“I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Marvelous are Your works, And that my soul knows very well.

My frame was not hidden from You, When I was made in secret, And skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.

Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed. And in Your book they all were written, The days fashioned for me, When as yet there were none of them.”

‭‭Psalms‬ ‭139‬:‭14‬-‭16‬ ‭NKJV‬‬

Currently, I’m in the process of becoming a missionary and part of that process requires “class work” and quite a bit of reading. Life is busy so I’ve found myself more apt to audiobooks. This month, the required reading, as part of spiritual formation, is a book called “invitation to a journey” by M Robert Mulholland Jr. and in this book he talks about the Myer-Briggs personality types based on Carl Jung’s theory. 

This has been something that’s always interested me but this opened up understanding on a whole other level for me when explaining the types as preferences. The author also explains that where our preferences lie, there’s a shadow side (the opposite of our preferences) that we must learn to accept and work with in order to experience wholeness. You can’t have one and not the other. For instance, I’m an INFJ, so I am introverted and prefer (key word there) solitude but yet in order to experience the wholeness God intends for me, I need socializing. 

It even goes on to explain that there may be preferences in corporate worship or how our preferences should be included in arranging our devotional time. While I was listening and taking in all of this information, “fearfully and wonderfully made” rolled around in my head and I was in such awe at how God forms us! We are wonderfully complex and He is the master craftsman. He not only forms our bodies but also our minds and shapes our personalities – preferences included – and therefore, our lives are mapped out in such a way to bring about wholeness. Our trials and experiences are working together to mold us, and God is using each thing: every mundane moment, every mountaintop experience, every hardship, every ease, every grief, every joy, every battle, every victory to make us more into the image of Christ, to bring us wholeness. 

As Christians, we know His sovereignty but life can start to seem like there is no rhyme or reason to any of it yet when we remember that it all becomes a part of His plan to bring about a desired end, there is hope. He’s orchestrating a song your soul will sing! And maybe you’re in a season that lacks harmony, your preferences are not being met, you have to do things or deal with things that are not ideal – you’re an extrovert who is at home all day in this season of life, or an introvert who has to make phone calls you’d rather not have to make, perhaps you are struggling in your devotional time because the rhythm of the season has changed and you can’t talk a walk in nature but have to sit inside and reflect, a feeler who needs to be more of a thinker right now, or one who has a more carefree look at life but has deadline after deadline you have to meet. 

Whatever it may be, be encouraged friends that God is using this, even an inconvenience of an unmet preference, to craft you into the image of His Son. If only our preferences were ever experienced, we’d never mature and would not be wholly sound. Imagine just having one arm buff and strong from working out and the other limp and weak because it’s never exercised – that’s what’s it like if we aren’t met with a challenge in our preferences. Our preferences serve us and bring glory to God, but the opposite of our preferences is beneficial to growth and wholeness. We are fearfully and wonderfully made in every way and every day of our life was recorded in His book…and the end of the story is “presented faultless” before Christ with great joy!