When we disciple others, we want to help them know God deeply and live faithfully according to his Word. That often means helping women navigate various types of struggles. As a biblical counselor, I know that depression, anxiety, anger, and addiction come up in many discipling relationships, and they rightfully grab our concern and care. But there’s another important discipleship topic that we tend to overlook: body image. Here’s why we need to be prepared to discuss it.

Deep Pain Can Lead to Desperate Responses

Body image struggles are deeply personal and painful. Talking about our bodies can take us to some of the most private and shame-filled places in our hearts. The woman you’re discipling might tell you how her parents teased her about her looks or eating habits. She may share the cruel jokes she heard from peers in her childhood. She might recount thoughtless comments by coaches, teachers, or even her husband that still rumble around in her mind.

She may not know how to confront these loud voices with biblical truth. Unaddressed, those messages can become embedded aspects of her worldview that produce shame and guilt when her appearance isn’t a certain way. Self-loathing can be so consuming that it leads to desperate responses like self-harm, eating disorders, or suicide.

Cultural Pressure Is Inevitable

All women face pressures to be attractive. Physical beauty (however it’s defined) is trumpeted as the key to a happy, successful life. But this is a lie. If we don’t confront this deception with biblical truth, the women we disciple will be consumed with meeting our culture’s beauty standards, or they’ll be devastated and ashamed when they don’t.

Body image struggles are deeply personal and painful.

We need to remind women that they’re created in God’s image (Gen. 1:27) and that fullness of joy is found in his presence (Ps. 16:11). We should tell them that nothing can separate us from God’s love (Rom. 8:35)—not extra weight, not a disability, not aging. We can discuss how it’s worth counting everything as loss to know Christ (Phil. 3:8). We can point them to the truth that while people look at the outward appearance, God looks at the heart (1 Sam. 16:7).

The pressures we face about our appearance are inevitable. We will respond—either with biblical truth that combats the lies and leads to peace, joy, and contentment, or with increasingly drastic attempts to conform to cultural expectations.

Our Bodies Belong to God

We should talk about body image in discipleship conversations because our bodies are an important aspect of our worship of God.

Paul urges us, “Present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship” (Rom. 12:1). Worship is the heart-activity of ascribing ultimate worth to something. When we worship God, we’re saying we love, treasure, and value him above all else. How we think about and use our bodies communicates what we think has worth.

When want to change our bodies, it’s because we think it’ll get us something we value. We may want to lose weight so we’re noticed and praised. We may want to have strong, defined muscles so we’re seen as powerful. We want something that we believe a “better” body can get us. It’s not always wrong to seek changes in our bodies, but we need to consider our motivation. The reason we want to change our bodies tells us something about who or what we worship.

God says, “You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body” (1 Cor. 6:19–20). We need a right understanding of our bodies to live a life of worship that glorifies God.

Body Image Points to God’s Beauty

Discussing body image in discipleship relationships is an opportunity to consider our God, the Creator of all beauty. In him, we see ultimate beauty and glory. He says lasting beauty is being like his Son, Jesus Christ.

As David Gibson explains, “In the Lord Jesus, God has given us someone who is absolute beauty, truth, and goodness all the way through.” Christ has “no dark side, no secret vices, no selfishness that comes out now and then. He only speaks truth; he only loves what is right; he never serves himself.”

In Psalm 27:4, David articulates the perspective we all need: “One thing I have asked of the LORD, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to inquire in his temple.” We were never meant to be fulfilled by gazing on ourselves. God created us to love him and to be transformed by beholding him (2 Cor. 3:18).

Talking about body image is a chance to discuss God’s beauty, how our longing for transcendence finds its fulfillment in him, and how our appearance—whatever we look like—serves God’s ultimate purposes and glory.

We were never meant to be fulfilled by gazing on ourselves.

If you, as a discipler, have struggled with body image and are willing to share how God has helped you, your openness can pave the way for fruitful conversations with the women you disciple. But even if you haven’t experienced this struggle, you have valuable wisdom to share. I love talking with women who don’t wrestle with body image. Their perspective and biblical clarity are refreshing. So don’t hesitate to jump into this conversation.

Regardless of your experience, talking about body image is worthwhile in discipleship relationships because it can lead us to discussions about how to treasure God and better imitate him.