There are days when the mirror seems more like a critic than a friend—when your weaknesses shout louder than your worth, and your past feels heavier than your future. Into that swirl of doubt, Psalm 139:14 stands like a bright, steady light. David looks at himself—body, mind, and soul—and responds not with self-obsession, but with worship. He sees that who he is did not happen by accident, and he dares to believe that the God who made galaxies also crafted him with awe-filled intention. That same God did the very same with you.

Known Before You Were Seen

Long before anyone saw you, God did. David says just a verse earlier, “For You formed my inmost being; You knit me together in my mother’s womb” (Psalm 139:13). Then he responds, “I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Marvelous are Your works, and I know this very well” (Psalm 139:14). You are not the result of random chance, shifting feelings, or human opinion. You are the deliberate craftsmanship of a personal God who does not make throwaway things. Your personality, your mind, your very body—down to the details you dislike—are known, seen, and purposeful to Him.

Scripture anchors this all the way back to creation: “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). Your identity is not something you invent; it is something you receive. You bear the image of God. Jesus even says, “But even the very hairs of your head are all numbered” (Matthew 10:30). That is not poetic exaggeration; it is a declaration of detailed, loving attention. The world will label you by success, failure, appearance, or desire. God names you image-bearer, personally formed, intimately known.

Marvelous Works in a Broken World

Being “fearfully and wonderfully made” does not mean life will feel wonderful. Bodies break, minds struggle, hearts ache. Some of us live with chronic illness, disability, or deep emotional wounds. In those moments, calling God’s works “marvelous” may feel like a stretch. But Scripture refuses to separate God’s careful design from the reality of our broken world. We are both handcrafted by God and deeply affected by sin’s damage—inside us and around us.

This is why the hope of the gospel is so precious. The God who formed you in the womb is also the God who stepped into a broken world to redeem what sin has shattered. “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I set you apart” (Jeremiah 1:5) was spoken to Jeremiah, but it reveals the heart of a God who purposes lives before birth. And when our weakness feels overwhelming, His Word reminds us, “Now we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this surpassingly great power is from God and not from us” (2 Corinthians 4:7). Your cracks do not cancel God’s craftsmanship; they become the very places His glory can shine through.

Living Like God’s Workmanship

If you are fearfully and wonderfully made, then your life is not your playground; it is your offering. David’s response to God’s design is, “I will praise You.” He does not stare endlessly at himself; he looks through the mirror of his own existence to the Maker behind it. That is the shift we need. Our culture trains us to obsess over self—self-image, self-expression, self-fulfillment. Scripture calls us to worship, surrender, and obedience. “For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance as our way of life” (Ephesians 2:10). You were crafted not only with care, but with calling.

This is why Paul urges us, “Therefore I urge you, brothers, on account of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God, which is your spiritual service of worship” (Romans 12:1). To believe Psalm 139:14 is to step into Romans 12:1–2—it is to say, “Lord, You made me; now use me.” Your eyes, your hands, your words, your time, your gifts, even your scars, belong to Him. Today, you can either live as if you are your own project, or as if you are His workmanship. One path leads to constant anxiety about who you are; the other leads to steady peace in Whose you are.

Father, thank You for fearfully and wonderfully making me. Help me to see myself through Your truth and to offer all that I am back to You today in obedient, joyful worship.

It is certainly a reality in our day that too few men and women are willing to keep the "top side" of their souls open to God and to His light from heaven. You may wonder about such expression as the "top side" of the soul, but I do think it is in line with Bible teaching, and certainly in line with all Christian experience. The heart and soul are open to God in some people's lives, but certainly not in others. We should be aware that man's forgiveness is not always like God's. When a man makes a mistake and has to be forgiven, the shadow may still hang over him among his fellows. But when God forgives, He begins the new page right away. Then when the devil runs up and says, "What about his past?" God replies, "What past? He has been forgiven!" Now, I think that kind of forgiveness and justification and acceptance with God depends upon a person's willingness to keep the "top side" of the soul open to God and His saving grace!

I hold not my life of any account as dear unto myself, so that I may accomplish my course and the ministry which I received from, the Lord Jesus. - Acts 20:24.

Paul, contemplating for his life’s work preaching amongst the Gentiles, determines at the beginning, "I lay down all of which I used to be proud. If my Jewish descent and privileges stand in my way, I cast them aside. I wrap them together in one bundle, and toss them behind me, that I may be the better able to help some to whom they would have hindered my access." A man with a heart will throw off his silken robes that his arm may be bared to rescue and his feet free to run to succour. The only way to help people is to go down to their level. If you want to bless men you must identify yourself with them. It is no use standing on an eminence above them, and patronizingly talking down to them. You cannot scold, or hector, or lecture men into the possession and acceptance of religious truth if you take a position of superiority.

As our Master has taught us. if we want to make blind beggars see, we must take the blind beggars by the hand, "Paul" means "little"; "Saul" means "desired." He abandons the name that prophesied of favour and honour, to adopt a name that bears upon its very front a profession of humility. His very name is the condensation into a word of his abiding conviction. " I am less than the least of all saints." Perhaps even there may be an allusion to his low stature, which may be pointed at in the sarcasm of his enemies that his letters were strong, though his bodily presence was "weak." If he was, as Monsieur Renan calls him, "an ugly little Jew," the name has a double appropriateness. But, at all events, it is an expression of the spirit in which he sought to do his work. The more lofty the consciousness of his vocation, the more lowly will a true man’s estimate of himself be. The higher my thought of what God has given me grace to do, the more shall I feel weighed down by the consciousness of my unfitness to do it.

So, for all hope, for all success in our work, for all growth in Christian grace and character, this disposition of lowly self-abasement and recognised unworthiness and infirmity is absolutely indispensable. The mountain-tops that lift themselves to the stars are barren, and few springs find their rise there. It is in the lowly valleys that the flowers grow and the rivers run. And it is they who are humble and lowly in heart to whom God gives strength to serve Him, and the joy of accepted service. Learn your true life’s task by identifying yourself with the humbler brethren whom you would help. Learn the spirit of lowly self-abasement. And, above all, learn this, that unless you have the life of God in your heart, you have no life at all. If you have that faith by which we receive into our spirits Christ’s own spirit to be our life, then you are a new creature, with a new name, perhaps dimly visible, and faintly audible, amidst the imperfections of earth, but sure to shine in the Lamb’s Book of Life; and to be read, "with tumults of acclaim," before the angels of Heaven. "I will give him a white stone, and in the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth save he that receiveth it."