Man, The Image of God #2: Fearfully & Wonderfully Made

“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).

 You are not an accident. Every person is here by design. As Psalm 139:14 states, we are fearfully made. This points to how God carefully thought about how you and I would be made. And as Rick Warren said, “God never does anything accidentally, and He never makes mistakes. He has a reason for everything He creates. Every plant and every animal was planned by God, and every person was designed with a purpose in mind” (The Purpose Driven Life, p. 24). Ephesians 1:4 in the Message Bible says, “Long before He laid down earth’s foundations, He had us in mind, had settled on us as the focus of His love, to be made whole and holy by His love.”

One writer summarized how we are fearfully made in the following way. “You are who you are for a reason. You’re part of an intricate plan. You’re a precious and perfectly unique design, called God’s special woman or man. You look like you look for a reason. Our God made no mistake. He knit you together within the womb, you’re just what He wanted to make. The parents you had were the ones He chose, and no matter how you may feel, they were custom-designed with God’s plan in mind, and they bear the Master’s seal.

No, that trauma you faced was not easy. And God wept that it hurt you so; but it was allowed to shape your heart so that into His likeness you’d grow. You are who you are for a reason, you’ve been formed by the Master’s rod. You are who you are, beloved, because there is a God!” (Russell Kelfer, as quoted in The Purpose Driven Life, p. 25)

Besides being fearfully made, Psalm 139:14 also teaches that we are wonderfully made.  Ponder for a moment just how wonderfully made the human body is. A person’s ears hear between 300,000 and 400,000 different tones and our eyes can distinguish between 8 million different colors. Without a doubt, the human body is the most complex information processing system in existence. Consider the human body which is composed of more than 100 trillion cells. “Think of the skin. While water penetrates the skin outwardly, it cannot penetrate inwardly. Aren’t you glad about that? Otherwise, you would have blown up and exploded in the shower this morning!

Think of the heart. Weighing less than a pound. It’s a real work horse. On the average, it pumps 100,000 times every day, circulating 2,000 gallons through 60,000 miles of arteries, capillaries and veins” (Leroy Redding, God Made Us).

We could go on and on yet we would barely scratch the surface of how wonderfully created we are! Therefore, I encourage you to remind yourself of just how fearfully and wonderfully made you are!

In His service,

     Matt