It all started with a pottery class in January. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do. Instead of talking about it, yet again, I decided to sign up for a class with Baltimore Clayworks.
When I arrived, I found at my work station a slab of clay, a plastic fork and a carving tool. Our goal was to make a flower pot.
Our class was led by a young student from the local art school who provided step-by-step instructions on how we were supposed to work with the clay:
Don’t be afraid to get your hands dirty.
You have to develop a relationship with the clay. Talk to it as you’re shaping and molding it into what you see it can become.
There are no wrong answers here. Whatever you create is what is within the clay.
The clay was warm and more flexible than I anticipated. A little firmer than biscuit dough. I followed the instructions as best I could in order to create a round bowl until I realized the bottom was way too thin and would not be strong enough to remain intact. I called out to the instructor, telling her that I had messed up and needed a new slab of clay.
“Oh Ms. Candance”, she said to me. “You don’t need new clay. Just ball it up and start over again. The clay is flexible enough to be made into something new, something stronger. It’s ready for that.”
God is the Potter
“This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: 2 “Go down to the potter’s house, and there I will give you my message.” 3 So I went down to the potter’s house, and I saw him working at the wheel. 4 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” Jeremiah 18:1-4 (NIV).
Jeremiah obediently goes down to the potter’s house and watches him at the wheel shaping marred clay. Rather than discard the clay that is damaged, the potter reshapes it into something else.
The moment we give our lives to God is the moment we become the clay on God the Potter’s wheel called life. That is the moment we give Him permission to shape and mold us into the vessels He sees within us. God knew us ,“before we were in our mother’s womb,” as he tells Jeremiah in the fifth chapter of this very book. This means He already knew “the plans he has for us that will prosper, not harm us. Plans that will give us hope and a future.”
We must allow ourselves to be moldable unto God. But what does that mean? Being moldable means giving up control. It means that we just stop wrestling with God over ourselves so He can do the work on our clay selves on His wheel. Being moldable means being obedient to God’s instructions.
Being on the Potter’s wheel means we must make ourselves available to God despite the distractions called feelings, called busy life, despite what our flesh, i.e., the enemy, is telling us to do. It means saying, “I’ll do what you say” so God can shape us, mold us and use us for His purpose.
We are marred clay
Raise your hand if you’re perfect. Ahhh, just as I suspected. All of us are marred clay. Marred means, “to ruin or diminish the perfection or wholeness of something, to be spoiled, deformed, distorted or disfigured”. Those are harsh synonyms that have been used to describe many of us in this room. Words that speak to atrocities done to us at hand of others, and quite frankly, by our own hands, too, that make us believe we are damaged good.
Thank God we are NOT God. Thank God that God does not judge us as harshly as we judge ourselves. Thank God that he uses what was intended by the enemy to harm us for His good. Thank God that he trades our ashes for beauty. Thank God that he is the Potter at the wheel of our lives who takes us, his marred clay, and forms us into what he sees fit!
The point is this: God can use you for his good. All you have to do is get on the potter’s wheel, and let God, the Potter, transform into what He sees fit. God is not going to harm you. He’s going use the potter’s wheel called life to prosper you. We must remember that we belong to the Potter. He sees a masterpiece in us all.
Check out my visual sermon below where I walk through how God shapes and molds us, his marred clay.
