Recently, I shared with you how God promised me that He would restore me to my true colours and I started my journey out of a broken life. He kept bringing me back to a picture of a butterfly with crumpled up wings, and the action of His hands straightening them out. Then the Lord showed me this verse in Psalm 139:13
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, you works are wonderful, I know that full well.
God showed me that I was packed with “butterfly potential.”
This is 10 things I learnt from this verse:
- He created and was still creating, we are new persons in Christ, the old is gone and God is working at developing the new person in me, in Christ.(2 Cor 5:17)
- He was present at my creation, actively involved in the process. Not absent, leaving my design and putting together to someone else, He was in charge of the whole process.
- He put my inmost being together. Previously, I came across the concept of a JOHARI WINDOW: developed by two psychologists Joe Luft and Harry Ingham. In short, they divided the real you into four windows: What you knew about yourself and no one else did; What you knew about yourself and so did everyone else; What you did not know, but everyone else did and finally: What neither you nor anyone else knew about you, called the Unknown window. God impressed upon me that He knew everything in all four windows, including the unknown. God knows it all, the “essential essence of me”, my inmost being. What was even more important, was that He was involved in putting it together.
- It implied that the Lord has intimate knowledge of me and how I operate. So therefore He would know what is best for me. Ps 139:1-4.
- He knit me together, which implies a pattern, like my DNA. Starting from a single cell from mother and father, their DNA is combined to form the basic DNA, which will be the base DNA for a person. The DNA is like the pattern for the rest of the body. From one string of DNA a body can be created with all of its unique detail, the whole basis for today’s cloning activities and stem cell research. Somehow the body knows how to use this DNA to grow different cells for muscle, bone, tissues etc. The DNA carries complete instructions for the design of the entire body, it is the pattern for the body. God designed my pattern.
- Lord is present and involved in the design of the pattern. He saw my unformed body (Ps 139:16). He was present in the process of weaving me together, even though it was done in a secret place. The way I am, my external design, my personality, my weaknesses my strengths, were all put there on purpose, by His design. They are my design! There is not any part of me that God did not specifically create on purpose for a purpose, He does not say “Ooops!”
- Life and sin, may have changed how that original God-design is functioning, but the original design and purpose is still there. I may have lost touch with it, may have got distracted, but the True colours are still there, still designed with purpose. When I am true to my True Colours, i.e. what He designed me to be, then I will experience a life that is abundant, full and meaningful.
- I should not covet the qualities that others have. Wanting to be like them because their “colours” are more appealing. Their colours are not true to my design. They will not fit with the rest of my design because they were not designed for me.
- Fearfully and Wonderfully made, how can awe and fear mix together? This is like a scientist would experience it, when you create something that has both potential for greatness and potential for destruction. In the process of our creation God puts so much of His character in us, created in His image with the potential for relationship with Him, but also, the potential for eternal destruction. When we are in relationship with Him, all our true potential comes to the fore.
- At the end of the psalm, the psalmist says, “your works are wonderful, I know that full well.” True to His character, when God creates something he does a good job? Scripture says that everything about our creation, our lives, our position in life is designed on purpose.
Acts 17:24-28 ”He is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else. From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.”
We are fearfully and wonderfully made, full on potential, all to be found in our relationship with Jesus. One of my first steps out of my broken life, was to accept who I was and acknowledge that even though I did not feel like it, God had done a good job creating me.
Even though my life was a mess, there was still great potential in me to be found in my relationship with Him.
Finally I had to make peace with me: stop writing myself off or trying to be who other people wanted me to be and start looking at myself honestly bearing in mind the future me that God was creating.
“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: the old has gone, the new is here!” 2 Cor 5:17
You are fearfully and wonderfully made.
Father, Your design is perfect. Help me not to discount how You designed me, just because I don’t like myself at the moment. The truth is, that You did a good job and don’t make mistakes. Help me to start celebrating my own unique self instead of always criticizing it. You did not design me to be anything put your original design, packed full of potential. Thank you Lord, that You were present at my creation and intimately involved. Help me to keep working with You to uncover the potential that You placed in me.
For more on my story and insights:
Awesome …encouraging …Uplifting …