For You formed my innermost parts; You knit me [together] in my mother’s womb.

Psalm 139:13

We’re always checking ourselves out. We look in the mirror to see how we look, and if we’re honest, most of us glance at our reflections in windows throughout the day. We compare our appearance with the models on fashion magazines and celebrities on the red carpet, and we have to face the fact again and again that we don’t measure up! As Americans, we spend billions every year to change how we look, and most of us remain disheartened.

We need a new benchmark and a new set of values, and David gives them to us in this beautiful poem. Almighty God, the One who is infinitely wise, kind, and strong, carefully crafted each of us in the womb. He used the building blocks of DNA, but the uniqueness of our individual appearance was in His hands. But it was not only our appearance. God crafted our personalities, our intellects, and our talents; and His creative work in each of us prepares us to fulfill the greatest goal life can offer: to be His man or woman in the circumstances we face everyday.

Zig Ziglar

I want to help you grow as beautiful as God meant you to be when He though of you first.

George Macdonald

We are constantly bombarded by advertisers telling us they can fix our imperfections, make us more beautiful, help us to fit in, to be successful or to be a star; if only we buy their product. They play on our inferiorities and our desire to be at the top with people looking up to us. Even children are placed under incredible pressure to be something they’re not. Shakespeare said, “Oh what a tangled web we weave when we first practice to deceive.” From the beginning the strategy of the devil is to make us feel that we lack in someway; that the God who created us left something vital out of us that has to be fixed or supplemented in some way. He does this so that he can persuade us as he did Eve to eat the fruit. As long as he can make us feel imperfect and unwanted the way we are, he can keep us in bondage. We’ll find ourselves trying in vain to become someone we aren’t and never learn to be content with how God made us.

The power of today’s verse is that it tells each and everyone of us that even before we were born God lovingly formed us. We just didn’t happen, we aren’t accidents. We have been formed and knit together by the Creator of the universe. And nothing that God has made is anything less than what He intended it to be. Oh to be sure we may have some flaws, we might be marred but Jeremiah tells us that even vessels that are marred are still in the hands of the Potter who lovingly makes us again another. That’s what the Bible teaches when it says that we are new creatures in Christ Jesus. Everything that was wrong with us, Christ fixed and what He left in place is everything He wants us to be.

God never intended for us to feel we have to compete with each other. He never intended that our value be determined by the clothes we wear, the cars we drive, or the house we live. He never intended for us feel like we need makeovers or plastic surgery to change our appearance. It’s not that God doesn’t want us to have nice clothes or cars or houses. It’s certainly not that He is against whether or not we enhance our appearance, as some from the old church taught; it’s just that He wants us to know that He loves and accepts us just as He made us to be. He sets our value incredibly high and proved that worth in the sending of His Son.

To all who feel insignificant, insecure, and less than, our verse says to you that it was God who made you and He carefully designed you to be you.

Dr. John Thompson