It was right around two years ago, that I prayed the prayer out of the words from "Change my heart oh God." It has been an interesting two years, and this is a reflection of that.
Change my heart oh God
Make it ever true
Change my heart oh God
May I be like You
Change my heart oh God
Make it ever true
Change my heart oh God
May I be like You
You are the potter
I am the clay
Mold me and make me
This is what I pray
Change my heart oh God
Make it ever true
Change my heart oh God
May I be like You
"You are the potter, and I am the clay; Mold me and make me This is what I pray." At the time I only had an inkling of what this prayer would actually mean. God does not instantly make you the person you are to become, just as a potter does not throw down a hump of clay and make a pot. The words of Jeremiah 18:1-12 ring true to the imagery of the potter:
This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD: “Go down to the potter’s house, and there I will give you my message.” So I went down to the potter’s house, and I saw him working at the wheel. 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. Then the word of the LORD came to me. He said, “Can I not do with you, Israel, as this potter does?” declares the LORD. “Like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in my hand, Israel. If at any time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be uprooted, torn down and destroyed, and if that nation I warned repents of its evil, then I will relent and not inflict on it the disaster I had planned. And if at another time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be built up and planted, and if it does evil in my sight and does not obey me, then I will reconsider the good I had intended to do for it."Now therefore say to the people of Judah and those living in Jerusalem,‘This is what the LORD says: Look! I am preparing a disaster for you and devising a plan against you. So turn from your evil ways, each one of you, and reform your ways and your actions.’ But they will reply, ‘It’s no use. We will continue with our own plans; we will all follow the stubbornness of our evil hearts.’”
We are marred, but the potter does his best to make a beautiful pot. I wanted to be the best man I could be at that time, and grow into the best man I could be in each role I could potentially fill in my life. I think that most of all I wanted to be a man that would be able to lead a family one day, but I wanted the fast track. Instead, God has used relationships to highlight and teach elements necessary to further my development towards the man he wants me to be. It is interesting how he used both singleness, and relationships to further my development towards this task. Recently my small group watched a series called "The New rules for Love sex and dating" by Andy Stanley. This series resonated greatly with me, and has really morphed my expectations of relationships and marriage. He presented the idea "are you the person your looking for, is looking for," and this kind of sums up the purpose behind it all. At first I was frustrated with the idea about spending serious amounts of effort into a continued molding of myself knowing that that there is the possibility that my future spouse has not put forth that kind of effort. He also put forth the idea that if you start running this track, and pursuing God, that while you are running you will happen to look over and see someone running next to you, running the same race, and it is at that point you find that person. It told several days for all of this to completely sink in, and it really took absolute faith to trust that this was indeed the best route.
Pottery isn't the only imagery provided, or the whole of the prayer I prayed. I desired also to be refined, and sifted.
"For you, God, tested us; you refined us like silver." - Psalm 66:10.
"Some of the wise will stumble, so that they may be refined, purified and made spotless until the time of the end, for it will still come at the appointed time." - Daniel 11:35
This third I will put into the fire; I will refine them like silver and test them like gold. They will call on my name and I will answer them; I will say, ‘They are my people,’ and they will say, 'The LORD is our God.'" - Zachariah 13:9
“Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift all of you as wheat. But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.” - Luke 22:31-32
The dictionary defines refined as:
1. Having or showing well-bred feeling, taste, etc..
2. Freed or free from coarseness, vulgarity, etc..
3. Freed from impurities
4. Very subtle, precise, or exact.
“Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift all of you as wheat. But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.” - Luke 22:31-32
I don't think freed from impurities brings true impact to the actual process of refining. It requires continued melting at high temperatures with the slag and impurities being removed in the process. It is only this process that allows us to become 99.9% pure, and more often then not it feels as if we aren't even that close to being 100% pure. The interesting element to this is that Jesus is 100% pure, and covers us so that we appear to be 100%, but the difficult element is be as close to 100% pure on the inside as we possibly can manage. This refining and sifting process can be at times difficult or painful. I will be honest and say that sometimes the process felt like a slap in the face, at other times a swift kick to the family jewels, and the hardest of all feeling as if you have been ran over by mac truck and all of the traffic following said truck. It is out of these moments that God makes us into the people he wants us to be if we desire. It is not often that these moments are what they seem, but they do mold and make who we become. The only thing we can do is pick ourselves up, dust off, and continue on the path set out before us: pursuing God, as he continually pursues us.
Josh
