Just Rest

Just rest my child... just rest.  Rest in me.  Trust in me that I know what I am doing. Trust in my heart of love that is working for your good.  Just rest.  Abide in Me.  I will strengthen you.  I will be with you.  I will comfort you.  You will bring glory to me as you rest and trust in Me and in My unfailing love.

are you sure, God?

Today I am not happy being clay.  As I prepared to teach Sunday school to four year olds I became so frustrated.  Here I am with degrees from two Bible colleges, daughter of a well-respected seminary Bible professor, with third world missionary goals and aspirations.  Yet here I am reading Sunday school curriculum on God making each child "special," when what I really want to do is share Christ's love and the Gospel to the lost (specifically Muslim women).  What happened here?? Hello?  God, do you see this?  Clearly, this is where God wants me right now (due to health issues), but yet the questions still come.  And I don't think I'm alone in these questions.  In fact these were the type of questions that were asked to God in the time of Isaiah.  And as in the case with Job, His answer was not very gentle, but the directness is oh so necessary:
         "Woe to the one who quarrels with his Maker- an earthernware vessel among the vessels of earth!  Will the clay say to the potter, 'What are you doing?' or the thing you are making say, 'He has no hands'? Woe to him who says to a father, 'What are you begetting?' or to a woman, 'To what are you giving birth?'.... It is I who made the earth, and created man upon it. I stretched out the heavens with My hands and ordained all their host."  Isaiah 45:9,10,12
And the apostle Paul, in a similar fashion, perhaps reflecting on this Old Testament passage, writes in Romans 9:20-21...
On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God? The thing molded will not say to the molder, 'Why did you make me like this,' will it? Or does not the potter have a right over the clay, to make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for common use?

Consider me now put in my place.  I may be clay, but I'm "special" clay in the hands of a powerful-trustworthy- loving-wise-capable Potter with a Father's heart.

"Holding You"

Where will you find peace when you cry?
In these hard times
it’s not in what you hold on to
It’s in the One who’s holding you tonight
You are safe in the arms of The Father

Matt Hammitt (from Sacred Real)
http://bowensheart.com/2010/09/12/bowens-first-surgery/

Our Father

I must write a post  for those who see God as distant and impersonal... if you are asking: "How can I get to know God, this Potter?"  God made a way! Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life (John 14:6)! God sent His very own Son, sent Him to earth as a human to die for our sins- your sins- making the only way that we could  have a relationship with Him, our Heavenly Father.  "But as many as received Him (Jesus), to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name," (John 1:12). 

Wow! So, He's not some distant impersonal potter, molding us however He feels like it whether it is for our good or not.  He is our Father if we have accepted His Son Jesus as our Savior.  And though we are the clay, we also must keep in mind that we are His children.  

God's incredible love and his immense wisdom

Like a shepherd He will tend His flock, in His arm He will gather the lambs and carry them in His bosom; He will gently lead the nursing ewes.  Isaiah 40:11


But now, thus says the Lord, your Creator, O Jacob, and He who formed you, O Israel, "Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name; you are Mine! When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they will not overflow you.  When you walk through the fire, you will not be scorched, nor will the flame burn you."  Isaiah 43:1-2

Who has measured the waters in the hollow of His hand, and marked off the heavens by the span, and calculated the dust of the earth by the measure, and weighed the mountains in a balance and the hills in a pair of scales? Isaiah 40:12

"For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
nor are your ways My ways," declares the Lord.
"For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My  thoughts than your thoughts."
Isaiah 55:8

A valid question

 ...some may ask: "Who is this Potter?"  And if you don't know the Potter, how can you even start to ask the question: "Why should I trust myself into His hands?"                
  

He is God

That's who He is and precisely why we should trust Him.

A Preamble

There I went down to the potter's house, and there he was, making something on the wheel. But the vessel that he was making of clay was spoiled in the hand of the potter; so he remade it into another vessel, as it pleased the potter to make. Then the word of the Lord came to me saying, "Can I not, O house of Israel, deal with you as this potter does?" declares the Lord. "Behold, like clay in the potter's hand, so are you in My hand."  Jeremiah 18:3-6


 
In thinking about what to write for this blog, at first my thoughts were primarily about the "clay".  You and I, tossed about between God's powerful hands as He makes us into who He wants us to be.  Which yes, is to be like His Son (Rom 8:29); but yet the process is painful as we are pressed, pulled, broken, reconstructed again and again.  Broken relationships... Deaths... loneliness... mistreatment... sickness...the list goes on...

However...
I think this was the wrong place for me to begin my reflections.  This is not about me.  This is not about the clay. 

The Potter...  It is with the Potter that I must begin.... it is where we all must begin...