TEACHING
You
Are Not an Accident
By
Pastor Rick Warren
Saddleback Church
CBN.com
- I am your Creator. You were in my care even before you were born (Isaiah
44:2a - CEV). You are not an accident. Your birth was no mistake
or mishap, and your life is no fluke of nature. Your parents may not have planned
you, but God did. He was not at all surprised by your birth. In fact, he expected
it. Long before you were conceived by your parents, you were conceived
in the mind of God. It is not fate, nor chance, nor luck, nor coincidence that
you are breathing at this very moment. You are alive because God wanted to create
you! The Bible says, The LORD will fulfill his purpose for me (Psalm 138:8a
NIV). God prescribed every single detail of your body. He deliberately
chose your race, the color of you skin, your hair, and every other feature. He
custom-made your body just the way he wanted it. He also determined the natural
talents you would possess and the uniqueness of your personality. The Bible says,
You know me inside and out, you know every bone in my body; You know exactly
how I was made, bit by bit, how I was sculpted from nothing into something (Psalm
139:15 Msg). Because God made you for a reason, he also decided when you
would be born and how long you would live. He planned the days of your life in
advance, choosing the exact time of your birth and death. The Bible says, You
saw me before I was born and scheduled each day of my life before I began to breathe.
Every day was recorded in your Book! (Psalm 139:16 LB). God also planned
where youd be born and where youd live for his purpose. Your race and nationality
are no accident. God left no detail to chance. He planned it all for his purpose.
The Bible says, From one man he made every nation and he determined the times
set for them and the exact places where they should live (Acts 17:26 NIV).
Nothing in your life is arbitrary. Its all for a purpose. Most
amazing, God decided how you would be born. Regardless of the circumstances of
your birth or who your parents are, God had a plan in creating you. It doesnt
matter whether your parents were good, bad, or indifferent. God knew that those
two individuals possessed exactly the right genetic makeup to create the custom
you he had in mind. They had the DNA God wanted to make you. While there are
illegitimate parents, there are no illegitimate children. Many children are unplanned
by their parents, but they are not unplanned by God. Gods purpose took into account
human error, and even sin. God never does anything accidentally, and he
never makes mistakes. He has a reason for everything he creates. Every plant and
every animal was planned by God, and every person was designed with a purpose
in mind. Gods motive for creating you was his love. The Bible says, Long before
he laid down earth's foundations, he had us in mind, had settled on us as the
focus of his love (Ephesians 1:4a Msg). God was thinking of you even
before he made the world. In fact, thats why he created it! God designed this
planets environment just so we could live in it. We are the focus of his love
and the most valuable of all his creation. The Bible says, God decided to give
us life through the word of truth so we might be the most important of all the
things he made (James 1:18 NCV). This is how much God loves and values
you! God is not haphazard; he planned it all with great precision. The
more physicists, biologists, and other scientists learn about the universe, the
better we understand how it is uniquely suited for our existence, custom-made
with the exact specifications that make human life possible. Dr. Michael
Denton, senior research fellow in human molecular genetics at the University of
Otago in New Zealand, has concluded, All the evidence available in the biological
sciences supports the core proposition that the cosmos is a specially designed
whole with life and mankind as its fundamental goal and purpose, a whole in which
all facets of reality have their meaning and explanation in this central fact.
(Michael Denton, Natures Destiny: How the Laws of Biology Reveal Purpose in the
Universe, New York: Free Press, 1998, p. 389.) The Bible said the same
thing thousands of years earlier: God formed the earth. He did not create it
to be empty but formed it to be inhabited (Isaiah 45:18 GW). Why did
God do all this? Why did he bother to go to all the trouble of creating a universe
for us? Because he is a God of love. This kind of love is difficult to fathom,
but its fundamentally reliable. You were created as a special object of Gods
love! God made you so he could love you. This is a truth to build your life on.
The Bible tells us, God is love. (1 John 4:8)It doesnt say God has love.
He is love! Love is the essence of Gods character. There is perfect love in the
fellowship of the Trinity, so God didnt need to create you. He wasnt lonely.
But he wanted to make you in order to express his love. God says, I have
carried you since you were born; I have taken care of you from your birth. Even
when you are old, I will be the same. Even when your hair has turned gray, I will
take care of you. I made you and will take care of you (Isaiah 46:3-4 NCV).
If there was no God, we would all be accidents, the result of astronomical
random chance in the universe. You could stop reading this article, because life
would have no purpose or meaning or significance. There would be no right or wrong,
and no hope beyond your brief years on earth. But there is a God who made
you for a reason, and your life has profound meaning! We discover that meaning
and purpose only when we make God the reference point of our lives. The Message
paraphrase of Romans 12:3 says, The only accurate way to understand ourselves
is by what God is and by what he does for us. The Ministry ToolBox is
for ANYONE serving Jesus Christ. For a free subscription, you can sign up at www.pastors.com.
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