Chapter Eleven: Trusting God for Who You Are
TRUSTING GOD FOR WHO YOU ARE
For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb. . . .
All the days ordained for me were written in your book
before one of them came to be.
PSALM 139:13, 16
I can still remember trying to play baseball as a youngster in elementary school. I could neither bat nor catch well because I could not tell where the ball was or judge how fast it was coming to me. I did not know until years later that my inability to play baseball was due to my having monocular vision—the ability to focus only one eye at a time. Depth perception is based on binocular vision, the ability to focus both eyes together to produce a stereoscopic or three-dimensional effect.
I’ve had this problem all my life, or at least since infancy. Even today I experience apprehension each time I go to renew my driver’s license. I wonder if the examiner will not renew my license because I cannot pass the depth perception part of the eye exam. I cannot play tennis, and I would not dare step into a handball or racquetball court for fear I would be hit right in the face with the ball.
But as a youngster I didn’t understand why I couldn’t play baseball with the other boys. I just knew that I felt shame and rejection because I was not like they were. Of course, many people have physical or mental impairments that are much worse than mine. But whether they are major or minor, these disabilities often cause childhood heartache and then, later on, difficulty with self-acceptance as an adult. When we become Christians, we may begin to struggle with God over the disabilities and limitations we have.
Other people who have no disabilities struggle with problems of physical appearance. Their ears are too big or their nose is too long or their body in some way does not match normal proportions. Still other people have difficulty with temperament or emotional traits. Others struggle with unavoidable environmental and hereditary factors over which they had no control.
Whatever the problem, many people struggle to accept themselves as they are. For them life is just a continuous adversity, not from outside circumstances, but from who they are. Their greatest need in trusting God may be to “trust God for who I am.” For those with this need, Psalm 139:13-16 has some very important and helpful things to say.
GOD MADE ME WHO I AM
Psalm 139:13-16 teaches us that we are who we are because God Himself created us the way we are—not because of an impersonal biological process. Notice in verse 13 that David says to God, “You knit me together in my mother’s womb.” He pictures God as a master weaver at work in our mother’s womb, creating us as directly as He created Adam out of the dust of the earth.
Obviously David was aware of the biological process that God used to bring him into this world. He does not deny that. Rather he teaches us that God so superintends that biological process that He is directly involved in fashioning each one of us into the person He wants us to be.
The first part of verse 13 says, “For you created my inmost being.” The Hebrew word for “inmost being” is literally kidneys, a word used by the Jews to express the seat of longings and desires. The New International Version Study Bible says the word was used in Hebrew idiom for “the center of emotions and of moral sensitivity.” David, then, is essentially saying, “You created my personality.” Not only did God create David’s physical body, He also created his personality. David was the person he was because God created him that way, physically, mentally, and emotionally. And just as God was personally involved in the creation of David, so He was directly involved in creating you and me. Rev. James Hufstetler said it well when he said,
You are the result of the attentive, careful, thoughtful, intimate, detailed, creative work of God. Your personality, your sex, your height, your features, are what they are because God made them precisely that way. He made you the way he did because that is the way he wants you to be. . . . If God had wanted you to be basically and creatively different he would have made you differently. Your genes and chromosomes and creaturely distinctives—even the shape of your nose and ears—are what they are by God’s design.[1]
Psalm 139:13 is not the only passage in the Bible that speaks of God’s direct creation of each of us. Job said,
Your hands shaped me and made me. . . .
Remember that you molded me like clay. . . .
Did you not . . .
clothe me with skin and flesh
and knit me together with bone and sinews?
JOB 10:8-11
The writer of Psalm 119 said, “Your hands made me and formed me” (verse 73). And God said to Jeremiah, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you” (Jeremiah 1:5).
The application of this truth should be clear to us. If I have difficulty accepting myself the way God made me, then I have a controversy with God. Obviously you and I need to change insofar as our sinful nature distorts that which God has made. Therefore, I do not say that we need to accept ourselves as we are, but as God made us in our basic physical, mental, and emotional makeup.
David, instead of fretting over the way God made him, said, “I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made” (Psalm 139:14). David was a man “with a fine appearance and handsome features” (1 Samuel 16:12). So we could say, “It’s well enough for David to praise God because he was handsome, athletic, skilled in war, and a gifted musician. But look at me. I’m very ordinary physically and mentally.” In fact, some people feel they don’t even measure up to ordinary.
I understand people who feel that way. In addition to my hearing and vision disabilities, I’ve never been excited about my physical appearance. But God did not give His own Son handsome features in His human body. Isaiah said of Jesus, “He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him” (Isaiah 53:2). The portrait of the bearded, handsome Jesus that we usually see has no basis in Scripture. Jesus, at best, was apparently nondescript in His physical appearance, and it never bothered Him nor interfered in any way with His carrying out the will of His Father.
David praised God, not because he was handsome, but because God made him. We need to dwell on that thought. The eternal God who is infinite in His wisdom and perfect in His love personally made you and me. He gave you the body, the mental abilities, and the basic personality you have because that is the way He wanted you to be. And He wanted you to be just that way because He loves you and wants to glorify Himself through you.
This is the believer’s foundation for self-acceptance. I am who I am and you are who you are because God sovereignly and directly created us to be who we are. Self-acceptance is basically trusting God for who I am, disabilities or physical flaws and all. We need to learn to think like George MacDonald, who said, “I would rather be what God chose to make me than the most glorious creature that I could think of; for to have been thought about, born in God’s thought, and then made by God, is the dearest, grandest, and most precious thing in all thinking.”[2]
If we have physical or mental disabilities or impairments, it is because God in His wisdom and love created us that way. We may not understand why God chose to do that, but that is where our trusting Him has to begin. In an earlier chapter, we saw that God ascribes to Himself the responsibility for physical disabilities. He said to Moses, “Who gave man his mouth? Who makes him deaf or mute? Who gives him sight or makes him blind? Is it not I, the LORD?” (Exodus 4:11).
This truth is admittedly difficult to accept, especially if you or one of your loved ones are the object of such disability. But Jesus also affirmed God’s hand in disabilities. When the disciples asked Jesus why a certain man was born blind, He replied, “This happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life” (John 9:3). Think about what Jesus said. A man was born blind and lived in blindness all the way into adulthood, so that God’s work might be displayed in his life. That hardly seems fair, does it? Why should that man suffer blindness all those years merely to be available to display God’s work on a certain day? Is God’s glory worth a man’s being born blind?
Such questions when posed about a Bible character who lived 2,000 years ago seem crass and irreverent. We would probably all agree that the glory of God is worthy of a man’s being born blind. But what about our own physical disabilities or inadequacies? Is God’s glory worthy of those also? Are we willing to take our physical limitations, our learning disabilities, and even our appearance problems to God and say, “Father, You are worthy of this infirmity in my life. I believe You created me just the way I am because You love me and You want to glorify Yourself through me. I will trust You for who I am”?
This is the path to self-acceptance, learning to trust God for who I am. To do this, though, we must continually keep in mind that the God who created us the way we are is the God who is wise enough to know what is best for us and loving enough to bring it about. Certainly we will sometimes struggle with who we are. Unlike specific incidents of adversity, our disabilities and infirmities are always with us. So we have to learn to trust God in this area continually. To do this we have to learn to say with David, “You created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.”
James Hufstetler is again helpful to us when he said, “You will never really enjoy other people, you will never have stable emotions, you will never lead a life of godly contentment, you will never conquer jealousy and love others as you should until you thank God for making you the way he did.”[3]
As we thank God for who we are, we also need to thank Him for those so-called positive abilities and traits we do have. All of the abilities—physical, mental, personality, talents, and so on—that we do have were given to us by God. Paul’s words to the Corinthians apply to all of us: “For who makes you different from anyone else? What do you have that you did not receive?” (1 Corinthians 4:7). All of us received whatever ability, learning, riches, station in life, rank, or influence we have from God to be used by us for His glory. Whether it is an ability or disability, let us learn to receive it from God, to give Him thanks, and to seek to use it for His glory.
TRUSTING GOD FOR WHAT I AM
God created us in our mother’s womb exactly as He wanted us to be, in order that we might fulfill His plan for us. God does not act according to whim or impulse but according to His eternal purpose. He had a reason for creating each of us as He did. Psalm 139:16 must be taken along with verses 13-15. It says,
All the days ordained for me
were written in your book
before one of them came to be.
There are two possible meanings that may be given to this verse. The first is that the span of David’s lifetime, in other words, the number of days he would live, was divinely ordained by God. Certainly this is a truth stated elsewhere in Scripture. David says in Psalm 31:15, “My times are in your hands.” Job said,
Man’s days are determined;
you have decreed the number of his months
and have set limits he cannot exceed.
JOB 14:5
And Paul said, “From one man he made every nation of men . . . and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live” (Acts 17:26). God not only created us as He intended us to be, He also sovereignly determines how long we live. This in itself is a glorious truth. Along with David, our times are in His hands. As one line from a song says, “Till He bid, I cannot die.”
But it is likely that David had in mind the other meaning in this passage, that all the experiences of his life, day by day, were written down in God’s book before he was even born. This refers not simply to God’s prior knowledge of what will occur in our lives, but to His plan for our lives. This meaning fits better with the flow of thought in verses 13-15. God created each of us uniquely to fulfill the plan He has ordained for us. Our disabilities as well as our abilities all fit into that plan. Did He create you with an incurable speech impediment? He did so because that particular infirmity uniquely fits you for the life He has planned for you. God’s plan for you and His creation of you were consistent. He equipped you to fulfill His purpose for you.
Someone well said that one of the most inspiring of truths is that God has a distinct plan for each one of us in sending us into this world. This plan embraces not only His original creation of us, but also the family and social setting into which we were born. It includes all the vicissitudes of life, all the seemingly chance or random happenings, and all the sudden and unexpected turns of events, both “good” and “bad,” that occur in our lives. All these situations and circumstances, though they may appear only as happenstance to us, were written in God’s book before one of them came to be.
However, God’s plan for us embraces more than merely the events or circumstances that happen to us. It also embraces that which He wants us to be and to do. The Scriptures teach that God places each believer in the body of Christ as it pleases Him. He sovereignly determines our respective functions in the body and gives us the corresponding spiritual gifts with which to perform those functions (see Romans 12:4-6; 1 Corinthians 12:7-11). Moreover, our spiritual gifts are generally consistent with the physical and mental abilities as well as the temperaments with which God created us.
God does not look us over the day we accept Christ and say, “Let’s see, what spiritual gifts shall I give to her?” No, God has planned our days before even one of them came to be. He said to Jeremiah, “Before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations” (Jeremiah 1:5). And Paul speaks of his apostolic call in this manner: “When God, who set me apart from birth [literally, from the womb] and called me by his grace” (Galatians 1:15).
Verses 13 through 16 of Psalm 139 must be taken as a unit. God created our inmost being and fashioned us in our mother’s womb so that we might be equipped to fulfill the plan that He set out for us even before we were born. Who you are is not a biological accident. What you are is not a circumstantial accident. God planned both for you.
Just as we must trust God for who we are, we must also trust Him for what we are—whether it be an engineer or missionary, a homemaker or a nurse. If there is one area of life where the saying “the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence” applies, surely it is in the area of vocational calling and station in life. Someone has estimated that as many as eighty percent of our work force are dissatisfied with the jobs they are in. For many of us that may be due to a reluctance to be what God planned for us to be.
Although I studied engineering in college, I soon left that vocation because I thought God wanted me to be an overseas missionary. But God never allowed me to become an overseas missionary. Instead, I became an administrator in a missions organization. At first I thought of administration as a temporary interlude on the way to the mission field. Then one day I had to face the fact that God had gifted me both by talent and temperament for administration, and that was probably what He had called me to do. For a time I thought of myself as a reluctant administrator, as one who would rather be out in the so-called “ministry.” But I realized that to think such thoughts was to say I was reluctant to accept God’s plan for me. I had to realize He created me a certain way to fulfill the plan He had ordained even before I was born.
God called me to be a missions administrator instead of a missionary. Most people are not to be either. God is the God of society as well as the church, and He determines the course of our lives in the natural realm as well as in the church. He ordained days for plumbers just as much as He did for pastors.
That thought should give meaning to the most humdrum of vocations. In fact, no vocation should be considered humdrum if God has ordained it for us. In the words of J. R. Miller, “The question of small or great has no place here. To have been thought about at all, and then fashioned by God’s hands to fill any place, is glory enough for the grandest and most aspiring life. And the highest place to which anyone can attain in life is that for which he was designed and made.”[4]
This is not to deny that work, along with all other aspects of creation, is under the curse of sin. God’s words to Adam, “By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food” (Genesis 3:19), should be taken in their broadest meaning to indicate the laboriousness and frequent futility that often accompanies any work. Becoming a Christian does not remove that curse from our respective jobs, but it should give us a new perspective about those jobs. We should begin to view them, not as a necessary evil through which we eat our daily bread, but as the place where God has placed us to serve Him by serving society.
Paul wrote to the slaves in the Colossian church, “Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men” (Colossians 3:23). Undoubtedly many of those believing slaves were assigned to tasks that were irksome and wearisome. Some were probably in jobs far beneath their abilities or training. But they were to work at their tasks with enthusiasm because they were working for the Lord. They were doing the things ordained for them before they were born.
The fact that God ordained our days for us should also give meaning to every day, not just the special or exciting days of our lives. Every day is important for us because it is a day ordained by God. If we are bored with life there is something wrong with our concept of God and His involvement in our daily lives. Even the most dull and tedious days of our lives are ordained by God and ought to be used by us to glorify Him.
The realization that God has planned our days for us should not lead us to a fatalistic acceptance of the status quo. If we have an opportunity to improve our situation in a way that will honor God, we should do so. Even to believing slaves Paul wrote, “If you can gain your freedom, do so” (1 Corinthians 7:21). But immediately before that statement Paul had written, “Were you a slave when you were called? Don’t let it trouble you.” There has to be in our lives a delicate balance between godly efforts to improve our situation and godly acceptance of those situations that cannot be changed by us.
For most of us, there are many seemingly adverse details of our lives that will not be changed regardless of our efforts or our prayers. They are simply part of God’s plan for us. In these situations, we need to take comfort from the words of God to the Jewish captives in Babylon, when He said in Jeremiah 29:11:
“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”
Although those words were given by God to a specific group of people, the captives, they reveal the heart of God for all His children. Just as He planned only good for the captives, so He plans only good for you and me. The plan God ordained for you and wrote down in His book even before you were born is a good plan. It is a plan to prosper you and not to harm you. I readily acknowledge there are many aspects of His plan for each of us that do seem harmful, that do seem calculated to take away hope. But here again, we are called upon to walk by faith, to trust God in the face of these adversities that will not go away.
TRUSTING GOD FOR GUIDANCE
The realization that God has ordained our days for us leads logically to the thought, “Can I trust God to guide me in that plan? What if I make a mistake and miss the way?” In answering such questions, I find it helpful to distinguish between God’s guidance and that which has come to be called by such terms as “finding the will of God.”
David said of God, “He leads me beside quiet waters. . . . He guides me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake” (Psalm 23:2-3, emphasis added). The imagery is that of the shepherd leading his sheep. The initiative is with the shepherd. He is the one who determines the watering places and guides the flock as he thinks best. As our shepherd, God has committed Himself to guiding us in the ways that He knows to be best for us. God sovereignly guides our lives so that we do indeed live out in our daily experiences all the days ordained for us.
The subject of discovering God’s will in a particular matter (or as some prefer to state it, making wise decisions) is a different, though somewhat related, subject. It usually refers to a “fork in the road” type of decision. Much has been written on that subject, and there are several divergent views. I do not propose to enter that discussion here.
What I want to do is draw our attention to God’s initiative and God’s faithfulness in guiding us, so that we do fulfill the plan He has ordained for us. We think so much about our responsibility to discover God’s will in a situation or to make wise decisions in life’s choices, but the biblical emphasis seems to be on God’s guiding us.
Consider the book of Acts. The only reference to the disciples seeking to determine the will of God occurs in the choosing of Matthias to succeed Judas. From that point onward, it is a record of God’s guiding His people. In Acts 16, for example, Paul and his companions were moving ahead in their missionary journey in a logical progression. Twice, however, they are stopped by the Holy Spirit and then, as a result of Paul’s vision, they concluded God was calling them to Macedonia. As they moved ahead, the Spirit guided them, stopping them in two places and calling them to another. The account doesn’t tell us how the Spirit guided, it simply says that He did.
God did have a plan for Paul and his team that was more specific than the Great Commission to make disciples of all nations. The provinces of Asia and Bithynia that Paul was prevented from entering were just as needy as Macedonia. But it was God’s plan that Paul should take the gospel to Macedonia and then to the entire Grecian peninsula. God did not leave it to Paul to seek His will. Rather, as Paul moved along, God took the initiative to guide him.
God does have a plan for each of us. He has given each of us different gifts, abilities, and temperaments and has placed each of us in the body of Christ according to His will. To place us in the body obviously denotes far more than leaving the choice to us. It means actually putting us there. It includes all the providential circumstances that are brought to bear upon us to insure that we do find our rightful place in the body and fulfill the functions He has given us to do.
We do have a responsibility to make wise decisions or to discover the will of God, whichever term we may prefer to use. But God’s plan for us is not contingent upon our decisions. God’s plan is not contingent at all. God’s plan is sovereign. It includes our foolish decisions as well as our wise ones.
For most of us, many of life’s more crucial decisions are made before we have enough spiritual wisdom to make wise decisions. When I was a senior in college I interviewed for and was offered a job to become effective upon completion of my required military service. At that time I didn’t know anything about the will of God or about making wise spiritual decisions. However, for some reason, I turned down the job. Looking back now I can see that God was guiding me, keeping me available for His later call to The Navigators’ ministry.
God’s means of guidance are infinite. As I look back over thirty-nine years of my Christian life, I am amazed at the many and diverse ways by which God has guided me. I am inclined to say with David, “How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them!” (Psalm 139:17). God is at work guiding all the details of my life.
Like most Christians, I have struggled over the right choice at some of those “fork in the road” decision points, which we encounter from time to time. I may have made some wrong decisions, I do not know. But God in His sovereignty has faithfully guided me in His paths through right decisions and wrong ones. I am where I am today, not because I have always made wise decisions or correctly discovered the will of God at particular points along the way, but because God has faithfully led me and guided me along the path of His will for me.
God’s guidance is almost always step-by-step; He does not show us our life’s plan all at once. Sometimes our anxiousness to know the will of God comes from a desire to “peer over God’s shoulder” to see what His plan is. What we need to do is learn to trust Him to guide us.
Of course, this does not mean that we put our minds into neutral and expect God to guide us in some mysterious way apart from hard and prayerful thinking on our part. It does mean, as Dr. James Packer has said, “God made us thinking beings, and he guides our minds as we think things out in his presence.”[5]
I believe Dr. Packer has expressed it so well: God guides our minds as we think. But the important truth for this study is that God does guide. He does not play games with us. He does not look down from heaven at our struggles to know His will and say, “I hope you make the right decision.” Rather, in His time and in His way He will lead us in His path for us.
Many years ago Fanny J. Crosby penned these words, which are so appropriate to this topic of trusting God for guidance:
All the way my Savior leads me
What have I to ask beside?
Can I doubt His tender mercy,
Who through life has been my guide?
Heavenly peace, divinest comfort,
Here by faith in Him to dwell!
For I know, whate’er befall me,
Jesus doeth all things well.
All the way my Savior leads me—
O the fullness of His love!
Perfect rest to me is promised
In my Father’s house above.
When my spirit, clothed immortal,
Wings its flight to realms of day,
This my song through endless ages:
Jesus led me all the way.[6]
We can trust God to guide us. He will lead us all the way. And when we stand before His throne we will not be singing about successfully discovering the will of God. Rather with Fanny Crosby we, too, will sing, “Jesus led me all the way.”