Written by Pastor Jack Wellman– Francis de Sales
God Created You
Every one of us is like snowflakes. No two of us are the same, and that’s the way God intended it. He doesn’t want cookie cutter Christians. He wants you to be you because there is no one else like you, for good or for bad. The psalmist understood that God was the author of life and that He had “formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb” (Psalm 139:13). Try to be you, but of course our goal is to become more Christ-like.
God Destined You
God has plans for you just as He did ancient Israel, where Jeremiah wrote, “I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope” (Jer 29:11). In fact, God has predestined you to do good works before you were born, as the Apostle Paul wrote, “we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Eph 2:10).
God Desires You
God desired to save you long ago before you were born (Eph 1), and so He planned an adoption of you long before the earth existed. Paul writes that God “chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will” (Eph 1:4-5). Did you catch that? God planned you before creation and created you to be “holy and blameless before him,” and it was not according to our will but “according to the purpose of his will.”
God Loves You
Returning to Jeremiah the Prophet, he wrote of Israel, “I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you” (Jer 31:3). Even though this verse was not written expressly to us, we can see that God is faithful to complete what He started in us just as He is not finished with ancient Israel, and so Paul could write, “I know whom I have believed, and I am convinced that he is able to guard until that day what has been entrusted to me” (2nd Tim 1:123). As long as you are drawing breath, God is not finished with you, no matter what you think of yourself.
Conclusion
Francis de Sales, in saying, “Do not wish to be anything but what you are, and try to be that perfectly,” must have understood that God created you in a very unique way; He has destined you to many great things in the coming kingdom and today; He desires you and me to be “holy and blameless before him,” and because of Christ we can do that (2nd Cor 5:21); and He loves you with an everlasting love that is not conditioned on our behavior or performance. Thank God for all this today.
