The Lord LOVES you.
You formed my innermost being, shaping my delicate inside and my intricate outside, and wove them all together in my mother's womb. I thank you, God, for making me so mysteriously complex! Everything you do is marvelously breathtaking. It simply amazes me to think about it! — Psalm 139:13-14 TPT
For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. — Romans 8:38-39 NKJV
The notion of striving for approval is deeply woven into the field of medicine. Viewed from a pure perspective, all of us doctors want to do the best we can by our patients, and to make our patients happy and healthy. It’s what keeps the field constantly evolving, with research and innovation constantly pushing medicine to new heights and keeping it relevant throughout the generations. It’s what makes us want to study and learn the most medical information we can, so that we’re fully prepared to treat all the conditions that patients come in with.
But that sense of ambition and approval is also present in medicine in far less pure ways. Take the process of even becoming a doctor. It starts in high school. If you don’t have the “perfect” grades in high school (an age where hardly anyone knows what they want to do with their life, by the way), you’re worried about getting into college.
In college, you have to do well in all the premed classes, and get a 3.5 GPA or above, and have leadership roles in your clubs and activities, and somehow have research and shadowing (despite the fact that hardly anyone in medicine lets undergrads shadow), and a perfect personal statement, all in order to just get into medical school.
In medical school, the grind never stops. First-year preclinical exams. Step 1. Step 2. Your clinical evals (which can be just as fickle and subjective as the humans who write them). So many chances in medicine to define your whole life as a performance.
Many people mistakenly view the Christian life as a performance, too. Do this, don’t do that. Wear this, don’t wear that. Act this way, don’t act that way. Because if you do it this way, or act this way, you’ll be more holy, or pleasing to God.
Nothing could be further from the truth about God.
Here’s the thing about God: He is holier, greater, and more powerful than anyone or anything we could ever aspire to be. Even if we try to be righteous enough to fall within his standard, everything we present not only gets a failing grade, but appears before Him “as filthy rags” (Isaiah 64:6).
He sent Jesus to the earth because of this. He wanted to breach the gap in holiness between us and Him, so He sent His own Son to take whatever penalty sin could bring upon us. He did this so that we could be close to Him without having to worry about whether we are “good enough”.
Here’s another thing about God. Long before you were in medical school, or before your life became defined by a job title, God knew you and loved you already. Long before you were born or even conceived, God already had ideas of what you would look like, what things you would like and how your personality would be. And He LOVED everything about you already.
He still does. He LOVES you. He loves everything about you! When He sees you, He sees His marvelous son, or His glorious daughter. He is proud of you!
In God’s eyes, medicine doesn’t define you. His love does.
If you want to find out more about to develop your relationship with God, see the “Resources” tab on this website. This is an excerpt from The Resident Physician’s Devotional, available over there.