Appearances
This takes a top priority with most people. We want others to see us on our best behavior or our good side. We want people to think good things about us. When it comes to being seen, some really make an effort to show off and make a grand entrance. Some want people to notice them, so they have to do some things out of the ordinary to be seen. I heard of a lady who had a lot of pride in wearing new hats; so she would purposely wait and enter the church house when everyone else was seated. That way she would have the attention, and not the preacher.
Whether we realize it or not, the way we dress tells others about us. One might think that someone is just being fashionable by dressing in a provocative manner, but those with minds in the gutter see something very different. While a girl may consider herself stylish, a guy might be seeing someone who is easy to get into bed and have relations with. In our age of alternative lifestyles, a guy might think he is something by showing his six-pak abs on a social media page, and get lots of offers from other men for sexual activity.
This is not really the point of the article about how we dress, which is very important as far as God is concerned. We want to focus upon ourselves and the appearance we make before God. There is a passage in Jeremiah 2:22 that reads: "Although you wash yourself with lye and use much soap, the stain of your iniquity is before me' declares the Lord God". Cleaning the outward does not clean the inward. Jesus made a similar comparison in Matthew 23:25 "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and of the dish, but inside they are full of robbery and self indulgence". And in verse 27, Jesus made the analogy of painting the tombs white and making them pretty, but they are still full of dead men's bones.
The idea that we can appear pretty to others is a top priority for many, yet we are deceiving ourselves by doing so. Remember that it is God that judges us, and everything we are trying to cover up is going to be exposed and made known (Ecclesiastes 12:14). One of the problems of this is selfish pride. We make ourselves look pretty, and we feel good about ourselves, and we become convinced in our own mind that we are alright. Proverbs 16:2 reads: "All the ways of a man are clean in his own sight, but the LORD weighs the motives".
One of the warnings parents always tell their children (if they really care about them) is that appearances are deceiving. This is how most con artists operate. This is how magicians perform their craft. And this is how Satan gets a hold of a soul. This is what happens when Paul spoke of this in Colossians 2:23: "These are matters which have, to be sure, the appearance of wisdom in self-made religion and self-abasement and severe treatment of the body, but are of no value against fleshly indulgence".
Appearances are important to everyone. Perhaps if more people considered how God looked at them, they would change their behavior and appearance to reflect a more godlier lifestyle.
By Carey Scott

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