8But now, O LORD, thou art our father; we are the clay, and thou our potter; and we all are the work of thy hand. Isaiah 64:8
The last few days I have learned a lot. I love/hate weeks like that 🙂 Because sometimes in order to learn, we have to get rattled a little bit in our beliefs and convictions. I don’t think many of us like that. I don’t.
What I have learned is that I want to continue to be molded and teachable. I desire to be quiet and listen. I want to hear why others believe what they do and then I want to pull out my bible and study it for myself. I want to be able to ask the hard questions and learn.
Pruning usually hurts. But Lord, keep on pruning and bending me! Challenge my convictions. Challenge my beliefs and bring me back to focusing on YOU.
When my personal convictions become an idol, I want to know about it. I want to be shaken, stirred, and changed. Because when it comes down to it, it’s not about me. It’s not about my children or my family. It’s about Him. And only Him.
If I become un-bendable, unteachable, and un-moldable there is a heart problem. Lord please do not allow my heart to become hardened.
Let your love shine through me, Lord! I pray that it is your perfect light beaming from my pores, and not my own dirty, smog filled light trying to push forth to be seen.
Are you struggling with hard questions? Do you have a safe place to ask them? Have you made yourself a soft and graceful place for folks to ask you the hard questions?
Above all, keep fervent in your love for one another, because love covers a multitude of sins. 1 Peter 4:8 (emphasis by me)
I posted on the same theme just today. Good thought here. My prayer this year seems to be: do what you need to do in order that I become what you want me to become.
Blessings on your journey.
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We don’t become a beautiful vessel of His making without the molding and breaking, remolding and refiners fire. Unfortunately we can’t skip steps. Oh, but I pray that we never trade becoming a thing of beauty in His hands for the comfort of avoiding the “hard stuff.”
I do think that one way to avoid hardening of our hearts is by guarding them. One example would be that I would encourage you not to go to any of the blogs that were commenting in a hurtful way. You already know that you are not seeing eye to eye so why subject yourself to something that you know is going to upset you even more or get you stirred up? Did you really need a confirmation that they were being mean spirited? I think you really already knew that, but, as most of us women do you were letting your emotions lead you into obsessing over it. That is where we have to take every thought captive and decide to think on only things that are good, noble, pure, just, and so on. Do you see what I’m saying? Guard your heart against Satan being able to use them to tear you down.
As far as the hard questions you asked in your previous post…it’s not about who is a better Christian you or them? What does that matter anyway? Is that going to assure us a better place in heaven, trying to be a better Christian than someone else? No. Do we need to be a better Christian than someone else to continue to bring people to the saving grace of Christ? No. So, is it ever prudent or relevant to compare ourselves? No, because that doesn’t bring us closer to God in any way. Focusing on Him through prayer, the scriptures and the guidance of the Holy Spirit does. He is the only one who will say “My good and faithful servant.” All the other questions about pride and twisting of scriptures can be boiled down to one answer….Are We Bearing Fruit? It is that simple. He said we will be known by the fruit we bear. Are we bringing others to Christ? Are we witnessing? And in that witness is there patience, kindeness, gentleness …and all other fruits listed.
I think I may actually turn this into a post on my blog 🙂 I hope that helps. ((Hhugs)) -Your sister in Christ – Tiffany
I totally agree with you. I actually didn’t visit the other blogs to obsess though. Sarah Mae seems to really respect one in particular and I was curious what sorts of things she had to say. I never expected to find comments from her saying I was sinning and I left and will never return. I didn’t go to anyone else’s except yours and a few others who obviously didn’t have the same feelings about that topic as the meaner ones. I have learned a long time ago not to keep returning, though I did go back to SM’s blog because she had a new topic. I am going to stay away from that one for a while too.
My questions were more general. I was asking questions I saw those women appear to believe, not ones that I believe. We’re not better than others. If we think we are, then we have an issue of pride. So if it came across that I want to be a better Christian than someone else or I have even an ounce of worry about that, then I apologize because I honestly don’t care. I know my heart and God knows my heart and that’s all that matters 🙂
My focus was mostly on how we as Christians don’t feel safe asking questions of another’s beliefs because others take it as a personal attack, instead of just trying to figure out how they read something into a scripture. We should be able to defend ourselves w/o getting nasty and mean. If we can’t fully say we believe because of xyz and because scripture clearly says xyz then maybe we need to take a second look and see if we’ve made it what we want it to be or clarify that yes, that scripture does in fact says xyz and that is why we take the stance we do. Online is usually not the best place for this because folks can’t hear your voice or see your face and assume that you are being argumentative when in fact, you’re just asking questions.
In Him,
Mel
Amen! And if we aren’t willing to be broken, reshaped, remolded, we aren’t allowing God to reveal himself to us or anyone else. Great article. much love, yo’ Momma (literally!) 🙂 Please feel free to stop by: Don Tolman Self-Care Revolution
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