Your Child Has the Bents!, Part 1

When just beginning life in the womb, God is making us, originating us in the private place as our mother was carrying us. You took such an interest in me that you made me an original. There's no other like you. There's no other exactly like me. If you talk to parents with multiple children under their roof, they'll readily describe the unique personality traits for each member of the family.

No two are the same. Well, how can this be so? Today on Insight for Living, Chuck Swindoll continues his brand new series called Restoring Your Family's Foundation. In this program, we'll take another deep dive into the Psalms and Proverbs. In doing so, we'll find compelling evidence that God has blessed every human with a unique collection of gifts and personality traits.

And for good reason, Chuck titled his message, Your Child Has the Bends. All scripture is given by the inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction in righteousness, that the man or woman of God may be brought to maturity, able to accomplish God's will and God's plan. It's all tied in with God's Word, which we use as a basis of every message delivered from Stonebriar Community Church.

Today is no exception. My thoughts today turn to Psalm 139. I'd like to have you turn in your Bibles if you brought one with you. Find the 139th Psalm and locate verse 13. I'll read down through verse 18. Right in the core of that Psalm is a very unique section of scripture where the writer David takes us into the innermost womb of a mother carrying her child and then describes God's work on the fetus within that child. Turn to Psalm 139, 13.

I'll be reading from the New Living Translation. You made all the delicate inner parts of my body and knit me together in my mother's womb. Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex.

Your workmanship is marvelous how well I know it. You watched me as I was being formed in utter seclusion, as I was woven together in the dark of the womb. You saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was recorded in your book.

Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed. How precious are your thoughts about me, oh God. They cannot be numbered.

I can't even count them. They outnumber the grains of sand and when I wake up, you are still with me. May God open our eyes and our hearts to what He has written in this section. You're listening to Insight for Living. To dig deeper into the Bible with Chuck Swindoll, be sure to download his Searching the Scriptures studies by going to insight.org slash studies.

And now let's resume the message Chuck titled, Your Child Has the Bents. For years, I've suggested a simple plan that will result in a life of fulfillment and security. I passed this plan along to our four children and on occasion to different ones of our 10 grandchildren as well as to those men and women who are preparing their lives for ministry to others. For who doesn't want to know how to live a life marked by security and fulfillment? Free of envy, free of competition with others, finding acceptance and satisfaction in one's own life as God has made us.

This simple plan has only three parts and they will sound so easy you think they would come naturally to you. But they do not. They are learned truths that must be cultivated. To begin with, we need to know who we are. To understand that we have been made uniquely by a God who took care to build within us qualities that made us unique. Just as we all have our own DNA, we all have our own qualities, characteristics, intuitions, voice inflections, mental attitude, personality that makes us who we are. But you don't automatically know that when you're born or even when you're growing up.

So it's a process of discovery. Next in line comes accepting who we are. We don't fight it. We don't resist it. We don't deny it. We acknowledge this is me and we are in the process of discovering ourselves and in doing so, we ideally learn to accept that. Which means we are not like any other. We are not like any other.

This frees us from envy. Wanting to be like someone else or longing for what they have and who they are and what they're able to accomplish. That doesn't enter into it when you accept who you are. And third, you would anticipate we must learn to be who we are. No more hiding, no more denying, but facing it.

Being open, vulnerable, and most importantly, real. We don't try to be someone else. We're satisfied knowing that we have been made like this. And now because we are complete in Christ through a relationship with him, the package comes put together. We know who we are. We accept who we are.

And we become who we are. I did not go through that process because, for whatever reason, my parents preoccupied. They weren't abusive. They didn't neglect my great needs for food and shelter.

I certainly was not abused. But I wasn't helped along the way to discover who I am, how I have been made. That began when I reached high school years and there was a teacher who saw in me what I had never seen in myself. Certain abilities and skills that he knew were there somehow and began to cultivate them in my life.

It was a marvelous beginning, though later in life than would have been ideal. And I began to accept that. It was not until I was in the Marine Corps I discovered that I'm a leader.

The thought never dawned on me before. But while in the military, it became evident that I could lead others. I somehow have that ability and I don't know all that goes into that. I just know it comes naturally.

And of course it needs to be cultivated and developed. And as those things transpire, by the way they emerge in that order, not until we know who we are can we accept that and not until we accept that can we be that. We looked at some of this when we spent time in Proverbs 22 6 which states, train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it. We dissected that verse rather carefully and in detail and we found that the best rendering from the Hebrew sentence is train up a child according to his or her way. Not the way not the way you think the child should go, but in keeping with the child's own way. Every child is different.

If you have three children, you have children with three different ways. And it's the responsibility of the parent to make a discovery, make a study of the child, pay attention to the child, and watch the child in those early years to see what is of interest to the child, what he or she is good at, how they are put together. And then as time passes the child grasps from the teaching of the parents, ideally, those qualities and realizes that's who I am.

And accepts that, doesn't try to change it, but does try to develop it. The Amplified Bible renders it this way, train up a child in the way he should go. That is in keeping with his individual gifts or bents. What an intriguing rendering, in keeping with his individual gifts or bents. Every child has two major bents. The first would be the good bents, the things that we're gifted to do, to be, things we're interested in, pursuits we want to study, develop, ideally form our career around those things, because that's the way we are bent. And it's all given by God.

We don't create the things we don't create in ourselves, though we can cultivate what God has given us, he places it there as we're going to see from Psalm 139. The other bent is the dark side of everyone. The evil bent within us. Paul writes in Romans 5 12, through one man, Adam, the first man, through one man, sin entered into the world and death through sin. So death and sin passed upon all, for all have sinned, every one of us, including our parents, as good and great and godly as they may have been, including them. And they give birth to those who were like them, sinners.

And that needs to be counteracted, discovered, dealt with, and consistently and fairly counteracted through measures of discipline, confrontation, and correction. We'll get to that in a few moments. But first, let's look at the light side, the bright side, the good bends. I don't know of a passage in all the Bible that develops this better than Psalm 139, 13 to 18, which I read to you earlier. I want us to focus on these verses.

And as you followed along when we did that with Proverbs 22 6, I want to sort of dissect these verses for you so that you'll glean from these words a full meaning of what they include. Notice the Psalm, if you've got your Bible open, is titled Psalm 139. Right below the title is the name of the writer.

This is called the superscription. Sometime it gives an explanation of the context in which the Psalm was written. The word song means song.

Song number 139. In this case, the writer, the composer of the song is David. He begins by describing how well God knows us. I mean, he he sees us in our in our waking moments and sleeping moments when we're aware of him and when we're unaware. He is there throughout our lives, never, never absent. This is called God's omnipresence. All around us, within us, he sees us.

He knows us. That doesn't begin when we're adults and come to realize it. It begins, according to verse 13, when we are just beyond the embryonic stage in our mother's womb. We are now a fetus being formed in the womb of the mother. Notice how it begins. You made all the delicate inner parts of my body.

The you in the Hebrew is emphatic. You, you alone. Not my mother. My mother didn't make me.

Not mother nature. She doesn't exist. Not a friend who had an influence on me. He doesn't, or she didn't make me. She didn't make me. You and you alone, oh God, made me. See the word made.

It's the word in the Hebrew that means to originate, to create. Isn't that beautiful? When just beginning life in the womb, God is making us, originating us in the private place as our mother was carrying us. You took such an interest in me that you made me an original. There's no other like you.

There's no other exactly like me. In fact, it goes on to say you made my inmost being. You learn when you read through the scriptures that you don't want to be in a hurry. Let the words linger.

Form them in your mind. You made all the delicate inner parts of my body. The word means inner being would include the vital organs, the heart, the lungs, the liver, kidneys, brain, and others. And the verse continues, you knit me together. This comes from the Hebrew word that suggests that an interwoven mass or thicket.

Isn't that interesting? All the delicate interwoven parts of my being, not only the various organs, but along with a veritable thicket of muscles and tendons and bones and glands and nerves and membranes and veins and arteries, all of that, interwoven within me, you and you alone did that. Let me tell you, a child needs to know this.

A child needs to understand it wasn't an accident. There is no such thing. In the making of the womb, within the womb, there is a hand working of God as he puts together this one and only original, you and only you. Even if you're a twin, you're distinct from your twin. You may physically look alike. You may even do some things alike, but you are different within.

And you've been knit together in a different way. This dawns on David and he begins the next verse, verse 14, with I praise you. He suddenly realizes how magnificent it is that he has been put together like this. In fact, the text reads actually, I praise you because I'm wonderfully made. Your works in me are wonderful. He brings in juxtaposition the repeated word, wonderful.

Wonderful doesn't have a better word to use than the hand work of God is wonderful and the resulting work of God is wonderful. And your marvelous works, I know it well, it's who I am. It's how I've been made.

Think of what that could do for a young child when he or she has it dawn on him. You're not like any other. You're an original from God's hand. And by the way, that matter of wonderful, I thought of that when I read a piece some time ago titled This is You.

Listen carefully. Today your heart will beat an average of 103,000 times. Your blood will travel 168,000 miles. Every hour, 250 pounds of blood will pass through your heart. You will breathe 23,000 times. You will inhale 438 cubic feet of air and you will speak an average of 36,000 words. For some of us, a lot more than that.

You will move 750 major muscles and you will use 7 million brain cells in one day. How wonderful, how wonderful God has given us these inner parts that serve in this way. Is it any surprise that David says twice, wonderful, wonderful, not only as God originated our vital organs but go further. He's given each of us our set of emotions, our unique personality, our inclinations, our abilities, our interest in certain subjects. As a result, no one else is exactly like you. There is no clone.

The psalmist realized that he's an original and something happened within him as he came to terms with that. He, as well as we, become free of comparison. I said this last time and I'll repeat it. A great mistake parents make is comparing one child with another. How unfair.

Why would we do that? Comparisons help no one. The one who's doing better just has his pride built up.

The one who's doing worse gets more depressed. What good is comparison? You're not meant to be like your brother or your sister. You're meant to be an original.

It's remarkable knowing of the Lord's original work within us and how we're meant to be. I mean think of what this would do for a child who grows up as an adolescent and begins to outgrow all the other kids in his class and by and by he reaches about six, seven, six, eight. He's 14 years old and it's a girl. Yeah. Now she needs to know she's not a freak.

She's not weird though the other classmates will see her as that. She's a unique workmanship of God made by him designed for some reason because he put her frame together. What's so amazing about this is there are those who deny that the one in the womb is alive. God is working on a living being preparing this fetus for birth. So when you hold your child for the first time and saw a wonderful little screaming creature that you've got in your arms, that child is come prescribed by God. This is Insight for Living and we're featuring a brand new series from Bible teacher Chuck Swindoll. It's titled Restoring Your Family's Foundation.

To learn more about this ministry, you can connect with us online at insightworld.org. This seven-part study represents decades of study in the Bible. But most importantly, Chuck offers a wealth of wisdom that comes from his role as a devoted husband, dad, granddad, and even great granddad. You know, the world is changing and it'll keep on changing.

That's no big revelation, but we can't stake our hope on idyllic dreams of yesteryear. Chuck invites us to embrace our future and to do it with the confidence and courage in God's unchanging word. If you're looking for a book to help you fireproof your marriage, let me recommend one of Chuck's classics. It's called Marriage from Surviving to Thriving. Whether you're newly married or a veteran in marriage, we believe the biblical principles in this book will help you. To purchase Chuck Swindoll's book, Marriage from Surviving to Thriving, go to insight.org slash store or call us.

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I'm reminded of a recent note we received from Tennessee. This woman was dealing with a troubled marriage and she said, Dear Insight for Living, it was Chuck's teaching on forgiveness and God's grace that brought so much light to the darkness. It gave me the courage to heal during one of the worst storms of my life. I'm now free.

No more chains holding me. Thanks so much. Well, you know, in many respects, your gift to Insight for Living makes a story like this possible.

So thank you. To give a donation today, call us. If you're listening in the United States, call 800-772-8888, or you can give online at Insight.org slash donate.

I'm Bill Meyer. Join us next time when Chuck Swindoll continues his message called Your Child Has the Bents on Insight for Living. The preceding message, Your Child Has the Bents, was copyrighted in 2022 and 2023, and the sound recording was copyrighted in 2023 by Charles R. Swindoll, Inc. All rights are reserved worldwide. Duplication of copyrighted material for commercial use is strictly prohibited.