Molded By Grace: The Potter and the Clay - In Search Of A Better Tomorrow

“But now, O Lord, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand” (Isaiah 64:8).

God is the Potter, and we are the clay, which the potter molds, fixing the clay’s imperfections into a finished creation for a purpose that shows His glory. The Potter wants His clay to be “treasures in jars of clay”—imperfect, fragile, and weak Christians—who continuously receive strength, power, and ability through God’s grace to do all things. Boldly and successfully, they transform their worlds by being a light for Jesus, guided and empowered by the Spirit, through their God-given purposes. For all this to happen, the clay must remain moldable to the Potter’s work, including His plan for the clay’s life and His desire for us to rely on God’s grace as our daily strength, replacing our weaknesses. If the clay keeps doing this, it will be a “treasure in jars of clay” to the world, and the Potter will be glorified and pleased with us, because our lives will be the finished product He desires for all His creation.

^“But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed” (2 Corinthians 4:7-9).

The Potter desires to use our life experiences to gradually mold us into increasingly more perfected versions of “treasure in jars of clay” for His purposes and glory.

Vulnerable to uncertainty and change, we are like clay jars: “fragile, breakable, and flawed.” When our “weaknesses” are strengthened, empowered by the all-surpassing power of God, we can be strong despite any struggle, competent to accomplish anything God asks of us. When we receive empowerment from the Spirit to spread the gospel, the world can receive the “treasure” from our purpose, making us a “treasure in jars of clay”.

“God chooses the foolish things of this world to shame the wise; God chooses the weak things of this world to shame the strong” (1 Corinthians 1:27).

God especially loves to use the weak for His purposes. The Potter gradually forms and shapes the lives of the unqualified, forming them into His masterpiece:

“He took a shepherd boy and molded him into a King”
“He took a grumbling fisherman and molded him a leader of the Church”
“He took a Hebrew who was “dull of speech” and molded him into the leader of a nation”
“And most of all, He molded Himself into human form, the form of an infant, a baby lying in hay in a manger, to set the captives free; to give us eternal salvation!”

(https://www.worthbeyondrubies.com/the-potter-and-the-clay/)

“God deliberately chooses weak, suffering, and unlikely candidates to get His work done, so that in the end, the glory goes to God and not to the person” (Joni Eareckson Tada).

In using these individuals, God reveals to the world His unlimited power, as the world sees a powerful God at work in the lives of the weak, etc., enabling them to accomplish far beyond their own strength and capabilities. When they allow God’s power to work in their lives, God receives glory as He demonstrates His greatness, as the world can witness God’s strength and the message of freedom through their purposes.

The truth is, we are all considered weak, as we are all jars of clay. The question remains: will our lives be considered a treasure by God?

Pebbles in the Clay

Through our life experiences, the Potter works to mold and shape us into a treasure in jars of clay. Unfortunately, we have pebbles in our clay — imperfections such as self-centeredness, spiritual pride, self-reliance, and insufficient faith — that He must constantly work to remove. So, if the Potter can build something useful and valuable out of our lives, we must consistently be pliable to the Potter’s work of eliminating these pebbles from our clay.

“Sometimes God allows what he hates to accomplish what he loves” (Joni Eareckson Tada).

Spiritual pride blocks us from entirely depending on God in our weaknesses. Through Christ’s strength, we can do all things; unfortunately, pride leads to self-reliance rather than reliance on Christ and to ascribing credit for our work to ourselves instead of to God. Thus, the Potter likes to use suffering — often in the form of a thorn in the flesh — to reveal our weaknesses and to restrain our pride, leading us to rely on God for the strength to manage the agonizing thorn.

Thorn in the Flesh

A thorn in the flesh is a “persistent, physical, spiritual, or emotional struggle or affliction, serving a purpose of torment or testing.”

“Therefore, in order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12:7-10).

God gave Paul a thorn in the flesh. No one today absolutely knows what it was, as the nature of Paul’s thorn in the flesh has been scrutinized under great debate. According to various theories, Paul could have suffered from “a chronic eye problem, malaria, migraines, epilepsy, a speech disability, or from a person, such as Alexander the coppersmith, who inflicted Paul with harm.”

Regardless, Paul was experiencing spiritual pride, having received “surpassingly great revelations” from God. Receiving “extraordinary insight” like he did could definitely “inflate his self-importance.”

The thorn Paul received from God kept him small in his own eyes and served as a reminder that all glory belongs to God, not to Paul. The fact that Paul pleaded three times for the thorn to be removed revealed that he was experiencing genuine personal weakness, which forced him to depend daily on grace rather than on his own strength. (Grace is “God’s enabling power to do what humans are unable to do in their own power or strength”.) As Paul consistently relied on grace, thanks to the daily reminder of his thorn, God displayed His mighty power through Paul’s weakness. His world received the treasure of him being a jar of clay, through the vessel of Paul’s purpose, all because Paul consistently depended upon the strength and power of God, and not his own. And, although painful, the thorn spiritually matured Paul’s character, increasing his hope, perseverance, endurance, and faith in God, among other things.

Whether it be a disability, trauma, loss of a loved one, depression, cancer, relationship problems, chronic anxiety, etc., God often allows us to experience suffering and torment, not as a punishment, but as a tool to keep us humble, dependent, and reliant upon God’s power of grace and not on our own abilities and strength.

“God will not allow a trial to come into your life unless He has a purpose”.

Joni Eareckson Tada, a quadriplegic and disability advocate, strengthened and empowered by God, became an inspiration for millions.

At age seventeen, Tada tragically became a quadriplegic after experiencing a diving accident. For years, Joni pleaded with the Lord to remove the thorn in the flesh that God had given her. She, her family, and her friends all prayed, but God said, “My grace is all you need. My strength is made perfect in weakness.” For over fifty years, she lived in a wheelchair, but despite all her tribulations, God’s grace gave her sufficient strength and power to endure. During her life, she has done incredible things through the power of God:

“She created a non-profit organization, Joni & Friends, that has helped people with disabilities for over forty years. Joni’s hardship has brought hope to many people around the world with similar disabilities. Her organization helps many people with their physical needs and shares the hope of the Gospel with those same people.”

“God’s ‘no’ to remove suffering from our lives may actually be an expression of His grace” (Rev. Dr. Jerald C. Joersz).

“Joni, in her booklet Hope . . . the Best of Things, she imagines someday meeting Jesus in heaven, and telling Christ: ‘The weaker I was in that thing [my wheelchair], the harder I leaned on you. And the harder I leaned on you, the stronger I discovered you to be. It never would have happened had you not given me the bruising of the blessing of that wheelchair’” (Crossway Books).

Just like Paul, Tada was given a thorn in the flesh. And just as Paul did, Joni undoubtedly echoes the same message in 2 Corinthians 12:9-10. What I believe kept her strong was complete reliance and trust in the power of grace:

Grace is sufficient power that enables people to endure any suffering without being crushed by it.

Grace frees people to respond to suffering in ways that lead to growth, change, and increased wisdom about life.

Grace promises that God will ultimately, even in suffering, work things out, bringing about a greater, ultimate good.

“Some people tend to believe that I’m a strong believer, a strong Christian, but that’s not true. I’m not a strong believer. I’m very weak” (Joni Eareckson Tada).

“Being a light in the world is brightest and most powerful when you are being the light through darkness and pain. When we feel weakest is often when we are actually being the strongest” (Emilyann Allen).

By admitting we are weak and asking God to give us the strength to overcome our thorn, we can become overcomers like Tada.

“Before He furnishes the abundant supply, we must first be made conscious of our emptiness. Before he gives strength, we must be made to feel our weakness. Slow, painfully slow, are we to learn this lesson; and slower still to own our nothingness and take the place of helplessness before the Mighty One” (A. W. Pink).

In surrendered weakness, we must declare in our hearts and minds: “With man, this is impossible, but with God, all things are possible” (Matthew 19:26).

“No one enjoys feeling weak, whether it is emotionally, spiritually, or physically. There is something within the human spirit that wants to resist the thought of weakness. Many times, this is nothing more than our human pride at work. Just as weakness carries a great potential for strength, pride carries an equally great potential for defeat” (Charles Stanley).

Resist pride by humbly seeking God’s strength, and not your own. Pray boldly and regularly to God, asking for strength and guidance in your trials. Trust in God’s promises as you stay rooted in God’s Word, holding onto the assurance that God’s grace, love, and promises will remain secure in your life, in the midst of adversity. Face your fears with faith and courage, strengthened by grace, trusting that God will always be with you and that His grace will always provide you with the strength you need. Finally, believe that God truly loves you, for “perfect love casts out fear” (1 John 4:18).

Conclusion

“For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do” (Ephesians 2:10).

“God does not need your strength: he has more than enough power of his own. He asks your weakness: he has none of that himself, and he is longing, therefore, to take your weakness, and use it as the instrument in his own mighty hand. Will you not yield your weakness to him, and receive his strength?” (Charles Spurgeon)

Deny your weakness, and you will never realize God’s strength in you” (Joni Eareckson Tada).

Molded By Grace: The Potter & The Clay Quotes

Sources:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEMqIJx0xe8

https://www.azquotes.com/author/14409-Joni_Eareckson_Tada