Over this past year, I have found that working with young people in a church is an absolute joy and pleasure. God has really broken through into these precious young people's lives, and we pray for more, Lord. There's one lad in particular, I think he's 14, let's call him Jim, he's fantastic in his matter-of-fact way of expressing things. If ever anyone says anything which could be seen as slightly off the wall he'd respond with something along the lines of 'that's not how God sees it.'
'That's not how God sees it'. OK then Jim, that's not how God sees it. How does He see it? How does He see us?
I've entitled this entry as 'The potter and His clay' funnily enough, as soon as I knew I was going to write about something along these lines, on my twitter newsfeed was a re-tweet of a minister somewhere in America saying 'He is the potter, we are the clay'. If that's not confirmation, I don't know what is. I know it's something I need to explore myself anyway.
In Ephesians 2:10, we read that 'we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.' Wow. Remember, this is even AFTER the fall of humankind. Why do we find it so hard to walk with this?
Isaiah 64:8 says 'Yet, O LORD, you are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand.'
A potter always starts off with a slap of clay, and it has to undergo so many processes before it becomes anything of any use. For this example I'm going to use a mug. Also, I'm going to go way back to basics. With this slab of clay, the potter then wets his hands so that the clay is easier to handle, he then begins the process of painstakingly shaping and moulding this piece of clay, cutting bits off (cause every mug needs a handle), moulding them. Every press of the potters hand, with precise, deliberate motion adds to the finished product.
Shaping the clay is only the beginning. The clay has to go for a long, hot blast in a kiln to dry without cracking. The refiner's fire. Fire is hot. It burns, causing pain. Some fire, however is good. Such as the fire in the potter's ovan. Without this fire, the clay would surely drop back into a squidgey mess, again, totally useless. After the clay has finally dried, the piece of clay is transformed, it is now resembling something of use.
There goes a few more processes to make it pretty, guilding the lilly as they say. There we have it, a beautiful mug, it wasn't easy, but when is life ever easy.
I like to think of our trials as another deliberate movement of the potter's hand. We're CONSTANTLY being moulded. Constantly made better. Constantly being made for our purpose. For God's purpose.
This is an interesting take on the whole process i found on YouTube, check these guys other vids out too, worth a look :-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhfUzodLRvk
