A Work In Progress

"But now, O Lord, You are our Father; We are the clay, and You our potter; And all we are the work of Your hand." Isaiah 64:8, NKJV Will it ever stop? Will my need to hop up again on the Potter's wheel for a re-shaping ever end? I don't know about you, but it seems like I'm always finding myself challenged to either stay the same or allow God to mold and shape me into the person He wants me to be. You see, we're the clay and He's the Potter. We don't get to shape ourselves—He does! I've found that sometimes His re-shaping hurts. It hurts my ego, it hurts my pride and it even hurts my feelings. (Call the waaambulance) But in the end, it makes me a better person. How about you? Can you relate to this, or am I writing this just for me? Did you know that God is always working in our lives? Sometimes He is very obvious and at other times He is working more behind-the-scenes shaping us into who He created us to be. Philippians 2:13 (NKJV) tells us, “…for it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure.” It all starts with our willingness to be open for God to work in our lives. So where do we start? Where does our Potter need to do His most important and vital work? It starts in the heart. I love the cry of David in Psalm 139:23-24 (KJV),“Search me O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts; and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.” A natural potter works to shape the outside of his project, but our Potter knows that His work is an inside job. If we’ll let Him, He will shape our hearts in such a way that we can become a reflection of His Son Jesus Christ. In Ezekiel 36:26 God tells us that when we are born again He replaces our hearts of stone with hearts of flesh. He takes out our hard and immoveable hearts and gives us a pliable and moldable heart of flesh. That’s the kind of heart that He can work with. For so many years my heart was hard. It was hard toward others, and even hard toward God Himself. But when Jesus became the Lord of my life, He began to soften my heart in an amazing way. The really cool thing is that the Potter’s work on the inside began to show itself on the outside. So now some thirty years later I find that I still need the Potter more than ever. I just love it when the Potter does His thing in my heart, because He’s always working to make my heart look more like His. I admit it; I am a work in progress. So today, will you join me in presenting our hearts to God? Let’s ask Him to do a work in us in ways that will please Him, and Him alone. A work that will cause us to be more like Jesus in everything we do.