For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful, I know that full well. (Psalm 139:13-14)
As someone who grew up in the church, these verses are very familiar to me. It’s a passage I’ve read and heard so many times that when I come across it, I almost gloss over it because I know it so well. But one of the things I love about scripture is that the Holy Spirit can speak new life into words we’ve read over and over again. It floors me sometimes.
The other day I read this passage, and something new struck me:“for you created my inmost being.”
Whenever I’ve read this passage in the past, I’ve envisioned God forming my body in my mother’s womb. All the intricate details of my frame — muscles, blood vessels, fingerprints. But “my inmost being” isn’t only my body. It’s my soul. My personality. My inner self.
God created the entirety of who I am.
I don’t know about you, but certain aspects of my personality can feel a whole lot like weakness. I see traits in others that I admire and think, “Why is it so easy for her to do that but I struggle to no end?”
I’ve spent a large portion of my life trying to put on traits that aren’t really me in order to be accepted or to appear more confident. Trying to define myself by some metric that will make me more acceptable to society.
But if I believe God created me for a purpose (and I do!), do I not also believe he gave me a specific set of traits in order to fulfill this purpose?
Sisters, I invite you to come alongside me and throw off all the things the world has told you that you need to be. Stop measuring yourself by its metric.
Instead, invite Christ to fulfill his purpose in you. Invite him in to the hard spaces and watch as he shows you that the very things you don’t like about yourself can be used by him to create something beautiful.
He created you. He loves every part of your inmost being. Invite his love to transform you into the fullness of who you were meant to be. Let him uproot the lies you’ve internalized about yourself. Watch as the very things you thought were ugly and weak become the most beautiful strengths as you let his loving power flow through you.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Journal/Reflection Questions
1. In what ways have you tried to hide parts of your personality because you think others will like you better if they don’t see them?
2. What aspects of your personality do you find it hard to accept? Thank God for those very things and ask him to reveal to you how he plans to use them for his glory.
Amber is a wife to her husband, Steve, and mom to her two children, Ethan and Stella. She grew up as a missionary kid in the Philippines and has a degree in Literature from Bethel University. She writes about food and creative endeavors at By Amber’s Hands.