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You Are Fearfully And Wonderfully Made

Psalm 138-144

Years ago I knew a man who had a secret; or at least he thought it was a secret.  He carried this secret for many years, never sharing it with friends or family.  This secret ate away at him for twenty or more years until he made a drastic decision to be rid of his guilt.  You see, when this man was just a boy he was curious and he tried on women’s clothing.  He found this titillating, exciting, and naughty.  His little experimentation turned into a bit of an obsession over which he felt irresistibly drawn and overwhelmingly guilty.

His guilt eventually drove him to surmise that God must have made a mistake.  He must have been a woman trapped in a man’s body, he thought.  Now let me tell you, there was nothing feminine about this guy physically or in terms of his personality or mannerisms.  As I said, he did not turn to friends or family to discuss this issue.  He turned to a councilor who specialized in counseling people with transgender issues.  Unsurprisingly this counseling led to a determination that a sex-change operation was in order.  He lived as a woman for a year, and then underwent surgery to make the necessary adjustments.

My friends, God doesn’t make mistakes; He is not unacquainted with who you are or how you are put together.  He directed your construction.  Look at the following verses from the 139^th Psalm.

Psalm 139:1-3

“O Lord, you have searched me and known me!
You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
you discern my thoughts from afar.
You search out my path and my lying down
and are acquainted with all my ways.”

He knows all about you; even the thoughts in your head.  There are no secrets from Him.

Psalm 139:13-16

“For you formed my inward parts;
you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
my soul knows it very well.
My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw my unformed substance;
in your book were written, every one of them,
the days that were formed for me,
when as yet there was none of them.”

Do you know what this means?  It means that even those born with Down syndrome, or missing limbs, or any other type of birth irregularity is not an accident.  I know this is hard to fathom.  We know just enough about how God put things together to be dangerous.  We know about the human genome and how genes typically combine to form your average human being.  We also can identify, while a child is still in the womb, genetic variations.  It is a human value system that places varying degrees of worth on those that don’t conform to the average, not God’s.  Because of our human value system we ask how a loving God could allow such “non-conformity”; as if the variations are some kind of curse.

Now, let me say that I believe birth variations occur because we live in a fallen world.  The world God made and intended was perverted by the actions of mankind and we suffer the consequences of those horrible choices in a million different ways every day.  God, however, can, and does, use all things to His good purpose for those who love Him.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard it said that a child born with a non-conformity was an incredible blessing.  Ask one of these individuals if they would have rather never lived and I suspect most would say they prefer life.  Some don’t ever get the chance to answer that question as our human value system only looks at the “burden” that non-conformist will place on parents or society and those who should love them kill them.  How self-centeredly cruel!

Of course, the man who changed his gender had no such birth non-conformity.  As a boy he was confused.  As a man he was guilt ridden.  Instead of turning to God to give him strength to change his behavior, he chose to accuse God of a mistake and turned to those that would tell him what he wanted to hear.  Interestingly enough, this man who thought he should be a woman was still attracted to women.  His sex change evidently turned him into a lesbian.  Talk about confusing!

There are those who claim that their homosexual behavior is a result of their genetic makeup; they just can’t help it; they’re made that way.  This not only flies in the face of the Bible but it flies in the face of science; which seems to be a higher power for some.  There is absolutely no scientific evidence to support the notion that genetic makeup forces behavior on human beings.  Let me be clear – NONE!  Behavior is a result of choices.  You are responsible for your choices.  If you feel guilty about what you are doing count yourself lucky, for God is convicting you of your need for a Savior.  He is convicting you of a need to change; not your body but your heart.

That man who changed his body did not solve his problem.  I believe his life got a lot harder.  I wonder if he would admit that.  Blaming God for your choices and attempting to correct your problems by rectifying His alleged mistakes area a recipe for disaster.  He is God and you are not.  He has made you for a purpose and you do not have the power to thwart that purpose.  You only have the power to make yourself more and more miserable.  That is not what he wants for any of us.  He wants us to be happy.  He wants us to be in right relationship with Him.  He wants to save us from our poor choices but we’ll have to admit our sin and humble ourselves before Him.

You my friend are fearfully and wonderfully made no matter how He chose to put you together.  Don’t pervert that with sinful choices.  Embrace who He made you to be!

Have a wonderful day brothers,

Your brother and servant in Christ,

Bill

Dying to self, living to serve!