God has specifically designed you and me, with our particular gifts and personalities and passions, for such a time and place as this.
God Designed Your Frame
Psalm 139 says:
“For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.” (v. 13-16 ESV)
Throughout the Old Testament, the idea of “frame” is talking about our physical makeup: how we’re built. One of the divine activities behind the biological processes that went on in our mothers’ wombs is that God was putting us together for the days he would give to us. He was building us for the life he knew he would give to us.
But that’s not all, because the psalmist knows that “your eyes saw my unformed substance.” That means God wired you in stature. He wired you physically. He wired you emotionally. He wired you with personality: your fight-or-flight response, your harmonizing, your persisting, your achieving. All of that is hardwired into you by God.
You’ve been uniquely wired by a divine hand. And God doesn’t make mistakes. He didn’t get distracted while he was knitting you together and drop a stitch.
We’re uniquely wired.
God Determined Your Place
And we’re uniquely placed:
“The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth … made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him … He is actually not far from each one of us.” (Acts 17:24, 26-27)
God made you to worship him and live faithful to him right where you are, right when you are. He is not looking at the age of unbelief and wishing he’d played his A-team for this era, rather than you and me. And knowing that should comfort us. God knows what he’s doing.
Knowing that should also eradicate any sense of boredom in our lives. What I mean is this: God is at work behind everything, setting us up as heralds of his good news to everyone. He is at work in our families, our friends, our neighbors, our co-workers, and potentially all those we come in contact with.
None of our conversations and interactions and situations are by chance (Christians don’t believe in chance). They are by divine appointment.
God Designed You Uniquely with Purpose
God has uniquely wired you with specific gifts and tendencies, and uniquely placed you where you live, work, and play in order to give you unique opportunities to speak to those he’s lined up for you to meet about the God who has done all this.
God could have given today’s church an Augustine, a Martin Luther, a Jonathan Edwards, an Amy Carmichael, a C.H. Spurgeon, an Elisabeth Elliot, or a [insert your favorite hero from church history here].
But he didn’t. He gave today’s church, in this age of unbelief, you and me. That’s our calling. That’s our privilege. That’s our responsibility.