This is a guest entry from David Wager.
For the objectified ladies of the world…
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. – Psalm 139:14-15
You were made to be loved.
I know there are times you feel like you were made to be used, but that is not the case. In fact, as you look at our wonderful creation and hear the voice of our Creator, you find that you were indeed made to be loved by Him and to love Him. As God crafted the world in which you live, He saw that it was good, for it was being crafted for you. God personally created you and personally create3d the world in which you live for you, as one of His many gifts to you.
Since we live in a world that is Godless, we often do not see how special life really is, and we feel used, cheap, abused, and hopeless. God, who started it all, had a plan. This plan involved loving, an you are the target of His love.
As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. – John 15:9
Take a look around the room you are sitting in. Pick an object, like a lamp, or a couch, or a pen that you might have in your pocket or purse. As you look at that object you will know that that object has some kind of value to the one who owns it. They bought it, with a price, so that whatever it is, it can be a part of their lives. Not only that, you will notice that the object was something that someone designed for functionality. The object actually has a purpose to fulfill, and whoever bought it and is using it has undoubtedly agreed. You would also know, even without too much thought, that whoever designed this object also had to find someone to manufacture or make it. You know it did not just appear. In fact, you would have to be a bit moronic to believe so.
Indeed, if a lamp had a predesigned function, a designer, a purpose, and a maker, then our entire universe, and the very observation of that design screams of a designer and a maker. Therefore, you were designed with purpose, and your purpose is to be one who is loved of God and loves God. The byproduct of doing that will also allow you to love other people.
It is important that you know that, because as you do, you will begin to live in the context of being one who is specially crafted, instead of acting as an accidental blob of protoplasm, which those who want to believe that all things came into existence on their own would like to believe.
Those who do not understand this are miserable, because they cannot live in the way they were created to live. In our first illustration, you would know that the owner of the lamp could do anything he/she wanted with the lamp, since they owned it. They could use the lamp as a baseball bat or a canoe paddle on the lake. If they do, they will both look stupid. You see, what they have done is use the ownership of the item to abuse it, and in the process, destroy it.
God made you to love you and wants to love you, but, in real love, you have real choice. If you have real choice, you then also have real consequences. Those consequences are either good or bad according to your choices.
The Bible tells us that we are fearfully and wonderfully made, that God Himself knit you together in your mother’s womb. The Scriptures are clear that even before you were conceived, God knew all about you. He gave you your eyes, your nose, your personality, etc.
It is obvious to anyone who reads the Bible that God wanted to make it clear to us that we were made to live life in an intimate bond. Relationships, real loving relationships, are what we were created for and what we long for. God, by His own design, was intimately bonded with you during your time in your mother’s womb, and you were made to enjoy and respond to Him, and you did.
You were not only made to be intimately bonded to God. You were made to be intimately bonded to your mother. For nine months, you were one with her. From the time you were born, you were longing for her and looking to her for love, affirmation, and care. You were created to be intimately bonded to your father whose genetics you share and to whom you desire to be close. One day, you will choose a spouse of your own and you will make the most powerful and longest lasting human intimate bond with him/her, and begin the process of loving relationships all over with a new, yet to be known by man, generation.
You see, the wonder of life, the beauty of life, is in its relationships, its loving relationships.
Sin, in our lives and in this world, has robbed us of these relationships. Sin first and foremost blocks us from God. Sin also blocks us from working out that intimacy with our human dads, and, in fact, has caused many human dads to not even be around.
In our effort to be intimate without God and His plan, we have prostituted ourselves. Men have thought about women as objects to use instead of treasures to love. They have allowed their temporal urges to dictate and could care less about the woman or the life they have started, and are more than willing to abandon all in their ultimate pursuit of self-satisfaction. Women, in general, have bought into this routine. They have seen how much attention men give to those who are objects, and they long for being loved, so they line up and pay the price. In doing so, they have abandoned the way they were created, and while searching for significance, they find despair and abandonment.
You indeed want to be significant, so you search for it. You compromise, you cheat, and you do things that you regret in order to feel “good” about yourself. In the end, you lose, because the significance and secure you seek cannot be obtained by seeking something or someone. It comes as a gift from God and is yours for that taking.
Here is the simple plan.
God made you and loves you and desires you to be all He created you to be. He is older than you, smarter than you, and loves you, so you can trust Him. The first thing you need to do is restore your loving relationship with Him, so that you can, once again, enjoy the plans and purposes of your life.
God knows that we are sinners, all of us, so instead of beating us up with it, He chose to send His Son, Jesus, to this earth to take our punishment for sin and restore the relationship that was stolen by this sin. He saw your need and made a way for you to, once again, be in His family at His expense. In essence, He saw you as a needy, abandoned child, ,because that is what you are in the sense that Satan and a Godless world offered you much, but delivered you nothing. He knows your need and sent Jesus to meet it.
God does not want to use you, or abuse you, and He does not even need you. He wants you. He wants to love you and be loved by you. He wants you to be in His family and to begin to live as you were created. His offer is clear, but He will not force you to choose this forgiveness and restoration because love demands choice.
Once you have accepted Jesus Christ as your Savior, you now have the capacity to love. You can love God and others. You can begin to see the critical way you were created and choose to live within its contexts. You will see the difference in being loved and being used. You will begin to restore your human relationships to being healthy, and begin to really live life while not fearing death. This happens because you have restored the intimate bond that was yours in your mother’s womb.
If you are not in God’s family, you have no hope of ever achieving true significance and security. It is as if you are malfunctioning. But as you grow in knowledge and grace, you will begin to see that your love for God, your spouse, and children continue to grow as well, and that satisfaction comes from living in the context of how you were created.
God is not angry; He is loving. He is not waiting to punish; He is waiting to forgive. He is not hoping to use you as a bad example, but as an object of His grace and mercy. He has promised to forgive and restore. In fact, He will forgive as far as the east is from the west and wants to restore that incredibly important intimacy.
The choice is yours. Choose this day what direction you want to go. After all, it is your choice.
Dave Wager – twitter.com/wagerdaw
