Why Psalm 139:14 Never Worked For Me (and What I Know Now) with Heather Creekmore

Have you ever confided in someone on a bad body image day only to get this response: “Hey, just remember you’re fearfully and wonderfully made!” Why is it that this scripture doesn’t seem to help for more than 15 seconds, or sometimes, not at all? In this episode, I brought on my sweet friend, Heather Creekmore, a Christian author and host of the Compared to Who podcast, who led us in diving deeper into this beautiful piece of Scripture! She shared: 

•  Why Psalm 139:14 never worked for her 😓
•  What she knows NOW that is making a lasting impact on her body image  🔨

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I Know, I Know! But…😰

When you hear Psalm 139:14, do you ever give this response 👆?

What do we do when we KNOW that we are fearfully and wonderfully made, but that truth doesn’t seem to cut it for us? Heather was in the same boat. Growing up in a Christian household, going to a Christian school, and attending Christian college and graduate school, Heather knew that she was fearfully and wonderfully made. But when she started to struggle with body image issues, Heather didn’t want to confide in anyone because she knew they would either point her to Psalm 139:14 or 1 Samuel 16:7: “For the Lord sees not as man sees: man looks on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.’” (ESV)

And so, Heather struggled with body image for decades. She felt like she was a “bad Christian” because she could accept the gospel, but she couldn’t accept that she was fearfully and wonderfully made. “Why couldn’t I be more fearfully or more wonderfully made like that woman on the magazine cover?” She’s fearfully and wonderfully made as well, so what’s the difference? Hey, sound familiar?  

Heather finally found freedom when she realized that she was living in body idolatry. No, she didn’t have a Buddha statue in her living room, but she had set up her body as something to be lived for above Christ. As Heather moved from slavery into liberty and began her work in the body image realm, she looked at Psalm 139:14 with fresh eyes. 

The Beauty of Psalm 139:14 😍

What if when we read this passage, we’re “putting the wrong em-PHA-sis on the wrong syl-A-ble?” When trying to apply Scripture to our lives, we often cherry pick verses and ignore the big picture.

We can be tempted to stand in front of the mirror and use Psalm 139:14 to boost our self-esteem, but when we read the Psalm in its entirety, we realize that it is definitely not a self-esteem passage!

David, the author of Psalm 139, modeled for us what godly worship looks like. Heather explained, “David wasn’t writing about how great HE was to make himself feel better; he was writing about how great GOD was to help himself feel better!”

Look at this passage again, and note my emphasis: 

“I praise YOU, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are YOUR works; my soul knows it very well.”

—Psalm 139:14 ESV—

Woah! That’s the gold, isn’t it? How awesome is our God that he made your body! “[His] works are marvelous.” (Psalm 139:14 NLT, emphasis mine) When he said that we are “knit together”, he wasn’t kidding. If you’ve taken up knitting or you know someone that has, you know that knitting is no joke! It’s precise; it’s intentional; it requires care. 

So often, our bodies become the subject of our obsession. How do you know if you struggle with body idolatry, and how do we overcome it?

Identifying and Dealing with Body Idolatry 

If you have a body idol, you believe that having an ideal body will rescue you from shame and body obsession. Before Heather realized that she idolized her body, she thought that having a crazy relationship with food and exercise was normal for a 21st-century American woman, but once she started to target the real issue, all of that “craziness” started to go away.

But, what is so wrong about body idolatry? When we idolize our bodies, we believe that God is not trustworthy when it comes to our bodies and that our view of them is more accurate than his. This unbelief in God’s character is the root for so many other issues and sins. 

In our culture today, self-love and self esteem is pushed everywhere. You say, “but, why is that a bad thing? Doesn’t Jesus say that you have to love yourself when he says, ‘love your neighbor as yourself?’”

Take a look at 1 Timothy 3:1-2:

“But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy…” (ESV)

“People will be lovers of self.” This phrase is listed with a whole bunch of AWFUL adjectives about those in “the last days”. It’s not a good thing to be a lover of yourself. 

“The Gospel of Culture is that more self will free you… but self is not the answer that the Bible prescribes; it’s always Jesus. We’re to die to ourselves, we’re to lay down ourselves, we’re crucified with Christ! ….That’s where the freedom is.”

—Heather Creekmore

So, if we aren’t supposed to have self-esteem, are we supposed to walk around like Eeyore? No, Christ came to give you abundant life, friend (John 10:10)! 

Instead of trying to seek after self esteem and self-love, we have to find our confidence in Christ and who we are in him. 

So, how do we practically deal with body idolatry?

• Confess and acknowledge your sin to God.
• Repent and choose to think on truth instead of obsessing over your body. Identify why you obsess over your body. Is it because you want to be loved or accepted? Confident? Search God’s word on how those needs are perfectly met in Jesus. (Because, no matter how “perfect” your body is, it will never be enough.) If you want some support with recognizing the needs you are trying to meet with disordered behaviors, take this free needs assessment so that you can learn how to meet them in the right way:

• Do an online search or flip through the Epistles to find any phrases that have the words “in him”. Rehearse to yourself who Christ is and who you are in him, write them down, and let them change you. 

For a lot of us, that’s a really tough pill to swallow. If you’ve been striving to find your identity in your body for a long period of time, it doesn’t just go away without any pain or grief. The struggle is real! Friend, hear me when I say: Jesus is sufficient. He is not only sufficient to get you to heaven; his grace is sufficient for your right-now body image struggles, and he cares. 

Moving Forward

There is so much peace, joy, and excitement in trusting Christ in your food freedom and body image journey. Trusting doesn’t mean that you stop caring for your body, but in some ways, it means the opposite! 

Heather left us with a closing illustration:

Put your palm in front of your face and pretend it’s a mirror. 🪞 This represents what we do -- staring long and hard until we find something we like about ourselves. Maybe you don’t like your nose, but you like your eyebrows. So, you go into the world confident because you have great eyebrows! Until you find someone with better ones…or you lose them in an unfortunate grilling accident 🤦🏻‍♀️. Now, tilt the mirror up. This is what we should do, tilting the mirror up to look at God so his beauty shines onto us. “Those who look to him are radiant” (Psalm 34:5 ESV). 

Resources:

•  Visit Heather at her website: https://www.improvebodyimage.com/ 
•  Listen to her podcast here!
•  Get her books: Compared to Who? & The Burden of Better

Looking for a community of awesome women to support you on your food freedom journey? Check out:

• The Food Freedom & Body Image Support for Christian Women Facebook Group!
• The Joy-Filled Food Freedom Society

My self-paced courses for better body image and food freedom: