We are told to dress for success. A successful business person wears a business suit with a button-down collar, creased slacks, and patent-leather shoes. A matching attaché completes the ensemble. Casual Friday? Not on your life! This is business, and we have to play the part. There is money to be made.
In addition, what about client soirees? Fancy dinners to celebrate the deal done well, to claim victory over the cash cow of our financial fiefdom regained? To gather to crow our success to each other and the world? After all, our evening of celebration will be seen on the society pages, broadcast to the world, and tweeted to every Twitter aficionado on the planet.
We want to look our best, so we adorn ourselves with pearls, diamonds, and high heels. We must dress for success!
How do we dress for success with God?
1 Timothy 2:8-10 in The Message translation tells us:
“Since prayer is at the bottom of all this, what I want mostly is for men to pray—not shaking angry fists at enemies but raising holy hands to God. And I want women to get in there with the men in humility before God, not primping before a mirror or chasing the latest fashions but doing something beautiful for God and becoming beautiful doing it.”
We should dress in prayer. When we do beautiful things for God, we will become beautiful in the process. Then people will see our Christian actions and not the pearls we wear.
What will our prayer clothes look like?
Pearls. Diamonds. High heels.
How is that again?
Let’s look at what the Scriptures say.
2 Timothy 3:16 tells us:
“All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness”
A pearl is no more than a nugget of sand surrounded by repeated layers of the oyster’s touch. It’s the application of the oyster’s time and energy that makes the pearl shine.
At the center of all we believe are the Scriptures. It is through teaching, reproof, correction, and training that his Word shines its beauty to the world.
Acts 10:34 quotes truth as voiced by Peter:
“So Peter opened his mouth and said: ‘Truly I understand that God shows no partiality…’ ”
A diamond cuts everything. Diamond-coated saw blades slice through steel and concrete. A diamond doesn’t say, This I will cut, but this I won’t. It slices through them all.
So it is with God. When we wear God, he slices the world from us, and we walk in his purity and love.
Galatians 5:16 says:
“But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.”
High heels elevate us above the pavement, and we stand taller than in our bare feet. Also, we keep our feet clean.
The Spirit elevates us above the world, and we stand proudly on the Word of Christ. Also, we keep our lives free from sin.
When we come before God, we will sparkle and shine. We will glitter with the pearls, diamonds, and high heels that show our devotion to him. We will give our time to his Word, slice away everything of the world, and stand taller and purer than those who walk in the ways of the world.
We will be dressed for success in him!
Dressing for success in Christ means putting on his attributes so that we may shine to the world.
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