ACCEPT YOURSELF
“And yet, O Lord, you are our Father. We are the clay, and you are the potter. We are all formed by your hand.” [Isaiah 64:8 (NLT)]
Do you want to be useful to God? Maybe you feel that some of your personality characteristics get in the way. However, to serve God you need not change your entire personality. God made you just the way you are, and wants you to serve Him with who you are.
God wants us to understand that He lovingly made us, and He wants us to accept how He made us. When you become a disciple, God the Potter doesn’t change who you are. Instead, He changes what you are without Christ. The Potter won’t change your personality – He simply will use who you are to better effect.
Self-acceptance is a key to usefulness for God. I read about a Nurse who attends to mothers at the post-natal / recovery ward, she wasn’t that nice with patients. She was impatient, rude, and very brusque. Sometime after, she became a Christian. God tempered her impatience into swift efficiency and transformed her brusqueness into briskness. She would come back in her spare time and give herself to her patients. All things had become new, although her basic personality was the same. God did not change who she was, but what she had been without Christ.
Why don’t you ask the Potter who formed you what He has in mind for you? Accept how He made you, and then step back and let Him transform you!
Prayers:
1 God transform me into a useful instrument in your hands in Jesus name.
2 Every thief that has been stealing from me, I command the thief to be arrested in Jesus name.
3 Let thunder, storm, and earthquake, destroy that strong man or strongwoman that does evil sacrifice and incantation against me in Jesus name.
Liberation thought: Self-acceptance is key to usefulness for God.
Further reading: