Formed in the Womb
By Dennis Pollock
We all love encouraging words of promise, and we surely find one in the opening verses of the 44th chapter of Isaiah:
Yet hear now, O Jacob My servant,
And Israel whom I have chosen.
Thus says the LORD who made you
And formed you from the womb, who will help you:
“Fear not, O Jacob My servant…” (Isaiah 44:1-2)
In these and the following verses there are several wonderful truths for Bible teachers to dissect, but for this study I want to focus on the idea of being “formed in the womb” by our Creator. This particular promise was made not to an individual, but to a people – the people of Israel (called here “Jacob my servant”). Still this passage could just as easily apply to every Christian throughout the world. We who have been born again through faith in Jesus Christ and justified by His death and resurrection are truly the chosen of God, and we have not come into this world by accident. We are the handiwork of God.
The Hand of God
Scientists know a great deal about the process of conception, cell multiplication, growth in the womb, and eventual birth. We know how it works, and we know that this procedure is repeated over and over again every time a baby is born into the world, whether black, white, red, or brown. The process never varies. But in His word God tells us that there is more to it than any eye, camera, or microscope can observe. He is involved. He plays an active role in the development of every person who is ever born. God told the prophet Jeremiah:
Before I formed you in the womb I knew you;
Before you were born I sanctified you;
I ordained you a prophet to the nations (Jeremiah 1:5).
Here God goes even further. Not only does He declare Himself the one who forms us in the womb, but He tells Jeremiah that He had ordained him as a prophet before He ever initiated the process of Jeremiah’s birth. When Jeremiah was born and entered into the world his destiny was already set; his position and prophetic ministry were already established. All that was required was the passage of time for God to fulfill all He had planned for this young man before he ever existed. Jeremiah’s abilities, his talent to speak and write, his willingness to stand up to kings and political rulers and rebuke them for their wickedness, his intelligence, his personality, and all that made him the man that he was had been put together in a divine recipe while he grew and developed in his mother’s womb, totally oblivious of everything.
You may be thinking, “Well, that is great for prophets, but has nothing to do with an ordinary guy or lady like me.” But you would be wrong. The God who controls the destinies of sparrows surely has had His hand on you from your mother’s womb as well. Paul writes to the Ephesians: “He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself” (Ephesians 1:4, 5). The Scriptures affirm again and again that we are not an accident. Whether your father ever loved your mother, whether your parents were ever married, whether you were conceived as a result of an act of rape or a momentary passion between two people who immediately afterward went their separate ways, or whether you were an outgrowth of a lifelong love which came from two married individuals, still you are, without a doubt, the product of the great cosmic master craftsman, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. You arrived precisely on schedule, on time, and with the exact shape, personality, and abilities you were destined to possess. You belong in this world!
“If only I were…”
This is important because probably 99% of the people in this world, including Christians, are unhappy with some aspect of themselves. It might be their body, it could be their personality, their looks, their lack of talent in some area, or any number of other things. We paid little attention to what abilities, talent, or looks we possessed or lacked when we were small. Life was a big adventure and we hardly noticed the differences between us and other children. But as we matured and especially in the school setting, we began to notice that we were all different, and that some children were superior to us in certain areas. As we grew into adulthood these differences became more and more apparent.
Why weren’t we born more handsome or pretty? Or why did we have such a quiet personality – why couldn’t we be the life of the party like Nancy or Bob? Or why did we always struggle to make C’s when Jim got A’s and barely cracked a book? Why did Susan have so many friends when we had so few? If we are not careful we may begin feeling greatly inferior and spend our days doing little, expecting little of ourselves, and blaming it all on our inadequacies. When we do this, we impugn God and dare to imply that He doesn’t do very good work at all. In another passage Isaiah warns us that the ax is not to boast against the One who made it. But the reverse is surely true as well. The ax should not criticize the One who made it, saying, “Why didn’t you make me better, or smarter, or prettier, or more talented, or more outgoing, or happier, or bubblier, or cleverer?”
Our God knows what He is doing. And when a woman becomes pregnant, regardless of the circumstances in which that conception occurred, there is something far deeper and greater than the mere multiplication of cells and the growth of the unborn child. The invisible hand of God Almighty is at work, shaping, molding, determining abilities, talents, and tendencies. And when that baby emerges into the world, he or she represents a masterpiece – uniquely designed by God to bring glory to His name and to accomplish much good and bring blessing to others.
It Can Be A “Wonderful Life”
Unlike Jeremiah, few of us will be ordained as prophets from our mother’s womb. We may be ordained truck drivers, school teachers, doctors, mechanics, or department store clerks. But wherever our abilities and inclinations take us, we all have the capacity to glorify our God and to be a means of great good in the earth. As with Jimmy Stewart in that classic movie It’s A Wonderful Life, we have it within us, by the grace of God and through our abiding in Jesus Christ, to make our world a much better place because we have been in it. It may not be at a Billy Graham level, but in our small way we can make a significant difference in people’s lives. Some of those blessings may be evident even while we live, but others will no doubt only be revealed when we stand before Christ and receive rewards for our service to Him.
What makes all this work is the experience that Jesus called being born again. By putting our faith in Jesus and receiving Him as our Lord and Savior, we are reconciled to God and are given the indwelling Holy Spirit. God is now ready to get to work in us and through us.
Yet even as Christians and children of God we may be tempted to bemoan our weaknesses and wish that we had more talent to give the Lord. We feel like such an unpolished, cracked, not-too-clean, not-too-bright vessel to be placed in the hands of Jesus. But, as Kathryn Kuhlman used to say, “God does not look for golden vessels; He does not look for silver vessels. He looks for yielded vessels.” Although it is our responsibility to shore up our weaknesses the best we can, we are never going to change the basic person we were made to be. Through Jesus we become enhanced, improved, enriched, and empowered. But still we remain who we are – just a better version of who we are.
Except in rare cases, most people who were terrible at public speaking before receiving Christ aren’t much improved in that area after believing on Him. Most people who were not very intelligent before Christ won’t become geniuses after Christ. On the other hand, if you had talents before coming to Jesus, you may find those talents greatly multiplied after receiving Jesus and being filled with the Holy Spirit. The apostle Paul was an ambitious, highly intelligent, and scholarly man before His dramatic conversion on the Damascus Road. After being transformed by Jesus, his epistles and his life indicate that he was still ambitious, highly intelligent, and scholarly – but much more so! Of course, some things were added, such as the grace to raise dead people and make lame men to walk!
“You Formed Me”
The point is, God knows you very well. He is the One who fashioned you inside your mother. David wrote:
You formed my inward parts;
You covered me in my mother’s womb.
I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made (Psalm 139:13, 14).
God made you for a specific purpose. His desire for you is first that you would run to Jesus, believe on Him and be saved, and second, that you would submit yourself to Him, and allow Him to do with you and in you and through you just as He pleases. And in whatever areas that you may feel inferior, He is able to either A) Supply that lack and place gifts in you that will totally surprise you, or B) Simply bypass that particular area in your life and use you in other ways and means. Not everybody has to be a singer, not everyone has to preach, not everyone has to be a leader in the church. But there is one thing that everybody does have to do – we all have to serve, some way, somehow, and in some capacity. We must be doing something in Jesus’ name to advance His kingdom!
This means that we use whatever talents, skills, aptitudes, and propensities we may have and try to find some work which seems at least somewhat of a match. If we truly feel we have almost no talents at all, then we must find a ministry, a role, a service which requires almost no talent. Start at the very bottom, if necessary, and even if you never rise much above the bottom, consider yourself privileged to serve Christ in even the most minimal and smallest position. At least you are doing something – which is more than many professing Christians are doing.
D. L. Moody
Sometimes we may surprise ourselves. The great evangelist D. L. Moody had little education, terrible grammar, and began his “ministry” teaching a group of unruly children he had gathered off the streets through bribes, pony rides, and lots of persuasion. He didn’t go from Sunday School teacher to great evangelist overnight, but as he was faithful to do what little he could, he found greater and greater opportunities. He became a powerful speaker whom God used to turn many to Jesus. But His grammar never improved too much. Once an educated young man heard the famous evangelist preach for the first time and talked with him afterwards. He told Moody, “Sir, I am surprised at you. You made 13 grammatical mistakes (I don’t remember the exact number, but it was something like that) during your sermon.” Moody smiled at the young man and told him, “Son, I am using the best grammar I can for the glory of God, and I suggest that you do the same.”
I have often been tempted to be jealous of people who have “big” personalities. I’ve never had one. I have always been kind of a quiet guy who thinks a lot more than he talks. But I never asked to be that way. I came forth from my mother that way, and it has never changed in all these sixty plus years I have been around. God uses that analytic tendency in me in my writing and teaching, and even though I’ll never win any awards for “personality of the year,” I have been able to accomplish some things as a writer that I probably would never have achieved had I been more outgoing and less analytical.
God knows best. Praise God, we are not the potter; He is. We are the clay, and the clay’s job is never to make itself, but to yield to the masterful hands of the expert Potter. And as we assess ourselves, who we are and what we are, what we have and what we do not have, we must never say, “O God, why didn’t you make me better?” Even though you are imperfect, God’s work in creating you was perfect. And once you put your faith in Jesus, through Him you are everything you need to be. With Jesus Christ in us and the Holy Spirit upon us, we can do all we are destined to do and be all we were meant to be. Our God does very fine work indeed.
