In Jeremiah, chapter eighteen, verse two, “Arise, and go down to the potter’s house, and there I will cause thee to hear my words.” Jeremiah was told to go to a potter’s house, where he watched a potter fashioning a vessel out of clay. Because the vessel was not suitable for what the potter intended, he had to remould it into something other than what he had first designed.
This parable contains several important principles for God’s work in our lives. First, our submission to God as the One who holds both our character and service to Him determines to a large extent what He can do for us. Second, a lack of fervent commitment to God can frustrate His original purpose for us, as in verse ten of this theme chapter. “If it do evil in my sight, that it obey not my voice, then I will repent of the good, wherewith I said I would benefit them.” Third, God remains free to change His intentions for our lives. If He has planned goodness and blessings for us and if we rebel against Him, He may then shape us into vessels destined for destruction, as in verses seven through eleven, chapter nineteen, verses ten to eleven, and Romans nine, verse twenty-two, respectively.
On the other hand, if we are, through our own stubbornness, vessels headed for destruction, but then we repent, God will begin to shape us into vessels of honour and blessing, as in Second Timothy two, verses twenty through twenty-one. There is a song related to the theme title, “Have thine own way, Lord.” One verse states, “Thou art the potter, I am the clay, mould me and make me after thy will, while I am waiting, yielded, and still.” Are we? As God works on us?