Self-Acceptance that is God-Glorifying

          I am working my way through Jerry Bridge’s book, 31 Days Toward Trusting God.  In the chapter entitled, Trusting God for Who I Am, Bridges refers to Psalm 139:14 where King David writes “I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made.”  Now David was handsome, athletic, a warrior, a musician, etc.  We might think - it was easy for David to write those words in Psalm 139, he had it all.  But what about me?  I am far less than all that David was, I struggle with even measuring up to just ordinary.

             

         It is hard to trust God with the way we have been created.  To not compare, to be content, to move toward self-acceptance.

May God encourage you with these two paragraphs from Jerry Bridges.

        “David praised God not because he was handsome but because God made him.  Dwell on that thought.  The eternal God, infinite in His wisdom and perfect in His love, personally made you and me.  He gave you your body, your mental abilities, and your basic personality because that’s the way He wanted you to be, and He loves you and wants to glorify Himself through you.”

       “This is our foundation for self-acceptance.  God sovereignly and directly created us to be who we are, disabilities and physical flaws and all.  We need to learn the perspective of George McDonald: ‘I would rather be what God chose to make me that the most glorious creature that I could think of.  For to have been thought about – born in God’s thoughts – and then made by God is the dearest, grandest, most precious thing in all thinking.’”

        These are good and encouraging words to us.  God thought of you, made you and loves you, just as you are.  Accepting yourself as God made you is a part of glorifying Him with your whole life.

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Dave MacKinnon

About the Author:
Dave serves on staff at Westchester as Senior Pastor