Pleasing Him (Nov 24, 1996)

I was at church Sunday morning. The teaching was on the sermon on the mountian. At one point, I felt the Lord's presense come over me strongly and He started to give me a picture of a vase being spun on the potter's wheel. The Lord told me to grab some paper and start writing, and this is what came out...

A vase was on the potter's wheel, being made. It glaced over at some of the completed vases, which were sitting on a shelf on the wall behind where the potter sat. The vase glaced at itself and saw a big difference ... it's shape was raw, it's color blan and it was not smooth and glossy like those vases on the shelf.

But the potter looked at the vase on his wheel and saw it's potential. He saw how the clay yeilded to His touch, shaping readily to the form in his mind's eye. 'This will clearly be my masterpiece,' the potter smiled to himself. So he worked slowly and carefully, perfecting the vase under his touch.

Meanwhile the vase felt a dispair wash over it. 'I'll never be like those beautiful vases on the wall,' it mourned to itself. 'I wish I could be pleasing to the potter,' it thought. 'I wish I could wear his beauty like those other vases -- I'll never be like them. I'm a blan color, I'm not smooth, my texture is not glossy. I hope I can please him someday...'

And the potter smiled to himeself as he worked and thought, 'what a delight this clay is -- see how it molds to my touch. I can create into this vase all of the beauty I see for it in my mind's eye. What a delight it is to work on this vase...'

Then the Holy Spirit whispered the point of this parable to me -- our perspective of ourselves does not always match the Lord's perspective of us...