The Creator Affect: God's 2018 Makeover

Long, long ago, and far, far away, God spoke to an ancient Prophet. His name is Jeremiah. Jeremiah actually did hear God speaking to him, and he heard God tell him to go down to the Potter's house. Well, this Prophet, had a habit of obeying God. So, he listened to what God told him. When he got there, he saw the Potter with his pottery on the wheel. He professionally shaped it, but then the pottery became marred in the potter's hand; therefore, the Potter started all over and recreated it, and he did so in whatever formed pleased him ... whatever pleased the Potter. The pottery, on the other hand, had only one thing to do. It just sat there while the Potter worked his miracle of creativity. It's only responsibility was to sit there in the Potter's hands and do nothing else. ( Jeremiah 18: 1-4)

Check Out What God Said Next

Then the word of the LORD came to me saying,
"Oh house of Israel, cannot I not do with you as the Potter does?"
Declares the LORD.
"Like clay in the hand of the Potter, 
so are you in my hand. O house of Israel."

The points are poignant, powerful and potent. God, has His hands on Israel. He has His hands on all of Creation. God has His hands on you and me. And if you read the rest of the Potter's house story, you will see God is expressing in clear, and NO uncertain terms, that He  controls Creation, the nations, and controls you and me. Paul tells us that God is "working out everything according to THE plan, and bringing everything into conformity with the purpose of His will." (Ephesians 1:11) Sin (trying to live independent of God and breaking his law) corrupted or "marred" it all in the Creator's hands, but God is not finished yet; and God is not finished with you or me, even when we might just make a mess of things.

Jesus and Paul

Jesus and Paul have something to say about this: First Jesus tells us how God wants to work all this out in us: He tells us  the thief --Satan-- comes to "kill, steal and destroy." In other words, from the outset, Satan came to cause God's creation(s) to be marred and scarred, and he did succeed; however, he didn't win because Jesus said of himself,  "I have come to give you life, and to give you a life that is full." He is talking about eternal life, which means a life shared with God forever. Second, Paul explains that, "If anyone is in Christ, he is a new CREATION. The old has gone, and the new has come."

Needless to say, God wants to turn our scars in something eternally better. He wants to make us entirely new for living right here on planet Earth, and to prepare us for beyond the grave; He requires us, however, to present our bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable unto God as a spiritual act of worship, and He does so that we won't be conformed to the world but be transformed... (See Romans 12:2) In other words we must surrender to our Creator ... the Potter of our lives. We must daily yield to the life giver, life changer and the Creator.

I guess what I am trying to say here is this is the time to surrender and receive a 2018 spiritually based makeover. No, it's not time for resolutions. It's time to yield to God's eternal life giving transforming solutions. It's time to put ourselves in God's hands to do with us whatever God wants to do with us as he forms us, come what may, into little brother's and sisters of Jesus who are created to be just like him. (See Romans 8:28 & 29) It's time to begin the New Year with a Pray/Song. I hope you will daily pray it as your own:

Have Your own way, Lord, have Your own way.
Your are the Potter. I am the clay.
Mold me and make me after Your will,
As I wait here yielded and still.

Have Your own way, Lord, have Your own way.
Search me and try me, Master today.
Make me whiter than snow, Lord, wash me by the blood of Jesus, just now...
As in Your presence I humbly bow.

Have Your own way, Lord, have your own way.
Wounded, by sin, and weary, help me I pray.
Power all power, surely is thine.
Touch me! Heal me! Savior Divine.

Have Your own way, Lord, have Your own way.
Hold over my being absolute sway.
Fill me with Your Holy Spirit until
Everyone can see
Christ only
Always
Living in me.

Wherever you are in the world today, may you have a blessed and newly created New Year.  In Jesus Name. Amen.

SoJourner