Why is it that you, today, believe in Jesus? Is it because God just so happened to look down one day, notice your life spinning out of control, and enter in? Was there a point in which God was a newcomer to your life—reacting to the mess of some new situation? Or, in truth, had He been present all along, working out the details according to His grand design?

Where did your story begin?

Perhaps it was in a home wrought with chaos and conflict or in a family soon to be devastated by divorce. Maybe it begins amid a cycle of job-loss, mounting bills, frequent address changes, or an environment marked by addiction and abuse.

The question is: If your childhood was marked by brokenness and turmoil, what did this teach you about yourself?

Whether for good or ill, our sense of self is profoundly shaped by our formative years. Our first interactions with family and early experiences of home—these ingredients combine to create our first conclusions about who we are and what we’re worth. The problem is, not only are these first conclusions often untrue, but they are also far more persistent than we’d prefer.

But what if they don’t need to be? What if brokenness could mark your childhood, but not your continued sense of identity? Sure, sometimes it seems we’re simply wired to take cues from our beginnings, but what if our beginning goes back far beyond our formative years?

Where You Really Began

Yes, Christian, your story did have a beginning. And yes, God means for you to derive your sense of self from it. But your beginning—your real beginning—took place long before your birth and long before family brokenness. Long before the stars ever shone in the sky.

When your story began in the eternal purpose of God, it was before the world began. He chose you, in him, before the foundation of the world (Eph. 1:4).

To truly understand your story, then, you must start with God long before you were born or the world was made. Begin with God: Holy, happy, and wonderful—before He had created the day or night and all was whole. To see ourselves rightly, we must start before the foundation of the world.

God brought you into His mind according to His will and delight. It was in a context of perfect, unremitted peace.

As God thought of you, He did so according to His peerless wisdom and boundless understanding.

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