God Speaking

“I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.” (Psalm 139:14)

Just recently I was walking through a busy mall in our neighbourhood and noticed that one of the stores was totally boarded up with these letters emblazoned over the side, “We Are Under Construction.” As I was wondering what was to emerge when the siding was taken down, a sudden thought struck me that we should have the same words printed on us somewhere. As I was pursuing this thought, I remembered a sweet story I heard.

In a small Italian village lived a famous artist who was well known for carving beautiful sculptures from marble. A little boy who lived in the same village would pass by his place on his way to school and would always stop to watch the man at work. Finally one day the little boy stopped to peek in and to his amazement, instead of a huge piece of marble, a majestic lion stood in its place. He cried out to the artist, “How did you know the lion was in there?

I can see ourselves in that story. On the outside we may appear to be nothing out of the ordinary, and it is only in the hands of our Heavenly Sculptor and his knowledge of the beauty contained deep within us can we really emerge as he planned us to be. We may have begun to think that we are nothing special, that nobody would notice us in the crowd. We may have begun to think that we have no special talents or gifts. We may have been told by others how worthless we are and have begun to believe them, this is when we have to have the confidence to put ourselves, “under construction”

Our Heavenly Father is the one who moulds us and shapes us into the beautiful creature he knows is within us. Unlike human sculptors, who work from the outside, our Lord does his major work from the inside. He often begins with the heart that has become calloused and hard

“I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.” (Ezekiel 36:26)

David realised that he certainly needed to have some repairs carried out on his heart and calls out to his Heavenly Father;

“Create in me a pure heart, O’ God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.” (Psalm 51:10)

When we totally allow the Lord to be the fashioner of our inner spirit an amazing transformation takes place. A new self emerges;

“To be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.” (Ephesians 4:23 – 24)

We were created to be the image of God;

“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” (Genesis 1:27)

Sin and self-centeredness have caused a lot of disrepair in humans. Our Heavenly Father is offering to take away the ugliness by smoothing off the rough edges and just like our little story, allowing the real child of God to be plainly seen. We need to accept his generous gift and offer ourselves to be moulded under his hand. We need to see ourselves as his beloved, just needing his skilful hands to bring to light what he has already destined us to be.

WE ARE UNDER CONSTRUCTION