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“All of my life has always been to conquer some horrible feeling of inadequacy—I’m always struggling with that fear. I push past one spell of it and discover myself as special and then I get to another stage and think I’m mediocre and uninteresting. That’s always pushing me, pushing me, even though I’ve become ‘Somebody.’ I still have to prove that that I am ‘Somebody.’”
—Madonna in an interview with Vanity Fair.

Every girl knows the feeling. We want to feel loved. We want to know we matter.

Despite all we may accomplish, there are lingering questions. Who am I? Why am I here? Where do I go to find the answers?

Science tells us that we are the product of some chance collision of protein and molecules that occurred billions of years ago. We just happened. Human life is nothing more than the result of a mutation of some single cell that just got lucky.

Where do I come from? What am I? Where am I going?

We have been divinely designed. We are God’s haute couture. The word is French for “high sewing”—the creation of exclusive, one-of-a-kind, custom-fitted clothing for a specific customer.

Look ladies, we are created in the image of God. He made us and formed us with care and breathed into us being. We didn’t just happen. The Bible tells who we are and how we can live meaningful lives in Him.

This fact should give us a great sense of significance and belonging, regardless of how others make you feel. No one needs to ever feel fearful or unloved. Your fingerprints and DNA are not like anyone else’s in the world. God fashioned you intricately in your mother’s womb.

“You created my inmost being and You knit me together in my mother’s womb. I am fearfully and wonderfully made. . . . I was woven together in the depths of the earth; your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be” (Psalm 139:13-16 NKJV).

God organized that unseen substance that makes you, and you are more than just the 46 chromosomes or blueprints. Science is sounding more and more like religion when it tells us that our DNA is not just the paper and ink that makes the book of our lives. Our DNA conveys information that is so complex and so vast that it is compared to a language.

If it is a language, then who is the author? The denial of God as the One who formed us is like reading Shakespeare’s plays and not believing there’s a playwright. How foolish that would be! There must be an author because His signature is all over creation.

Why am I telling you this? Because you won’t learn this in your biology class. You won’t read it in Cosmopolitan, and your girlfriends—unless they’re believers—aren’t going to have a clue.

Impressionist painter Paul Gauguin left France to find a paradise of tropical beauty and went to Tahiti with all its promise of sunlight and freedom. Sadly, he was unable to find what it was he was searching for.

One day, after finishing what some consider his greatest masterpiece, he took a bottle of arsenic, walked into the mountains, and killed himself. The title he had given his painting were the very questions he never could answer: “Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going?”

We’re given the answers in God’s Word. You were not only divinely designed, but you were designed for a purpose.

If you believe the Bible, there is no room for uncertainty. Well, you might say, isn’t accepting what the Bible says a matter of faith in the end?

Of course, but the faith that is spoken of in the Bible isn’t blind and faith doesn’t function apart from our capacity to think. These truths have stood the test of 6,000 years of history. So when we say, “The Bible says it, therefore we believe it,” we aren’t expecting you to disengage your thinking.

Paul explained how Scripture is essential to living rightly in 2 Timothy 3:16-17 when he said, “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God (God-breathed), and is profitable for doctrine (it teaches what is true), for reproof (it teaches you what is wrong), for correction (it teaches you how to get it right), for instruction in righteousness (it teaches you how to keep it right), that the man (or woman) of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work” (NKJV).

The New Living Translation puts it this way: “All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives. It corrects us when we are wrong and teaches us to do what is right. God uses it to prepare and equip his people to do every good work.”

As we begin to unwrap the teachings found in the book of Proverbs, let’s begin with confidence that these teachings are able to not only keep us on the right path, but they will lead us to that path of significance we are all searching for. A life that will have significance, not only for now, but for all eternity.