The Jesus Who Will Bake your Cake

 I'm in the habit of reading Dr. Charles Stanley's devotionals (sign up at InTouch.org - they are free, and greatly useful).  Today's was entitled "Our Trials" and it immediately caught my attention (by divine design, I'm sure, since I'm currently up to my eyeballs dealing with little life challenges).

The devotional mentions that we all have trials, both the believer and the unbeliever, and outlines that these troubles can come from various sources:

1) Other peoples' sin.  I've always envisioned this as someone jumping up and down in the "mud-puddle of sin" and anyone nearby is going to get splashed to a certain degree.  The closer you are to the sin, the muddier you're going to get.

2) Spiritual Warfare - Satan attacks anyone who is a threat to his mission, so I guess when Satan trips you up and frustrates your work, that's a good thing.  Looking at the big picture, that is.  You're valuable enough to God to warrant Satan's attention.

3) Our own sin.  Kind of a no-brainer.  It's going to come back and bite us sooner or later.

4) Trials from God Himself.  You can be sitting there minding your own business, and along comes trouble.  

The overall message in the devotional is that no matter what the source of your difficulties, God has a reason and a purpose for allowing them.  He will take them and use them to accomplish something good.  Maybe in you.  Maybe in someone else.  Maybe in a lot of people.  And He will always bless you for your faithfulness in going through the trials in the right way - His way.

I was imagining baking a cake.  All these raw ingredients are in The Bowl That Is You.  You've got some raw eggs, some flour, some sugar, some baking powder...  And it's neither tasty nor useful.   But beat up those ingredients a little bit, and put them through the fire, and they change.  You end up with something really good.  As long as you don't forget the leavening agent, which is Jesus Christ, who makes sure the whole mess is raised up properly, your cake won't fall flat. And personally, if I'm going to get beat up by life and go through the fire, I'd rather not fall flat.

As you enter into a time of trial, don't forget God is allowing it for a reason and a purpose, will limit it to the shortest amount of time necessary, and He will never leave your side as you walk through it.  Trusting Him is a choice.  Keep your eyes on Him and take it one step at a time.  There's blessing on the other side of this.

Clay in the Potter's Hands, Part II

Our women's Bible study group at church is currently doing "Giving God Your Future" by Christa Kinde.  It's an excellent study and I highly recommend it.  We're nearly done and as a person who tends to be a worrywart, I've learned a lot about the peace and serenity that comes from trusting a most trustworthy God.

As we go through the attributes of God and why He is more than capable that we are of directing our futures, I've also been looking at how God has directed my past, which I believe is necessary to feel comfortable in totally entrusting my future to Him.  

Looking back at the top three or four really hard stretches of my life, I can see exactly how I was blessed on the other side of each of those challenges.  And while the hardships were tough to bear at times, the blessing far outweighed the difficulties, so much so that I'd go through it again if I needed to in order to get what I got.  The blessing has been more than commensurate with the hardship involved.

While each tribulation has resulted in blessing, collectively the experiences are changing me. Looking back on how I reacted to various periods of crisis, I find myself more content to accept that God has a plan and purpose rather than to complain and bemoan the situation.  I find myself more comfortable not having to know exactly what is coming and how God plans to provide for me through it, and just accepting that my role is to keep my eyes on Him and trust that He will make a way even when -- no, especially when -- I don't see it.

I love to feel these changes as they are happening.  That edifying and uplifting feeling of being the clay under the Potter's skillful and all-knowing hands is more valuable than anything else I've ever experienced. 

Clay in the Potter's Hands

"Yet you, Lord, are our Father.  We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand." -- Isaiah 64:8

I suspect many Christians can recall times in life when we were going through a time of reshaping and can feel the Potter working on us.  We find ourselves reacting differently, feeling differently, thinking differently... and we know we are being changed.  While it's always good when God is reshaping us, it doesn't always feel so good when you're the clay that's being reworked.

All of this took me back to high school when I did a lot of work with clay in art class.  We had a large plastic garbage can filled with a mixture of dry clay and water.  The first thing we'd do is pull out a handful of that sloppy mess and put it on a large, special surface to dry out to a consistency we could work with. When the surface had absorbed the excess water, we would scrape up the clay into a mound, but before shaping it we would throw it, hard, many times against the surface to knock the air bubbles out, as air bubbles would weaken the structure of the finished product.  At that point we would put the mound of clay on the potter's wheel and begin shaping it into something that bore no resemblance to the sloppy mess that we pulled out of the garbage can.  And when it looked amazing, into the kiln it went to bake at a high temperature to help it stay amazing.  And in the appropriate time, the work of art is pulled from the kiln, much more beautiful and stronger than it started out in the garbage can.

Suddenly that comparison between me and the clay became very real.

I was in that garbage can and had no clue there was something better.
I've felt lifeless and formless and without purpose.
I've had the air knocked out of me a time or two.
I've been shaped into something that bears no resemblance to how I started out.
I've been in the fire, and God took me out of it when the time was appropriate.
I've come out of the experiences better and stronger and more purposeful than the sloppy mess that came from the garbage can.

There are so many references in the Bible to the Lord being the Potter and we being the clay.  As I read through them, a lot about life starts to make sense - in this comparison there's not only a sense of purpose for us, but also addresses truth and submission and trust.  

Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for special purposes and some for common use? -- Romans 9:21

Woe to those who quarrel with their maker, those who are nothing but potsherds among the potsherds on the ground.  Does the clay say to the potter, "What are you making?" Does your work say, "The potter has no hands? -- Isaiah 45:9

You turn things upside down, as if the potter were thought to be like the clay!  Shall what is formed say to the one who formed it, "You did not make me"? Can the pot say to the potter, "You know nothing"? -- Isaiah 29:16

This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: "Go down to the potter's house, and there I will give you my message."  So I went down to the potter's house, and I saw him working at the wheel.  But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands; so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him.

Then the word of the Lord came to me.  He said, "Can I not do with you, Israel, as this potter does?" declares the Lord.  "Like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in my hand, Israel. -- Jeremiah 18

He knows what He's doing, we don't.  He knows the finished product, we don't.  He knows the purpose of it all, we don't. How can any believer not trust Him more reading through these verses?  

Can You Follow Me This Far?

Several years ago, I laid in a hospital bed facing a huge obstacle, and it was terrifying.  I fell asleep that night praying for that obstacle to go away.  I had a dream that I was outside looking at a huge, very dark, very large forest and my path lead right into the heart of it.  Suddenly, Jesus appeared, and walked over to the edge of the darkness and said, "Are you able to follow Me this far?"  I said yes, and I walked to the edge of the forest to Him, and there we stayed.  Then I woke up.  He was not asking me to walk the whole path, just that small step by His side.  I woke up with a peace that was totally unexpected.

All of us have obstacles like this at one time or another. This one was certainly not the last for me, but it was the beginning of my understanding that He doesn't ask us to take on a huge situation or a long path all at once.

When we're standing there looking at this massive mountain ahead of us it can be overwhelming.   And the longer I live and the more of these huge obstacles I see, I am convinced that it's not necessarily all  about overcoming them.

Psalm 119:105 says "Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light on my path."   Note that it says LAMP, not SPOTLIGHT.*  He shows us the next step for us to take, not the whole path with all its twists and turns and offshoots.  We don't know what's coming, but we have Jesus just ahead asking "Will you follow Me this far?"  This next little step may stretch our faith, but maybe that's the point.  One little do-able, faith-building step at a time.

Perhaps there's as much to be gained from the journey as overcoming the obstacle.

* from the faith-filled morning host at The House of Praise streaming radio.  

Submission

 A few things I have learned about submission to God in the last year or two:  

It's not just sitting there passively and being willing to take whatever God sends your way.  It's much deeper than that. There's a hugely important active component to it.  It's important to ask God what he would have me do in this place and situation in my life, and actively following His direction.    It's actively believing He has a plan and that He is also actively putting it into play, regardless of what our eyes see and what our overthinking brains come up with.   Things are happening - we don't have a passive God.  He is working on us.  He is working on other people.  He is working out the circumstances to bring about His best.

He keeps His promises.  Trust God and His plan, even if you don't see it.  Even if you can't make sense of it.  And keep praising Him.  Something amazing happens when you put your focus on praise and gratitude to the God who loves you more than you can imagine.  

Today's Thought

I may be no match for Satan, but Satan is no match for Jesus.  

Lean Not On Your Own Understanding

 "Trust in the Lord with all your heart
And do not lean on your own understanding" (Proverbs 3:5)

This is my "life verse."  I have spent a great deal of time over the years focusing on those first words - "trust" and "all" especially.  It's that second line that trips me up.  When God has said one thing, and my eyes see something else going on, it's hard to remember that "it ain't over till it's over" and God doesn't always take a direct route to the end result.  And there's a reason and a purpose for that.

For some reason probably related to that second line, I noticed a recurrent cycle in my reading of the Old Testament: God performed miracles, then made promises, and His people didn't believe those promises despite His faithful past, they went their own way and sinned, suffered the consequences, repented, and then the whole cycle repeated itself again.  Despite God always making good on His promises, His people looked instead to what they saw with their eyes and chose not to believe Him.  They grumbled against Him when things looked impossible.  I don't think it's coincidence that He brought those instances to my attention.

I interrupted my normal Bible reading schedule to jump to the book of Luke in celebration of the Christmas season.  Right away, in the first Chapter, I noticed something related to this - two back-to-back contrasting examples of how to react to God's promises of the seemingly impossible.

Zacharias and his wife Elizabeth, both elderly, were told by the angel Gabriel that they would have a son.  Gabriel also visited a young virgin, Mary, and told her she would also bear a son.  Zacharias heard this news knowing his wife was too old to bear children, and asked for proof.  Mary heard this news knowing she was a virgin and asked how it was going to happen.  

Gabriel saw fit to explain the process to Mary, but often we don't get that explanation, only the instruction to "lean not on your own understanding."  That's hard.  Sometimes it's really hard, when our eyes - and often the people around us - tell us the opposite.  God is cognizant of our humanness and our imperfect faith, but we pay a price when we put more faith in what we see over God's promises.  The Old Testament examples show that, and Zacharias lost his ability to speak until the promise was fulfilled.  And there's always a blessing when we are able to trust the Lord even when our circumstances might indicate otherwise.  Mary found favor with God and is most blessed among women.  God is always faithful.  He keeps His promises.  Always.  Even when we can't see how.