August 17

But now, O LORD, You are our Father; we are the clay, and You are the potter; we are all the work of Your hand. — Isa 64:8 BSB

Until free will, self-righteousness, human efforts, and personal merit are completely dried up and withered away—until they die—none of us can truly come to the place where we are the clay, and God is the Potter. Can clay shape itself into a vessel? Can it mold itself into a form of use or beauty? Can it rise from the ground and make itself a vessel for honor? No more can we make ourselves fit for glory or mold ourselves into vessels of honor for God’s service. If the Lord gives us this understanding in our souls, we will come to see that our sweetest privilege and greatest joy is to simply be the clay in His hands.

Free will, self-righteousness, human wisdom, and creaturely strength—we give all these to the Pharisees; let them make what they will of them. But when the Lord blesses our souls with some measure of access to Himself, and brings us in humility and brokenness to lie low before His throne, we realize that we are nothing except what He makes us, we have nothing except what He gives us, and we experience nothing except what He works in us. To be in that place, to lie there in humble submission, is to be the clay. To feel the Lord working in us—bringing forth holy desires, fervent prayers, secret cries, and the acts of faith, hope, and love—is to know that these things are freely given, graciously communicated, and divinely wrought in us. When we understand that the Lord is doing all this for us and in us, we find Him to be the Potter, and we are brought to the sweetest, lowliest, and happiest place that a soul can be in.