"And yet, O Lord, you are our Father. We are the clay, and you are the potter. We all are formed by your hand." Isaiah 64:8
Lately, I've been feeling very unpliable in the Master's Hand.
Unbending.
Unyielding.
It's a most uncomfortable place to be...especially when you know you need to just loosen up, let go and let God do the molding.
Romans 8:29-30 says in The Message version of the Bible: "God knew what He was doing from the very beginning. He decided from the outset to SHAPE the lives of those who love Him along the same lines as the life of his Son. The Son stands first in the line of humanity He restored. We see the original and intended SHAPE of our lives there in Him."
For those of us who are born again, we are being shaped into the very image of Jesus.
No easy feat or us to endure.
We, who were born into sin, are being shaped into the image of the One who knew no sin.
What?!
Easy stuff for God. Hard for us because we tend to think our cleaned up, baptized, sanctified selves are just fine. What further work could possibly need to be done? That pattern of the world, that cloth that we were cut from, needs to be worked out of us. Because we weren't designed according to the pattern of this world.
I think back to my 5-year-old's fascination with Playdoh a couple of years back. He'd poke it, prod it, flatten it, slam it with his hand--all with the hopes that it would be shaped into the image in his mind's eye. And when he couldn't get it quite right, he'd hand it over to me where I'd further poke and prod until finally it met approval from both of us.
In just the same way, God has an image He's forming us into. He knows what the finished product is to look like. How much it needs to be bent and shaped. We are the ones who are clueless. So all the prodding and reshaping can seem like torture....maybe even sometimes like God doesn't care.
But, oh! How much He cares. So much so that He won't let our unyieldingness hinder Him from shaping every silhouette of our lives.
My prayer of late is that I stop being so stiff in God's hand and so hard-hearted towards what He's trying to do in me. In the end, I'm sure I'll be surprised at the masterpiece that He'll unfold after all the shaping and re-shaping takes place.
