The Lord said to Jeremiah, "'Go down to the potter's house, and there I will give you my message.' So I went down to the potter's house, and I saw him working at the wheel. But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands; so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him" (Jeremiah 18:1-4).
This figure of the potter and his power over the clay is used in the Bible to show God's awesome sovereign power over our lives. God is the potter, we are the clay, and the wheel is the circumstances that God brings into our lives to form and shape us into the person that He wants us to be. Isaiah wrote, "O Lord, you are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand" (Isaiah 64:8). Paul wrote, "But who are you, O man, to talk back to God? Shall what is formed say to him who formed it, 'Why did you make me like this?' Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for noble purposes and some for common use? (Romans 9:18-22).
We do not have any right to challenge God about what He does with us. He created us and He can make of us whatever He desires. That would terrify me if I didn't know that God loves me and would never do anything to harm me. God wants to make each of us into a vessel of honor, but He has given each of us a free will, and He leaves the choice of what we want to be in our hands. We can be a vessel of dishonor or we can be a vessel of honor for His glory.
The potter knows what he wants to make out of each lump of clay. That lump of clay doesn't have a clue; it has no idea what is in the mind of the potter. The only way the clay can discover what is in the mind of the potter is to yield completely to the potter's touch. In the same manner, we do not know what God has in store for our lives, but by yielding our life completely to the work of God, gradually we begin to see and understand the shape that God is making us into. And ultimately we begin to experience the beauty of God's work in our lives as we become vessels that God can use for His glory and honor. If we will yield to His touch, He will make us into a vessel that He can use for His purposes; He will make our life into something that is valuable and beautiful for His glory.
If you resist what God is seeking to do in your life, if you do not want to yield your life to God and your only desire is to please yourself, if you want to control your own destiny, doing your own thing, demanding your own way, then you will become marred in God's hands and you will become a vessel of dishonor, and as far as eternal things are concerned, totally without value. Jesus said, "I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in Me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from Me you can do Nothing" (John 15:5).
As God begins His work in our lives, we have a tendency to get impatient, but God is still working us over, getting all the lumps out, creating a pliable bit of clay that He can work with. As He is working in this process, sometimes we cannot figure out what is happening, but God is getting us ready so He can begin to form and shape us into something that He can use for His glory. This preparation is an important process in the developing of our lives, because we are so slow to yield to God's touch. The Bible encourages us to be patient with the Lord and ourselves. Paul wrote, "Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up" (Galatians 6:9). James wrote, "But let patience have its perfect work, that you might be perfect and complete, lacking nothing" (James 1:4).
After we have yielded ourselves to God, He places us in the center of His wheel of circumstances. The circumstances of our lives are the instruments that God uses to shape us, and sometimes it is necessary for God to use pain, there is a certain quality of character that cannot be formed apart from pain. It is hard for us to understand why He would allow this pain in our lives, but He is forming us, He is making us into a vessel that He can use for His glory and sometimes it does involve painful situations.
Sometimes God uses sorrow to develop character within us. It is impossible to understand someone's suffering unless you have also suffered in the same manner. Paul wrote, "Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort. Who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God" (2 Corinthians 1:3-4). Because we experienced God's compassion and comfort in our sorrow, we can show God's compassion and comfort to others as they go through those heavy trials and hard experiences.
Each of us has a choice; we can be a self-centered vessel of dishonor, or we can yield our lives to God and be a vessel of honor. Jesus said, "If anyone would come after Me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow Me" (Luke 9:23).