Isaiah 45:9 “Woe to you who strive with your Maker, earthen vessels with the potter! Does the clay say to the one who fashions it, “What are you making”? or “Your work has no handles”? This episode talks about how crazy it is when we tell God how to do things. God knows what He is doing, even without our help. Music:"Adding the Sun" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
God Knows What He Is Doing!
Isaiah 45:9 “Woe to you who strive with your Maker, earthen vessels with the potter! Does the clay say to the one who fashions it, “What are you making”? or “Your work has no handles”?
As soon as I heard this verse the other day I knew I wanted to share it with all of you. As soon as I heard it I thought, “Wait, that is exactly what we do.” This verse is talking about how a clay pot wouldn’t tell the creator how to form it. The potter knows how to form clay. It’s his job. I heard this verse and I instantly felt silly for all the times when I told God how I think He should do things. Yes, I really did that, and I am sure you have to. We see things like they are and we are sure we have the solution of how to make things better. We tell God if He would just do X, Y and Z then everything would work out and everything would be fine. I hope you see, as I do, how crazy this is. Why don’t we realize God has already thought about that? Why doesn’t it occur to us that God has not only thought of that plan, but 5,000 other plans just like it and He has seen the outcome of all those plans. Not just the 5 minutes down the road outcome, or even the 5 years down the road outcome. He has seen the forever down the road outcome.
We think we know better than God because we don’t have the ability to know how things will turn out in the end like He does. We tend to see what is right in front of us and we might be able to look ahead some, but none of us know what is 5, 10 or 20 years in our future. There is too much between us and that future to see how it will turn out. There are too many forks in the road, too many twists and turns for us to see clearly to the end of the road. The same is not true for God. He can look around every twist, every corner and down each fork in the road. He sees what we can’t see and that make Him uniquely qualified to be our Creator. I know I am not telling you something new. I know you know this already, I do too. So… why do we still tell God how to do things?
I wonder if it is because we don’t know what else to do? I wonder if we tell God what to do because we want to help, we want to be useful and yet we know there is nothing we can do to help. But, if we are telling God what to do then we are helping, right?! We are part of the solution? I have a newsflash I know is not going to be a surprise to you. God doesn’t need our help. He doesn’t need our solutions. God is the way maker. He makes a way where there isn’t a way. God is the God of the Impossible. He makes possible what isn’t possible by human standards. God’s got this, He doesn’t need our help or our suggestions. What He would love is our praises! What He would love instead is our gratitude. What He would love is our love and appreciation.
I know some of you are going through a really difficult time right now. I know some of you don’t understand why your situation is the way that it is. I understand the feeling. I have had a lot of situations over the last 20 years that I did not understand. Situations I wouldn’t have thought I would ever be in. Situations I didn’t feel I deserved to be in. I felt I had been faithful to God and I didn’t understand why life was so hard. What I do understand now, that I didn’t understand then is how much of a better person I am because of those trials. I am a better wife and a better mother because I had those trials. I am a better listener because I had those trials. I have provided many other parents with comfort because of the mountains I had to climb. I have been able to offer words of encouragement and words of support instead of words of judgement because of the all that happened in my life.
If you are in a season right now where everything sucks, I promise you a better season is coming. I don’t know when, but you are in the sowing season right now and you will reap the harvest. I almost said soon, but I don’t know if it will be soon. I struggled for 16 years and the struggle is not over yet, so I can’t promise soon. I can promise it will come though. I can promise you God hasn’t forgotten about you. He understands why you think your solutions is better than His and He also knows why that is not true. He knows you just want the hard part to be over and yet He knows why you have to walk through this. I don’t know what your specific circumstance is and I don’t know why you are in that situation. I do know that God can take any awful thing and use if for good.
That doesn’t mean it won’t be awful anymore. I heard it explained one time on the Big Life devotional crap is always crap. Can crap be used for good? Yes, farmers can use it for fertilizer. Does that mean the crap is transformed into something good. No, it is still crap, but it can be used to create something good. If someone takes their pain and uses it to help others, that is taking something bad and using it for good. However, that pain is still their. That thing that happened to cause the pain is still an awful thing that happened. Sometimes when people hear that God will use what is bad for good they are waiting for the hurt to go away. They are waiting to feel happy about what happened. That is not what is meant here. Crap is still crap. You are not suddenly going to feel happy about some awful thing you went through. However, you may be able to use that pain or that sorrow to help others and that can create something beautiful from something awful. I hope that made sense.
God knows what He is doing! We do not have to tell Him what to do. We do not know better than He does. Remember what it says in Isaiah 55:8-9 “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” God’s ways are higher than our ways. As hard as it is to do sometimes, we need to trust God knows what He is doing and instead of telling how He could be doing it better we could ask Him for the strength to endure it, or the strength to get through it. We could pray for whatever it is we need to survive. We can ask Him to help us not just survive but to thrive in any circumstances we find ourselves in!
Dear Heavenly Father, I ask you to bless all those listening to this episode today. Lord we are so grateful your ways are higher than our ways. We are sorry we forget this so often. We are sorry we are constantly telling you how to do things better than you are. Please help us to remember you know better than we do. Lord, we ask you to help all those struggling right now. We ask you to fill them with all they need to make it through this very difficult time. Lord, we ask you give them wisdom to understand what is going on. We ask you to fill them with trust, hope and love. Lord you are amazing. We love you so very much. You are the light of the world and the word made flesh. We are so grateful and we ask all of this in accordance with your will and in Jesus’ holy name, Amen!
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey to walk body with Jesus. Tomorrow’s guest is a friend of mine named Jeremy. I first met Jeremy through his wife Kristiann. We had a mutual friend and when Tony and I were moving to Germany, our friend put us in contact as Kristiann and Jeremy had moved to Germany a few months earlier. It was great to meet someone so soon after getting there. I love that about the military. Everyone helps everyone and someone you know probably knows someone at the new base you are moving to. Jeremy and his wife are no longer in Germany and are now living stateside again. Jeremy is going to give his witness about how he struggled with loss and what happened when He turned to God and told Him “I can’t do this, you need to do it for me.” It is an amazing witness and I can’t wait to share it with you tomorrow. Have a blessed day!