Today’s devotional reading is about being content with how we are made. The author says many people question that, wish they were someone else, complain that they would like to be more this or less that person, and generally are not happy with who they are.
She goes on to say, “God made me and He must know the sort of person He wanted me to be. If He had made me a potato vine, I must be satisfied to grow potatoes and must not want to be a rosebush and grow roses.”
I’ve never wanted to be anyone else. Earlier in life that was surely my pride showing. I thought I was the best person I knew, so had no desire to be different. Then, when Christ got hold of me, I began seeing all my shortcomings and realized that I wasn’t so special. In fact, I am just like everyone else—we are all sinners. For a proud person, that was a difficult lesson!
Then I began to see that I am also unique. No one else is like me. I am created by God for His purpose, and that purpose cannot be fulfilled by another. Ephesians 2:10 says it this way: “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.”
It isn’t just that He created me and that I am fearfully and wonderfully made (Psalm 139:14), nor is it that He says of me, “This people I have formed for Myself; they shall declare My praise” (Isaiah 43:21). This declaration in Ephesians says that God has specific good works for me to do, a to-do list that He wrote out beforehand—likely before I was even created—that I should do it. Wow!
Wanting to be another person is out of the question . . . or is it? The Bible also says that God’s intention for me is to be like Jesus. Romans 8:28-29 say that He uses everything that happens to me for my good that I might be “conformed to the image of His Son.”
That marvelous promise was perhaps the first truth from Scripture that made a big impression on me as a new Christian. It may have been pride then (“Oh, look. I am going to be like Jesus!”), but over the years this has become a humbling promise and process. I have not earned nor do I deserve this as my destiny, yet the goodness of God determines that He will make of my life something that glorifies Him, even that I am like His Son.
In the end, that is my destiny. 1 John 3:1-2 says it so well. “Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God! Therefore the world does not know us, because it did not know Him. Beloved, now we are children of God; and it has not yet been revealed what we shall be, but we know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.”
I’m happy I am who I am, but I also have some discontent, not quite the same as my devotional reading describes. It is not that I question the wisdom of my Maker, but that I want to be all that He has promised for me—right now! Sometimes my progress is so slow (or more like regress), yet I know that the outcome is certain. God says so.
In the meantime, my task is to cooperate with Him in the changes (I can be stubborn) and obey those specific assignments. I am His workmanship and as my Maker, He will finish His work in me, just as He has promised.
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