Charm is Deceptive and Beauty Still Is Fleeting
- Whitney Nicole
- May 14, 2023
- 4 min read
Every day my co-laborers gather around the table to first meet with Jesus. Over the past month, we’ve been reading through Proverbs, and it just so happened the day I was thinking of a verse was the day that we read it in the text: “Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting; but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised” (Proverbs 31:30). A girlfriend of mine recently told me that when she sees a repeated message, she calls it a double. For me, they are like highlights from heaven that shout pay attention to that.
This particular verse was on my mind because a sister had the night prior shared some feedback she received from a brother about how easy it is for men to be led astray. A consistent presence. A soothing voice that promises understanding and comfort. Both of which are seemingly missing from his present relationship is how affairs begin he told her. What he didn’t seem to imply was the trap that it truly is. Unfortunately, the man too often believes he is being given a gift when Scripture tells us he is instead inheriting his grave (Proverbs 7).
It is easy to pass judgment on women we believe are the seductresses of our coveted relationships, but how often have we been those women? I was recently convicted while reading Lady in Waiting by Kendall Jones with these words: “And that no man transgress and defraud his brother [sister] in the matter because the Lord is the avenger in all these things…” (1 Thess. 4:6). To defraud is to excite physical or emotional desires that cannot be righteously fulfilled.”
I put myself in the seat of the Seductress when I incite desires in my brothers that I cannot righteously fulfill as his wife. It does not matter if the man is unmarried; if he is not married to me, then I am the woman the king’s mother warns him about: “O my son, O son of my womb, O son of my vows, do not spend your strength on women, your vigor on those who ruin kings” (Proverbs 31:2-3). Ouch. How many kings have I ruined with lust, with smooth talk, with outer beauty void of the inner beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit (1 Peter 3:3-4)?
As a boymom, I think much about the kind of man I desire my son to be. And I think how much I wish to guard his life from the things that ensnared my own. Relationships and sexual thoughts and acts have great power to damage not just one life but many, even generations. I want to model for my son through my relationships and standards how he is to treat women and how he is to protect her even from herself and himself when desires that long to be fulfilled by any means necessary rise up.
This is so countercultural. Women are paraded as objects of pleasure, and our little girls are growing up wishing to be one. I’m grateful for the women in my life who are showing me a different way. A man once told me that I was beautiful inside and out; and that I didn’t realize how rare that was. Now he and I can look at my life and certainly see marring. But I think we both knew why any beauty existed within me at all - it is because of Jesus.
I remember I was only a day into a fast to reset my mind on God, and I happened upon two gentlemen at the edge of my driveway. It didn’t take long for words to be exchanged between us, and one of the men immediately said this to me: “You have the Spirit of God on your face.” He talked about how the presence of God was evident upon me and began quoting from 1 Peter 3 about how my adornment should not be that of my outer appearance but of God.
That had been a divine appointment from heaven. Earlier, I had went to CVS only for them to tell me that my medicine was not yet ready; it was one I truly needed to begin that day due to a cold. I was already over halfway home when they called and said it was prepared. Can you see the annoyance on my face? I asked what time they closed and said I’d just return later. It was upon my departure and return that I encountered Mr. Joseph, and he had given me a word my soul needed to hear.
I was wrestling over how I had not perfectly been an example of a godly woman in the life of a brother. Yet with just a turn of my heart back to Jesus, it was evident that I had been with Him to a complete stranger. My dear sisters (and brothers), wherever you are on the path of life – steadfast, drifting, or completely out to sea, there is a Lifeguard willing to bring you back to shore and Captain capable of navigating you in the right direction again. Be a woman who helps to nurture kings. Be a man who is one. Do so by setting your affections on the only good and wise King.
Below are a few messages that have brought conviction and encouragement to me throughout my second season of singleness. I want to be the kind of woman for which men will say “she did not try to point me to herself and to her body, but she tried to point me to her God.”
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