That’s just the way I am

To EDDIE TOLAN, 5' 5" tall, everyone always said, "You are too small, my friend, to become a great sprinter." He never believed it though, and when he participated in the 100 metres final of the London Olympic Games, he became the winner by a hundredth of a second over his rival. The rules say that the first one to cross the finish line completely wins the gold medal. Eddie, being smaller, crossed it first.

Sometimes there are things in our lives that we don't like. I'm not referring here to moral defects, but to parts of our personality or our physical appearance with which we are not happy. We may even blame God for making us this way and think, "If only I was like so-and-so. If God had only made me like that other person." We think that we could be better if God would change something about us.

God, however, thinks in a different way. He chooses the very thing that we find disagreeable or negative in us, and he uses it in an extraordinary way. Every one of us has received natural and spiritual gifts that God has placed in us and, therefore, it is a sin to think that we are useless. God accepts us just the way we are. God likes what we have and, if we put it into his hands, the way we are can glorify him and be a help to us and to those around us.

In every team we need people for every position, people with different personalities and specialised qualities. A team made up of identical people, would be unable to win a single game. The Bible teaches us that not all young people have to be the same; nor do they all have to think in the same way. The world is moved by fashion and many are carried along in the current of fashionable living, without realising that this takes away their freedom. God teaches that there are different characters because there are different jobs to be done, and each one should be himself - not like his idols, not like what's in style, and not trying to be like what others want or expect him to be.

 

God made each one of us special, different and unique. You are special, different, and unique. God made us all different and no-one perfect. When the Lord Jesus chose his twelve disciples, he looked for people very different from each other - fishermen, tax-collectors, and zealots; introverts and extroverts; strong and amiable characters - there wasn't one who was just like somebody else.

God's involvement with man does not depend primarily on man's personality or character, but on his love for them.