When a young couple announces that a baby is on the way, everyone tells them, “It’ll change your life!” But the fact is, they are already changed. From the first moment of anticipation, they see themselves in a different light. They find that it’s possible to be deeply in love with a tiny human being they’ve never met. They brim with dreams of the things they’ll do with their child—taking trips to the beach, getting a puppy, learning about God. Until that child is born, father and mother will think of little else; after the child is born, they will devote themselves fully to their precious offspring.

Where did this powerful love come from? The answer: It’s an inherited trait. We are made in the image of a heavenly Father who felt the same deep joy before we were born, but His love is even more powerful, more boundless. You know that God loves you now, but do you realize that He always has—even before you were born? Even before the world was created? He has loved you from the very foundation of time. Let’s explore what the Bible says about God’s relationship with you before you were born.

Before You Were Born, God Knew Your Identity

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.

—PSALM 139:15–16

The primary purpose of this passage is to express a truth about God, but it also says something about the psalmist who wrote it. Clearly David considered himself to have been a person even before he was conscious of himself. He was saying, “I, as a person, was covered by Your hand, O Lord, in my mother’s womb. I was made in secret and masterfully wrought in the inner recesses of my mother’s body.”

It is important to note that verse 16 contains the only use of the Hebrew word for embryo found in Scripture—translated here as “my substance, being yet unformed.” As God was forming you, He was watching over you in love. We know this to be true because the Bible says that “God is love” (1 John 4:8, 16). Everything God does, including overseeing the development of an unborn human child, is carried out in love. Henri Nouwen explains: