This is a reblog of my friend’s Martha’s post. Do yourself a favor and read it! It will bless you!!
Day: August 27, 2012
Little Clay Pots
This is reposted from the writer Anne Graham Lotz from her devotional: “The Joy of My Heart: Meditating Daily on God’s Word”
“You are our Father; we are the clay, and You our potter; and we are the work of Your hand.” – Isaiah 64:8 NKJV
The principle that suffering leads to glory is illustrated in Scripture by a vivid description of clay on the Potter’s wheel – clay that was once cracked, shattered, and broken, clay that was totally useless and ugly. The Potter took the clay and broke it down even further, grinding it into dust then moistening it with water before He put it on His wheel and began to remake it into a vessel pleasing to Himself. The cracks and chips became soft and pliable to the Potter’s touch. But the clay was still soft and weak, the color dull and drab. So the Potter placed the vessel into the fiery kiln, carefully keeping His eye on it as He submitted it to the raging heat. At a timer He alone determined was sufficient, the Potter withdrew the pot from the furnace. The blazing heat had radically transformed into a vessel of strength and glorious, multicolored beauty.
You and I are just little clay pots destined for glory!
Let’s let God do the work that He wants to do in our life. Let’s become the clay pots that He has in mind for us. It is not just a matter of obedience but of faith and trust and living a life that is fulfilling that brings glory to God. I can’t think of a better way to live. Can you?
Joy – A Woman After God’s Own Heart!
God Trusts You, Do You Trust God?
God trusts you, do you trust God?
I’ve been a Christian for a long time and there have been times that have felt like a dry spell, times of refreshment, desert times, and honeymoon times, but through it all God has taught me one constant, that no matter how it feels He is always there and all I need to do is trust Him through whatever time I’m going through. Just as Mother Teresa has said there are times when, “I just wish He didn’t trust me so much!” But none the less God is faithful and He knows what is best despite our lack of faith and trust.
He will pray to God, and God will delight in him. That man will behold His face with a shout of joy. – Job 33:26
Now if ever there was a man who was familiar with difficulties it was Job but look at the promise God gives him for his faithfulness to God. God delights in our prayers, there is an awesome thought. That alone should get me on my knees more often. And if that weren’t enough we will behold His face one day the later seems to me like a well duh moment, of course we’ll shout for joy! What we’ve been imagining for all so long we will no longer have to imagine, we will actually be in the presence of our God. Hurrah! Hallelujah! And Amen!!
But on the way to getting to that place God calls us to grow in Christ. To become more and more like Him each day.
My journey has me on the discovery of past to overcome and move on in the here and now. I praise God that things that where once just suspicions are now actual memories and I no longer doubt myself but am doing the work I need to do to move on from here. It isn’t always fun, work rarely is, but it is necessary and freeing. For that I am so grateful to God. I’m making progress that I’ve never been able to make before and a heavy weight has been lifted off my shoulders.
You have begun to live a new life, in which you are being made new ad are becoming like the One who made you. – Colossians 3:10
As you go through the journey that God has in store for you to bring you to the perfect place that He has in mind for you, may I give you some advise to surrender to the Masters hands? He knows the pattern of the cloth that He is weaving you into. While you see the underside with all it’s dark threads of depression or deep red threads of pain, there are other threads you are less aware of that when it is finished in the Master Weaver’s hands will make a cloth so beautiful as you could never imagine. Trust the Master and allow Him entrance into all the areas of your life.
“For I know the plans that I have for you, ” declares the LORD, “plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope.” – Jeremiah 29:11
You see God promises that His plans are for our good. So you can trust Him.
I have been through the dry spells and the desert times when you feel like you are all alone in what you are going through. I have cried out to God, “Where are You?” “Don’t You see me?” “Don’t You care?” You want to know a secret? I have even cried out, “I don’t want to die right now cause I don’t want to see You! I hate You! How could you let them institutionalize me! He won! If You came down here in the form of a man I would beat You!” I might have well cried it out it was what was on my heart at the time and God already knew it. I’m sure the nurses in the psych ward thought I was in the right place. I misunderstood and thought I’d been institutionalized when it was just another in many psych ward visits. You see my ex had gotten an attorney to see if he and my mother-in-law could institutionalize me, thus the rant when I thought I was. But God as always was faithful and saw me through. Another lesson in trust.
He will always be there for me, I know that now. My moments of doubt still come but they last far shorter than they used to instead of weeks or months they may last days or moments on a good day. Then I remember all my Father has brought me through and I laugh to myself that I even questioned for a second that He wouldn’t have this covered too.
Joy – A Woman After God’s Own Heart!
Joy's Words of Encouragement 