Accept Yourself — Flaws and All by Rick Warren

“My friend, I ask, ‘Who do you think you are to question God? Does the clay have the right to ask the potter why he shaped it the way he did?’” (Romans 9:20 CEV)

Spiritual gifts, heart, abilities, personality, experiences — these are the five things that make you, you. I call them your SHAPE.

Accepting your SHAPE — the unique way that God made you that brings glory to him — means to believe that God knows best. It all comes down to the matter of trust. Do you believe that God made a mistake when he made you? Or do you trust him, knowing that he has a plan for your life? Do you believe it?

When you say, “God, there are things I don’t like about myself. I wish I had different hair or a different color of skin. I wish I were taller, shorter, skinnier. I wish I had more talent. I wish I could do ‘that.’ I wish I looked like him. I wish I had her smarts” and on and on. This kind of thinking is basically telling God, “You blew it! Everybody else is OK. But you goofed up big when you made me.”

When you reject yourself, you are in essence rejecting God, because he’s your creator. When you don’t accept yourself, it’s rebellion against God. You’re saying, “God, I know better than you. You should have made me different, with a different set of strengths and a different set of weaknesses.”

But God says, “No, I made you exactly to be you because I want you to be you — with your strengths and your weaknesses. Both of them can give me glory — if you’ll just start doing what I made you to do instead of trying to be like everybody else.”

It’s actually quite arrogant to reject yourself. The Bible says in Romans 9:20, “My friend, I ask, ‘Who do you think you are to question God? Does the clay have the right to ask the potter why he shaped it the way he did?’” (CEV)

Whenever we doubt God’s love and wisdom, we always get into trouble. The root behind all of your problems is that you don’t trust God. You don’t believe God really loves you. You don’t believe that he really has your best interest at heart. You wish he had made you something different. As a result, there’s a spirit of bitterness in you that keeps you frustrated and keeps you from being all the man/woman God meant for you to be.

Job 10:10 says, “You guided my conception and formed me in the womb” (NLT). God wanted you, and he loves you. Believe it, and then trust it.