Created to Be

Can we decide who we are? Can we decide who we want to be? Can we, like Bruce/Caitlyn Jenner, decide our gender? Can we, like Rachel Dolezal, decide our race? Did God make a mistake when he made us the gender or race we were born as? Did God make a mistake when he hard-wired us with the personality we have? Or with the unique giftings we have, different from everyone else? Should we spend our lives wishing we were, and trying to be, someone else?

Is it ours to decide who we are? Or did God create us to be who we are? Let’s ask God’s opinion:

Psalm 139:13-14: You created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. (NIV)

Jeremiah 1:5a: Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart. (NIV)

God’s of the opinion that he’s our Creator, and that he got it right. We are not a mistake. We do not have the right to decide who we are, including our gender or our race. That’s rebellion against who he made us, and hence against God himself. Our life does not belong to us; it belongs to God. He made us, we did not make ourselves.

Some of us have been wounded by sin against us so deeply that we don’t know who we are. Sometimes it even confuses our gender identity or our racial identity. We wrongly think the sin against us was our fault, and we hate ourselves for it. Our shame has taught us that we are the evil done to us. If we could only remake ourselves into something different, then we’d be okay. Then we’d stop hurting.

But that’s a lie from the pit, and nothing could be further from the truth. Trying to remake ourselves, trying to be God in our own lives, only leaves us a hollow shell of a person. And the pain just gets worse.

Isaiah 45: 9-10: What sorrow awaits those who argue with their Creator. Does a clay pot argue with its maker? Does the clay dispute with the one who shapes it, saying, “Stop, you’re doing it wrong!” Does the pot exclaim, “How clumsy can you be?” How terrible it would be if a newborn baby said to its father, “Why was I born?” or if it said to its mother, “Why did you make me this way?” (NLT)

Arguing with God about who he made us to be is a recipe for disaster. We can’t be God in our own lives because we’re not God. The truth is, we will only live a satisfied and fulfilled life if we live who God created us to be.

1 Corinthians 12:7: Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good.

And the truth is, the people around us desperately need us to be who God created us to be. By confusing our identity, the enemy has robbed them too.

This life is not a hollow, selfish journey of “who do I want to be today.” That horrible deception robs us of the richness of life. Instead, life is a wonderful, awe-filled journey of discovering who God made us to be.

Who did God make you to be? Is there pain in the way? God has healing for you. What part of your being do you not like? What part of yourself are you at war with? I’m not talking about bad habits or character flaws here. I’m talking about what part of you – your gender, your race, your height, your hard-wired personality traits, etc – don’t you like and why? Tell us in the comments or send us a private message from the “Contact Us” page. Let’s get some healing started.