Who has God made me to be?

The second question is: who has God made me to be? Our connecting text is Galatians 1:15, where Paul is talking about what God did in his life, and astonishingly he says of God, [he] set me apart from my mother’s womb—that is from within his mother’s womb, from conception. He is talking about him being an apostle, a preacher, and a missionary; he is saying his preparation for being an apostle, a preacher, and a missionary began from conception. We might be tempted to say, “Wait a minute, Paul! Surely, your preparation began on the Damascus road. You were a persecutor! You hated Christ and the cause of Christ. You threw Christians in prison! You had them beaten! You had them killed! Surely, the whole of your life up to that moment on the Damascus road is a blank—a waste of time—it is worthless; it is worse than useless. Paul says, “No, no, no. God set me apart from my mother’s womb. The brain God gave me, the intellect God gave me, the personality God gave me, the way God put me together and created me as an individual human being, were all part of God’s preparation for what I was going to be and do for him. God’s hand was shaping me from the moment I was conceived.

That is equally true of you and of me. This was not a special unique work of God. It is true of every one of his servants. Who you are in the essence of your humanity—that is no accident. Your personality, character, temperament, gifts, talents, weaknesses, natural abilities—those are all part of God’s doing. Your education or your lack of education is all part of God’s providence. Your training, your past experiences, the good experiences that you have had in your life—that have all been part of God’s preparing you. The not so good experiences as well as the terrible experiences. Paul, whose previous life was black and wicked, but now was preaching the gospel and speaking to a Jew, was able to say, “I understand you. I love you. I have sympathy with you. I was there—this was how I argued; this is how I felt. When Paul was speaking to the vilest sinner in Corinth, and somebody came to him and said, I could never be forgiven, because this is what I have done, Paul could say, Listen friend, I was forgiven. Let me tell you what I did: I stood when Stephen was stoned to death and I was in charge, I supported it. But the blood of Jesus washed me. And if Jesus Christ could forgive me, he can forgive you. That was part of his terrible, terrible, terrible preparation. But you see how Paul could see the whole of his life under God’s grace—that the black times and the things he had done wrong, his very sins, does not excuse him. His very sins were part of his preparation.

Is that not a very wonderful thing? To see the sovereign God bringing good out of evil, overruling all things for his glory and for the benefit of his church. It does not take away the sorrow. Paul collected money for the widows and orphans in Jerusalem till the day of his death. Everywhere where he went he was always collecting money for the widows and orphans in Jerusalem because it was his fault there were widows and orphans. He had to carry that with him. But he was forgiven, and he knew that God was using it. What I am saying, dear readers, is that all God’s work is a unity—his creative work, his providential work, and his redeeming work. It is all a unity. It all harmonises. It goes together. God does not save you and me and then say, Oh dear, it is a pity the first half of your life was so much of a mess. That is really going to damage what you can do. No! It is far more wonderful than that.

Who has God made you to be? Look in the mirror. Do not be frightened. Do not try to be anybody else. God does not want you to be anybody else; God wants you to be you—who you are, who he is going to make you. He has made you a certain shape, a very odd shape. But he has got particular holes of service and there is only one person going to fit into that shape. There is only one place in the jigsaw, and there is a place where the odd peculiar shape that you are will fit into. Who has God made me to be?

A part of the problem is that people do things for which they are not fitted. They try to be who God has not made them to be—they try to be somebody else. When you try to be somebody else, you will always make a poor job of it. Accept who you are. Ask yourself, Who has God made me to be? That will guide you if you think gifts.¹

Edward Donnelly