One of the greatest realizations you can have is that you were uniquely created with gifts and talents to continue the mission of Christ. Not only did He love you enough to die for you, but He also gifted you specifically to collaborate with Him in bringing the Kingdom of God to fruition.
So many wander through life discouraged because they believe themselves to be insignificant and without purpose; this is tragic and we need to be telling them how special they are in the eyes of God.
I’ve often heard people excuse their behavior by saying they were “born this way” or they blame their actions on the circumstances of their environment. None of us were created to fail; this is a lie that Satan delights in feeding into our minds. The reality is we are each created for a purpose. That ache in your belly is not despair, it’s the longing to discover and be who you were created to be. In Ephesians 2:8-10, Paul explains that the grace of God has allowed us to put aside all our failures and all our disappointments. The blood of His Son covers all of the mess of our past, present and future. We can change who we are today simply by giving ourselves to Christ and following Him with all our heart.
While it’s true that we all were indeed “born this way”, that is actually a positive, not a negative. We were created to know and love God, with specific skills and abilities that He intended us to use for His purposes. That is the way we were born, in perfect communion with God. It is when we rebel against who we were born to be that we begin to lose our way. Suddenly we are acting in ways contrary to the purpose for which we were created and our gifts and talents fall to the ground, wasted and unused.
Our environment can certainly impact the way we behave, but this is something that by and large we can control. If your friends cause you to sin, go find new friends who are committed to walking with Christ. If your family is responsible for trying to lead you astray, walk away and embrace the family of God. Jesus said that we would have to forsake everything, including our family, if we would follow Him (Luke 14:25-28). Basically He was saying that anything that would come between you and Him must be left behind. Only when we are willing to lose everything for His sake will we begin to realize that all we need is Him.
We are not prisoners of fate or victims of circumstance. We are not trapped forever in the person we are today. Each day brings new opportunities to choose a new path, a new way of living. Even if we cannot physically change our circumstances, we still have the ability to choose our attitude and change our thinking. The Bible is clear on whom we were created to be; it’s who we are in our very essence, at our core. The choice is ours; we can continue to wallow in our insignificance and despair or we can embrace the person we were born to be and impact our world with the love of God.
We have too long believed the lies of Satan, the subtle whispers that convince us our lives do not matter and that we will never amount to anything. The truth is we were created to work alongside Jesus and do the very things that He did when He walked on earth. His power is available to each of us if we would simply ask. He has created you for significance and purpose. Our true worth is found only when we sacrifice all we are to Him. When we release our selfish desires and ambitions, when we cease to believe the lies of the devil, then we will come to embrace who we were created to be. At this point, we can rejoice in who we are and proudly proclaim that we were uniquely created to accomplish great work in the service of the King. Don’t be discouraged, but rather take heart; you were born this way.