In the minds of non-Christians, especially anti-Christians, and even (to some extent) among genuine and authentic Christians, to embrace and adhere to the literal (and even figurative) Biblical doctrines of Christianity . . . is initially "embarrassing" and momentarily "shameful" -- from most every angle and perspective.

That feeling of shame and embarrassment is and should only be temporary, however, because:

Mark 8:38 For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of man also be ashamed, when He comes in the glory of His Father with the holy angels.
Luke 9:26 For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words, of him will the Son of man be ashamed when He comes in His glory and the glory of the Father and of the holy angels.

It is not insurmountable nor impossible to regard Christianity shamelessly, because humans have the ability to detect or at least imagine the beyond-superstition invisible presence and existence of the actual and real supernatural:

First Corinthians 1:18 For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.
19 For it is written, "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the cleverness of the clever I will thwart."
20 Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?
21 For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe.
22 For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom,
23 but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles,
24 but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.
25 For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.
26 For consider your call, brethren; not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth;
27 but God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise, God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong,
28 God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are,
29 so that no human being might boast in the presence of God.
30 He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, whom God made our wisdom, our righteousness and sanctification and redemption;
31 therefore, as it is written, "Let him who boasts, boast of the Lord."

First Corinthians 2:1 When I came to you, brethren, I did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God in lofty words or wisdom.
2 For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified.
3 And I was with you in weakness and in much fear and trembling;
4 and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power,
5 that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.
6 Yet among the mature we do impart wisdom, although it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to pass away.
7 But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glorification.
8 None of the rulers of this age understood this; for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.
9 But, as it is written, "What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived, what God has prepared for those who love Him,"
10 God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God.
11 For what person knows a man's thoughts except the spirit of the man which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.
12 Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the gifts bestowed on us by God.
13 And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who possess the Spirit.
14 The unspiritual man does not receive the gifts of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.
15 The spiritual man judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one.
16 "For who has known the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?" But we have the mind of Christ.

All that should be kept in mind when guys like Dawkins rant on via the History Channel about their weird and goofy Genesis-contradicting pseudo-"scientific" notions about alleged superior-being "aliens" and/or how the universe and stars were formed.

Luke 16:16 "The law and the prophets were until John; since then the good news of the kingdom of God is preached, and every one enters it violently." Kicking and screaming, so to speak.

It is temporarily "shameful" for us Christians to have to confess that we have screwed up, made immoral mistakes, virtually slapped God in the face at least with disregard and indifference and at worst with mean anger at times, and both grievously and irreparably sinned (from which consequences we are incapable of extricating ourselves from and successfully abrogating by ourselves).

It is not easy to admit our errors in our natural pride, self-confidence, and desire to elevate ourselves with non-negative self-esteem. After all, who respects anyone who confesses that they have sinned against God?

Does Kenyan-not-Hawaiian-born liar Barack Hussein Obama (who many mis-call: "The President"?), confess in so-far-never-once-publicized deep non-faked humility and contrition that he has sinned by calling on God to bless murderous infanticide practitioners misnamed Planned Parenthood (which should instead be called Planned Parentlessness and/or Planned Promiscuity)?

Has Barack Hussein Obama confessed to antisemitically criticizing Israeli settlements, confessed to calling for and thus promoting same-gender homosodomy-unions licensing (mis-termed: "same-sex marriage")? Confessed to authorizing the NSA and IRS to snoop on and harass innocent American citizens?

Of course, not all blame possible is to be placed on Obama himself. An equal (and in one sense, greater) amount has to be placed on those trouble-inciting niggar-"rights" worshippers who campaigned for and voted him into office, and even some fault goes to those who said and did nothing about it but let it happen out of their own irresponsible black-reparations racism - presuming that being silent about public-nuisance and divisive "minority"-"civil"-"rights" activism certainly constitutes self-atoning brownie points allegedly qualifying them for assured entrance into Heaven upon their demise.

Henceforth, the plagiaristic road name: "Rev Dr Martin Luther King Drive" in St Paul MN will be colloquially referred to as merely: Marty King Drive.

We await modern-times repeat of the following:

First Kings 8:33 "When your people Israel are defeated before the enemy because they have sinned against you, if they turn again to you, and acknowledge your name, and pray and make petition to you in this house . . .
8:35 When heaven is shut up and there is no rain because they have sinned against you, if they pray toward this place, and acknowledge your name, and turn from their sin, when you do afflict them,
8:46 "If they sin against you -- for there is no man who does not sin -- and you are angry with them, and do give them to an enemy, so that they are carried away captive to the land of the enemy, far off or near;
8:47 yet if they lay it to heart in the land to which they have been carried captive, and repent, and make request to you in the land of their captors, saying, 'We have sinned, and have acted perversely and wickedly';
8:48 if they repent with all their mind and with all their heart in the land of their enemies, who carried them captive, and pray to you toward their land, which you gave to their fathers, the city which you have chosen, and the house which I have built for thy name . . . [ to be continued ]

Both those yet-wicked-and-still-under-condemnation, along with those formerly-wicked-but-now-under-acquittal spoken of in Ephesians chapter two:

Ephesians 2:1 And you He made alive, when you were dead through the trespasses and sins
2 in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience.
3 Among these we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, following the desires of body and mind, and so we were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.
4 But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which He loved us,
5 even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved),
6 and raised us up with Him, and made us sit with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus,
7 that in the coming ages He might show the immeasurable riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.
8 For by grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God--
9 not because of [self-atoning] works (such as claims of "accepting Christ," "believing in Christ," "obeying Christ," or "having faith in Christ" nor "robbing banks"), lest any human should boast.
10 For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works [not faith alone - see James 2:24], which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

. . . are put under obligation to humiliating above-reiterated deprecation (potentially noxious to the self-assured once-saved-always-saved), along with mandatory-accommodation-by-confessional-belief subjugation which both the yet-impenitently-evil and the now-penitently-righteous are presently in subordination to (whether they comply or not).

In a nutshell, the "main thing, main point, or gist of the Ephesians chapter two segment above can succinctly be put as follows:

You were a rat. God made you automatically become an un-rat. Now, good works are expected from you.

Of necessity, the details of "the main thing" define what "the main point" is.

Incidently, it behooves the reader, and also yours truly, to be reminded that "passions of the flesh" does NOT mean all erotic or sexual desire per se - but instead any and all incorrect and forbidden human expression of all sorts of wayward thoughts and words and misbehaviors:

Galatians 5:19 Now the works of the flesh are plain: fornication [adultery not exempted even though not mentioned here], impurity [porn, among other things], licentiousness [warm-weather mopheaded or sleevesless or slacksless or soxless quasi-indecent-exposure exhibitionism for whatever doctrines-of-demons excuses and irrationalizations, and lurid/lewd suggestion for such],
20 idolatry [including porn idols], sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, selfishness, dissension, party spirit,
21 envy, drunkenness, carousing, and the like. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.
22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,
23 gentleness, self-control; against such there is no law.

[ You will not come back to a fast-food restaurant or pump-and-munch service station where the soon-to-be-promptly-fired cashiers impose anti-customer hate, depression, grumbling, adversarial reaction, rudeness, tardiness in processing an order, harshness, outburst of rage, etc. instead of fruits of the Spirit.

And, as a genuine Scripturally-orthodox Christian, you need not and should not buy from nor sell to obvious and impenitent homogays, murderous abortionists, antisemites, anti-creationism pseudo-scientific evolutionists, arrogant and insubordinate sexist feminists, warm-weather immodest exhibitionists, etc. To avoid charges of non-substantiated "discrimination" from such deviates, simply inform them, if questioned, that "I already bought (or sold) gas and groceries from (or to) that Christian pump-and-munch (or whatever other business) over there, and thus I already have all I need for the time being." Or: "We already hired a Christian, and so that employment job is obviously no longer available." ]

24 And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.
25 If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit.
26 Let us have no self-conceit, no provoking of one another, no envy of one another.

[ You will not come back to a fast-food restaurant or pump-and-munch service station where the cashiers instead of fruits of the Spirit impose anti-customer hate, depression, grumbling, adversarial reaction, rudeness, tardiness in processing an order, harshness, outburst of rage, etc.

And do not tailgate nor honk in impatient pompous-ass road rage. One car-length space for every ten miles per hour of speed, please. ]

Sexual types of flesh passions are only one aspect (although a primary and somewhat-emphasized aspect) of the entire gamut of "works of the flesh" - as can readily be observed and deduced from the Galatians 5:19-26 passage above.

The Ephesians-chapter-two verses:

3 Among these we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, following the desires of body and mind, and so we were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.
4 But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which He loved us,
5 even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved),

. . . indicate that even the Spirit-inspired Biblical-epistles-author Saint Paul once followed the passions of his flesh, the desires of his body and mind - which might have included some sexual ones, for even though Saul who became Paul was a dedicated Biblical-Text-scholar Jewish pharisee, he perhaps had some encounters with and enticed excursions into Jewish and Roman and Greek live-nude-sex solicitations of his time - and not simply gazing and lusting at nude-goddess Roman or Greek female statutes (being that copious photographic and video porn on the internet was not yet available).

The part that is both intriguing and disturbing is that verses 4 and 5 of Ephesians chapter two seem to imply that God arbitrarily chooses a few here and there to pounce on as then-helpless victims of suddenly-involuntary obedience, which hapless persons had no choice whatsoever in the matter.

It seems quite obvious that, if that is the case, God has not pounced on, or yet pounced on, everyone on the planet with forced obedience - of obligatory faith to trust Him, obligatory faith to believe what He had written in His Word the Bible, and (beyond the obedience of faith), obligatory acceptance of his bloody redemptive gospel and mandatory expectation to perform perfect pre-arranged good works of His choosing and definitions.

Many DO resist and do NOT accept. They will NOT admit that they have "sinned" -- because that would necessitate them acknowledging distasteful-and-disgusting-to-them existence of immutable-and-absolute Divine Law (overriding constantly-changing, fickle, and adjustable "legal" laws), along with God's non-questioned authority and rulership over them, as would admitting that He is "merciful" over them, and therefore requires them to enter into and forever maintain an eternally-binding "love" and companionship relationship with Him -- obviously mandating them to always do things His way instead of their own way(s).

They will NOT believe that God through Christ's "pathetic" "shameful"-cross "execution" compensates for their own "imaginary" grievances they "purportedly" have "committed" against God.

They will NOT acknowledge that they have been "saved" (implying a reconciled and of-necessity close relationship with God perpetually conforming to His "restrictive" ways) by "grace" (which free-gift-giveaway is utter foolishness to those who expect tit-for-tat barter and commercial-transactions-like human-whims-based payments, a "laughable but pitiful" giving away whatever is of great value for "no sensible nor logical" reason, and certainly "counterproductive" because no selfish profit is acquired by so doing).

Getting back to the verses:

8 For by grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God--
9 not because of [self-atoning] works (such as claims of "accepting Christ," "believing in Christ," "obeying Christ," or "having faith in Christ" nor "robbing banks"), lest any human should boast.
10 For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works [not faith alone - see James 2:24], which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

WHY do good works, or automatically start and continue to do good works (using God's definition of "good" and not that of greedy perverts and thieves) - when the credit for doing them is not given to those who do them, but instead has to be given to the God who empowers puny them to do good works?

But can simply believing what is in the Bible, and [naively? or presumptuously?] applying what is read to onesself, and particularly believing that bloody gospel of Christ-credited atonement-for-the-helplessly-atoned -- be considered a good work? Can merely calling Jesus 'Lord' (meaning Sovereign Master over onesself forever) be considered a "good work?"

Matthew 19:16 And hey, someone came up to Him, saying, "Teacher, what good deed must I do, to have eternal life?"
Mark 10:17 And as He was setting out on his journey, a man ran up and knelt before Him, and asked Him, "Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?"

John 6:29 Jesus answered them, "This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent."

Acts 16:30 . . . "Men, what must I do to be saved?"
31 And they said, "Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household."
32 And they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all that were in his house.
33 And he took them the same hour of the night, and washed their wounds, and he was baptized at once, with all his family.

A little more was required for The Penitent Dying Thief on a Cross, The Woman Caught in the Act of Adultery - both of whom simply called Jesus 'Lord.'

They were then sprinkled or immersed in baptism, ingested only the wafer but not the wine, promised to call the Old-Testament Apocrypha canonical Scripture, and said a few Hail Mary's using the Matriarchal Mantra of: "Holy Mary, Mother of the Triune God, pray for us sinners now or in the hour of our death, or whenever you think best, being that we're not going to boss you around." And the Sun rises in the west each morning, or sets in the east. Whatever.

The word "should" in the following verse can be heretically problematic:

10 For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works [not faith alone - see James 2:24], which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

"Should" walk in them is NOT specifically equivalent to "must" walk in them - whatever "walk" means.

Some fake "christians" might use the word "should" as an excuse to negate the insistent necessity of performing 24/7 real-time good works (in whole or in part, with a pick-and-choose capriciousness), with the insinuation that we are merely saved by grace of His work on the cross for us through our faith that that event really occurred centuries ago in the Middle East and supposedly now applies to us here in America, and so doing good works is not mandatory nor required for salvation (they presume), thus abrogating James 2:24, which states that we are justified (i.e. saved) by [doing] [good] works, not by [our non-reliable-and-faltering] faith (in what or who?) alone.

So, is the intended meaning, in fact, "should" or instead: "must?" Should implies something optional, voluntary but not absolutely required, only a suggestion, take it or leave it.

To illustrate with a typical and practical everyday example:

If two persons play a game of Checkers, their age, gender, title, religion, physical bodily attributes, skin-color race, health, language, attire or lack of it, and so forth, are irrelevant.

What they both must rather than merely "should" do, however, is as follows:

(a) They must make alternate moves when playing their opponent.
(b) They must make their moves within 45 seconds, or they automatically forfeit the game by default.
(c) They must move single checkers only upwards, and only diagonally one space unless they jump checkers.
(d) They must jump if they have put themselves or are put into a position where they have to jump.
(e) They must remove checkers from the checkerboard which have been jumped.
(f) They must not replace checkers which have been jumped.
(g) They must have their checkers be crowned king when they reach the opposite side of the checkerboard.

Again, the operative word above is always must - and never "should."

If good works are merely optional (whatever "good works" consist of in part or in whole, and do not consist of in part or in whole - whenever and wherever), perhaps the following verse:

Matthew 5:48 You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

. . .either "should" or instead "must" [ WHICH is it? ] be changed to:

"You, therefore, should be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect."

. . . particular in view of the [we're-only-human] verses:

Ecclesiastes 7:20 Surely there is not a righteous man on earth who does good and never sins.
Jeremiah 2:35 you say, 'I am innocent; surely his anger has turned from me.' Hey, I will bring you to judgment for saying, 'I have not sinned.'
First John 1:10 If we say we have not sinned, we make Him [out to be] a liar, and His word is not in us.

If continued sinfulness is the case, elaborated by St Paul stating:

Romans 7:14 We know that the law is spiritual; but I am carnal, sold under sin.
15 I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.
16 Now if I do what I do not want, I agree that the law is good.
17 So then it is no longer I that do it, but sin which resides within me.
18 For I know that nothing good resides within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it.
19 For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.
20 Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin which resides within me.
21 So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand.
22 For I delight in the law of God, in my inmost self,
23 but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin which resides in my members.

. . . how can self-assured proud and belligerent baptists and other reformed types brag that they are bonafide un-rats from now on?

Certainly an un-rat can readily become a rat again, and so-called "eternal security," in which no one ever snatches believers out of the Father's hand, is rightfully balanced with the warning for "already-got-it-made" Christians:

Hebrews 10:26 For if we sin deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins,
Hebrews 10:27 but a fearful prospect of judgment, and a fury of fire which will consume the adversaries.

WHY would an un-rat want to become a rat again? Why not? They would do it because they can, and might want to do what they can.

Second Timothy 4:10 For Demas, in love with this present world, has deserted me and gone to Thessalonica; Crescens has gone to Galatia, Titus to Dalmatia.

Why do a few people believe that the gospel is for real, and applies to them . . . while most others choose to disbelieve that the gospel is for real and certainly does not apply to them?

Was God responsible (or, even worse, at fault and to blame) for constructing only a few good human specimens but a lot of bad human ones? Is God illegally or unfairly discriminatory by only pouncing on some people but not on others? If He does pounce on everybody sooner or later, doesn't God's pouncing on both of them (by, for example, both reading Ephesians chapter two and most of the rest of the 2000-year-old foreign-country-originated foreign-languages-translated Biblical text as if it applied specifically to themselves), automatically insure His acceptance of them, and their acceptance of Him - whether they respond positively or instead respond negatively?

Ah, here is where that lutherans-abhorred human freewill (another "gift"? of God - and sorry about that, you God-haters) comes into the picture!

Do they - in their cowardly, direct-contact-with-God-bypassed, I-don't-want-God-to-directly-tell-me-to-give-up-my-idols diversionism - only take their orders from some human papal/priest-equivalent intermediary:

Deuteronomy 17:10 Then you shall do according to what they declare to you from that place which the LORD will choose; and you shall be careful to do according to all that they direct you . . .

. . . or instead must they choose for themselves:

Deuteronomy 30:19 I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse; therefore choose life, that you and your descendants may live

Joshua 24:15 And if you be unwilling to serve the LORD, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you reside; but as for me and my house, we will serve the LORD."

Second Samuel 24:12 "Go and say to David, 'Thus says the LORD, Three things I offer you; choose one of them, that I may do it to you.'"

Job 15:5 For your iniquity teaches your mouth, and you choose the tongue of the crafty.
Job 34:4 Let us choose what is right; let us determine among ourselves what is good.
Job 34:33 Will He then make requital to suit you, because you reject it? For you must choose, and not I; therefore declare what you know.

Isaiah 7:15 He shall eat curds and honey when he knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good.
Isaiah 7:16 For before the child knows how to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land before whose two kings you are in dread will be deserted. ?

Why some accept God and His stringent Law plus bloody animal-sacrifice-reminiscent gospel . . . while others reject it . . . is not God's fault or doing.

Some are BORN to accept God (and thus have a willfully-accommodating favorable attitude for Him from the start) . . . while most instead have a willfully-non-accommodating disfavorable attitude against the Lord from the start:

Psalm 58:3 The wicked go astray from the womb, they err from their birth, speaking lies.

Whining lying sucklings. Babbling baby-talk discontents. Terroristic nuisance shriekers.

First Peter 2:8 and "A stone that will make men stumble, a rock that will make them fall"; for they stumble because they disobey The Word, as they were destined to do.

Does the LORD, who "destines" people one way or the other, know beforehand which of His human creatures is going to be for Him, in contrast to which are going to be against Him?

Not always:

Genesis 2:19 So out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to the man to see what he would call them [ the Creator did not know already? ]; and whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name.

But usually:

Jeremiah 24:7 I will give them a heart to know that I am the LORD; and they shall be my people and I will be their God, for they shall return to me with their whole heart.

Acts 2:23 Him, being delivered up in accordance with the determinate will and foreknowledge of God, you all have taken and by wicked hands have crucified and slain.
Acts 4:28 to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place.
Romans 8:29 For those whom He foreknew He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, in order that He might be the first-born among many brethren.
Romans 8:30 And those whom He predestined He also called; and those whom He called [ preferable to: "pounced upon" ] He also justified; and those whom He justified He also glorified.

It is fascinating that the Lord seems to be able to predict what freewill-exercising humans will eventually do:

Isaiah 41:22 Let them bring them, and tell us what is to happen. Tell us the former things, what they are, that we may consider them, that we may know their outcome; or declare to us the things to come.

Such forecasting or prophecy would be quite a different thing (both conceptually possible and easy for humans to understand and accept) if non-freewilled robotic creatures were simply operating on only pre-programed instinct interacting with pre-programed environmental phenomena - as complex as that would be.

One has to understand the "by nature" wording of Ephesians chapter two, realizing that that means everyone is born into a sinful environment (and even experiences the phenomenon of sin while yet inside their sinful-mother's womb as she and hers sinfully interact with a sinful world).

That does not mean that they are forced to choose to become and/or stay homosexuals, atheists, evolutionists, pornographers, immodest warm-weather exhibitionists, sexist feminists, antisemitic, etc. right anytime before nor when they ooze out of the vagina of their moms. Instead, they (at some distinct points during their ongoing lives) reveal that they deliberately choose and then have chosen whatever aberration(s) they select as their deviated lifestyle.

Regarding (not "concerning") the righteous who are supposedly "born that way:"

Isaiah 44:2 Thus says the LORD who made you, who formed you from the womb and will help you: "Fear not, Jacob my servant, Jeshurun whom I have chosen."
Isaiah 44:24 Thus says the LORD, your Redeemer, who formed you from the womb: "I am the LORD, who made all things, who stretched out the heavens alone, who spread out the earth Who was with me?
Isaiah 46:3 "Respond to me, house of Jacob, all the remnant of the house of Israel, who have been borne by me from your birth, carried from the womb;"
Isaiah 49:1 Listen to me, coastlands, and respond, you peoples from far away. The LORD called me from the womb, from the body of my mother; He named my name.
Isaiah 49:5 And now the LORD says, who formed me from the womb to be His servant, to bring Jacob back to Him, and that Israel might be gathered to Him, for I am honored in the eyes of the LORD, and my God has become my strength . . .

Jeremiah 1:5 "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations."

Free-willed Jeremiah thankfully agreed with The Plan, and thus make the right choice - for the Lord, for himself, and for all of us.