ON THE POTTER'S WHEEL

“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 it seemed best to him.” Jeremiah 18:1-4

We are all in the hands of some potter. Something is forming the shape of us all. Hopefully we have chosen to entrust ourselves into the hands of the One True Potter, our Creator, who alone knows what we were meant to be.

And if indeed He is our Potter in the truest sense of the word, He not only wants to mold us externally—that would be our circumstances, our talents, all our raw material, the way our lives look on the outside to others—He wants to fill us up with Himself so that all we look like, all we do, is purely motivated by and is all about glorifying Him.

But the shape and condition of the inside of these vessels influences how much of God we can contain. Maybe—even though no one may be able to see it from the outside—there might not be enough room inside for His Spirit.

It could be that instead of being an adequate receptacle for Him, we are clogged up with calcium deposits—hard places—so that we are no longer tender and vulnerable and approachable.

Or maybe we are filled with decaying, rotting debris—bitter grudges, festering unforgiveness— which might us to be broken and our insides exposed so that the Potter can file away all this stuff and reshape us according to His vision for us.

Rough calluses might need to be smoothed; offending, impeding debris might need to be chipped away.

Diligent students of the Word, does something hauntingly familiar spring to mind here, speaking of the need for something to be cut away? Hopefully it is this, from Hebrews 4:12: “For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow, it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.” Yes, studying the scriptures can help us with all of this painful surgery we might so desperately need. Verse 13 and following go on to say that “Nothing is all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of Him to whom we must give account.”

We are an open book to God, for sure, but whether or not He is allowed to use the scalpel of His Word to do the surgery on us is our call. He will not force that upon us.

He does, however, do much to encourage us to let Him. The Hebrews writer hastens to remind us of this wonderful truth: Jesus our High Priest has experienced this very life we live here on this very earth. And He has now gone before us to the heavenlies so that we can approach the throne of God with confidence and receive mercy and grace in our times of need.

CHOOSING NOT TO BE ORPHANS

Our Family-Thanksgiving 2010- Part of the Orphanless Family of God
(From top left to right: Jeremy, Bryson, Allison, Ben, Larry, Callie, Emily, Leslie,Eli, Jan, Joel)

“And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Counselor to be with you forever— the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept Him, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him. But you know Him because He lives with you and will be in you. I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. Before long the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live.” John 14:16-19

So then, if good behavior can’t fill us with peace, what can? Is there anything? Jesus made it abundantly clear in His Sermon on the Mount that things cannot. Even when moths don’t corrupt or thieves don’t break in and steal, we find ourselves plagued by an irrepressible hunger to have more and more and a nagging itch to have better and better stuff. Neither can human relationships fulfill us and bring us peace. Even the really wonderful ones—the matches seemingly “made in Heaven”—are really only as good as frail humanity. They are all doomed to disappoint us sometimes; no one can fill our multi-faceted needs.

There are no things that can fulfill us and bring us peace, but there is a Someone who can: the precious inheritance Jesus left us when He went back to His Father—His Spirit. We can either welcome Him and allow Him to fill and thereby use these vessels, or shun Him by ignoring Him and thereby refuse to let Him use us. John 3:8 describes Him as a wind that blows wherever it wants. We can chase this wind and follow His call, or we can insist that He follow where we want to go and do what we want to do.

Until we are following His lead and being useful to God, we will never find peaceful fulfillment. We might be stuffed to the brim with something. We might be rich in things and constantly busy, but we will feel empty, and life will seem meaningless.

From Still on the Wheel, hopeful sequel to Broken Jar: 365 Days on the Potter's Wheel ( Xulon, Jan Doke, 2009)

OUT OF THE FRYING PAN...

“He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me, scatters.” Luke 11:23

In our last study, Jesus pointedly told us that cleaning up our lives by trying merely to clean out our junk would bring us more problems than we had to start with. He is thus warning us that emptiness—even a “clean” emptiness—invites“seven other spirits more wicked than itself… And the final condition of that man is worse than the first” (Luke 11:26).

Doesn’t that make you curious? It did me; without that understanding, I felt I was being gypped somewhat about receiving the totality of this parable’s intent. So I asked God to help me understand what that meant—what those “seven other spirits” were. He answered me by applying the parable to my twenty-first century life using some “evil spirits” I am more than just a little familiar with. Let’s look at it this way. If I were addicted to alcohol or some other drug and by the power of sheer, determined will, I kicked that habit, what other problems—as a result of getting dry that way—might befall me that could possibly be worse than the demon of that addiction?

First of all, without being filled with an awareness of and gratitude for where my help really had come from—the Lord God Almighty, who calms seas and raises the dead to life—I imagine that I would certainly be filled with a damning pride, an arrogance for having

accomplished such a feat.

I would also be beset by a dangerous, even deadly independence, believing I had some sort of super power, so what need could I possibly have for God?

Then, of course, the demon of fear would follow because I could never be sure I really had it in me to keep that first demon at bay for very long.

A self-sufficient independence from God is not just stubbornness; it is a form of idolatry. We are worshipping at the throne of self. I believe Jesus meant in this parable that by trying to behave alone, I would soon be taken captive by some other idol.

There are prisons within prisons and bars upon bars in the captivity of idolatry. Getting to the bottom of it is extremely complicated. There is flying on false winds and catering to counterfeit needs. Then with all the pride and arrogance comes the temptation to need appreciation, and sometimes even adoration. When these accolades we feel we have come to deserve don’t happen, usually disillusionment followed by bitterness assaults us and we we once again become easy targets for that first demon, substance abuse, to drown out the hauntings that plague us.

All of these could be what Jesus meant by the “seven other demons” that would come in and make us worse off in our apparent “good” behavior than we were in our obviously “bad” behavior. No, behavior alone, neatness alone, leaves us empty, and thus we get into serious trouble. Good behavior, alone, like things, alone, will never be able to fill us with peace.

From Lying Still on the Wheel, sequel-in-progess to Broken Jar: 365 Days on the Potter's Wheel, by Jan Doke

REARRANGING THE SAME OLD FURNITURE

“I have told you these things so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” John 16:33

If we are to “catch” the real peace we are pursuing, we must get off the world’s treadmill of “striving after wind,” and we must seek the abundant life of Christ. After all, He willed to us His peace (John 16:33). How do we cash in on this legacy? How do we trade off fretfulness and stress for this peace He means for us to have?

Granted, to some extent this involves shedding some of the world’s trappings that we have tried to substitute for the real thing. Most of us know, even if we aren’t telling anybody else, what some of that junk is. We are right to desire to be purged of bad habits and low thinking. However, even in this noble desire to clean up our lives, if we are not careful to pay attention to scripture, we will end up just rearranging the same old furniture. The room might look a little different, but we will settle into it no more peacefully.

I have heard women in drug rehab centers say that they are there to get their lives “cleaned up.” They want the bad things out of their lives so that they can live lives of peace. However, Jesus tells us a parable in Luke 11:24-26 that helps us to see that a good housecleaning is at best a temporary measure and at worst an invitation for even more trouble to enter in. “When an unclean spirit goes out of a man, it passes through waterless places seeking rest, and finding not any, it says, ‘I will return to my house from which I came.’ And when it comes, it finds it swept and in order. Then it goes and takes along seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they go in and live there, and the last state of that man is worse than the first.” The first time I read this, I was shocked at the ending. I thought the man would be rewarded for cleaning up his act. But there is a hint in what He said just before the parable: “He who is not with Me is against Me, and he who does not gather with Me scatters” (v.23).

Peace is about being with Jesus. He seems to be saying that what is most important is that we are attached to Him. Otherwise, whatever we are doing, whether it looks moral or not, actually scatters, rather than bringing our lives together into a peaceful state.

Such is the problem with many whom we might dub with the modern, trendy label of "OCD." It seems like most of us by now have decided this thing, rather than being a real affliction, is at worst a lightweight and laughable burden and at best a secret badge of superiority: (" Because I am so OCD, I just cannot let myself get away with living like this!" they say, as they make a huge sweep of the hand around your less-than-perfectly-tidy, less-than-squeaky-clean house.) And if we are going to have to admit that all of us have impediments, I can certainly see how it would be a lot more savory to lay claim to being OCD than to being a kleptomaniac or a pedophile. But do you see what I'm saying here?

Super-tidiness/"togetherness"and even hyper-morality, for its own sake, has no power to bring peace; rather it usually brings only a shockingly disappointing emptiness. We thought such diligence would be the key- would finally be enough- but it failed miserably to satisfy somehow.

The Bible is one long love story of God’s pursuit of us for the purpose of our being united with Him with some unswept corners and a little clutter rather than scattered from Him with all our ducks in a row. Swept clean is not enough. It just leaves us empty and vulnerable again. Staying attached to the True Vine—being filled with His Spirit—is our only hope for true peace.

From Still on the Wheel, a visionary sequel to Broken Jar:365 Days on the Potter's Wheel.