365 Days of Spirit-Filled Fruits Challenge-Day 82

Last night we attended our Ash Wednesday church service. Admittedly, it has been the first Ash Wednesday service that I have attended since I was a Catholic kid. We sat up close which is not our norm and found it to be a different experience. In the closeness, we were able to truly see the tears in the eyes of the pastor speaking and the emotions on her face. It made the words that she was saying so much more. God makes us into more than just the dust, dirt and clay that we are. At the end of the sermon, the pastor went to a potter’s wheel and began to make a clay bowl as the rest of us came up to have the ashes marked on our foreheads as a sign of humility to Christ and to remind us that we are made new. God’s love for us is beyond our understanding it is so great but I know that his love is within me and I am to become that pitcher, vase, bowl or whatever he is making me into that will do something with that love that will glorify him and build his Kingdom.

1 John 4:9-12 By this the love of God was manifested in us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has beheld God at any time; if we love one another, God abides in us, and His love is perfected in us.

365 Days of Spirit-Filled Fruits Challenge-Day 72

I find it interesting in Job that all his friends are giving him advice but it is misguided advice. The latest friend, Eliphaz tells him to submit to God and be at peace with him; in this way prosperity will come to you. Unfortunately, although he got the first part right in turning to God, asking forgiveness and being obedient to him, the second half is not always the case, a prime example being Jesus who was the ultimate in righteous and yet was led to and nailed on a cross. His friend thought Job had sin that he was being punished for. There are definitely consequences to sin but they are not there to punish but rather to direct you back to the Almighty. I was thinking the other day of the analogy of the clay and the potter. We are the clay and God is the potter. He is sitting at his potting wheel pouring water over us which keeps us from drying out and is shaping us into something. When God is not at the potter’s wheel because we have turned away from him, the evil one is going to suck the life out of us leaving us a dark formless lump of clay, nothing.  We must ask God to come back and sit at the potter’s wheel, than the Holy Spirit will be poured into us giving us life and light and God will work again at shaping us to work into his plan. Will we be like a vase that stands there and shows the beauty of the picked flowers? Will we be like a pot that is mixing something up that will be for all? Or will we be like a pitcher made to pour out water? We will discover his plan for us as we journey through our faith. Job’s friend had his assumptions wrong. It is not about sin and being repentant and obedient to God so that we will have prosperity. It is about being in relationship with him. Job is angry at God but he is still talking to him. We too must keep talking to God through our struggles, troubles and tribulations and ask him to pour the water over us.

Job 23:16-17 God has made my heart faint; the Almighty has terrified me. Yet I am not silenced by the darkness, by the thick darkness that covers my face.