Jeremiah arrived at the potter’s house and watched the potter at work. I decided to do the same. I went to look for someone that I knew did pottery as a ministery. Years ago I watched in amazement as Michael Rozell and his wife Pam mistered at the church my husband and I went to. So I pulled up YouTube and found him on there. As I watched and read Jeremiah 18, this is what I got. I included a link at the bottom to Potter’s Field Ministry so you can watch it too.
To start with we are going to go back to Creation in Genesis chapters 1 & 2. In Genesis chapter 1 as you read through each day starts off with, “God said…”, until the sixth day. On that day God changed the way He created. God didn’t say and man was created, instead, in verse 26, He said, ” “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness;” He took His time to make man. In chapter 2, we see that He was the first Potter. Sure, He didn’t use a potter’s wheel but He got His hands dirty in verse 7, “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.” So what does the Creation story have to do with the potter’s house? God started out with his hands clean on the first five days of creation until the sixth day when He created man, likewise with the potter his hands are clean until he starts working with the clay on the wheel.
The clay has to stay moist with water to be able to be worked with. If it dries out too much it will crack and become useless. We are the clay on God’s potter’s wheel. We need to be covered with the Living Water so that God can mold us into what His plans are for our lives.
There are problems that can come up along the way.
With all that is going on in our daily lives, it is easy for us to get off balance and start spinning out of control. Without the gentle guidance of our Potter’s Hands, by being in the Bible daily, to keep us where we need to be we could topple right off the wheel and have to start all over again.
Outside influences can crush us to the point that God has to pick us up, clean us up to make us something new. Or He has to take a tool and gently cut away the influence shaping us into His unique work.
There are impurities in the clay and they need to be removed and the clay has to be kneaded all over again to be useful. This is where Judah is at in the time of Jeremiah. There are impurities throughout the land including the Temple of God. God has a plan to destroy Judah and start over but because He is patient, He keeps holding out waiting for them to repent, knowing that when it comes down to it He will have to see His plan through.
From the day that you were born, you were placed on God’s potter’s wheel as a lump of clay that He is making into something to be filled with and used by Him.
Bonnie Sue Writes 