Don’t you just love Sunday mornings? I love gathering with my church family to worship. Yesterday morning we sang a song I call the Potter’s wheel because I don’t know the name of it. Some of the words are still with me this morning.
“Place me on the Potter’s wheel spinning me until there’s nothing left but You in my life. Brokenness is what I want. Do a work deep in my heart so when You look at me all You see is Your reflection.”
As I stood singing the song I realized many of us gather in church and other places to worship and just sing whatever words are on the screen. We don’t think about them or what they are really saying.
How many of you would knowingly, willingly sign up for brokenness? I would venture to say most of us want the end result brokenness brings without the pain and suffering. Paul tells us we will suffer trials in this life [1 Thessalonians 3:2-4]. He says we’re “destined for them.” James tells us we are to consider it pure joy to go through trials [James 1:2]. How many of us look at our problems that way? Not many. Many of us stand around crying out to God, “Why me?” Why not you? Why should we receive all of the blessings of the cross without enduring any of the hardship for it?
We say we want to be like Jesus- to reflect Him to others, yet we only want part of the package. We’d like to have the love, healing, deliverance, salvation part without the persecution or physical and emotional pain and suffering. Jesus took all of our infirmities upon the cross [Isaiah 53:4]. We can bank on it. But as we’ve seen, the Word of God does say we will go through trials. God allows us to go through trials because there is a purpose in the trails we experience.
1 Peter 1:3-7 says “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In His great mercy He has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade- kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith- of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire- may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.”
God uses the difficulties we experience to shape us and mold us more into His likeness so our faith will prove genuine. No one likes a fair weathered friend- even Jesus. We all prefer the real deal. When difficulties come into your life, don’t ask “Why me, God?” Instead, ask “How, God?” If you ask Him how you are going to walk through something, He will show you and even better than that…He will walk with you every step of the way.