The Cart before the Horse

This process of becoming is not an overnight thing. It takes time because it's a heart thing. When we come into our walk with the Lord sometimes there's this eagerness to become what our ideal of this 'perfect being' is. Sometimes this pursuit can lend us to focus on changing the outer aspects of who we are whilst we neglect the inner work. This is not a from the outside in thing, this is from the inside out. This process involves the Lord cleansing our hearts of things that are not like Him, Him healing us and causing our thoughts to align with His word and Him giving us His desires in exchange for our own. As a result of that work, there becomes and outer manifestation of the change within. You began to see the difference. What I liked and what appealed to me as it relates to my appearance at one time no longer does. This is something that changes from day to day, year to year. It doesn't begin this way, however, it's ending is one where we reflect His image inside and out. A statement I heard years ago, "You can take a hooker off the street and change her clothes. She is still a hooker. However, if her mind is renewed she becomes a new woman." Changing someone’s surroundings or outward appearance doesn’t change their identity. Real change, true transformation begins with a renewed mind.

^{2 Corinthians 3:16-18 (AMP)}

¹⁶ but whenever a person turns [in repentance and faith] to the Lord, the veil is taken away. ¹⁷ Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty [emancipation from bondage, true freedom]. ¹⁸ And we all, with unveiled face, continually seeing as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are progressively being transformed into His image from [one degree of] glory to [even more] glory, which comes from the Lord, [who is] the Spirit.