Am I the potter or the clay?

Today in church, a sister, a gifted potter showed us an illustration which a cried through the whole thing. It was the beginning stages of shaping a vessel. The first thing she was doing was getting the clay ready. She kept throwing it on the table. Kneading it, pounding it...everytime she did that, I could feel God doing that to me. I would say in my spirit everytime that clay hit the table with a thump...."OW! OW!" But yet it gave me comfort to know I was in the makers hands and His plans for me are good and to prosper me and never to harm me. What a powerful time in worship. I wanted to share where God is leading me right now. It's all on discipline and Hebrews chapter 12.
Quite a few things jumped off the page this time as I read chapter 12. The first thing I noticed was that God said, "endure hardships AS discipline, God is treating you as sons. Hmmmm. Endure hardships as discipline. How many hardships do you have in one day?
Your children as fighting
You husband phones and tells you he won't be home for another whole hour!
You try to have a nap, but your baby won't let you
You got into an accident and have to find a new car
7 am comes too early
Don't have enough money
can't find a sitter
Someone's gitchies are on the bathroom floor AGAIN!


What do I need discipline for? I didn't do anything! Why do I need the discipline? It's them that are fighting! It's Joe that's late! It's faith that keeps waking up! This isn't my fault!
Are any of these things MY fault?
Did I cause any of these hardships?
Could I even have prevented these things from happening?

For those of you not following....the answer is no....

But God says that we need to endure all hardships as discipline. Our God is so efficient cause He uses everything. These are all hardships that He uses for our discipline. To put the whole chapter together it goes like this....

He is the author and perfector of our faith. Not us. If we were, we would get to choose our hardships. If he's the author, then HE writes the story. Take every thing in your life and treat it that God is shaping us for our own good! It never is pleasant at the time, but later on you will reap a harvest of righteousnees and peace...for those who have been trained by it!

Hey, I could go for that right now! I think we could all say, "yeah, can you pass the peace and righteousness?" But God doesn't pass it out without the training first.

-Fix your eyes
-then God treating us as legitimate children, will show us true love by disciplining us for our own good
-endure it
-Strenthshen your weak knees.....the only way to strengthen something is to train, lift weights, use those muscles, DO SOMETHING ABOUT YOUR WEAK KNEES!
-Allow yourself to be trained by the trainer.
-then your harvest will be PEACE and RIGHTEOUSNESS!

I have learned that when my God disciplines me...he is loving me. If he didn't love me, he wouldn't care less. He shows me love when he gives me consequences. If I never got any, I would never turn and repent.

What an amazing God. One that loves like no other and yet could destroy us all if He so chose....but He chooses to woo us into repentance.

Those are my thoughts today.
Blessings to all who visit my blog!