I AM: Chosen Week Three - Day One

By Central Women

While sitting in an Easter service in 2004, as a wife of one year, mom to a newborn, a two-year-old, and stepmom to a twelve-year-old, I was exhausted and feeling hopeless. It was a message I grew up hearing, but something was different this time. I was desperate for the kind of freedom that could only come from surrendering my life to Christ, and so that’s what I did right then and there.

I started to attend church every week, joined a Bible study, read my Bible, and started to develop a personal relationship with Jesus the best I could. Life didn’t miraculously get better. In fact, while my faith in Jesus grew so did my self-doubt. I wrestled with believing I was chosen by God.

I was born to a teenage mother, a product of an unwanted pregnancy and a subsequent marriage at the mandate of her father. I was at fault, the cause, the reason, the one who took the blame for my mother’s unhappiness. I know this much because she reminded me, repeatedly.

I spent my days trying to please her. All I wanted was her love and affection, but there was none, not for me anyway. Four kids and pregnant with the fifth later, my parents separated. I no longer had the protection or care of my daddy, who did his best to convince me I was loved.

A few years after their separation my mom left and never came back, leaving behind the scars of emotional, physical, and verbal abuse and us kids to be raised by a single father. I was seven.

Although love and care were abundant by my daddy, I still wanted the approval of my mom. Because I didn’t have it, I held onto the words she used to describe me causing me to feel unwanted, worthless, less than, and unloved.

I couldn’t reconcile being chosen by God if my own mother didn’t want me.

Then one Sunday, our pastor read Psalm 139:13, “For You created my inmost being; You knit me together in my mother’s womb.” And Ephesians 1:4-5, “For He chose us in Him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in His sight. In love He predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with His pleasure and will.”

I heard him explain we weren’t an afterthought, a mistake, unwanted. We were chosen by God before the creation. To be chosen means to be the object of a choice or of divine favor, an elect person. It means we are set apart by God, selected for a special privilege, predestined for adoption through Jesus Christ for His glory.

If this was true, it meant God chose me before I was called a mistake by a teenage mother and then abandoned. I wept. For the first time I started to believe who I am, who God created me to be. I am holy and blameless in His sight, and so are you.

How do you define chosen?

Do you struggle with believing you are chosen by God? Why?

Again, life didn’t instantly change, but my heart was softening. Over time I went from knowing God’s Word is true to believing God’s Word is true for other people and eventually believing God’s Word is true for me too. Sisters, it is my prayer that over the course of this week you not only know God’s Word to be true, but you also believe it to be true for yourself too.

Whether you are a new believer or have known Jesus your whole life, we all need to remember we were predetermined to be part of God’s original plan. This truth will be the foundation for our study this week.

Reflect:

Write out the phrase: I AM CHOSEN with a dry erase marker on your bathroom mirror or on an index card and put it somewhere you will see it every day.

Father God, please soften our hearts and open our eyes to see ourselves the way You see us, holy and blameless. Amen.