I have a pretty good imagination, especially when reading. I love to visualize in detail scenes that I am reading but I also involve my emotions and often rise and fall with the characters I might be reading about. Such is the case when I read of the prophet Jeremiah. In the opening of the book of Jeremiah he recounts his response to the calling of God: “I’m too young and inexperienced and I am not an eloquent speaker”. Yada, yada, yada. It all sounds so familiar and I find myself connecting emotionally to his words. In truth, Jeremiah was thrown into a dire situation. The northern kingdom of Israel had already been destroyed and the southern kingdom of Judah was being pounded and plundered by Babylon. God called Jeremiah to preach repentance and to prophesy about the coming destruction. It was grueling and frustrating work and if, like me, you engage emotionally with the prophet, you might just find yourself weeping along with him by chapter nine.

I love the truth that who God calls He also equips. We don’t have to figure it out on our own but at just the right moments fresh vision pours into us. God did such a thing in Jeremiah 18. God sent him to the potter’s house and told him that He would give Jeremiah His message there. Don’t miss this! When we are weary or disillusioned or feeling helpless and hopeless God sends us to the potter’s house too. Our visits to the potter’s house might look more like a walk on the beach or a hike in the woods or listening to the crickets and watching the moon rise and the stars appear. Our potter’s house visits could also be a passage of Scripture or a worship song that we suddenly hear as if we had been deaf before. Make no mistake though, God plans; God calls; God imparts; God equips. It starts with Him and it finishes with Him. We don’t ever have to figure this stuff out on our own.

Jeremiah 18: 3-6NIV, “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: ‘O house of Israel, can I not do with you as the potter does?’ declares the Lord. ‘Like clay in the hand of the potter, so you are in my hand, O house of Israel.'”

The settings and details of our potter’s house visits will be as unique as each of us are but there are some commonalities to all the visits. (By the way…..He calls us to these visits a whole lot more often than we hear or respond to!) We are clay that is common and unformed but when we choose to let His hands touch our lives He places us upon the wheel. The wheel has to move. There has to be movement and a process. Standing still will leave us unformed and unfinished. It is God Himself that controls the speed of the wheel. We often struggle with this and either want to pick up the pace or slow it way down. He knows exactly what He is doing. A beautiful life can’t be rushed. He would never risk our purpose to feed our immaturity and impatience. As His wheel begins to spin it can often seem like we are experiencing the same things over and over and that no progress is being made. We are just going around in circles. Then it happens! (I’m getting excited) We feel pressure because the Potter puts His hands on us and begins to shape. It has to be just right. This isn’t assembly line work because each piece He is crafting is unique and special and created for such a time as this.

I hope your imaginations are cooking because I’ve thrown an awful lot of imagery at you in the last paragraph. Here’s the bottom line of why we need regular visits to the potter’s house…..to learn to be still. God has His hands on our lives and is lovingly shaping us into all that He sees for us in His mind’s eye. As the wheel turns, as the crafting is done, we often get dizzy and distracted, or frustrated and fearful and we move. His hands never waiver but we move. Look again at the passage I shared. See the word “marred” in verse 4? The word marred means, “to ruin the beauty or perfection of”. When we move away from the work of His hands on our lives we become marred and He will start again because He cherishes us too much to leave flaws within us.

I know good and well that the process of growth in the life of Christ can be quite dizzying as we go round and round and round. But God is doing a good, good work in us. When He calls you to “go down to the potter’s house”, go! He will stop the wheel and whisper ever so gently into your ears, “Be still and know that I am God”. Psalm 46:10NIV