Today I was reading a commentary on the life of the prophet Jeremiah, and here are some things that really stuck out to me…
God is a master at giving us object lessons and visual aids. He told Jeremiah to go down to the potter’s house. That’s a strange place for a prophet to go but that is where God sent him; this was God’s great object lesson of how He restores lives and takes a broken life and makes it over again—not according to the failures and foolish dreams of an individual, but after the potter’s heart, for the potter has power over the clay to shape it as he wishes. This not only applies to the nation of Israel but to the individual as well.
“O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter?” says the LORD. “Look, as the clay is in the potter‘s hand, so are you in My hand, O house of Israel!” Jeremiah 18:6
As Jeremiah watched the potter at work, he saw him making a vessel on his wheel, and as the wheel turned the potter shaped the vessel. And as Jeremiah watched, the vessel in the potter’s hand was marred and broken. Then the potter took the vessel and once more pushed it all down into a lump of clay, and shaping it the second time, made it into a vessel after the potter’s heart.
Imagine how you would feel when no one listens to you and persecution hounds you every step of the way – this was the life of Jeremiah. He spoke a prophecy of ruin—of desolation, destruction, and judgment. Imagine that you are unable to seek comfort in marriage because the days are too difficult and God has said to remain unmarried. You would feel abandoned, and alone; all your friends turn from you. Jeremiah was all of the above.
And if you try to quit, and refuse to be this kind of a preacher, you find that you cannot quit—that the word of God burns in your bones and you have to say it whether or not you want to. And despite the message that you are called upon to deliver, your love for your country is genuine and deep—as you see it surrounded by its enemies and ravished and conquered and despoiled, you are overcome by a deep sorrow (Jeremiah is the author of Lamentations – a book of grief and sadness). And here’s something else you can think about…
“If racing against mere men makes you tired, how will you race against horses? If you stumble and fall on open ground, what will you do in the thickets near the Jordan?” Jeremiah 12:5
Is God saying this to you? Are you questioning why your lot in life seems to be more than you think you can bare? Take a lesson from this. Jeremiah was complaining to God because he couldn’t wrap his head around all the adversity that he was forced to go through. God spelled it out for him… “Stronger adversity is coming.” This is what I know to be the truth… every trial we go through makes us who we are. Each trial makes us stronger. God is using whatever trial to prepare us for greater work; it is through pain that God gets the most out of us, for His glory and for the blessing of others! Remember, through suffering, God teaches us how to yield and surrender to Him 🙂