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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, NIV

Wonderfully made is God’s declaration over his creation: “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good” (Gen. 1:31, NIV).

I confess I am not in the practice of praising God for how wonderfully I am made. More often I’m seeking affirmation to measure my worth, comparing myself to others to benchmark my value and living preoccupied with perceived deficits in others and myself.

The psalmist’s focus is entirely different. In Psalm 139 he’s not analyzing himself or looking at others to measure his value and worth. Instead, he’s collecting evidence about God—the Creator, his Maker. And it is through this lens that his value of being wonderfully made begins to gain traction and grounding: God knows me, he is familiar with all my ways, he knows my thoughts and my words before I even speak, he surrounds me, he guides me, he is with me wherever I go, he created my inmost being—he knows me inside and out (see Ps. 139:1–13, NIV and MSG).

This knowledge generates a shift in the psalmist’s mind and spirit. Realizing that God notices him and is continuously present with him tells him something about his Creator—something he hadn’t quite understood. Where once he may have felt alone, unnoticed and uncertain about who he is, now the psalmist is bursting with enthusiasm because he knows whose he is. Intimately designed, known, loved, valued and precious—he is stamped with “wonderfully made” in God’s eyes.

Knowing our identity as wonderfully made brings a response of reverence, awe and praise: “I thank you, High God—you’re breathtaking! Body and soul, I am marvelously made! I worship in adoration—what a creation!” (Ps. 139:14, MSG).

Living in this assurance and posture is essential to our identity and well-being. Realities of a sinful, broken world can so easily damage our self-perception and threaten our praise. We are confronted with physical, mental, intellectual, relational and social barriers; and there are times when God puts his finger on our attitudes and behaviors that need his stretching, shaping and transformation. The difference is that God’s attention always brings us more to life in his design, not less.

God knows exactly who we are, how we’re designed and what we need to function most effectively today. Through Jesus, God has breathed his very life into us, drawing us into relationship with him, filling us with his Spirit. He’s the One who started this good work, and he will “carry it on to completion” (Phil. 1:6, NIV). “In him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28, NIV).

Our identity as wonderfully made beckons us to fully be who God has created us to be: engaged and wholehearted with people and tasks, sharing ourselves with others, stewarding our resources and abilities, praising God for being so wonderfully made.

“When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, what is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them?

You have made them a little lower than the angels

and crowned them with glory and honor.”

Psalm 8:3–5, NIV