Every Last Detail

​God forms us as unique individuals to cooperatively work in His world.  He gives us all a unique set of talents and skills to use for our good and that of others.  He desires us to honor and glorify Him and give Him praise for our individual talents and skills. “Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit.  And there are differences of administrations, but the same Lord.  And there are diversities of operations, but it is the same God which worketh all in all” (1 Corinthians 12:4-6).  2 Peter 4:10 reads, “As every man  hath received the gift, even so minister the same one to another, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God.”  We are to serve one another and honor God with the gifts and talents He gives us.
 God made us all unique and in His image. Genesis 1:27 states, “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.”  He loves us enough to create us unique and in His image; we should love Him enough to honor Him for His creativity. 
In Psalm 139, King David says, “I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvelous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well…How precious also are thy thoughts unto me, O God! how great is the sum of them…Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting” (14,17,23-24). 
​God made us all to be incredibly interesting people with our unique packages of talents, personality quirks, and more.  It’s up to us if we will seek Him and seek to honor Him with how He made us.  Every day we have dozens of opportunities to promote ourselves or promote God who made us in His image to represent Him in this world.
God never stops loving a person and desiring a relationship with him or her, even when that person tries exhaustingly to live for himself or herself.  Living for ourselves is overwhelming and exhausting because we were not designed to live for ourselves.   Ephesians 2:10 reminds us, “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.”   Living for God in God leads to shalom—complete fulfillment as a result of God’s presence.  We cannot truly live for God apart from Him.  The more we desire to know Him and honor Him, the more we welcome His shaping into our lives.  The peace of God’s presence and the blessings and rewards He gives overshadow all discomfort involved with His shaping us for better use.
Seeking to honor God without seeking God Himself and inviting Him into every detail of our lives results in His crushing and reforming us.  In Jeremiah 18: 6, God reminds the Israelites they are in His hands: “As the clay is in the potter’s hand, so are ye in mine hand, O house of Israel.”  Using our human perspective to plan our life never works out right.   The bumps in the road are much harder when we choose the road instead of following God there.  Seeking God and trusting Him with all the details gives us constant peace, even when trouble hits.  Trying to figure out the best way to use what God gives us without inviting God’s direction in a very detailed manner leads to much more pain than pleasure in life.
Part of how God continues to shape us is by putting new desires into our hearts and new opportunities into our lives.  James 1:17 states, “Every good and perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.”  We do not recognize these gifts if our attention is not on God.  If we are consumed building our lives in our own time and strength, we do not have capacity left to acknowledge what God wants to do in us and for us.  The unknown author of The Kneeling Christian says it this way, “A full hand cannot take Christ’s gifts.”
In Psalm 139:15, the King James Version of the Bible reads, “My substance was not hid from thee, when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.”  The Hebrew word translated as “substance” here means “bones, frame, might, strength” according to Strong’s and NAS Exhaustive Concordances, collectively. The Hebrew word translated here as “curiously wrought” means to variegate color, according to Strong’s Concordance; and according to NAS Exhaustive Concordance the primitive root of this word is translated as “embroiderer, skillfully wrought, and weaver.”   Whether you think of the man and woman as weavers or God as the Almighty Weaver who is using the man and woman to weave the unique person who will result from their union, God is undeniably involved in creating our frame and everything about us.
We are to give credit where credit is due, so others will know the loving kindness of God.  As the prophet Isaiah prayed to God, he acknowledged, “O Lord, thou art our father; we are the clay, and thou our potter; and we all are the work of thy hand” (Isaiah 64:8).  We read in David’s Psalm of Praise, Psalm 145, “One generation shall praise thy works to another, and shall declare thy mighty acts.  I will speak of the glorious honour of thy majesty, and of thy wondrous works” (4-5).
God not only knew what our personality and life situation would be, but He designed them together for our good and His glory.  It takes seeking God with our whole hearts while desiring and determining to live for Him in order for us to see this come to fruition.  Though we may not fully understand in this life how all our intricacies work together for our good and His glory, we can rest assured that they do.  Romans 8:28, one of my anchor verses when I cannot see the good in something, assures us that “all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.”
 It’s awe-inspiring to know that the Master Potter created and placed together every cell of our being and is still shaping us to be more honorable vessels for Himself.  To know that every detail from our beginning to our end is in the loving care of our Eternal Creator Father is assurance enough for us to focus more on Him and less on ourselves or any of our details in life.