change everything

Use me, Lord, wash me clean I want to be more like You. Change my mind, change everything, For this is my cry to You: that my thoughts be pure and my actions holy that i would speak the truth and love You only

We sang this song at Wesley the other night; the words are so powerful. Bob talked about the passage in Jeremiah 18 about the clay and the potter.

This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the LORD: "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. (v.1-4)

As an aside, I would like to emphasize how greatly I would appreciate the LORD telling me to head on down to a certain spot with a promise to speak to me clearly and (apparently) audibly there. I hope Jeremiah realizes how fortunate he was.

Then the word of the LORD came to me: "O house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter does?" declares the LORD. "Like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel. If at any time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be uprooted, torn down and destroyed, and if that nation I warned repents of its evil, then I will relent and not inflict on it the disaster I had planned. And if at another time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be built up and planted, and if it does evil in my sight and does not obey me, then I will reconsider the good I had intended to do for it. (v. 5-10)

While Bob was speaking about this passage, I started praying:

27 August
Ruin the ambitions or plans I've made apart from You. Reshape me. Oh... You're already doing it. You started almost a year ago, and You continue to shape me into this more amazing creature, someone I myself am just getting to know - the real and beautiful and honest and free and fully alive Kirby... Demolish the thoughts or ideas that crop up in my mind when they are not from You. Fill me with your Peace. Help me to know and love you, so that I can trust You and relax as you form me. I want to know you. more. please connect with me. I want to be close to You - nearer than I was when I woke up this morning - more intimate with you. I want to taste and see your Goodness. I really really really want to know You - for You to be much more real than anything else in my life.

"Now therefore I say to the people of Judah and those living in Jerusalem, 'This is what the LORD says: Look! I am preparing a disaster for you and devising a plan against you. So turn from your evil ways, each one of you, and reform your ways and your actions.' But they will reply, 'It's no use. We will continue with our own plans; each of us will follow the stubbornness of his evil heart.'" (v. 11-12)

I think that evil is, simply put, an absence of Goodness (a.k.a. God). So even though a year ago, when this entire process began, I wasn't exactly overtaken by malice and orgies and drunkenness and debauchery, I certainly had plenty of selfish ambitions, and therefore, evil ways. Like Israel, I made my own plans. Like Israel, I ignored His warnings of destruction. Like Israel, I continued to follow the stubbornness of my evil heart.

I held on so tightly to what the had LORD planted and built up that its Goodness was suffocated. He destroyed it. He reconsidered the good He had intended for it. He smashed the emerging pottery into a lump of clay. He ruined me.

But this, as it turns out, is wonderful news. You see, its not the end of the story. I am being reshaped. recovered. rebuilt. renewed. redeemed. reclaimed. restored...

ruined for anything less than Him.