Lisa Bevere - Its Not How You Look, Its What You See: Change Your Perspective—Change Your Life

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ITS NOT HOW YOU LOOK, ITS WHAT YOU SEE by Lisa Bevere
Published by Charisma House
Charisma Media/Charisma House Book Group
600 Rinehart Road
Lake Mary, Florida 32746
www.charismahouse.com

This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in a retrievalsystem, or transmitted in any form by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopy,recording, or otherwisewithout prior written permission of the publisher, exceptas provided by United States of America copyright law.

Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, NewInternational Version, NIV. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.comThe NIV and New International Version are trademarks registered in the UnitedStates Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.

Scripture quotations marked AMP are from the Amplified Bible. Copyright 1954, 1958,1962, 1964, 1965, 1987 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.

Scripture quotations marked KJV are from the King James Version of the Bible.

Scripture quotations marked NKJV are taken from the New King James Version. Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked NLT are from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation,copyright 1996, 2004, 2007. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.,Wheaton, IL 60189. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked RHM are from The Emphasized Bible: A New Translationby Joseph Bryant Rotherhan, copyright 1959, 1994. Used by permission of KregelPublications, Grand Rapids, MI.

Scripture quotations marked TLB are from The Living Bible.
Copyright 1971. Usedby permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, IL 60189. All rights reserved.

Copyright 2014 by Lisa Bevere
All rights reserved

Cover design by Lisa Rae Cox, Justin Evans, Allan Nygren
Design Director: JustinEvans

Visit the authors website at www.messengerinternational.org.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bevere, Lisa.

Its not how you look, its what you see / by Lisa Bevere.
pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-62998-030-0 (trade paper : alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-62998-198-7 (e-book: alk. paper)

1. Christian womenReligious life. 2. Body image in womenReligious aspectsChristianity.I. Title.

BV4527.B4944 2014

248.843dc23

2014024969

Portions of this book were previously published as The True Measure of a Woman byCharisma House, ISBN 978-1-59979-150-0, copyright 1997, 2007 and You Are Not WhatYou Weigh by Charisma House, ISBN 978-1-59979-075-6, copyright 1998, 2007.

What do you see with your eyes closed? Do you see dreams and hopes, or do you seenightmares and failures?

As Ive journeyed through life, Ive proved this truth: what you see with an openheart is far more important than what you see with open eyes.

We are in a day and age when an inordinate amount of significance is placed on howpeople look and with whom they are seen. Both of these are fleeting, fickle dynamicsdestined to shift in our ever-changing world. I have penned this book in the hopeof anchoring you to the hope of the unseen eternal.

You are more than what you see, what youve done, or who youve known. You are destinedfor the unseen realm that far outweighs all that you could imagine!

LISA BEVERE

CONTENTS

Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective,not the truth.

MARCUS AURELIUS

D O YOU KNOW that how you see is far more important than how you look? I do, andyet for me, walking this out is a dance of daily recalibration. You see, rearrangingthe furniture of my life or altering my physical appearance is so much easier thandaily lifting my sight.

Appearance is how you and I are seen or perceived by others. As much as we have thefreedom to change the way we look, we have little to almost no control over how otherschoose to see us.

No matter how attractive, well-positioned, or social media savvy you are, someoneis going to choose to dislike you. Regardless of how good your intentions are infamily, work, or fashion, someone will find a reason to misread or misinterpret.The truth is, misunderstanding will happen more readily than understanding. It isfrustrating but true.

You cant control how you are seen, but you can choose how you see. While my appearanceis how my world sees me, how I see becomes my vantage point on my world. Looks areabout being seen. But more than being seen, our world needs you to see. It needsyou to open wide your eyes.

Perspective has the power to distort or enhance, dismiss or embrace.

Not long ago, at the start of a new year, I wrote a blog post about fasting thatfeatured some of the concepts in this bookonly to be shocked by the response. Iopened with this statement:

A diet changes the way you look. A fast changes the way you see.

To say this concept resonated would be an understatement. It became glaringly apparentthat people were tired of simply looks and looking; they were desperate to see. Belowis an excerpt of the blog post that accompanied this statement.

Perhaps you feel a bit like me: holiday hung-over from a bit too much of a bit toomuch. I look like I need to give birth to a Christmas food baby. Good thing itsJanuary, right? Its time for that annual fast and some serious New Year resolutions.

But wait. What if instead of a diet/fast combo I really pressed into a bit more?Rather than simply changing how I look, I want to change how I see.

I truly sense that the year before us will require a heightened sense of sight. Wewill need greater vision to see us through. Rather than allowing the cross that loomedbefore Him to fill His eyes, Jesus saw through the cross to the joy set before Him(see Hebrews 12:2). How about you?

Are there some areas you need to see through?

Are you tired of being limited to howyou look?

Are you ready to be released by what you see?

I certainly hope so. Your family, your friends, and this world need you to connectwith a larger vision than what youve seen.

My sense of our need for renewed sight has carried long past the day I wrote thatblog post. That is why I felt it was time to delve a bit deeper and revise and updatesomething that had already been written.

I wrote the book You Are Not What You Weigh more than a decade ago, and as time haspassed, I have met women who have found liberty as Gods Word brought light intoformerly shadowed realms. Women who were once captive to an eating disorder are nowstrong and free. For some, the release was nearly immediate. In a short span of daysthey saw everything differently and were able to move into the largeness of a newlife. (That is the power of what you see!)

As I revisit the words I wrote years ago, it is my desire that the same kind of encounterwith truth will set you free from any captivity of vision. What formerly addressedissues of body image and weight has grown into a larger story about how you see.It is my earnest prayer that these pages will unlock your sight and lift your vision.

RENEWED SIGHT

When I first started wearing glasses, I argued with the optometrist, These are toostrong! I can see