Understanding How God Created You

Today I am going to talk about “Understanding How God Created You.” Why would you want to understand how God created you? The answer is that when you understand how God created you, you are much closer to figuring out what you were created to do. And when you are doing in life what you were created to do, you couldn’t live a better life.

As a human being, you are the pinnacle of God’s creation on earth. You are not just a better monkey, God created man in a class of it’s own, you were created in the very image of God. To better understand how God created you with a unique divine design, we are going to use the acronym SHAPE. S – Spiritual gifts, H – Heart, A – Abilities, P – Personality and E – Experiences. Each of those five aspects makes you who you are and makes you completely different than anyone else who has every lived or who will ever live.

God created you to use your unique SHAPE to serve Him in the various parts of your life. You use your SHAPE to serve God in your family. You use your SHAPE to serve God in your work. You should use your SHAPE to serve God in your church. Using your SHAPE to serve God in your church is called ministry. My ministry as a pastor is to equip you as a believer to fulfill your ministry. NRS Eph. 4:11-12 Pastors and teachers equip the saints for the work of ministry building up the body of Christ.

If you are a believer, you are a saint, according to the Bible, and your ministry is to serve others in the church and build them up. Being a believer is not a spectator sport, just sitting and listening to someone else teach or preach. Being a believer is a participatory sport, you get involved in helping others. Now some of you are thinking, I really don’t have the SHAPE or ability to help someone else in the church. I can’t teach, I can’t speak in public, I can’t sing, what could I do?

Let me briefly tell you my story. I became interested in science and chemistry in grade school. I pursued that passion, eventually receiving a doctorate in organic chemistry from University of California, Berkeley. While working at Monsanto as a research chemist, I felt God calling me to serve Him as a pastor. Imagine what thoughts went through my head: “God, I think you’ve made a big mistake. I don’t think the church needs any chemicals mixed. I get petrified with public speaking, just leave me in my lab mixing chemicals.” Then God began to show me some of the abilities and spiritual gifts he had given me: abilities of organization, administration, studying, communicating in writing and faith. He began to help me overcome my fear of speaking and to get better at it and here I am today, no longer mixing chemicals, but serving as a pastor.

If God can turn a chemist into a pastor, don’t count yourself out. God may not be calling you as a pastor, but He is calling you to minister. Begin to ask God to show you how the SHAPE He has given you can be used to minister in the church. Your life will never be the same. So how can you use your SHAPE to minister to others and serve God?

To hear more about this topic, listen to my September 10, 2006 message entitled Understanding How God Created You