What Are You Wearing Today?

Posted by cherikemp on Jul 21, 2010 in Daily Bread | 6 comments

How do you choose what you will wear each day? Does it depend on the weather, your activities, or who you will see that day? Whatever is clean? Sometimes I get up and already know what I will wear. Sometimes I change 3 or 4 times before breakfast. Sometimes I wear old clothes for dirty work, and then there are items in my closet that I have only worn one or two times because they are only for special occasions.

And how do you feel about your wardrobe? Do they make you feel confident, or reveal your insecurities? Do they reflect some body changes lately (pregnancy, weight loss or gain)? Do they fit you and make you look nice, or hide things you don’t want others to see? Do they reflect your personality or profession? Do they draw attention to you, or blend you in? Maybe you even care what you wear.

For most of us, we put some thought each day into how we dress our bodies. This is good. God requires that we clothe our bodies to protect those parts that are humble. Society, the weather, the fullness of our laundry basket, and the events of the day dictate some of our choices. But after much reading that God has put before me lately, He places FAR MORE responsibility on me to properly dress my spirit. Woah. I don’t think I’d ever even considered that since I am body, mind, AND spirit, God requires me to dress ALL of me – body, mind, and spirit. I think this might be what the Matthew 6 passage is talking about. In verses 25-34 Jesus tells us that God will provide what we need to put on our bodies – so don’t worry about that, but more importantly, He wants to clothe our spirits.

He wants to start with removing our grave clothes (John 11:44) and filthy rags (Isaiah 64:6 – I’ll let you take a look at the literal translation of those words on your own), so He can clothe us with salvation (Isaiah 61:10). Then as believers in Jesus, He wants to clothe us with Jesus and His righteousness (Romans 13:14) so that we can learn to glorify God rather than ourselves. As we submit to His love and die to self, the rest of our wardrobe will help us bring glory to God and serve others. God has for us garments of joy (Psalm 30:11), strength and dignity (Proverbs 31:25, Isaiah 52:1), power (Luke 24:49), and humility (1Peter 5:5), just to name a few.

Our clothing choices can reveal the struggles of our spirits. We often put so much effort into our clothes, but do nothing about our hearts and minds. And conversely we can be so weighted by the wounds and insecurities of our spirits, that our clothes simply hide us. Neither does any good for the Kingdom of God – either way, the attention is inwardly or outwardly on self, and serves the desires of our sinful nature. (I’m speaking to me here. If you’re still reading, you’re seeing into my journal.)

So here’s my final question: What if we purposely allowed Jesus to clothe us each day, so that no matter what we put on our bodies, the beauty, righteousness, forgiveness, compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience, and love of Christ eclipsed everything else about ourselves? We would be whole, healed, and able to serve others with abandon because our whole purpose for the day would be to bring glory to God. We’d be free of our burdens because God would be responsible for everything we do and say. We’d be stunning.