To The Potter's House

Well, good afternoon, everyone. It's good to be with you here in Dallas. Appreciate the special music very much. It's always nice to have an original composition. I admire people who can put words together like that into a song. It was very nice. Thank you very much. It's about three years ago, I think, the last time we were through Dallas. We had our Beyond Today public appearance campaigns at that time. Three years in, I think it was October that we were here. So a lot has gone on in many ways in the world and certainly in our own lives since then. And it's good to see friends and faces that we've known through the years to be here this weekend to go over to Big Sandy for the regional conference and the leadership conference.

So those of you that will not be able to maybe not see today, hopefully we'll see some of you over there tomorrow and take part in those those activities. I have a question. How many of you have in your home a favorite cup or mug out of which you drink your favorite beverage? Coffee in the morning, hot tea, hot chocolate, whatever it might be, but it's your cup, your mug that is yours. How many of you have a favorite that is there?

That's what I thought quite a few of us do. I've had several through the years. You probably have had as well. The first favorite mug that I had my wife gave to me before we got married, before we left Ambassador College in Pasadena. I think she'd been to San Francisco on a corral trip and she bought a nice big hefty mug that had shamrocks on it that was nice and green and kind of I'm Scotch-Irish so she got the Irish part right.

She had shamrocks on there and she gave that to me and I used that for a number of years and then it kind of it kind of began to crack and and leak. I still have it, but today it holds pencils or whatever you know on in our house. The second favorite mug that I picked up was a handmade mug that we picked up in southern Indiana in a little town that was an artist colony and we were going through a pottery shop one day and I fell on this set of pottery that was kind of a blue low setting mug, obviously handmade.

Each mug was distinctive and the one mug I chose had kind of a kind of a rust oxidized streak through it that had come out in the firing process and it had kind of a nice shade of blue and for years and years that was my favorite mug. Every morning I drank my coffee out of that until one morning I looked down on my lap and I felt something warm down there and it was the only coffee and it had developed a leak through the years.

Now I still have that mug. It's setting on my desk and it too has pencils and ink pens in it. Today I have a third favorite mug that I picked up a few years ago in Prince Edward Island in Canada during the Feast of Tabernacles. One afternoon I was out driving around through the country and I saw a pottery shop.

I went in and started looking around and they were closing down for the season and they had things on sale and they had one mug that was kind of a red and blue and it had been formed around a wine bottle and it stood fairly high and you could see again this nice handmade mug and I kind of said that's the one. I bought it and still have it to this day.

Every morning I drink my coffee out of my favorite mug and it's it's just something that I look at and I admire the the beauty of it but of course it's very useful because I use it every day like you should with a with a mug like that or a piece of pottery. You know in the ancient world pottery was far more functional than it is for us mostly today.

You can study pottery in the ancient world and when you go to museums and you'll see this, people stored oil in earthenware, they stored grain in earthenware, they stored, they carried water in pottery, they stored wine and traded with that out of earthen pottery that was a staple of life far more than it is for us today. We may have pieces that are decorative pottery in our homes and of course dishes and mugs and cups can be very useful to us as well but you know when we go to the grocery store and we come home we carry our groceries in plastic bags and while today archaeologists will dig up an ancient city and they will identify much about the everyday life of that culture out of the pieces of pottery they put together. I've often wondered sometimes what will they conclude about our culture and our life when they dig up the Kroger or Costco or Sam's plastic bags out of the landfills and refuse places that they might find should time go on that far and people try to study our world today. But pottery is very interesting and pottery is something that God tells us about in the Bible. I mentioned the fact that what I have in my favorite pottery pieces they're both useful and they are beautiful. We should remember that because that is exactly what we are to become in God's hands. Something that is useful and something that is beautiful as God shapes and molds us in our life today. I'd like to talk a little bit about pottery today and the lesson that God tells us from the Scriptures about it, especially through the story of Jeremiah. Chapter 18, if you will please turn over to Jeremiah chapter 18.

And let's look at a little field trip that God sent the prophet on one day down to the pottery shop in Jerusalem to observe the workings of a piece of pottery. Now, I should mention something. We would have to probably look far and wide for a pottery shop today. You'd go to an artist's colony, maybe some, you know, a resort area. Most pottery that we use is made in large factories and a mass scale. There are still artisans that will do it. But it's not something you will find on the everyday straight corner. In Jerusalem, you would find a number of them. Jeremiah didn't have a problem knowing where to go when God said in Jeremiah chapter 18 verse 2, arise and go down to the potter's house, and there I will cause you to hear my words.

God was sending him down there not to buy a piece of pottery, not to find something new, because Jeremiah knew all about the usefulness of pottery and the everyday place that it had in their lives. God was going down there, taking him down there to show him something about life.

You see, the pottery house in Jeremiah's day was the place people went to get not only a piece of pottery, but to also get kind of caught up on the everyday aspects of life in the community, of the village, Jerusalem in this case, of the day. When I was growing up, my dad owned a Texaco gas station. I grew up there. Outside of when I wasn't in my home, I grew up hanging around his gas station. We had all kinds of characters come through that gas station, truck drivers, salesmen, teachers, and people, and they would buy gas, but many of them would stay and talk for a few minutes. And as a kid growing up, I learned all the things that I needed to know and some things that I didn't need to know about life, the community, gossip, and everything else, as people would pass through that on a daily basis. Pottery shop was kind of like that. It's where Jeremiah was set by God to learn something about God dealing with us in about everyday life. Verse 3, So I went down to the potter's house, and there he was making something at the wheel. We all know how pottery would be made in this type of fashion on a small scale, the potter's wheel. A lump of clay put there, it begins to go round and round, and the potter shapes it by his hands. And the vessel that he made in verse 4, of clay was marred in the hand of the potter. Maybe he got disturbed by something, maybe the potter didn't get it exactly right, maybe the clay wasn't responding, and it wasn't shaping up the way that it should be. And so he made it again into another vessel. By doing so, he would just kind of smash it down and destroy what he had started, start all over again, as it seemed good to the potter to make. And so the potter had complete control with his hands, shaping the bowl, the cup, a large vase perhaps that might be holding wine, or water, or wheat, something else. Whatever it may have been, the potter was in control, creating it out of his own mind into the shape and image that he desired it to be.

And so after this, the Word of God, the Lord came to me saying, O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter? Look as the clay is in the potter's hand, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel. Jeremiah had one of those moments where he began then to see a piece of pottery in a far different light. He began to see that Judah, the people that were his neighbors, even his own life, was like that piece of clay being shaped by a potter, his life, Jeremiah realized, and everybody else's life in this community was being shaped by God. As God willed it and as God desired it into something useful and into something beautiful. Useful and beautiful. But God had a problem. The problem was Judah wasn't living up to its agreement.

And he was teaching Jeremiah a major lesson as a result of this trip to the potter's house here as to what was going to happen to Judah. And this is where Jeremiah had what we call today a beyond today moment.

Only he'd never heard of beyond today.

Why do we call the magazine and our television program beyond today? One reason is because, and one you may not have thought about, part of our very core of our message is to help people learn about God and His truth and His ways and to turn their life around so that they will live a better life beyond today. That they will see that it pays off to make the right decisions today in this instance and where they are so that their life beyond this moment, beyond today, can be better by living God's way of life and to begin to turn from a way of life that may not be producing happiness and the best, the optimum results, to a different life. We call that we want people to have a beyond today moment. Jeremiah had that beyond today moment, and he had a kind of his eyes began to be opened as to what God was doing, and he began to see and make different connections. Now, as I said, pottery was useful and beautiful. It was functional, and it had an artistic design to it. But the lump of clay was the starting point.

God shows us that He created man out of the dust of the earth into his own image in Genesis, Chapter 1. We are created in the image of God. We find that God stooped, and He did that with His own hands as He formed the first man. And that also tells us as we carry this on through, that God is shaping our lives through the circumstances into which He has called us, and which we live with, and which we are involved every day. We are those lumps of clay on the potter's wheel, and that's our life. Our life, in one sense, is that lump of clay being fashioned, being molded, being shaped into something beautiful and into something useful. And God is the master potter. This is what He is wanting to teach through Jeremiah, and He's shaping us today into something that is useful and something beautiful. What I want to cover here in the brief time that I have with you is three points for us to learn about this process of a potter shaping a lump of clay into something that can be used. First, we're going to talk about the choosing, the choosing of that clay. Then we're going to talk, secondly, about the forming of that clay. And thirdly, we're going to talk about the firing of that clay, the choosing, the forming, and the firing. Let's look at the choosing for a moment. A potter first chooses the type of clay that he wants to make a specific piece of pottery. It doesn't take a lot of research to look into and learn a little bit about the art of pottery making as it has been from ancient times and is still today. There are different types of clay depending upon the regions of the world from which it is extracted from the earth, different consistencies, different colors of clay. Each has its own advantage and each has its own purpose. There's a diversity of clay. When God chooses us, it is by His will. And God places us where He will in the body, into the church. In 1 Corinthians 1 and verse 26, the Scripture we know well, we are told that God doesn't make any mistakes. We'll build a little bit off of what Mr. Myers was talking about in his first message in 1 Corinthians chapter 1 and verse 26, the Scripture we know well. God says through Paul, speaking to the Corinthian brethren, for you see your calling, brethren, that not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble are called.

But we have a calling. We have been chosen. Paul wanted people to see something about that, not the mighty, not the noble, not the wise. He's chosen the foolish. We could go on to describe this. But here's the point. Paul says you see your calling. We've all been chosen by God. We have been called by God. And God has not chosen us at random. There is a reason for each of us having been called to the knowledge of the truth, to have our minds open by a miracle of God, to understand the plan of God and the fullness of that plan as it is revealed in Scripture. And that we must never take for granted. We must never forget that there is a calling. It doesn't make us better. It doesn't make us more righteous than others, except as God's Spirit is in us producing that righteousness, but certainly not better. It just means that we're chosen as a group of people that we know are called and labeled the first fruits in Scripture.

But God has done that meticulously. And there is a reason that you and I, your parents, your aunt, your uncle, whoever in your line of your family came first and you are here now as a result of that, by your own choosing and decision, that is of God, and it is not by random.

Now, when you consider that and appreciate what that is, that opens up responsibility, but also encouragement and hope that God is with us as He shapes us in our life.

Now, in this choosing, we go back to the analogy of a potter, looking at that piece of clay, as I said, there are different types of clay. One of the things that stood out in the book that I was reading of, a book called a potter's book written by a man named Bernard Leech, looking at this subject, he describes clay that is older. There is an actual aging process to clay that improves it. In fact, it is improved by long storage, kind of like wine or bourbon or scotch.

It improves in many ways its ability to be worked, its composition, it will even change color as it ages through time, and it will even begin to smell as it begins to break down, the organic material begins to break down. Bernard Leech writes in his book, he said, I've been told about old potters who speak of such matured or soured clay with the impressiveness of Epicureans who discuss vintage wine. It takes on a character of its own.

And I find that to be something that is rather descriptive of our aging, if you will, as a piece of clay, even after God has chosen us to begin to work with us. Aging, as we know, occurs not just by the passage of the days in the calendar, but by the experiences of our lives. That ages us. There's a saying, I don't know, you can claim it here in Texas, but I learned it first, I think, in Missouri, in describing sometimes people who may have been kind of worn out after a long period of work or after a period of stress or trials. We would say to them, you look road hard and put up wet.

And it's pretty descriptive. Road hard and put up wet. Life does that to us at times.

And it creates the wrinkles, it creates the lines and the sags and everything else about us, maybe the premature graying of our hair. Aging comes by the years and also by the experience. And you know something? When it comes to our calling and to our time and years in the church, one thing that I have learned that it sometimes takes us, even in the church, many years to get to the point where we then can finally begin to really, I think, be molded and shaped by God into what He has intended us to be when He first called us. It takes sometimes a long time. And we might have to kind of maybe leave the fellowship for a period of time, as some do, and go out and experience a few more knocks, but then come back in wiser, mature for the experience of recognizing that they made a mistake 10 years ago, 15 years ago. And they come back to their calling. It's not been completely lost. Or as we go through the stresses and the strains of our time in the church, then we finally begin to have certain moments and certain times and certain experiences that finally, again, give us that beyond today moment where we, now I get it.

And then God can begin to work with us. We all know the story back in Job, chapter 42, where Job, a righteous man who went through the many chapters of experience that got him up to the very end in chapter 42 of Job.

My wife goes through an annual reading of the Bible, which many of us do. She'll do an annual plan to read through the Bible. A few years ago, I think when she was reading through Job, she'd not read it for a long time. And she just was, as she put it, her words, slogging through Job. Okay? Woah and woah and problem and problem. And she looked up at me one morning as I was drinking my coffee out of my favorite coffee mug at the time. And she says, what's the purpose of this book? And I said, turn to chapter 42 in verse 5. Okay. You've got to stay with all of that to get to the point. And Job had to go through all that he did, to where then he finally had a view of God, and God had his attention. And he said in verse 5, I have heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eyes see you. Therefore, I abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes. Job went through a lot of experiences. The loss of his children, his livelihood, his whole life turned upside down.

And then he had to deal with friends who came and tried to help straighten him out and all of that. And finally God spoke to him and came to this point. And I told Debbie, I said, that's it.

Sometimes life is like that. We have to go through the chapters, 41 plus chapters, to get to the point where we finally see God. Aging takes that upon us. And you know what happened as you read through verse 12, God blessed the latter days of Job more than his beginning. It is when we come to the point where we finally recognize, indeed, we have been called. God has chosen us for a purpose, and he is working with us. And the events of our life that we sometimes bend and resist and don't understand and complain and wonder and fear and doubt, that's God working with us. And we finally, we stay with it long enough, and we come to the point where we say, now I get it. Now I understand, Father. And God can begin to work with us. That's the choosing. God has chosen us, and he is working with us. Now let's talk about the second point, the forming of a potter working with a lump of clay.

You know, you watch that being done. The potter, he wedges and he shapes, and he needs that lump of clay like we will do a lump of dough for baking bread. He'll work that clay to remove the air, to remove the lumps, and to make the clay more malleable, to kind of warm it up. And all of that has to be done before the shaping and the forming can really take place on the wheel. That begins to go round and round. Back in Jeremiah 18 and verse 3, where we began, as Jeremiah watched the work of the potter, it says that he was making something at the wheel. Now at first, it may not have known exactly what that lump of clay was going to become once it was placed there and began to be worked. But as the potter puts that lump of clay there, they may add a little bit of water to make it more workable, pliable. They may add oil to it as well, to get it to the consistency to where it will be supple and easily shaped.

Now God gives us His Spirit, symbolized by water and by oil in Scripture. He gives us the gift of His Holy Spirit upon repentance and the baptism and the laying on of hands that Scripture shows us. And He grants us that ability then to be molded and to be shaped into His image by and through a portion of His essence, Spirit, Holy Spirit, that begins to work in our lives. We have to be yielded to God in heart and Spirit so that we can be shaped by Him.

Jeremiah wasn't the only prophet that had to learn the lesson of a prophet's of a potter's wheel. In Isaiah chapter 64 and verse 8, Isaiah writes, he said, we are the clay and you are the potter and speaking to God. And all we are the work of your hand.

God's hand is upon us. We are in His hands and He's shaping us and He is molding us by His Spirit, by the life of His Son within us. You know, in the making of pottery, the really craft work that is being done, it's all about the hands. I don't know. I've never tried. The only pottery that I've ever made was probably like a lot of you in elementary school in art class. All right? And I made my rude crude, I hope it wasn't too rude, but crude efforts to make a vase. I think I can remember making an ashtray for my dad. My dad was a smoker and I think I remember making an ashtray and, you know, shellacking it and getting it fired and everything and bringing it home. Long since gone from my life. But if I were to sit down with a glump of clay on a potter's wheel today, I don't have the training. And maybe I could learn how to shape that into something that wouldn't look lopsided and go streaming off onto the floor. But the hands of a potter are the hands of a master craftsman. And when you watch that being done, you see that bowl begin to shape up. You begin to see that cup take form. And it's all in the work of the hands to create what they want. And if that clay is not soft and supple, the sensitive touch of the master potter will not be able to shape it into the form intended, which is something to be useful or something to be beautiful. Useful and beautiful. That's what God's doing with us. You know, there's something about pottery that when you study it, and as you and I have looked at it through the years, whatever you might have in your home, or if you've gone to museums and you'll go through certain exhibitions and you'll see pottery examples in various museums, whether artifacts from the ancient world or modern examples, there are distinctive forms of pottery. The Chinese have a distinctive form. The Japanese have a distinctive form. Greek, ancient Greek pottery has a distinct Greek image.

Egyptian pottery. What we would call the biblical or the Judean pottery that is a part of the story out of the Bible that comes out of the ground from that area of Canaan. It has a distinct style. And pottery takes on the culture as well as the time of its creation and the culture in which it's made. In fact, archaeologists have pottery down to such a science when they unearth the shards out of an archaeological excavation. They can tell to within a very specific period of time the year that was made or the age in which it was made and the culture from which it came. And that's how they date archaeological excavations, especially in the biblical world, and understand what they're dealing with as they dig into a mound of dirt in Israel or in Jordan, wherever they may be working. Pottery dictates that, and they can see that. But we can see through all the different cultures as we look at the hands of an artist and they crafted the pottery, the culture from which that potter is working creates the pottery. Here's the point. God is the master potter working in our life. We're in His hands. He's shaping and molding us according not to an Egyptian culture, not even to an American culture. Spiritually, God's working and shaping us to the culture of His kingdom.

And that's the beauty of it when we finally begin to see that. That as God shapes us on that wheel, He is putting into us the culture of the kingdom of God, which means that in time, as we understand that process, the culture that we were born into grew up in it and imbibed, whether it was Scottish or English or African or American or whatever it may have been, that has to then kind of be put aside. Bible has other terms for that. It's called putting off the old man as we take on the culture of the kingdom of God. But God does that by shaping us with His hands, and we are shaped into His culture at this particular time. He is putting within us the timeless life of the kingdom of God, which will last for eternity. In 2 Peter 1 and verse 3. 2 Peter 1 and verse 3. Let's read verse 2. Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.

As His divine power has given to us all things that pertain to life and God with us, through the knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue, by which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through us. We are to be partakers of the divine nature. That's one of my favorite phrases to dwell on and to think about. To me, it is one of the yet to be fulfilled aspects of our culture as God works with us in this phase of His church and His work and time. To help us all take on and know how we can take on that divine nature. That's what it's all about. And God is doing that as He passes that on through His hands, if you will, through Spirit as He shapes and molds us. His nature should be coming into us so that the finished product will look like Him from the inside out. And for me, that's some of the unfinished business that our time in the church of God, our experience in the church of God, needs to fulfill, taking on that divine nature. The potter has to keep that clay dead center to get it all done. With God, that can take a long time, and He gives us a lifetime, even through certain mistakes, and He may restart part of the process or allow us to restart. He may just put it on hold to be able to be worked with. He's very patient, and God takes the time to work with us. Let's look at point three, the firing. As you all know, a wet piece of clay finally brought to the shape that the potter wants has to be put into an oven, a furnace, brought up, that heat brought up at a very gradual temperature. There's an art to even the firing to harden and to set that pot, that mug, that plate, that vase in its form as He sees it and as He wants it at that time. Now, the art of pottery today knows that there's always a chance, there's always a little bit of the element of chance when a piece of pottery goes into the kiln as to how it will come out. Some don't make it. Some don't make it.

And that then is just broken and cast aside. But there's also happy surprises because the combination of the fire and the elements that are already within the clay, the minerals, can produce some very interesting results and colors that will come out that were not necessarily there before the firing took place, the heat. But it must survive.

The trials that we go through in life, they are the firing of our pottery, the piece of clay that God's working with us. That's what is going on with us. Again, in 1 Peter, chapter 1, 1 Peter this time, chapter 1 and verse 6, Peter talks about this, the fiery trials of life. He says in verse 6, In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if it need be, you have been greeted by various trials. A fiery trial is often called. That the genuineness of your faith, being much more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire, may be found to praise, honor, and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

Our trials that we deal with and that come upon us from unexpected sources, or sometimes we bring upon ourselves by our own actions, will test us, will determine much about our faith and our future. Every piece of pottery has to be fired once, but it's that firing that will set the piece permanently in the form that it's in. How that applies to us spiritually can be interesting to think about. I sometimes think that there are certain events that we go through, there are certain trials that will test our faith, that may be the one trial that does finally set us in God's hands, in the church, if you will, in the faith from which we are determined we will not deviate. We will not leave. Only you and I know when that point may come after a few years of being in the church, a few experiences, and we go through something that finally sets us and our direction and our focus on God, and we never look back. And we know I'm a lifer. All right?

I've been at this since I ate myself, since age 12. I'll be 67 this month. You do the math. Some of you have been at it longer than even that, and that's great. But I came to a point, I can't necessarily define it necessarily, although I could look at certain points where, in a sense, I was fired. I was set. I wasn't going to turn back.

Maybe we have to go through certain ones. You know, a piece of pottery, there's one firing that sets it, but it would that they may go through one or two other firings because the potter will then begin maybe to put in the paint. They will color it. They will put a design on there. That has to be fired as well. And if they put in then a finishing coat upon it, it'll have to be fired a third time before then it is done. So there may be multiple firings by which we will go through to get ourselves to the point where we are then that finished work of art in God's hands, set, never to deviate, and ready. I've always been a firm believer that, again, that we are in God's hands to the point that even when we die in the faith, God knows that that is our best time. How else can He say that the death of one of His saints is something that is very precious in His eyes, except that He knows that they're set. It's a final firing. From that point forward, they are ready for His purpose in the body and the larger spiritual work that is being done for the kingdom of God. God's ways are far beyond ours.

And it's hard at times to accept that for certain deaths. They're tragic, untimely as we would look at them. But if we believe that our lives are in God's hands, once we enter this process, we must believe that when that firing takes place. And we come to the point of God finally having us set in His purpose and within His church.

You know, we don't ever want to get to the point where then we would have to be broken. In Jeremiah 19, there's another story where the prophet was told to go out after he had gone to the potter shed.

Just note that briefly in Jeremiah 19. He called some of the elders of the temple and some of the elders of the city together. And God said, go down and take them down to the valley of Hinnom. That was the part of Jerusalem was kind of the dump, the city dump, dead bodies, refuse. That's where the fires burned in perpetual fires down there. And they were to go there.

And Jeremiah took a piece of earthen pottery with him. And in verse 10, he says, after Jeremiah was to speak to them certain words of admonishment, you shall break the flask in the sight of the men who go with you. And it was an object lesson because that flask meant to hold wine or oil then was no longer useful. It was broken irretrievably. Jeremiah was to do that to make the point that, as God said in verse 11, I will break this people and this city as one breaks a potter's vessel. It cannot be made whole again. We don't ever want to get to the point that we cannot learn as God works with us. That's what I take away from this.

We always want to be able to be taught. To me, it's the mark of a disciple.

A true disciple of Jesus Christ is one who is always learning and has never come to the point that we say, I know it all. I've learned enough. I think a disciple is a lifelong learner when it comes to the truth of God and the purpose that God is doing. I'm amazed at that. As I watch it in my own life and various things, we must always be able to be taught.

As we look around at ourselves, you think about your life. We've looked at a pot, a piece of pottery being shaped and molded. It can be broken. If it's broken after it's fired, it can't be put back together again. Let me ask this question. What might be the greatest obstacle to any of us? Finishing our race, achieving our crown of life, being that useful and beautiful vessel fully formed and fashioned in God's hands for His purpose. What might be the greatest obstacle to any of us from finishing that? As we think about God choosing us, God shaping us, God putting us through trials to fire us and to set us in our character and to again continue to work with us. What is it about us and in your life? We can name a number of different things. I like to kind of come back to one and I find it to be continually, perennially true. The one obstacle, people. One word, people. You ever heard somebody say, this would be a great church if it weren't for all the people. This would be a great place to work if it wasn't for all the people because it's people who create the needs and create the product and sometimes create the situations and it's people. There's a reason that God said to the church of Philadelphia, don't let a man take your crown. Don't let people take your crown. It's usually other people, though, isn't it, that can get in the way. People can be annoying.

People we don't like. People we can't get along with.

People we can't understand, maybe don't want to understand. As we interact in our lives within the church, think about that.

Who have you had conflict with through the years, people? Who's offended you, people? Who have you offended, people? Who gossips about you or something or who accuses people? Sometimes we dismiss people as irrelevant. They're not relevant to me. Sometimes people hurt us.

People will always disappoint us. People will betray us. Sometimes people will abuse us. Sometimes people will leave us.

One of the things that I have come to realize, and I think it is a truism, is I've looked at our recent years in the church, and from my perspective as a member and minister and working with the church and observing everything, we are firstfruits. God has chosen us. He's forming us. And if we're part of that group called the Firstfruits, then we have been placed not only in the church, but rather think about this, we have been placed in each other's lives.

We have been placed in each other's lives because we make up a part of that church, that ecclesia, that body of Christ. It is the individuals that God has called and is working with, and we've not only been placed in the church, but we've been placed in each other's lives, which means we've got to work at that, to make that happen, make it work, to move beyond the annoyance, the hurt, the disappointment. And that is also hard. That's the soft stuff, and that's the hard stuff. The soft stuff is always the hard stuff when it comes to any organization and certainly within the church. But we have been placed in each other's lives if we are Firstfruits, and we've got to appreciate that, and we have got to stay with one another. And by that I don't necessarily mean we've got to stay in the same room, although we should, but we've got to stay with each other in the sense that we grow ultimately to the point where we truly do love one another, and we can forgive, and we can move beyond, and we can smile with one another, and we can appreciate the calling that God has given to each other, to the other person, the diversity that we have within ourselves, because we're all being shaped and molded by the same potter, the same God. And even when there may be parkings and separations, one thing I've learned in recent years, we're not done with one another yet.

And if we think we're done with one another, then I don't think we understand God. And if anybody who thinks that just by leaving or done, I think they have a few things yet to see about God. And maybe we do this well. When Jeremiah first encountered God, he learned that God had formed him in the womb, Jeremiah 1.5. And through the experiences, he learned that God was a shaper of lives, and that became a very deep conviction. We're not here by chance.

We're not here because in our goodness we chose God. We're here because God chose us. And He chose us to respond to that calling. We are being formed by God by His hand.

And that's the beauty of it.

That correction that you may have received from somebody, from a sermon, from a friend, from a minister at a private counseling session, that correction that you didn't like, that correction that hurt, tell me that might not have been from God, telling you to alter your course.

That idea that came into your mind, that notion to do something kind to another person, to encourage another person in their trial when they were down, to go to church when you didn't want to go to church, when you'd rather just sit home and dial across the Internet universe and find somebody else you think is better to listen to.

But you came to church anyway, and you may have stood in the aisle here, and you talked to somebody, and you learned a little bit about them. Maybe you said something you didn't think was all that encouraging, but they were encouraged. Maybe the fact that they just saw you in church that day, and you were here, you showed up, was an encouragement all by itself.

Tell me if that was not God shaping you into a kinder person by you going and acting against your grain. That insight that came to you about some profound principle of life, that you finally learned. Tell me that that was not God lifting you by His hand and creating a little bit of an edge and a lip to you as a future bowl or pitcher. Or maybe that was God kind of pinching a little bit of the side there to create a place out which the water could flow in a steady stream. Tell me if that wasn't God, with His hand adding a dimension to your life. That courage that you finally found to say no to a weakness, to a sin. Tell me that that was not God shaping your foundation, making it stronger in faith.

Ask yourself those questions. Look at your life from that perspective. Put your life in that perspective. Go to the Potter's house. Arise like Jeremiah was told and go to the Potter's house and there learn the words of God.