Heart attitudes are revealed in what we wear because behind what we wear is the why of what we wear. What we are wearing or not wearing, displaying or not displaying, emphasizing or not emphasizing, is an expression of our heart.
Some would say, "I'll wear whatever I please." That's the point--it's all about me. Have they considered the people who have to look at them? Probably not with that attitude. Some would say, "I just think this outfit is cute." Naivety wrecks many a gal. Some would say, "I like to make the guys look." In fact, lust is posh and pushed by the culture. People are topsy-turvy confused, and immorality is rampant as result.
But for a follower of Christ, it's different--if the heart is in tune with His word. We're told that modesty "is proper for women who profess godliness." We make the gospel believable when how we dress reflects inward godliness. This is a profession of our faith. This is how people are convinced that what we say we believe is reality. This is the beauty of a modest heart.
A woman's greatest loveliness comes through a modest heart, and a modest heart expresses itself in modest behavior, modest dress, modest reactions, and modest attitudes. ~ Nancy Leigh DeMossNancy spent a few days on this subject on Revive Our Hearts. If you'd like to listen in, just click the image below. She'd love to have you drop in.
