“And the word of the Lord came to me. “Oh house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter has done?” declares the Lord. “Behold, like the clay in the potter’s hand, so are you in my hand, oh house of Israel.”
– Jeremiah 18:5–6
Jeremiah 18:5–6 Reminds Us God Is In Control
This is powerful imagery in Jeremiah 18:5–6 that describes our lives in the hands of God. Like clay in a potter’s hand. And the whole picture here is God can do whatever he desires with clay in his hands, with our lives. He can mold us and make us and the intent of this imagery is to cause us to desire God to make and mold us into a noble instrument that’s a display of His goodness and His glory.
Picture your life this way. I picture my life this way, I want to be moldable by God, shapable by God, just totally available to God, in His hands, for Him to form and fashion me however He desires, in a way that I know if I’m trusting in Him, surrendered to Him, just available to Him in that way, that He will mold me in a way that is good and right and glorifying to Him and good for me.
May it be our prayer for God to make us vessels for His glory knowing that He is conforming us more into the image of Christ.
Jeremiah 18:5–6 Leads Us to Pray For God to Transform Us
See your life that way, and let’s just pray together then, God form us today. Form us today like this day, transform our minds and our desires and our thoughts, our affections, our words, our actions, our lives, every facet of them. Our relationships, Lord, do whatever you want in us today. We are clay in your hands. You’re the potter, we’re the clay, we’re not in charge. We’re clay. You’re the potter. You know what is best, you know what is good for our lives and we are asking, oh God, make us instruments. Make us vessels that display your glory. We know that will be good for us, we know that will be good for our families, we know that will be good for the people around us. So have your way in us.
This Verse Leads Us to Surrender Our Lives
Lord, I pray just in my own life, today, for just a deeper level of surrender to you, like clay in your hands. I pray for this for my life, I pray for this for those who are listening to this right now. God, help us not to resist your forming and reforming and fashioning and remaking and transforming, God, please, have your way in us. Help us not to resist that in our lives. Lord, help us to be as clay in your hands. And make us vessels for the display of your glory. Do this today and each day in our lives, we pray. And we pray these things so we might be more conformed into the image of Jesus. Oh God, form us more and more like Jesus, we pray in his name. Amen.
David Platt serves as a pastor in metro Washington, D.C. He is the founder of Radical.
David received his Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and is the author of Don’t Hold Back, Radical, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Before You Vote, as well as the multiple volumes of the Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary series.
Along with his wife and children, he lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area.
