The Potter and the Clay

The Potter and the Clay

The Bible is filled with stories and examples to show God's people how to live.  God has held the blueprint of each of our lives long before we entered into our mother's womb.  In fact, our blueprint came out of the mind of the Lord before time and history.  He planned why He brought life to us, our purpose in life, and when we would leave this earth to return to Him in heaven.  He knows everything about us individually because He is our Creator.  Without a doubt, our blueprint is for good - His and ours, with God having His ultimate plan and purpose for our life. 

The Lord came to Isaiah the prophet, telling him that the people of Israel, both individually and as a nation, had come against Him to think they knew better than their Creator - the clay knew more than the potter.  They were arrogant, substituting their own rituals of idol worship for the true worship God had commanded of them.  The people of Israel actually thought their plans were so much better than God's and He would just let them do as they pleased.  Because they were bent on their own ways, God simply allowed them to travel down their own road of destruction (Is 29:13-16).  But God laid it on the heart of the Prophet Isaiah to intervene in prayer on behalf of Israel for them to change.

Is 64:8 8 But now, O Lord, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand.  

Israel still refused the instruction of the Lord, so God then spoke to the Prophet Jeremiah, instructing him to go to a potter's house where God showed him through the potter and the clay His broken relationship with Israel.  The people were still bent on their own way, so God continued to allow Israel to travel down their road to full destruction - all the way to captivity into Babylon.

Jer 18:2-6 “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.”

The Pharisees and experts of the Law during the time of Jesus carried that same spiteful additude as those of their countrymen so many hundreds of years earlier.  Jesus rebuked them for refusing to correctly follow the Scriptures - for if they had, they would have accepted Jesus as their long awaited Messiah (Mark 7:2-13).  Instead, they had Him crucified.  

One Who Argues With His Creator is in Grave Danger

No matter how much we might think of ourselves, we are still small in comparison to God, yet God knows us all individually - He is our Creator and He loves and desires the very best for us.  He is omnipotent (unlimited power), omniscient (knows everything), and omnipresent (all seeing).  Yet, He created us with a free will - to choose our own destiny.  His heart, however, is for us to follow the blueprint He has laid out for our life, for that plan is perfect and bring us to places we could never imagine possible.

We don’t know our future and where our thoughts and ideas will take us.  We can either go down the road we want to do what we think is best for us, or we can follow God's blueprint by being obedient to His ways.  When we choose to follow after God's ways, we need to trust Him to work things out for our best because He is continually molding us into the image He wants for us.  It is when we step in and come against God, does the clay of our lives becomes broken and needs mending.  When that happens, we simply need to put our lives back into His hands, and allow Him to remold us as He has designed the blueprint of our lives. 

King David was a good king, bringing God before his people, yet, he was a human man subject to sin and error.  After he got sick and tired of himself, he finally came to the end of himself and cried out to God to change him.  He asked God to search his heart - to look into every crevace of his heart to change him. 

Psalm 139:23  Search me, O God, and know my heart; Try me, and know my anxieties.

Be Moldable

Yielding ourselves as clay over to God our potter, is not a once in a lifetime yielding.  It is a daily giving up of our will and crying out to God to change us to be that person that He has created us to be.  For me, I know through personal experience many times over that when I do life my way, I go astray, thinking I know best.  In that I have failed over and over.  I have learned the hard way that it takes yielding myself as an empty vessels daily and then seek to be filled with God's purpose - again, daily.  In the same way that King David cried out to the Lord, so do I - daily -  "Search my heart Lord, where have I sinned.  Fill me and change me to be that person you created me to be."  As I do that daily, my life takes on purpose. 

When we daily yield to the Lord, asking Him to fill us with His will and purpose, it becomes a natural habit of learning how to live the life of God in and through us.

Right now, would you take this moment in time where you stop everything to yield your heart over to the Lord, asking Him to search out what needs to come out?  Give all those negative thoughts and determinations over to Him and ask God to change you from the inside out.  I promise you that if you do that daily, your life will begin to follow that blueprint of God for your life as you let God be your potter and you keep yielding yourself as His clay.