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.

God and Suffering

 I was reading a book that attempted to explain why good people sometimes suffer.  It was a good lesson to me that if a Christian is looking to read something enlightening about God (besides the Bible), reading a book that is written by a non-Christian is not going to be helpful.

The basic premise of the book is that our God is NOT all powerful, and He struggles against evil like the rest of us.  But - we can take hope and comfort that God can sympathize with us just the same.  Hmmm.  Not sure how a god with no power can provide any sort of hope whatsoever.  Besides, I struggle with the notion of a God who can create the world and everything in it being powerless over it, among other things. 

The other striking thing about this book is that it summarized various books and passages in the Bible.  I don't claim to be a Bible scholar.  But in reading it through on my 4th time now, I have a reasonable idea of what's in it.  These summaries provided in the book took me by surprise - nowhere did I recall what these summaries claimed, so I got out my Bible and took a look again.  And, guess what?  Nowhere did I see anything even similar to what the author was asserting.  How a person could read these verses and come up with the conclusions that the author did was mind blowing.  Take home message:  Never, ever rely on someone telling you what the Bible says.  Read it yourself, and you'll know.  

There are three things to remember:

1) God IS all-powerful. 
2) God IS all-knowing.
3) God loves you dearly, so much that He came to earth to take the punishment for your sin, so you wouldn't need to.

In the Bible, God says we don't think like He does.  We'd all be God if we could.  There's much to this universe and to this existence of ours that we are not going to understand.  But we believe in the One who does understand.

There are many reasons we suffer on earth.  It shapes us - He holds us tightly through it, if we let Him. We come out of it differently than we went into it.  Sin is part of earthly life because Satan is here.  We have free will to be sinful if we wish, and unapologetic (and unforgiven) if we choose that as well.  One person's sin hurts others - that's a fact.  We don't sin in a vacuum.  Sometimes the suffering we do gets our attention, and refocuses us away from something harmful.  I don't believe that God necessarily causes our suffering (it's part of allowing us free will) but He'll help us through it, stop it when it is time, sustain us through it, and bless us despite it.  Yes, God IS omnipotent, loves us tremendously, and allows us to suffer, all at the same time.

Don't Look Down

"Don't look down... Keep your eyes on Me
Just Walk on the Water... Walk on the Water with Me..."

I heard these lyrics on the radio while running errands this morning, and while I don't know the song nor the singer, they were so poignant and significant to me.  It's been a hard several months for us, culminating in a tremendous amount of stress over some tough situations.  High anxiety, sleepless nights, upset stomach and sick with worry, I finally came to realize that these a significant amount of this anxiety all started with one negative thought, which rumination would feed like a starving animal until the situation was even more out of control.  Don't get me wrong, a fair amount of stress was to be expected, but my own internal reaction to it made it so much harder to bear, and overshadowed any remembrance that my God would neither leave nor forsake me, and life still held a tremendous number of blessings.

The song lyrics I heard this morning hit a spot in my soul.  The Apostle Peter was doing fine while keeping his eyes on the Lord, but when he let his fear of his circumstances take over, he sunk.  He saw that he *might* sink, not that he *was* staying afloat.   And that fear changed everything for him.  That "I'm walking on the water and I might sink" turned into "I'm sinking!"  When we have big, bad events in our lives, we need to hunker down with our Bibles and our God all the more, see past the scary stuff and see the ways He's keeping us afloat. He won't leave us.  But we need to keep our minds, eyes, hearts and thoughts on Him and His sustaining power.  And THAT is real.

In Charles Stanley's "Handbook for Christian Living," he has an entire section on "Thoughts" and their impact on every part of our lives if we don't take them under control.  Ruminating on bad things isn't helpful, nor does it paint a realistic picture.  Bad thoughts out of control overshadow everything else, including the blessings in our lives.  Allowing negative thoughts to grow into things of epic proportions warps our perception of reality.  And it is possible to get these thoughts under control, but certainly difficult when many of us have not ever exercised that discipline.

This is not the same as sticking one's head in the sand, or "pretending our troubles away."  We can face our realities accurately, remembering that Christ will never leave nor forsake us.  Oftentimes we can't see it, but our intense difficulties in life on this sinful earth can bring good and they can change us for the better.  Our reactions to them can bring glory to the Lord, and they can draw us closer to Him.  But not if we've ruminated them out of control.

"Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life."  (Proverbs 4:23)