God knows how to bring salvation to your family, your friends, your community, and your world. Accordingly, He looks for those who will allow Him to shape them into the instruments He requires to do His divine work. Clay has no plans of its own, no aspirations for service, nor reluctance to perform its given task. It is just clay. Moldable, pliable, totally submissive to the will of its master. At times we excitedly announce to God: “I’ve discovered my strengths and gifts, and now I know how I can best serve You!” At other times we inform Him, “I am aware of what my weaknesses are, so I know which tasks I’m not capable of doing for You.” Yet this is not characteristic of clay. God is not limited to working with our strengths (2 Cor. 12:9–10). He can mold us into whatever kind of instrument He requires. When God's assignment demands humility, he finds a servant willing to be humbled. When His work requires zeal, He looks for someone He can fill with His Spirit. God uses holy vessels, so He finds those who will allow Him to remove their impurities. It is not a noble task, being clay. There is no glamour to it, nothing boast-worthy, except that it is exactly what Almighty God is looking for. Compliant, moldable, yielded clay. If your tendency is to tell the Father what you can and cannot do for Him, submit to His agenda and allow Him to shape you into the person He wants you to be. Like clay. - Blackaby Experiencing God Day by Day
Reading this, this morning, as well as a reminder of a chorus we used to sing are indeed what is needed to begin this day.
A reminder of who and what we are and are to be. The Master teaches, the Disciple does. That's the interaction. The potter moves the clay, the clay silently obeys and moves at the will of the Master.
Does the Master potter require insight, or information from the clay as He works out His plan for the clay? Does He first need to hear all about his or her strengths and weaknesses? Does the clay know more about the end result than the Master?
Does the Master need to hear all about what He doesn't understand?
Yet we try to do that with God.
Look at the greatest Teachers and Prophets of the Bible and you will see one characteristic: obedience. If you continue to look you might see submission.
Characteristics of clay in the potter's hands.
I need no special insight into my own life to see almost all the times where I, the clay, kept speaking up and kept trying to change, what Jesus was doing in my life. Satan gladly reminds me.
But that chorus adds to this message of obedience.
"Lord prepare me, to be a sanctuary,
Pure and holy, tried and true.
With thanksgiving, I'll be a living
Sanctuary, for you."
The Sanctuary is a place of holiness. It echoes and rings out the truths spoken in it, not from it.
We tend to worry, whether or not we admit that is something different. We are like Indiana Jones in one of the movies where his next step was a step of faith. How do we when all we can see is not pleasant?
Jesus, the Potter, says gently, "Trust me".
Oh I can speak of painful times that I have been brought through. I understand the concept of surgery in stages in that respect. There's just times when my Holy Potter does only so much until I am strong enough to handle more.
The same goes with you. We don't understand and we get upset at God. Nobody wants to admit that so we redirect that anger at others or other things. I can't say that I am mad at God! Look. You probably aren't right in being angry with God, and yes, Jesus will forgive you, but you need to remember to be honest.
You can't foster anger WITH love. It would be like making the north and south poles of a magnet live in harmony in the same body.
But what about....
Jesus already is in your today, if you were granted a today. He already knows everything about it. If you weren't granted a today then either you are in Heaven or Hell. Both cases of which you wouldn't be reading this. What will really blow your mind us He knew you would find this and be reading this long before you were born. Just like every question you have ever thought about asking He knows every answer to.
Peace as He gives is so much different than the world gives. Jesus said that it would be that way with Him.
I CAN stress out about how He is making me but it wouldn't gain me anything.
Ahh but here comes the real truth...if I trust Him, His will, His choices for me, His direction....then...say it...spit it out...then I am not in control.
No, you're not. The crux of the original sin of Adam and Eve was who would be in control. Before the fall, before that sin, in everything God was. Then Satan tells them THEY will be like God. They will be able to do as they please. They will be in control. Look how that worked out. God is still in control. He is still on the Throne.
Not Satan, not you, not me, not anyone else. Nor will there ever be anyone else.
The thing about Salvation is in all that Jesus did to provide it, He didn't force it on mankind. He still gives mankind a choice. Nobody who's ever lived has liked being forced to do anything. Just being real there. People come to Christ because they chose to. They opened their hearts to the truth. They let their Savior in. They became the clay that didn't fuss and fight with the Master.
Oh but I will have to stop...
Oh but I won't be able to...
Oh but...
Oh but...
Look...as I have described in other posts.
People being rescued and cared for from their experience don't ask for three quotes, letters of recommendation and references before getting rescued! You just trust your rescuer and you DO what they tell you is necessary to be saved! Does ANYTHING in this world mean more to you than your life? Jesus went through what He did to save that which is most important to you and Him. You!
Trust and Obey for there's no other way to be happy in Jesus but to trust and obey.
No comments:
Post a Comment