Episode #34 – Beautiful Layers

Transcript:

Welcome to Soulish Femme. Soulish Femme is a channel solely dedicated for you where I help focus in prospering body, spirit and soul. Life is a journey and I am glad that you can be a part of mine. As you explore my vlogs and my real talk episodes, I hope you will find inspirations and motivation you are looking for. Remember that life is not going to wait around for you. Therefore, live a life with intentionality and curate the life you’ve always dreamed of. As much as I love to share about my faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, I also would like to showcase my passions in life such as food, travel, fashion, beauty, and many more. To truly be free from the shackles of the systems limitation, you must decide once and for all to live unapologetically and live a life that makes you feel alive and rejuvenated every single day. Perhaps I am a hopelessly romantic person, but I truly believe we are meant to enjoy the wonders and the magnificent beauty the world has to offer. If you are ready to embark on your healing journey from traumatic experiences, feel free to check the link below to enroll in this course through Udemy. I will see you there. Thank you.

Hi everyone! Welcome back to another podcast. Welcome to my channel. My name is Glennavelle Manarang. Today’s topic is about Beautiful Layers. This is from my old journal and I’m going to read. There is really no author’s name. So, I’m going to just read what it says,

“The art of a painting lies not in what you see, but in the process that has gone into making it what it has become. Usually, a painting begins with inspiration, an idea or emotion that wants to be expressed. It proceeds with sketching, color, texture, and variations in between. A painter rarely produces exactly what they originally pictured. Our life with God can be like a painting. It begins with our faith. Our belief in Jesus sets up our canvas. But the scriptures call us to add to the depth of our faith by applying colors of goodness, knowledge, and self-control. The beauty emerges as we add perseverance, godliness, affection, and love. These things take time to develop. They can involve mistakes, and they can end up making us look very different than how we started. Jesus has begun a good work in you. Have faith in his saving grace. Make the effort to become more beautiful by applying goodness, perseverance, and love to your life.”

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Yes, we are beautifully messy people. We have lots of layers and this is how God truly stripped us off of those layers. Many people that do not understand spirituality, they will not understand that you are not just a onedimension person. You are multi-dimensional. You are not just a mother. You are not just a wife. You are not just your profession. You are more than meets the eye. When you have beautifully been curated in the eyes of God, you are molded. You’re going to be broken into pieces, purified and forged in the fire that it will come out out of you either lots of fragility, brokenness and life is part of it. And that’s exactly what it says that when you’re broken down and you are stripped up of your old identity, it’s going to be uncomfortable when it comes to knowing who you are. You are going to have this new chapters in your life written for you by the creator.

Before I became a Christian, I was a messy, broken, wounded, lost person who was going through the motion, living like the world, living for the world. I was not happy. It looks like I was happy on the outside, but I was actually depressed and wanted to harm myself most of the nights that I spent in my bedroom. This is why when this book says you are just a canvas being painted and the scripture calls us to add the depth of our faith by applying colors of goodness, knowledge and self-control. Apart from the Lord Jesus Christ, you could never be good. The only reason why you are good because God makes you good. The reason why you have self-control because Jesus said, “Apart from me, you could never bear fruit.” A fruit of love, self-control, control, goodness, patience, longsuffering. These are the fruit manifestations of the living God that is living inside of you.

Without him, you cannot possibly live a life according to God’s principle because you are a human being that is still from Adam and Eve. We have two personalities or two personas that we’re going to embody. The first one is from coming from Adam and Eve. The first version of you before you become saved, you are actually going to live like the world. You’re going to please your flesh. You’re going to indulge into the lustful ways of your flesh. You are blinded. That’s why Jesus said they don’t know because their eyes are not open. They have ears, but they do not hear because God has not opened their eyes and their ears. And when you are not converted to Christianity, does it mean that you have to say that I have to drop everything off? You cannot really be converted without repentance.

Repentance is turning away from your wicked ways. It is about the mindset. Romans 12:2, it says, “Be not conformed into this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” The majority of people think just because they’re a Christian that they don’t have to change their mindset. How many Christians are living in bondage today and they go to church, they do the right thing, they pray and they read their Bible, but nothing is changing in their life because they have not shift their mindset. They haven’t changed the way that they think about themselves. And our thoughts are what determines our action. Our thoughts is what determines our behavior. Our thoughts and what we ponder constantly is what make us who we are.

This is why it’s all about the renewing of the mind. Set your mind on the things that are above, not on the things of below. As I said before and as I promised that I will continue on this podcast talking about the mind, our speech and our heart. And this is the segue of what I said earlier that our speech matters. And right now I want to talk about our thoughts. What you think about yourself and about people truly comes from your belief system. without the renewal of your mind by revealing to you how God sees you and how God loves you so much. No matter what you do, whether you’re praying and you’re just going through the motion, if it doesn’t seep through your bones, if it doesn’t really resonate within your soul, with within your core, then you cannot change it and you are really a masterpiece. Not perfect yet, you are still are able to be molded. You are clay. God is the potter. You are not done.

When Jesus said, “I will finish what I have started until I come back.” You are still an unfinished masterpiece. You are still unfinished sculpture who has to be chiseled. And part of growing in faith is that God wants us to be able to grow maturity. He wants us to grow up in our head. He wants us to be able to separate the childishness proclivity and to become mature. Not drinking milk anymore, but being able to teach others and living our lives by example in our conduct, in our words, in our lifestyle. Because Christianity is not only on Sundays. Christianity is not only when you put it on for the world to see and you put it out when no one is looking. Actually, Christianity is not also a religion.

Although people may call it a religion, but it is a lifestyle. That’s why Paul said when you become a newb born again Christian, the new things has begun. The old things has passed. Beautiful layers is because when you really know that Christianity is about re reconstructing the very essence of you that were wicked. It is about you illuminated by the Holy Spirit that your ways were crooked. That you were actually doing the bidding for Satan. That you were drinking the cup of the darkness. Christianity is opening your eyes. When Paul, before he became Paul, he was soul. Remember what he was doing? Chasing after Christians, persecuting many Christians. And when he encountered the Lord on his way to Damascus, God illuminated him.

First of all, he was blinded for three days. And then God opened his eyes after three days because God strip off the scales out of his eyes for him to see that he was actually wicked. Unless you have a reflection of who God is in your life and knowing who Christ is in your life, you are not going to know that you’re wicked. A person that is dead, spiritually dead, is not aware that he is sinning against God. A person who doesn’t have the spirit of God is unaware that it’s actually walking in the dictates of the world. The world is going to do sensuality, sexual perversion, me, myself, and I. It’s about pride. It’s about the indulgences of the flesh.

That’s why John said, “You cannot be a friend of God and a friend of the world. for the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life is part of the world. When you’re always prideful and lustful, covetousness is another term for lust. It’s about wanting to have what others have. And when you are actually allowing the spirit of God to break you and allowing him to expose to you the sinful ways that you have been doing, God is going to tell you that you are going to just give it up. You cannot have two masters. You either love the other or hate the other. When you are actually loving the world, you cannot possibly love God because your affection is divided and your loyalty is divided. That’s why Jesus said you cannot you cannot love mammon and God at the same time.

And when you are beautifully layered, there’s going to be pieces of you that God is going to say you have to let it go. For instance, I used to be addicted to porn because I was introduced to porn by this person that I was dating a long time ago and he was into that and I got sucked into it. And when God told me that you have to cut it out and let it go, it wasn’t my own strength. There were so many battles of course because once you keep doing it, it becomes an addiction. The same thing with shopping. Too much shopping and consumption. You become addicted to the point where even if you have no money in the bank, you think that by purchasing an item time and time again, it makes you happy. But actually, it was my own crutch.

The only reason why I was picking on my hair because I was actually dealing with depression and insecurity that I was picking on my hair because I was looking for meaning in life and I was trying to satiate the starvation and the chasm of my soul that only Jesus said I am the only one who can fill the chasm and the void in your heart which is the spirit of God the fountain of living water. He is the mana from heaven. That’s why many people go through addictions and substance abuse because they try to feel the they try to fill the empty void that is missing in their heart. And when you are not willing to be broken, you’re going to be just stuck in that mindset of victimhood mindset.

That’s why many people cannot shake off of their victim mentality. They point the finger. They don’t take accountability. They always have the self-pity party and they always say, “Woe is me. No one is helping me. Therefore, I’m just going to be stuck here. And that’s exactly where Satan loves to feed off to those kind of people. When people always try to say, “I have never changed.” It’s not because God is not helping them. It’s because they don’t they’re not willing to help themselves. God cannot help you unless you are willing to help yourself. God shows up to those people who are willing to make any changes in their life. God cannot force you because he is a God who doesn’t force anybody. He gives us the freedom, the free will to choose whether or not to obey and to follow him.

And this is why body, spirit, and soul is you cannot separate the three where I always like to emphasize on my channel because if you are not healthy, your vessel, your body is a temple of God, God cannot use you. And if you’re also still wounded from your past, your soul, if you have not changed your mindset and the way you feel and think about yourself, then God can also use you. Because if people come on into your life and you’re not ready physically, emotionally, and mentally, then you’re just going to crumble under pressure. Then God knows that you are not ready for that kind of perhaps uh power or influence. And that is why in the darkness, in the wilderness, this is where God breaks us.

This is where God chisel us. This is where God is going to strip us off of our pride. He exposes our darkness. He actually enlighten to us what needs to be done in the darkness or in the wilderness. This is where God gives us the idea that you have a mother wounds. You have a father wounds. You have to deal with your trauma as a child. And when God used you, he is not going to just tell you to just go ahead because majority of people are going to give you the what is it called? The title. And they can most likely drag you back down to where you come from. When God uses you, just look at the Bible. Look at Joseph’s life before he was before he became the second to Pharaoh. Before he became the governor to the Egyptians from the Egyptian he was actually thrown into jail.

He was falsely accused. He was actually been sold to slavery by his own brother but he was 17 years old when God had given him that vision that his family is going to bow down to him. He’s going to be a ruler someday because God was testing his character. The same thing with David who was haunted by also Saul. The king Saul because he was also tested with God’s faithfulness and he was also tested whether or not he’s going to be faithful in times of struggles and trials that even if he did not do anything wrong to Saul. He was also accused and because of Saul’s jealousy when women the ladies were singing you know Saul only killed a thousand but yet David killed 10,000. Saul was aroused by his insecurity and therefore he was threatened by the power of David. But God was actually stripping him off of that layer that someday when David becomes a king, how he would he treat other people? Would he treat the same way what Saul did?

And when we are actually being used by God in his kingdom someday, he’s going to do the same thing for us. He’s going to strip us down of our pride. He’s going to expose every darkness of our hearts. Because the reason why Jesus chosen the fishermen, uneducated people, unwise, they were not in the they don’t have the pedigree. They don’t have the right etiquette. They didn’t come from the right neighborhood. They didn’t have the right education because Jesus perceived that if he would have used the most wise people in his day, if he would have used the most educated people in this world, there will always have going to be debate. Unfortunately, it’s the truth that the more educated you become, the more most likely you are going to not recognize God. And some people are atheist or agnostic.

The fact that you’re educated or you have so much money because money is their god. Not all, but majority of people who have the influence, who are financially savvy, who are actually educated and wise, they usually do not understand who God is and they refuse to believe in God. And they think that God is just a figment of your imagination. And that is why Jesus had chosen the least the fisherman’s and not the you know lawyers or not the most educated people not the scholars in his day because when you are being stripped of God he actually wants to be able to use you as a teachable person. Do you have a teachable heart? Are you willing to obey him? Are you willing to relinquish all of your rights? Are you willing to relinquish your identity? Are you able to relinquish your own perception of what the world gives you, the title of the world?

And when you’re being stripped of of your layer, you become beautiful because at the end of it all, God wants to see your heart, not just your outside appearance. God said, I am after the person’s heart. I do not I do not um go after the first appearance. I am not impressed by the appearance. I am after the heart that is broken and a contrite heart. And the same thing with a particle son. If you are truly become a weward son and daughters of God, you have se separated yourself from God. You run away from God because you thought that God is just a joke and I am going to renounce his Christianity. And it’s a beautiful illustration of the prodigal son where he decided to ask his father’s money inheritance and the father just give it to him. And also, as I said, God is not going to force you to stay. And that’s why I really think that he allows us to make mistakes. He allows us to make a fool out of ourselves.

Like the prodigal son, the father was so loving that he gave a part of his inheritance to his child when he asked for it because he wants him to figure out about the world. And the beautiful thing about God is he allows us to make mistakes. He allows us to make the wrong choices to make the wrong steps so that we can come into our senses hopefully like the particle son saying to himself what am I doing here eating with the hogs pen uh my father is rich he is abundantly so much food on his table he has servants and here I am at my lowest point eating with bunch of swines because sometimes God would allow us to eat with the pigs he allows us to eat with the swines which is the filthiness of of the world.

The world couldn’t really offer value and beauty. Look at the world around you. What do they offer really? Filthiness, perversion, confusion, sexual immorality, promiscuity, godliness, lawlessness, and without peace, without love, this is what the world offers. It’s actually a counterfeit offer. It looks very appealing on the eyes, but once you have experienced and tasted it, it is nothing compared of what really God offers. And so when the particle son decided to depart from his father and he ventured into the world and he thought he could have found a better way of living until to the point where he found himself uh strip up of his money. He lost everything because he squandered every penny he had and he ended up eating with a the swine. Nobody ped him. Nobody gave him the food.

And so he actually remembered who he was. And when he remembered who he was and whose he was, he decided to dust off his feet and he said to himself, I will just go back to my father’s house. And that’s what you call repentance. Repentance is realizing that you have actually sinned against God and you know of your own mistakes that you’re actually not going to do anything without God. You cannot do life without the creator of the universe, without his guidance. And so when the prodigal son decided to go back to his father, he said, “I sinned against you before heaven and earth and I have actually apologized for the things I have done.” Now, he didn’t say, “I’m going to be your son again and take me back.” He did not come as a pompous man who was entitled. He actually said, “Father, I would like to be your servant for the rest of your life.”

And the father of course had embraced him and took him in because of his humility. And many people think that when you are being humbled by God, it it actually going to break you down. He wants to make you aware that your pride is not going to help you change. That’s why people who are not willing to change because they’re not ready to change. If they’re not willing to change themselves, God cannot do anything for you. As I said, you cannot fix a broken person unless they’re willing to fix themselves. You have to come down to that awareness that there’s nothing much that God can do for you unless you are ready for it. You cannot fix a broken man. You cannot fix a broken woman. It doesn’t matter how many people are going to tell you you have to change. If they’re not ready, if they’re not willing to change, they’re not going to do it.

The same thing with me when somebody told me, “Get out of that relationship because he’s no good for you. He is abusive. He’s going to be the death of you.” It doesn’t matter how many warnings or how many advice I have received from my family, my friends. I did not listen because why? I was stubborn. I was prideful. I didn’t listen to them because I was not yet ready. So the same thing with people who are not humble enough and they’re not willing to change because they’re not ready yet. Then no matter what God tells you, doesn’t matter. Even if the father would say stop and you know you’re making the biggest mistake of your life, venturing into the world that you have not yet been into. You are uh going into uncharted territory.

You’re making a biggest mistake of your life. The father could have stopped the son by going out into the world, but he didn’t. He allows him to make mistakes. He allows him to find what he was looking for until one day a famine strike and disaster actually found him in the deepest in the lowest he found himself in the lowest uh position and that exactly what happened. He came into his senses and he repented and he turned around and he humbled himself saying I will be a servant. But the beautiful thing about God is he forgives us because he knows that we are flaws until the time that we humble ourselves. And that’s why God said, “I resist the proud and give grace to the humble.” And so the father gave grace to his son and he throw him this big banquet, a celebration because once he was alive, now he’s dead. Now he’s alive. He was lost and now he was found. And that’s what you call beautiful layers.

There’s a layer of us that is stubborn. There’s a layer of us that is disobedient. There’s a layer of us that is rebellious towards God. There’s a layer of us that is sinful nature that’s crooked. Our layers because of what Adam and Eve did. They were our first parents who have violated the very law that God said, “Thou shalt not eat of this tree of good and evil.” And they have eaten it. And that is why many of us are still paying for the consequences of the wrong choices. Our layers are broken. Our layers are guilt and full of shame and wretchedness. And that is why Jesus had to offer himself on the cross so that he could pay our sins that we couldn’t pay. Because no matter what we do, it’s never good enough for God. We are all filthy. We are all wretched in the eyes of God. We are all impure.

We have been born as a sinful nature from our mother’s womb. And that’s why when Jesus said, “I have been I pay the price. It is finished.” He meant that he he is the greatest sacrifice. A man who knew no sin became sin. Jesus was a man who was a perfect man who lived no sin. He is the son of God that was crucified on the cross to pay the penalty of the sins of the world. And that is why God is not after our own happiness. God is after our own uh faith. He wants us to mature in our faith. He wants us to become resilient, immovable, and be able to finish the race. Well, God is not only after our comfort. When you’re comfortable with your sin, that’s why people become callous and they are seared with their conscience because you’re comfortable with your sin. You are no longer willing to change and accept the fact that you are a person that is broken and wounded and you are just going to justify your bad behavior.

And that’s why people they haven’t changed because they have not changed their mindset or they have not humbled themselves before God and allowed God to strip them off of their sinful nature. It is uncomfortable when God is going to break you. It is not comfortable. Our flesh hates it. Our flesh despises it. Nobody likes to be chiseled. Nobody likes to be purged. Nobody likes to be purified because it is uncomfortable. That’s why if you would like to grow up in the head, if you want to mature, suffering is going to be part of it. And you have to be able to understand that at the end of it all, it benefits you. It doesn’t really benefit anybody else but yourself. Because after the purging, after the purification, then you are actually a better person than you were before.

And that’s exactly how God says that a tree that is good produces good fruit. A tree that is bad, it produces bad fruit. You will know them by their fruit. And if you look at your life, what are the fruit that you are producing? Are they good fruit? Are they fruit that is making a difference in people’s lives? Or are you a person that is a bad fruit that you know the abundance of the heart the mouth speak and whatever you come out of your mouth that is exactly what you have been pondering about that’s what I always say the mouth is something that God is going to judge us with it is not so much about the food that we eat but it’s actually the mouth that comes out of our mouth that Jesus said I will bring into judgment whatever you’ve been spoken in the dark and spoken in the light and I know because my tongue is what makes me trips me off. My tongue is the very thing that God is using and also the thing that Satan is tripping me off of making me stumble.

And that that’s why the tongue is unruly. It’s a beast. No one can tame it. Only the spirit of God could. And so when you are beautifully being stripped of of your nature is because God wants to translate you and transform you from a caterpillar into this butterfly. It is a metamorphosis. It is a changing of your old nature into the nature of someone that is uh valuable and beautiful in the eyes of God. And when I have found out who I was in the image of God, my whole identity have shifted. My way of thinking about myself has shifted. And this is why it’s important, as I always like to inunciate or reiterate on my channel, without vertically aligning yourself with the creator, you cannot love yourself. There’s no way for you to deeply know how God loves you so much because think of yourself as a computer or a laptop. You go back to the manufacturer.

If for some odd reason something happened into your laptop, you go to the manufacturer because they’re the one who designed it and they know better of how to fix that motherboard or some pieces of that computer that you have broken. And the same thing with us. The person or the spirit that can help you better know who you are and really understand your complexity is the creator. He is the one who made you. He’s the one who knows exactly who you are. You were created and wonderfully created intrinsically been crafted in your mother’s womb before the world knew you. God already knows who you are. And if you are just looking around for people to fix you, you are just looking for disappointment because people are broken themselves.

They cannot fix someone who is also broken who are also damaged. Many people are damaged. We are all damaged goods. When we came into this world, we’re imperfect people and we need a savior to fix us all up because we are all messed up in the first place. We’re all broken. Just look around you. Your family is never perfect. Your friendships are never perfect. There’s no such thing as perfection. But the moment you have got a hold of that master, the savior of the world, the savior of your soul, your life has never been the same. At least my life has never been the same. The moment I became a Christian, I was slowly being introduced to who God is and how God loves you.