Trusting the Skill of the
Potter
Maybe you've been where I was the night God took drastic steps to get my attention. He had been pursuing me, I realized much later, but I was not about to listen to the Master Potter's call.
I was living in Louisville, Kentucky, and had a position as staff singer at a local radio station. I had Tom with me at the time. Suddenly a polio epidemic hit the area. I came home from the radio station one day to find Tom vomiting and screaming with pain. I immediately took him to the hospital. They ran a long needle down his spine to draw fluid to see if he had polio.
While he was being examined, I paced the corridor, praying, begging God to keep Tom from having polio. I remember pleading with God, "Let my boy be all right! You can have my life, but let me have my boy."
A Miracle
Even though the doctors had been sure it was polio, the report was negative. Based on the symptoms, I
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can only say it was a miracle that it was not polio. I was relieved, and I went to church, giving thanks to God.
I continued to struggle to survive financially. With the Depression on, I had to take Tom to my folks' farm in Texas, where he would be safe and in school. My mother, who was a remarkable Christian, took over the training.
Like many who make promises during a crisis, I forgot my promise to God, for soon the cares of making a living and providing for Tom again overwhelmed me. God had done His part to get me onto the wheel of the Master Potter, but I quickly removed myself and remained in control.
Relationships are a two-way street. The Bible is filled with examples of God wanting to develop a deep and intimate relationship with people; yet, the people were not ready to let Him into their lives — except in cases of emergency.
In my case, God was there waiting for me to submit to His shaping, to enter into a truly vital relationship with Him. But I thought I could get by with church appearances and Bible reading in times of crisis. What my actions were saying to God was, "I can't trust You with everything I am and want to be. I'm not convinced You are skilled enough and care enough about me as a person to entrust myself to You and Your shaping of me."
Remember the story of the spies Moses sent to check out Canaan? Of the twelve who visited the land God had promised them, ten were in the category of God-doubters. They were convinced that despite the abundant crops and the richness of the land, God could not give them victory over the giants living in
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the land. Those spies reached that conclusion despite the fact that God had sent the plagues to force Pharoah to release them from bondage in Egypt. He had divided the water in the Red Sea so they could all march through to escape the pursuing Egyptian army. On top of that, He had let the waters return in time to wipe out the Egyptian strike force. The Israelites had run short of water in the desert only to have God provide water from a rock in response to Moses' command. They had seen God supply manna as a daily provision, and meat as a special provision. Still, they doubted that God could be trusted to help them conquer those living in Canaan.
Only Joshua and Caleb had developed enough trust in God to say: "Let us go up at once and take possession, for we are well able to overcome it" (Num. 13:30).
They were overruled by popular vote. Instead of seeing God provide miraculously for them, all of those original people, except for Joshua and Caleb, died in the desert during the next forty years — only the offspring experienced the bounty God had prepared for them all.
The people of Israel did not change much over the next thousand years. Yes, there were brief periods where they turned to their God, especially during the reigns of kings like David and Hezekiah. But the human tendency to try to run our own show, to worship idols of our own choosing, was demonstrated in them over and over again.
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Digging Our Own Cisterns
Isaiah's prophecies about the coming Messiah are well known, especially since Handel incorporated some of them in his great oratorio Messiah. Yet Isaiah also lamented the failure of the people in Judah to follow the Lord, calling them "a rebellious people, / Lying children, /Children who will not hear the law of the LORD" (Isa. 30:9).
That certainly described me. For years I did exactly what Jeremiah accuses the people of Judah of doing:
My people have committed two evils: They have forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters, And hewn themselves cisterns—broken cisterns that can hold no water. (Jer. 2:13)
That's what I did when I eloped with my first sweetheart, even though I was active in church as a youth leader. That spring about six couples from our high school eloped. We went across the state line so no one could stop us. I said I was going to spend the night with a girlfriend but went to my boyfriend's hometown instead. We were married in the home of a Baptist preacher, with his wife as witness.
We took off for Tennessee. I discovered that even though he was four years older than I, my new husband was a thoroughly spoiled boy. His parents were divorced and shared custody. And both had spoiled him. He had never been denied much.
We had a terrible time financially. He had to take a job, after having worked only for his father. After Tom was born, we had to sell my husband's car to pay some bills. He just could not cope. So just before Easter he took me to my mother, who lived in Memphis at the time.
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His brother and sister said they would come and pick me up in a week. But he never came back. Instead he wrote me a letter saying that he wanted to be free.
I cried for a year. I thought my life was over. I even thought of committing suicide — I was so hurt, so crushed. Since he wanted it, I finally filed for divorce.
While I read the Bible through and gained a lot of courage from the Psalms, I did not really turn my life over the Master Potter. I was determined to show my ex that I could make it on my own, just as the people of Israel repeatedly left the Lord and dug out their own cisterns.
I took a business course and went to work in Memphis. I started singing and playing the piano at a radio station, developing quite an audience. I was working for Clarence Saunders, the developer of the Piggly Wiggly chain, the first serve-yourself stores. One day I came out at lunchtime, and there was my ex-husband sitting on the curb.
Even though I cried many tears, I still had a crush on him. So I agreed when he said, "I want to talk with you. See if you can get off this afternoon, and we'll go to the show." I got off, and as we sat in the show he said, "I want you to come back." I said, "My mother will never take me back if you leave me again." He replied, "I'll take out some insurance on my life [so even if something happened to him, I'd be taken care of]. You won't have to worry."
He was so convincing that I agreed to go back with him. But when I went home and told my mother, she said, "If you go back to him, and he leaves you again, don't come home." Since I had my little boy, I had to make a responsible choice — and turned down the opportunity to be reunited.
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Later I was thankful to my mother, for my ex-husband became an alcoholic and married two more times, mistreating his wives. One day when his sister refused to go fishing with him, he committed suicide.
Yet even that escape from what surely would have continued to be a terrible marriage did not make me turn my life over to God. Like Israel, I actually became hardened against God, rejecting His overtures of love.
Why Trust the Master Potter?
Why should we trust our Savior, Jesus Christ, as our Master Potter? What evidence do we have that He truly is skilled enough to shape us into whole people who glorify Him?
Let's think of how an earthly potter gets started. He takes clay dug out of the ground, adds water, and stirs the mixture until it has an even consistency. All lumps must be broken down, for they will weaken the object being made. The quality of the clay put on the potter's wheel is totally dependent on the skill of the potter in preparing it for shaping.
What the potter then starts with is a nondescript lump of clay with no particular shape. Only the hands of a skilled potter can shape that lump in a useful object.
Even such a "minor" thing as how the clay is centered on the small platform on the wheel is vital. If the lump of clay is not accurately centered on the potter's wheel, the elliptical action makes shaping a round object impossible. While the resulting object can bring a lot of laughter, it is no laughing matter for the potter.
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Knowing how to develop the exact texture in a lump of clay and how to place it correctly on the wheel so it is easily handled are two critical steps to the successful creation of an object. Only a truly skilled potter can produce a truly beautiful object.
Buyers know which pottery-making friend they can trust to produce a truly well-formed, beautiful object. Their trust has been built by seeing that potter make many beautiful objects. Trust is developed by demonstrated skill.
Let's extend that analogy to human beings in relationship to the Master Potter. Who is this Person who insists on our being the clay while He does His thing as a potter? God described Himself to the people of Israel and Judah through Isaiah, the prophet:
Thus says the LORD, your Redeemer, And He who formed you from the womb: I am the LORD, who makes all things, Who stretches out the heavens all alone, Who spreads abroad the earth by Myself." (Isa. 44:24)
Now if during the time I was refusing to let God take control of my life you had asked me if I believed God had created everything, I would have emphatically agreed He was the Creator. That had been drilled into me in Sunday school and in the youth group. But the implications of that did not hit home until many years later.
My musical talents, a gift from God? That's what the preacher kept saying, but He wasn't the one practicing at the piano long hours, learning new songs, adapting my style to that favored by most people.
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Trust God with my talents? Not when I had worked so hard to develop them!
And who got me onto radio in Memphis, Louisville, and Dallas? Who got me the opportunity to sing with a group at the Blackstone Hotel in Chicago? Who got me five shows a week as a singer on CBS, with a commercial on Sunday? I did, through a lot of effort — and maybe some luck — or so I thought.
Only later did I realize that the God to whom I paid lip service was in reality the Master Designer, the Master Potter. He was at work even during my rebellious years, preparing me for when I would yield control to Him. My twenty-five years of life under my own control have been followed by fifty-nine years under His control — and those have been the truly productive and satisfying ones. But that could not happen until I was willing to truly trust the Master Potter.
He is Eager to Guide
Yet it is not only the fact that God formed us in the womb for His purposes that should make us willing to trust Him as Master Potter. God did not just create us and then forget about us. In a pronouncement very similar to the one in Isaiah 44, God speaks in Isaiah 48:17:
Thus says the LORD, your Redeemer, The Holy One of Israel: "I am the LORD your God, Who teaches you to profit, Who leads you by the way you should go."
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The Lord adds something I wish I had paid attention to early in my life as an adult: "Oh, that you had heeded My commandments! / Then your peace would have been like a river, / And your righteousness like the waves of the sea" (Isa. 48:18).
That's the Lord who is asking us to let Him be the Master Potter in our lives. That's the Savior who is asking us to trust Him with our future.
One of the men I admire most did that. Leonard Eilers grew up in North Dakota. He had a very difficult childhood. After being a cowboy for some years, he came to Hollywood, where Cecil B. DeMille picked him up to be a cameraman. But God got a hold of Leonard, and he gave up his position to go to the Bible Institute of Los Angeles. After graduation he became a pastor, but his primary ministry was to cowboys in the movie industry.
Leonard Eilers is an amazing person. He never had any big churches. He never had any huge gatherings. He was never a big-time evangelist, and he certainly never became a star. But he was faithful.
Leonard used to liken people to horses. He'd talk about God's having to tame them. He'd do rope tricks while in the saddle for children's meetings, talking about the Lord and "the last roundup." But his most important ministry was to cowboys in the movies, where he was known as the preaching cowboy.
I loved to read what Leonard Eilers wrote, written so beautifully using cowboy language. It just broke my heart that no publisher would accept his writing.
If Leonard Eilers had not been willing to accept the Master Potter as a teacher and attend the Bible Institute of Los Angeles, and if Leonard had not been willing to let the Lord direct his way, I don't know what
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we would have done when our special child, Robin, was born — and died two years later.
You see, one day soon after I submitted to the Master Potter there was a knock on the door of our big, old Spanish house in Hollywood. When I opened the door, there stood a woman whose husband was a cowboy preacher — and who had been quietly, persistently witnessing to Roy. I hardly knew her, but I invited her in.
Frances Eilers brought a Bible, on the flyleaf of which she had written Proverbs 31. I took her to a famous Hollywood restaurant, the Brown Derby, for lunch. That started an extremely important friendship for me, for God used her to do a lot of reshaping in me. Even more important is the example she and Leonard were to me.
When Robin, our special little angel, died, Frances was the first person I called. She came over and took me in her car and let me cry for two hours while the funeral director came to pick up Robin's body, while Leonard sat with Roy. God really used this woman to bring peace into my life during some of God's most difficult shaping periods.
All of this became possible only because Leonard decided to accept at face value God's promise to teach him what is best, and to direct him in the way he "should go." What a role model he and Frances became to both Roy and me!
A Caring God
The skill of the Master Potter also expresses itself in the attitude with which He shapes us. Tom Peters and his wife frequently remind readers in their book
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In Search of Excellence that the difference between a successful, profitable company and one that does not make it is usually a matter of attitude. If everyone is oriented to helping the customer with a friendly, caring attitude, customers will come back again and again.
During the writing of this book, a friend and his wife moved from their own home in California into an apartment in Nashua, New Hampshire, to be close to a son and his family. Any move is traumatic, but one across the country, going from one's own home into an apartment, creates a whole new range of feelings. And since apartment managers can be difficult, they wondered what the response would be when a maintenance problem arose.
To their delight, the complex's sales staff proved to be both friendly and consistently helpful, even volunteering to help move furniture. When my friend's wife turned in a "laundry list" of maintenance problems after taking possession of the apartment on a Saturday, a maintenance representative showed up on Monday to correct all the problems. He even replaced old and noisy equipment — and volunteered to help hang pictures.
My friend thus was not surprised when he and his wife met tenant after tenant who had been in the same apartment for years. In today's world, considerate, caring landlords are a prized jewel.
It took me years to realize that God also is a truly caring, loving Lord. My picture of God had been that of a holy, righteous God ready to whip me in line when I did wrong. Somehow I missed passages like Hosea 11:3-4:
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"I taught Ephraim to walk, Taking them by their arms; But they did not know that I healed them. I drew them with gentle cords, With bands of love, And I was to them as those who take the yoke from their neck. I stooped and fed them."
Only after I submitted to the shaping of the Master Potter did I discover Lamentations 2:22-23: "Through the LORD's mercies we are not consumed, / Because His compassions fail not. / They are new every morning; / Great is Your faithfulness."
That's why I failed to heed His call as I attended churches to make sure that Tom got the right start in life, while refusing to agree to His leading for my life.
Healing the Wounded
God's love, His compassion, and unfailing kindness do not prevent Him from shaping us in ways that at the time are painful indeed. But the pain of the shaping is always matched by the Master Potter's skill in healing the wound.
The fact that God's skill in healing should reassure us is a constant theme in the prophetic writing of the Old Testament. While God comes down hard on disobedience and consistent rebellion, He often reminds Israel that He is the God who heals as well. After Hosea had, on the basis of an order from God, restored an unfaithful, promiscuous wife and accepted her unconditionally, he writes:
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Come, and let us return to the LORD; For He has torn, but He will heal us; He has stricken, but He will bind us up. After two days He will revive us; On the third day He will raise us up, That we may live in His sight. (Hos. 6:1-2)
Never was that more evident than when I submitted to the Master Potter as a result of Dr. Jack MacArthur's message. The relief I felt, the healing of the soul I received, changed my whole outlook on life. I not only had fellowship with my Lord, but my fears were gone as well. I gained new confidence as a mother of three children, knowing that I now had the Savior and His love with me at all times. I came to understand what the apostle Paul meant when he wrote to the Ephesians:
He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height—to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge; that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. (Eph. 3:16-19)
As the Master Potter began His sometimes painful shaping in my life, I recognized more and more how wide, how long, how high, and how deep is the love of Christ. And I rejoiced in being able to share it with others as I spoke.
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The skill of the Master Potter is far beyond my comprehension, but in time I have learned to appreciate many aspects of it. In the coming chapters I want to share more of what it means to be shaped by the Master Potter, so that you, too, can enjoy the richness of His care and provision.
Reflecting on the Shaping
1. What experience before you encountered the Master Potter personally revealed that the Master Potter could be trusted?
2. Why were Joshua and Caleb so positive that God could be trusted to give the Israelites the victory over the inhabitants of Canaan?
3. Who are some of the caring persons who have helped you recognize the loving care of the Master Potter?
4. What qualities of the Master Potter are important to you after reading Hosea 11:3-4 and Lamentations 3:22-23?
