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PROGRAM D-7968
Are you happy with the way God created you? I want to encourage you and help you get to that place because, as soon as you can accept yourself and believe that God has made you for special and unique purposes, you experience wonderful benefits: You are free! The person God has created you to be starts to shine through beautifully! You are able to see just why God made you the way you are! You discover that there is a lot more to you which you didn’t even recognize before!
God is free to work in and through us when we’re free to say, “Thank you, Jesus, you didn’t make a mistake when you made me. Now, please take what you have made and use it for the purposes you intended.”
When an artist creates a painting—and it is a good painting—what do we say about the painting? We say, “What a wonderful painting! That artist is very good.” Who gets credit for the painting? The artist, of course. We don’t give the painting credit; that would be silly. It is nothing but a blank canvas until that artist turns it into a thing of beauty.
Ephesians 2:10 says we are God’s workmanship—or God’s masterpiece—created in Christ Jesus to do good works which he ordained in advance for us to do. He is the artist and we are his canvas. As God’s canvas, we are not our own; we belong to him. We were created by him and for him.
Paul writes that our bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit; we are not our own, but belong to Christ. For those of us who have been born from above through faith in Jesus Christ, we have been made new. He created us anew in Christ Jesus. The old has gone, the new has come. Have you been created anew in Christ? That’s what Jesus was talking about when he told Nicodemus, “You must be born again.” You need to be created anew. It is that new creation that then becomes God’s canvas on which he paints his masterpiece.
This verse then tells you why he created you, why you are here: you are here to do the good works he planned for you to do. This means that God has a list of good things for you—explicitly you—to do, and your reason for being here is to know and do those good things.