Celebrating God's Handiwork - The Essence of Self-Acceptance - Part III

Celebrating God’s Handiwork - The Essence of Self-Acceptance – Part III

Innumerable scriptures detail God’s unfailing and everlasting and faithful towards each of His children.  The following ten verses will encourage and empower you as you practice the preceding spiritual disciplines.

1.      Psalm 26:3

2.      Psalm 27:10

3.      Psalm 51:1

4.      Psalm 118:23

5.      Isaiah 1:18-19

6.      Isaiah 50:7

7.      Jeremiah 31:3

8.      John 3:16

9.      Romans 8:39

10.  2 Timothy 1:7

11.   1 John 4:18

12.  1 John 4:19

Before detailing the majestic and mysterious love that God shows us in Psalm 139, I wish to emphasize the ability of self-acceptance to obliterate doubt and negativity.  The lack of self-acceptance leaves you perpetually questioning yourself, fostering a very bleak outlook on life.  Instead of having faith and finding the positive aspects of any challenge, you assuredly discover the reasons why things cannot be done.  In addition, life’s greatest enemy, fear, strengthens these self-defeating and pessimistic views.  Underneath such “rational” doubt is a harmful cynicism fueled by the intensity of a lack of self-acceptance. 

The Psalter admonishes us to celebrate God’s handiwork in us.  We are “fearfully and wonderfully made!”  What a marvelous realization!  Modern science agrees;our DNA, teeth and fingerprints among other distinctive qualities demonstrate our inherent uniqueness.  Although there are more than six billion people on the earth, none of us are the same, not even identical twins.  Interestingly, God deserves a patent for each of us because of our individual uniqueness.  Nevertheless, Psalm 139 teaches us to accept ourselves as we are and in so doing accept God’s handiwork in us.

The opening six verses describe the psalmist’s intimate relationship with Almighty God.  The Lord of universe who hung more than a billion stars with separate solar systems and galaxies cares enough about the individual that He knows the psalmist’s sitting down, rising up, going out and coming in.  Most incredibly, the psalmist says that God loves Him enough to pay attention to his thoughts.  Before they are conceived fully, the Lord knows them from afar.  Overwhelmed by this reality, the psalmist declares that the sheer thought of this indescribable blessing and relationship as amazing.

Whereas the preceding verses demonstrate the psalmist’s belief in the omniscience of God, the next four verses, seventh through the tenth, speak of His omnipresence.  The psalmist can escape the presence of God.  There is no location in the infinite and expanding universe that provides a refuge.  Whether in heaven, hell or the farthest reaches of the ocean, the psalmist will assuredly find God.  The presence of God empowers the psalmist with faith, hope and comfort.  Should the psalmist “take the wings of the dawn” and embark upon a new enterprise, God will be right in the middle of it.  His “hand will guide me.”  “Your right hand will hold me fast.”  God’s love and concern for each of us leads Him to listen to all of us simultaneously.  Furthermore, it motivates Him to be present with the fortitude, peace and wisdom of His character despite the circumstances.  Do we really believe the word of the Lord?  Do we fully appreciate God’s unfailing love as embodied in the care and concern that He extends to us?  Do we accept and love ourselves as God loves us?

The eleventh and twelfth verses offer a very pleasant surprise.  Rhetorically, the psalmist ponders whether the darkness will hide him from the presence of God.  He wishes that the light of the day will become night around him.  Thus, he will escape completely the presence of God and thereby the necessity of obeying the will of God.  But, the psalmist immediately admits “even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you.”  He finds tremendous hope and comfort in that realization.  Accordingly, we can cease and desist with the notion that God only works in the light of our lives.  In fact, these words assure us that He incredibly uses the bleak periods of doubt, anger, cynicism and hopelessness to transform us.