When He Molds Us, He Holds Us

Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God that He may exalt you in due time. —1 Peter 5:6

My sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me and I give unto them eternal life and they shall never perish neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. And I give unto them eternal life and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. —John 10:27

The Potter is still working today. Over fifteen times in the Old Testament the term “out of their hands” or “out of the hand” is used and this is very important. If somebody can be taken out of somebody’s hand or they can be delivered out of somebody’s hand according to the scriptures, I want to know why. It matters because of what we read in the Bible regarding the hands of the potter. The scripture says that God had Israel in His hand. In John we read that He’s going to give unto His people eternal life and nobody is going to be able to pluck them out of His hand. There is safety in the hand of God. There’s forgiveness in the hand of God. There is mercy and grace in the hand of God. If we can just stay in the hand of God, everything can be worked out.

Jeremiah tells us that Israel was in the hand of God. The pottery industry today is not nearly as important as it was in the days of Jeremiah. In the days of Jeremiah, pot-tery was used for eating, drinking and the storing of various liquids, the same way it is still used today in many various Middle Eastern countries. The potter was a very im-portant person in the city. Every town needed a potter. In our Western society we don’t seem to need the potter as much as we used to. Because of this fact we have lost the relevance to some of the scriptures regarding the potter. Jeremiah was told to get up and go to the potter’s house because God wanted to show Jeremiah something. It was important that Jeremiah understand God’s message.

So Jeremiah goes to the potter’s house and finds the potter working with the clay. The potter was making a vessel, but the vessel that he was making was not very good. Because the vessel was not very good, he had to reshape it, and he had to remold it. The scripture tells us the vessel was marred in the hand of the potter. So he made it again another vessel. He didn’t remake the vessel into the same vessel, he made it an-other vessel. If you stay in the hands of the potter, if you will just stay on the potter’s wheel, there’s something very special that can take place in your life.

Staying on the potter’s wheel, staying in the potter’s hand can make you a com-pletely different person. When He is molding us, He’s holding us. God said: “Oh Israel, cannot I do with you as the potter does with the clay? Can I just take you and remake you into something better than you are?” And then He says something very interesting in verse 6, “The clay is in my hand, you Israel are in my hand.” This gives me comfort and courage, it also gives me hope. When we read Jeremiah and God talks about how Israel was in the hand of the potter, it should give us courage to know that the One who created us, who is redeeming and sanctifying us, is not just working us over, but we are in His hand. God can’t mold you unless He is holding you. Sometimes we forget that.

Sometimes we forget that God is holding us when we go through hard times, trou-bles and difficult circumstances. We feel all alone and things seem like they are not going our way. Sometimes it’s easy for us to think that nobody cares, that nobody really loves us. If God really loved us, why would we go through this? We easily forget that while we’re being molded we’re also being held. God is holding you, He’s also picking you up and shaping you. He does everything that He does with special care. He’ll never bruise you or batter you, He’ll never bully you into anything. Sometimes God will allow you to go through difficult things for various reasons. Just never forget that as He’s molding you, He’s holding you. Sometimes we get so upset and frustrated with the molding, we forget about the holding.

Sometimes we get so busy going here and going there, doing this and doing that, all the while God is molding us with different circumstances in our lives. We forget that we can just stop, talk to Him and allow Him to hold us just for a little while. The scrip-tures are very clear about this point. God specifically said that He was holding Israel. This should encourage everyone of us. We should take heart and be encouraged be-cause God takes special effort to make sure we get this point.

Are you lonely and empty? You know if you are. Behind the smile is an empty person. Behind the smile is somebody that’s missing something in their life. There are times when you will go through situations in your life and you need to come to church and you just need to be broken before God. You need to be open with God. If things aren’t right, you don’t need to act like they are right. You need to say:” God, I need You. God, I need You now, I can’t make it without You. I don’t want to go another day until You show up and until Your presence overwhelms my life. That’s when you start getting real with God. If you are lonely and you are empty today, I want to encourage you because the Potter knows where the weaknesses are in the vessel. The Potter knows how to make a better vessel.

When you make a vessel out of clay and you shape it and form it, if you do it right there shouldn’t be any holes. If you will allow the potter to do what He does best, it will be a perfect vessel. So many times we try to make our own vessel, and we usually mess it up. When we finally get miserable enough, we take a look at our life are realize that things are not as they should be. Maybe you have looked in the mirror recently and asked yourself how you could get yourself into such a mess. You know deep down in-side of you, that you’re really, really not happy. You put on a happy face at work, you put on a happy face for your family, but deep down inside you’re not really happy.

Many people will go to extremes to be happy. They will go to the bars, and they will drink and drink and drink because that is the only way that they can ever find temporary relief and a little bit of happiness. The only way some people actually feel okay with themselves, is if they drink enough. Other people will shoot drugs into their bodies because they just want to feel okay with themselves and they can’t be happy any other way. This desire pushes people to try to produce a chemically induced “happy feeling”. Many would do just about anything to find happiness. It doesn’t matter how much it costs, they would pay for it. It doesn’t matter how far they have to walk or how far they have to jog, run or drive, they will go. Many people will continue to go to extreme after extreme all the way through their lives. All this world has to offer is the pleasure of sin for a season. This world can’t give you much more than that. When you reach the furthest extent of happiness that the world can give, the most joy you can receive in this world, there’s only one direction to go, DOWN!

Why not put your life into the Potter’s hands? If you’re going to extremes, why don’t you go to the right extremes? God knows how to mold you. He knows how to shape you into something that is able to be filled with substance. That is what they lack in this world. They lack substance and when you don’t have substance you can’t have joy. If what you have is not real and and lacks true substance, then it dissipates. The Potter knows how to make your vessel and put substance on the inside. He knows how to make a good vessel and if you would just put your life into His hands, and allow yourself to be put onto the Potter’s wheel, you would find this out for yourself.

You need to make a step of faith today. Get yourself out of your comfort zone and put yourself on the Potter’s wheel. Lift your hands to Him, you say: “God, here I am. I’m placing myself into your hands.” There comes a time where you get miserable enough you just don’t care anymore. The next thing you need to do is repent of your sins. The scriptures tell us if you repent of your sins, if you confess your sins (repenting is turning from your way and going God’s way), God will forgive you. The Bible says if we confess our sin, He is faithful and just to forgive us for all unrighteousness. It doesn’t matter what you’ve done, no matter how bad of a sinner you feel like you are. People have told me before, “Pastor, if I walk into your church, the roof is going to fall in on me.” They don’t understand the grace and the mercy of God. They don’t realize that God wants to forgive them more than they want to be forgiven. The scripture says it like this: “God is not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.”

After you have repented and confessed your sins to God, you need to be baptized in Jesus’ name. If you are only baptized in the titles of “Father,” “Son,” and “Holy Ghost” it will not suffice for your salvation. Scripture says:

Neither is there salvation in any other name…There’s none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved. —Acts 4:12

What name is that talking about? Go back to verse 10 of Acts chapter 4, you’ll find the name of Jesus Christ. There’s only one name to be baptized in. If you haven’t been baptized in the name of Jesus, that is the next step you should take. You can be a new vessel. All your sins can be washed away. Everything can be cleansed by the blood of Jesus Christ.

In Acts 2:38 we get a really great promise from God. Peter says that once you have repented and been baptized in Jesus’ name that you shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. You can receive the spirit of God. Jesus told His disciples before He left this earth, “I will not leave you comfortless but I will come to you.” The scripture tells us that If the same spirit that was in Jesus, dwells in us, it will quicken our mortal bodies. The scripture goes on further to say that if we do not have the Spirit of Christ, that we are none of His. That means in order to be part of Jesus, you have to be born of the water and born of the Spirit. John 3 says you have to be born again in order to enter and see the Kingdom of God.

Sometimes the hardest thing to have is faith. Trusting in what you cannot see. We have to trust in God. How do I trust in a God that I cannot see? The little boy who grew up in the pastor’s home and his Mom kept telling him: “Wash your hands, wash your hands.” He said, “Mom, I don’t want to wash my hands.” She told him, “Boy, you’ve got to wash your hands or you’ll have germs, and the germs will infect your body.” And he said, “Germs and Jesus, germs and Jesus, that’s all I hear about in this house and I never see either one of them.”

For most humans, if we cannot see something physically we don’t trust it. Am I getting a little too personal when I ask how much you truly trust God? How do you feel today? Are you trusting God completely with your finances? Are you trusting God with your children’s future? Do you trust God with your time? Maybe you would answer…I really don’t know, and I’d like to give it a try. What if I try to trust God and I come up short? What if things don’t work out? That’s the hard part. When we first come to God, we have to trust in Him for salvation. After salvation we will still face many obstacles in life that will challenge our faith and trust in God. The toughest part of being a Christian is learning how to really trust God. Once you learn how to really trust God, you will still go through things, but you know that He will always come through for you!

The good news is that every man is given a measure of faith. The scripture says if you have faith the size of a grain of a mustard seed, that you can speak to this moun-tain: Be thou removed and cast into the sea and it shall be moved. Ask God to increase your faith. We read about the man who had the son who cast himself into the water and into the fire, he came to Jesus and said: Lord if you will, help my son to be whole. Jesus said: “If thou believe.” The man said: “I believe, but help my unbelief.” The Potter knows where you are today. He sees the lumps in the clay. He sees all the little edges and He knows what’s going on.

But without faith it is impossible to please Him. —Hebrews 11:6

I want to be pleas-ing to God but I can’t unless I have faith. Why? Because he that cometh to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him.” If you can trust people which are not perfect, and didn’t create the worlds, people who didn’t come and die on a cross for your sins, and who don’t have all the power in the universe, you ought to be able to trust God. You say: “But I can’t see Him.” You ought to be able to see Him in His children. You ought to be able to see Him in the people that are around you. You see, God doesn’t work around the body, or under the body or over the body. God will work through the body of Christ. As you are able to see the attributes of God displayed in the people around you, they will be helping to mold you into what God would have you to be.

It is important to be faithful to church. You need to be in the body of Christ. James 2:20, says: “But wilt thou know, o vain man, that faith without works is dead. Verse 26 of the same chapter says, For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also. What good is faith unless you use it? How much good would faith have done Noah, if he knew the rain was coming and didn’t build the ark? You’ve got to use the faith you’ve got. As God moves on you about different things in your life, you need to make the necessary changes. If you don’t make the necessary changes, you quit growing right there. That’s it. Until you do what He has already asked of you, He’ll never push you again.

There is a question you should ask when you feel led of God to do something. The question you should ask is: Will this benefit me spiritually? Will this help me get closer to God? If so, then that leading you feel is probably of God. How can you be sure of this? Because your flesh and the devil don’t want you to be any more spiritual than you already are. They do not want you to be any closer to God. You feel God tugging at your heart… to do something, to draw closer to Him, to give more, to be more involved, to sacrifice, to put something aside or to pick something up. If you feel an urge in your spirit and you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that whatever it is will bring you closer to God, then that leading is from God.

As I grew up I used to feel those urges and I would say: “Oh, that’s just me. That’s just me. I’m just making that up. That’s all in my head.” Because I really didn’t want to do it. God is leading and guiding each and everyone of us into a closer walk with Him. As we are led by Him, we need to continue to follow. As God deals with us about things, if we will make the changes, He’ll deal with us about something else and we’ll make that change and He will continue to deal with us. Christianity is a never ending walk. We’re always getting closer and closer to perfection. We are being made into His image and His likeness. If we stop anywhere along this road, we will not continue getting closer to God. We need to do the things He deals with us about and stay in the hands of the potter.

Endurance produces character. Some of you have been in the hands of the potter for years. The Apostle Paul said: “That we glory in tribulations also knowing…” What do we know? Sometimes we cannot glory unless we know. So he gives us the “what I know“ part. Knowing that tribulation worketh patience. Some of us need more of that. And patience experience, and experience hope. And hope maketh not ashamed be-cause the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given to us. Experience and hope. Is the trial worth it? I really don’t want to go through this but I do want the patience and I do want the experience and I want the hope. Paul didn’t just say we rejoice in the midst of our suffering but we rejoice in the midst of our suffering knowing that our suffering produces endurance and endurance produces character.

There is a unique term used in Romans chapter 5, it is the Greek term “dokimas” and it literally means someone or something that has been put to the test and has measured up. If you travel into the Middle East, you can visit a potter and find a vessel or a jar that has been through the furnace and through the fire, it didn’t break but it came out whole. If it comes out complete and you turn the vessel over to the bottom you will find a stamped word: Dokimas. It means approved. This is a vessel of character. It has withstood the test of the furnace where it has been refined and it hasn’t broken, it is whole, it is complete and that’s what the apostle was talking about. If you’ll go through the furnace, if you’ll go through the fire, there’s integrity and character that you’re going to come out with in the end. If you can stand the test of the coals, and go through all the heat and still keep your head up then you know what? You’ll be approved.

Maybe God is still putting you on the potter’s wheel and forming you again be-cause He is still perfecting the vessel before it goes through the fire. He’ll never put you into the fire until you’ve already been on the wheel and He’s perfected you. Yes, you have to go through the fire. Everybody has to go through the fire in their lives. Look at the story of Job. Job was a good man. God loved Job. The devil came to God and said, If you’d just let me take Job out, I will mess with his family, I will destroy what he has and if I do that, Job will turn on You. So the Potter said: “Ok, you can try, but I know my vessel.”

Was God being mean to Job by allowing him to go through all of this and lose everything? I used to struggle with this book when I first studied it. I said: “How could God, if He really loved Job, let him go through this?” Come on, he allowed the destruction of all these people and his animals until Job lost almost everything. It’s wrong, and it’s terrible. What’s wrong with God? Why would He do that? The Potter made the vessel and He knew what He had made. He saw Job’s vessel, He knew that he was ready for the furnace. There is going to come a time in your life where you have been shaped and reshaped and re-molded. If the vessel is still young, and is still very new and the potter sees a flaw, he can break the vessel. He can break the vessel and soften the clay again. When God sees that we are making bad decisions and He knows that He can help us, he offers to remake us. He lets us know that if we will allow Him to, He can reshape our lives. There are times when He has to just break us down and make us a better vessel.

Sometimes people get upset when God breaks them down. I know throughout my life there have been several times when I did not understand what God was doing and so I felt very broken. I felt like if God had called me, and I was doing God’s will for my life, then how could I be having so much trouble? I just needed to be reminded that He is building me for the final furnace. He is shaping and preparing me for the final trial of fire. When I go through the final test and the final trial, before He takes me home, I want Him to be able to turn the jar over and say: “Stamp it approved. Well done, my good and faithful servant.” I want the Potter to approve me. I don’t care if He has to break me down and soften me back to my original form. No matter how many times it takes I am willing, because every time He breaks me down, every time He remakes me, each time I come out better than the time before. Every time He breaks me down and makes me a new vessel, I’m better than I was before.

The vessel you are now is not the vessel God intends to make you. He has some incredible things planned for your life. Sometimes we get discouraged thinking about everything we should be by now, everything that we should have, and be able to do. The biggest lie that the enemy wants to tell Christians is that if God really loved you, your life would be better than what it is. What the devil is trying to keep from you is the truth of this simple message: When He is molding us, He is holding us. You are never closer to God than when you allow Him room to work in your life. Quit allowing the trials and tests of life to overwhelm you, the Potter is in control. Just stay on the wheel, and let Him keep His hands on your life! Allow Him to mold you and shape you into what He desires for you to be. You will never regret your time spent on the Potter’s wheel. God never fails. He doesn’t make junk. For thousands of years now, He has been turning out masterpieces. Trust Him today. Let Him hold you while He molds you.

Questions for Reflection:

(1) Are you pliable and willing to be molded?

(2) What parts of God’s character are revealed to you by knowing that God holds us while He molds us? (ie..Forgiveness, Love, Long-suffering…)

(3) How have you responded to God molding you in the past?

(4) What changes would you allow God to make in your life so that you could be “approved?” (In what areas could you use His molding right now?)

(5) Because you are learning to trust God more, you should always remember that He is in control. Knowing that God is in control, how does that give you hope and comfort right now? (What things have you been stressing over, that you need to just put into the hands of God?)