Trusting the Potter

     Can we learn to lean on and trust God with our future? Our natural instinct is to follow our feelings, to allow our circumstances to overtake us with worry and stress. I pray you are focusing on the Words of Scripture in these devotions. The Word of God will change your life, more than words from someone else, more than a forty-five minute visit to a church pew on Sunday mornings. So many of us believe the Bible is impossible to figure out, intimidating and foreign. That is just what Satan wants you to believe.

     Scripture often interprets Scripture. The Old Testament is just as vital and relevant to our lives as the New. As the Words of Scripture become etched in our hearts and in our minds, we become prepared to trust God through the most terrifying events of our lives and we learn to trust Him to overcome our deepest grief and fear.

     Will we ever get to the point of trusting Him completely? Boy, I hope so. I’m still working on that one, but He will not give up on these jars of clay. The Holy Spirit within us can become stronger than our will and emotions as we listen to His voice above the other competing voices surrounding us each day. His deep and abiding joy can be our strength.

     I can testify to that. Dealing with an eye disease that has left me with no peripheral vision is a struggle as I attempt to navigate the world around me. I need to rely on others to safely guide me, to chauffeur me and to help decipher small print. I am grateful for my husband and daughters and so many thoughtful and caring friends. We need each other don't we?

     God has found purpose and passion for me even as I deal with this weakest part of my body. How about you? Have you found God’s strength in the midst of suffering and weakness? Do you have verses to comfort you, specific verses meant just for you? Allow me to share one of my favorite verses with you. I believe Isaiah is speaking to the spiritually blind, but this speaks to my physical blindness as well.

I will lead the blind by ways they have not known, along unfamiliar paths I will guide them; I will turn the darkness into light before them and make the rough places smooth. These are the things I will do; I will not forsake them.  Isaiah 42:16

     He has taken me along new and adventurous paths. He has turned the toughest parts ot the years into smooth sailing once again and He has never, not once, left me alone or forsaken. His light is the only light that really matters in this ever-increasing darkness.

     Take hold of His mighty hand today and open yourself to His plan for you. Worried or in deep grief? Search through His Word. It is written for you. It is powerful and it is life and it is truth. It will teach you the lessons that matter most, the lessons of the Spirit.

Dear Father in heaven,

You will never leave us and You will continue to fill these empty pots, work  around and through our flaws and weaknesses and allow the fires of life to make us strong and wise. Thank you for Jesus, the light of the world. May He shine in each heart today and always.

Amen