The Potter

God often teaches us spiritual truths in the Bible through the use of parables or living pictures. In Jeremiah 18:1-6 God gave the prophet, Jeremiah, a living picture. God did this to help Jeremiah understand an important spiritual truth. God told Jeremiah to go down to the potter’s house, and there God promised to give Jeremiah a message. In Jeremiah’s day one could not go down to the local retail store to buy a bowl, vase, or pot. One had to go to the potter’s house. The potter would start with a lump of clay. The potter would then put that lump of clay on a potter’s wheel; and with the touch of his hands he would form the clay into a beautiful vase, bowl, or pot of some kind. Sometimes the potter made something that did not please him, or the vessel was ruined in his hands. This may have happened because some impurities had not been removed, or perhaps a piece of unwanted material in the clay would not yield to the work that was being done on the potter’s wheel. If that happened, the potter would smash the pot and remake it over and over until it was a vessel pleasing to him.

The Lord God is the Potter in our lives, and we are the clay in His hands. He is in sovereign control of our lives, and He controls all the events of our lives. All the events of our lives are used to make us more like Jesus. God especially uses problems, difficulties, and trials in our lives to mold us into the kind of people who truly reflect the Lord Jesus. The Lord wants to bring us ever closer to the center of His will. This is also true about the difficult challenges and trials of family care-giving. Difficulties teach us to not rely on our own self-effort and devices. Difficult times in our lives teach us to rely and trust only on the Lord. This became abundantly clear to me when I was a caregiver for my husband. His disease was incurable. It was out of my control. The only recourse was to seek to rely and trust in the Lord.

Difficulties in our lives also help to remove the impurities of sin from our lives, and they help us to grow in our love relationship with the Lord. When spiritual impurities come into our lives the Lord God recreates and molds our lives to be more in tune with His will. Our prayer to God should be that He will make us into beautiful vessels of purpose for Him. When we fail and allow spiritual impurities into our lives we need to pray that the Lord will take us back to His Potter’s wheel. We need to pray that the Lord will then reshape us and form us into something more beautiful for Him. From the broken fragments of our lives the Lord can make us into beautiful vessels for Him!

From experience I know the pressure of family care-giving can feel overwhelming and unbearable at times. We must not fight against or question the Lord’s molding of our lives, however. We need to pray that each touch of the Lord’s hand on our lives will help us to become whom He wants us to become. The Lord knows just the right amount of pressure to put on our lives. We also must remain thankful for how He has made us and thankful for how He is working and leading in our lives! We must persevere in our willingness to submit to the Lord's will. We must be submissive to the Lord even in trials and difficult times in our lives. The Lord has promised to be with us all the way.

Finally, we must also ask the Lord for the filling of the Holy Spirit’s power and the fruit of the Holy Spirit in our lives. We must yearn for the Lord to control our lives completely every hour and every day! The words to this song need to be our prayer each day: "Lord, You’re the Potter. I am the clay. Mold me and make me in Your own way. Take me and break me, Savior, I pray, into a vessel of honor today."

Dear caregiver, trust you life and your care-giving journey to the hand of the great Potter. He know what He is doing even when the path becomes very difficult.