Real ID: God Made Me

Real ID: God Made Me           1/26/20

Psalm 139: 13-18

Good morning friends. Thanks for choosing to be with us on Sunday. I know on cold winter days it can be hard to find the motivation to do anything. But I’m grateful that you’re here. Today we’re continuing our sermon series called Real ID: Discovering the Real You. We’re exploring the words of Psalm 139 as we counter the lies of our world with God’s truth, specifically what God says about us. And today we consider the truth that God made us. Would you read with me? 

Several years ago I ran my first ever youth retreat. It was a surreal moment for me. I had grown up attending spring youth retreats, and they were instrumental in helping to shape my life and faith. In fact, it was at a youth retreat where I led my first devotion, and afterwards, the main speaker for the morning, as well as several adult mentors, began to speak words of encouragement into my life, claiming the gift that God was planting within me. And so it was pretty amazing when I got to step into that role and create a weekend where teenagers could experience the amazing love and presence of Jesus. The weekend was phenomenal. The music was tremendous, the speaker as engaging. And God moved in powerful ways. As I watched the weekend unfold, I was drawn to one particular young man who seemed to be responding to Jesus’ invitation to new life. Every time the altar opened up, he was there…and others seemed to follow. He had one of those attractional personalities that drew others to him. He was a natural born leader, and from my vantage point, was good at everything he attempted. He was witty, athletic and he was extremely polite. And as I made my way home after the weekend, I was sure that God was going to do great things through him. If anyone was fearfully and wonderfully made; if anyone had been intricately woven together by the God of the universe, it was this young man. And then 9 months later, I received a phone call that I never expected to receive: this beautiful young man, created in the image of God, had taken his own life. 

I know the world we live in is a difficult one. There’s nothing easy about living in a broken world, nothing easy about trying to make sense of a world that is filled with pressure and stress and problems. But the last person I expected to experience this type of ending was that young man. And I wasn’t the only one. His death left the local community stunned. His church was shocked, his parents beside themselves, his friends, who saw in him something he could not see in himself- had no idea what to think. From our vantage point, he had everything going for him. He was the picture of vital, God-infused living. But his vantage point must have been different. I don’t know what plagued him. I don’t know anything about the pain he experienced or the demons he faced. I don’t know the lies he believed about himself. And I know I never will. But what I do know is that his life, like every single life God has created, was precious. And if I could, I would tell him that today. I would tell him that God made him- every single detail- and God wasn’t done with him. I would tell him that God was shaping his life into something beautiful, even though he couldn’t see it. But someday he would. 

Sometime in the early portion of the 20^th century, a man by the name of Grant Colfax Tullar was inspired to write a poem about life from God’s perspective. He called it “The Weaver.” The poem was made famous by Corrie ten Boom, who found a way to frame her life, which was full of ups and downs, like a tapestry. Now, I’m not a tapestry expert, but I know enough to understand that if you look at the wrong side, you’ll end up at the wrong conclusions. If you look at the wrong side, you’ll see a mangled mess. You’ll see thread lines going every which way, and different colored swaths sewn together that don’t look like they should go together. If you look at the wrong side of the tapestry, you won’t see anything about the design that makes sense. But when you flip the tapestry around, you’ll see the beauty it beholds. You’ll see the Weaver, the designer, had a plan all along. “My life is but a weaving,” writes Tullar, “between my Lord and me; I cannot choose the colors He worketh steadily. Oft times He weaveth sorrow and I, in foolish pride, forget He sees the upper, and I the underside.” 

We spend a good portion of our lives laser-focused on what Tullar calls the “underside.” But that underside of life can be confusing and at times downright demoralizing. If we attempt to define our lives by any single moment or any single season, we’ll never see the full picture. But to know who we are, to understand our real ID, we need to glimpse the other side; we need to give God space to show us our lives from His vantage point. And that’s what Psalm 139 invites us to do. It’s as if the psalmist has had an opportunity to peak at the upper side of life, to flip over the tapestry of his life and explore what God has so wonderfully woven together. And what he sees causes him to rejoice. 

He sees first of all that he’s not a mistake. Nothing about his existence can be judged as an accident. For it was You who formed me. You who knit me together in my mother’s womb. You knew all the days ordained for me, before one of them ever existed. And then he praises God with those famous words, I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Those words took on a different meaning for me a few days ago. As I was getting out of bed, I opened my Facebook app and found a picture of a beautiful baby boy, born just a few hours earlier to our good friends. And as I smiled at this miraculous picture, I thought about the last nine months and what it was that God was up to. Everything about this baby- his hair, his fingerprints, his cries- every detail has been intentionally orchestrated by God. Before his parents knew him, before his parents got their first glimpse of this child, God was already at work in those secret places. Nothing about him is an accident. And the same is true of you. Nothing about your life is a mistake. There might be portions of your life that aren’t perfect; there may be lots of imperfections in your life-- but that doesn’t make your existence a mistake. Long before the day you were born, God had his finger on you, with plans for your life that fit into his grand purposes. I thank God for some of the people in my life that have blessed me in spite of life circumstances that could’ve easily led them to believe they should’ve never been born. They could’ve given up when they were sexually abused, or when their spouse left them, or when their parents walked out on them, or when their alcoholism got the best of them again. They made mistakes; others made mistakes. But they were not and are not mistakes. Because when they turned over the tapestry of their lives, they saw that God was using every detail to create the beautiful people I know each of them to be today. And the same is true of you. You are not a mistake. You are not an accident.

The second truth that is implied in this psalm, and which understandably leads to rejoicing is the discovery that our mess-ups and imperfections are not irredeemable. We are not mistakes; we are not accidents; but that doesn’t mean our lives won’t be without struggle, nor does it mean that we won’t screw up from time to time. King David, who many believe wrote this psalm, made some pretty bad decisions. There were times he let his pride get the best of him and times when he could not muster the self-control necessary to keep from sinning. And David could sin with the best of them, and in the process, he hurt a lot of people. Like each of us, David was “formed” and “knit together” by a perfect and holy God, but he was also born into a broken and imperfect world. We spend our days in this imperfect world, we live our lives in the context of a world that is far from the way God created it to be. And that imperfect, broken nature affects each of us. That’s why we struggle with sin. That’s why we have bodies that sometimes let us down. That’s why we with experience troubling emotions and don’t always “feel” the way we want. And that’s also why our Creator becomes our Redeemer. This is why David celebrates, this is the “wonderful work” David experiences in God. Our mistakes are not the end of our journey; our imperfections don’t tell the entire story. The God whose fingerprints have been on us since our mothers’ wombs are the same fingerprints who remain with us, redeem us and promise to make us new. The same God who has made you is the God who will redeem you. 

The final truth David sees as he writes this psalm is that his purposes-in fact his entire existence- is always God directed. God never makes anything or anyone without a purpose, but that purpose always fits into the scope of God’s overall plan. You were not created to be an island. You were not made to run after your own desires, as good as they might be. You were made with a purpose, and that purpose is always God-centered. If you grew up in a Reformed tradition, you might be familiar with the Westminster Shorter Catechism. A catechism is a teaching tool with a question and answer format that helps train people to be disciples. And the first question drives this point of creation and purpose home: What is the chief end of humanity? The chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. That’s what David is realizing. David could spend his time navel-gazing; he could spend his days constantly focused on himself, but every time he does, he is drawn to God. When he looks inward, he thinks of God. When he considers the length of his days, he thinks of God. And when he considers God’s thoughts and ways, they’re just too much to comprehend. And for good reason. When David looks back at his life, he sees God’s fingerprints, God’s masterful, skillful weaving, from day one. He would see a young shepherd boy who nobody would’ve chose to be king, except God. He would have seen a victory over a giant that should’ve been impossible, except for God. He would’ve seen countless times when enemies should have destroyed him, but God always came to the rescue. David could not have created that type of life. He could not have written that type of story. But God could, and God did, because God made him. And long before David ever entered this world, God had a plan for him, and God saw that plan through to completion. 

Friends, I don’t know if your life has turned out the way you expected, and I don’t know what the rest of your days will hold, but I’m convinced that God’s fingerprints are all over you. You have been created in the image of God, created for purposes that God is slowly and intentionally fulfilling with every up and down, every mountain and valley, every detail big and small, that is your life. There is beauty in your life. There is worth to your life. You are God’s creation. This is your Real ID. This is who you truly are. But this won’t always be easy to see, and it will take a lot of faith, every day, to lean into who God says you are. One day we will see the masterpiece God is creating. One day we will see how God used every moment of our lives to make us more like Him. One day we will turn over the tapestry of our lives and see how God brilliantly weaved together every joy and every pain, every laugh and every tear, every wound and every prayer. But until that day comes, we must live by faith and not by sight. The invitation this morning is to trust Jesus with every detail, every moment and every day, placing all of them, all of you, in His hands for His purposes. And if that’s something you’d like to do this morning, I’d like to offer you a prayer I learned from my friends in the Recovery community. This is called the Serenity Prayer, written by Reinhold Neibuhr. 

God, grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.
Living one day at a time,
enjoying one moment at a time;
accepting hardship as a pathway to peace;
taking, as Jesus did,
this sinful world as it is,
not as I would have it;
trusting that You will make all things right
if I surrender to Your will;
so that I may be reasonably happy in this life
and supremely happy with You forever in the next.

Amen.