“I praise you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works. My soul knows it very well.”
– Psalm 139:14
Psalm 139:14, we are fearfully and wonderfully made. In a way that I didn’t see coming, I don’t think my wife Heather saw coming, in fact I know she didn’t see it coming, none of us and our family saw it coming. God led us, after four children, to adopt number five, and specifically to pursue international adoption and to adopt number five from China.
Now for months and months we didn’t know if this child would be a boy or a girl or how young or old they might be, and so we just had this child out. We were praying for this child and we didn’t want to keep calling this child it or this child we’re going to adopt. It just felt clunky as we were praying, so we came up with, we talked about it as a family and said, “Okay, what can we name this child? We don’t know if it’s going to be a boy or girl. What can we name this child?” The name we came up with was wonderfully made because we knew for sure, boy or girl, age, any other factors that there might be, that this child is wonderfully made by God as Psalm 139:14 teaches.
You have been knitted together by the God of the universe. Take comfort in this and humbly worship Him.
Yeah, for months we were just been praying for wonderfully made and then we got a picture and a face, and we’ve given that child another name besides wonderfully made, Jeremiah, Daniel. J. D. I share that just because I think this truth is revolutionary in so many ways and I just want to apply it, not just to this child that we are adopting, but to your life. You just let this soak in. You are fearfully and wonderfully made by God himself.
This means you have divine dignity. You’re made in the image of God. To use language from the verse right before this, he formed you. He knit you together. You are wonderfully made by God. So you do not need the acceptance, the approval, the applause of this person or that person, to look a certain way, to be seen a certain way. No. You are totally free from that when you realize you are knit together by God. Fearfully and wonderfully made by God himself. So live in this. Enjoy this reality. Rest in this reality.
Walk in this reality of Psalm 139:14 in humble awareness that God has made you fearfully and wonderfully.
Oh God, we praise you for this reality. I praise you for this reality, not just in my new son’s life, and I praise you for this reality in his life, but not just for that, for this reality in my own life and the life of every single person who’s listening to this right now. That we are all fearfully and wonderfully made in your image. All glory be to your name for making us in your image with the capacity to know you and relate to you, and experience your goodness and walk in communion with you. So God, we want to experience that to the full. We want to reflect your image fully in every way possible.
Prayer To Bring an End To Abortion
Oh God, even as we pray this, I am so overwhelmed, convicted, heavy hearted, when I think about the number of children you are knitting together in mother’s wombs right now who are being aborted in the world. God have mercy. God have mercy. Have mercy on these children, have mercy on us for doing this to these children. God, we pray that you would save kids’ lives and you would bring an end to abortion. God, I thank you. Thank you that my new son’s birth mother did not abort him. I praise you for bringing him into this world. So God, we pray that that would be the story over and over again throughout the United States, around the world. God, deliver us from abortion. Deliver babies from abortion.
God Brings Redemption
Even as I pray that, God I pray for women who may have had an abortion and others who may have supported abortion in different ways. So, God, I just pray for your grace, for your mercy, and for an awareness of how abortion goes totally against Psalm 139:14. But in that awareness and in confession of that, and in confession of sin that you would shower grace and shower mercy and bring redemption.
God, we praise you for this reality and we pray that you’d help us to live in it. Day by day, help us to work to stop this horrible practice and that you’d help us to honor each other in every way, from the child in the womb to the person in the desk next to us at work, to the people who are different from us in this way or that way. God help us, help us, help us to honor one another, love one another as people wonderfully made in your image, even as we enjoy that reality in our lives. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.
David Platt serves as a Lead Pastor for McLean Bible Church. He is also the Founder and Chairman of Radical, an organization that helps people follow Jesus and make him known in their neighborhood and all nations.
David received his B.A. from the University of Georgia and M.Div., Th.M., and Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. Some of his published works include Radical, Radical Together, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, and Don’t Hold Back.
He lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area with his wife and children.
