Week Ten, 2018
WONDERFULLY MADE
By John Grant
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. – Psalm 139:14
Not long ago, I spent several days at more than thirteen thousand feet in the Andes Mountains. We had a wonderful time, but the price was altitude sickness. In the middle of the night, the sickness felt like my bed was a swinging hammock and when I got up, I could barely stand up and was totally out of balance.
They say that the best cure for altitude sickness is to go to a lower altitude and I did. It partially helped, but when it lingered after arriving home, I knew I needed professional help. So I went to see an otolaryngologist.
He explained to me that the ears control our balance and in each ear there are two gel sacks of tiny crystals, billions of them. The crystals (sometimes called ear rocks) in one sack control horizontal balance and the crystals in the other sack control vertical balance. Imbalance is caused by a mechanical problem in the inner ear. It occurs when some of the calcium carbonate crystals that are normally embedded in gel become dislodged and migrate into one or more of the 3 fluid-filled semicircular canals, where they are not supposed to be.
After learning so much about my ears, I drove home thinking how wonderfully we are made by God. Only a God of creation could design such a complex body.
Do you ever wake up, take a good look in the mirror, and tell yourself, “No doubt about it—I’m fearfully and wonderfully made!” Maybe when you think about the kind of person you are, words like “average” or “not bad” come to mind. Sometimes you might see yourself as above average, but there are days when a closer look reveals insecurities and flaws that you can’t ignore. If you ever consider yourself unremarkable or even ordinary, you’re not seeing yourself as a result of God’s divine creation.
When we discover the truth that we are God’s unique design, it is overwhelming. In Genesis 1:27, “God created man in his own image…male and female he created them.” We often mistakenly equate this with just physical appearance.
On a more practical level, God has fearfully and wonderfully made us, setting us apart as the brightest, clearest mirror of His creativity. While evolutionary biology considers us nothing more than glorified apes, scientific research confirms that humans are vastly unique on many levels.
We didn’t evolve from goo to the zoo, to you. We are a direct creation from the hand of God and we are wonderfully made. Never underestimate the power and creativity of the hand of God.
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SOMETIMES TRUE STORIES
“The most important commandment is this: . . . ‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength’” (Mark 12:29-30 NLT).
Do you hear the emotion in these words from Jesus? He’s saying he doesn’t want you to just kind of love him. He wants you to love him passionately — with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength. God doesn’t want your head knowledge; he wants an emotional relationship with you.
There are some things you need to understand about emotions.
1. First, God has emotions. God is an emotional God. He feels joy, grief, pain, and hatred toward sin. He gets frustrated with people. The only reason you have emotions is because you’re made in God’s image. If God wasn’t an emotional God, you wouldn’t have any emotions.
2. Your ability to feel is a gift from God. Emotions are what make you human. It is your emotional ability that allows you to love and create, to be faithful and loyal and kind and generous, and to express all of the emotions that are attached to the good things in life. Your emotions may not always seem like a gift, but even the negative ones have a purpose in your life.
3. There are two extremes to avoid. Emotionalism is the extreme of saying the only thing that matters in life is how you feel — not what you think or what’s right or wrong. Everything in life is based on your emotions, this view says, and they control your life. On the other hand, stoicism says feelings aren’t important at all, and the only things that matter are your intellect and your will.
God gave you your emotions for a reason, and he wants you to worship Him with all your heart and all your mind. Rick Warren
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QUOTES YOU CAN USE
It’s just as hard to attain satisfaction and success from attaining goals we don’t have as it is to get pleasure from reminiscing about things we haven’t done. Ernie J. Zelinski
Positive thinking is of zero value without positive doing. Robert Sharma
None are so good they need not be saved – None so bad they cannot be saved. Ken Whitten
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©2018 John Grant | Florida State Senator (Ret.) | 10025 Orange Grove Drive | Tampa, FL 33618