The Potter’s Wheel

Steps for Creating Pottery

1. Preparing Clay: Rolling and mixing the clay to get all the bubbles out is very important. If the bubbles are not removed in the very first step they can cause the clay to break or explode during the firing stage.
2. Center the Clay on the Wheel: Placement is important and must be precise.
3. Create the Form: Create the design the artist has in mind. The design was previously decided and planned out with a specific purpose in mind.
4. Use String to Cut Piece off the Hump: Quickly and accurately cut your piece of pottery off the larger amount of clay.
5. Place to Dry: They must be placed carefully to dry. Cover and leave alone for 1-2 days.
6. Add Signature: The potter places their personal mark on the clay.
7. Fire: The piece must go in a very hot fire (1112-2912 F). This process leads to permanent change in the piece. It also increases the strength and rigidity of the pottery. The clay maintains its flexibility until you cure it in the oven, meaning you can shape and reshape your creations as many times as you want. After you put your clay into the oven, it will then maintain its exact shape and color as it hardens.

Isaiah 64:8 Yet, O Lord, You are our Father; We are the clay, and You our Potter, And we all are the work of Your hand.

So many times we ask God to mold us, change us, and make us more like Him. We want to walk in anointing, but as soon as He starts the process we jump off the Potter’s wheel.

He puts us on the wheel, and we jump right back off because it is painful. He begins to sculpt, pull, and stretch us and we don’t like the pain of the process so we stop it. The only way for us to grow and change is to be stretched and molded.  

If we want endurance, we must go through situations that cause us to endure.

If we want patience, we must go through situations that create patience.

If we want faith, we must go through situations that create faith.

If we want to look more like Him, self (flesh) must die. We cannot be more like Him without being less like us.

When Jesus says count the cost, pick up our cross, and follow Him I 100% believe He is asking us: Are we willing to live like He lived, are we willing to go through what He went through (not necessarily death), but are we willing to die to self. Are we willing to let ourselves be molded by Him and changed into who He wants us to be, who He created us to be? Are we willing to get in the refiner’s fire to burn out all the impurities?

Luke 9:23 And He was saying to them all, “If anyone wishes to follow Me [as My disciple], he must deny himself [set aside selfish interests], and take up his cross daily [expressing a willingness to endure whatever may come] and follow Me [believing in Me, conforming to My example in living and, if need be, suffering or perhaps dying because of faith in Me].

Luke 14:25-33 Now large crowds were going along with Jesus; and He turned and said to them, “If anyone comes to Me, and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life [in the sense of indifference to or relative disregard for them in comparison with his attitude toward God]—he cannot be My disciple. Whoever does not carry his own cross [expressing a willingness to endure whatever may come] and follow after Me [believing in Me, conforming to My example in living and, if need be, suffering or perhaps dying because of faith in Me] cannot be My disciple. For which one of you, when he wants to build a watchtower [for his guards], does not first sit down and calculate the cost, to see if he has enough to finish it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is unable to finish [the building], all who see it will begin to ridicule him, saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish!’ Or what king, when he sets out to meet another king in battle, will not first sit down and consider whether he is strong enough with ten thousand men to encounter the one who is coming against him with twenty thousand? Or else [if he feels he is not powerful enough], while the other [king] is still a far distance away, he sends an envoy and asks for terms of peace. So then, none of you can be My disciple who does not [carefully consider the cost and then for My sake] give up all his own possessions.

Do we really know what dying to self looks like? Do we really understand being fully surrender?

Molded by God on the Potters Wheel

We don’t even know what we were created to be, but so many times we start asking and questioning God, saying, “I don’t know what you’re doing here. I don’t like the way you are designing me; I don’t think it needs to be done that way. I think I could be used this way, or I think I need to be molded that way. I think this is my purpose and what You should be creating me to be.”

We try to take the place of the Artist. We start telling Him what we are good at and what we think we need to be doing with our time. We try to fit Him into the calling and gifting we want and not the other way around. He is molding us to be a cup and we complain because we want to be the plate.

How many times do we see the callings, anointing, gifts, ministries of others and get jealous and want what they have? But in reality, we have no idea what it cost them to be where they are. We may say I want their calling, I want their gift, I want their anointing, I want their ministry, but we have no idea the cost of their calling. We have no idea what their molding process looked like. We have no idea what their firing process was like. We just see the end result and want it. Sometimes we get so busy looking at what others have that we totally miss what God is trying to do in our own lives. We want the end result, but do we want the process? Are we willing to stay on the Potters wheel? Are we willing to allow Him to burn out the impurities? 

We pray and say, “Lord I want to be more like you.”  But then He puts us on the wheel and starts molding us, changing us and then we start questioning Him. “Why are you doing this? Why are you doing that? What are you doing to me? Why is life so hard? Why don’t You answer this prayer? Why don’t You operate on my timing?”  

Remember step 5:Place to Dry: They must be placed carefully to dry. Cover and leave alone for 1-2 days. Sometimes God is quiet. Sometimes we have to be okay sitting in the silence. We can’t fall apart when He doesn’t answer like we want Him to. When He doesn’t respond in the time we think He should. Maybe how we respond to His silence is part of our process?  

We forget He is the Potter and we are the clay. We forget the clay has no right to tell the Potter what its purpose is, how to create it, or what process to use in its creation. The only thing the clay can do is willingly yield to be molded by the Potter.

Molding is painful and at the end, after being molded, we have to go into the firing process. We have to be put into the fire that creates the lasting effects of the molding process. We have to go into the refiner’s fire that burns out all the impurities and sets us in place. If we don’t go through the baking portion of the process, then it does not create the lasting change because once the Potter molds us, we are still flexible. We can crush or bend, we can be shifted and distorted back into who we were. But once we go through the firing process that is when the changes are solidified. The baking, the fire, the kindling that is what creates the lasting change and sets the molding and shaping in place. We cannot have a finished piece of clay pottery without the firing process.

We must have both: molding and firing. We must allow the Potter to mold us, shape us, grow us, and make us what He wants us to be and then to we must allow Him to put us in the fire to set us in place. We must go through the baking to pull out all the moisture and drive out everything that doesn’t belong so that we are solidified and molded into what He has created us to be. It is not a one and done process. It is a lifelong process that we must submit to.

If we want the things of God and if we want to walk in the callings and the anointing of God, it will be painful and it will cost us. It does not come free, and it does not come easy. It will cost us something. It is not just handed out. That’s why the Bible says count the cost. Are we really willing to pay the cost for what it takes to walk in His anointing, His calling, and to be molded by Him? Do we want to just go about our lives being nominal Christians and not changing our world? Or do we want to lay ourselves down and allow Him to make us who He wants us to be and walk in the calling that He has given us to walk in?  Are we ready to be the people of God that He has called us to be?

We are in a time and age that people need Jesus more than ever. They need us to share Him. It is time to speak out, they need us to be bold. They need us to speak the truth found in His Word. We will only do those things if we stop looking at ourselves. We must get our eyes on the Kingdom. We must get our eyes focused on Him and start looking at eternity. We must let God mold us and make us who He wants us to be. We can’t get off the wheel until He molds us exactly like He wants us and then puts us in the fire to solidify who He’s called us to be. That is when we will turn our world upside down.  Are we really willing to pay the cost?

Mark 8:34-36 Jesus called the crowd together with His disciples, and said to them, “If anyone wishes to follow Me [as My disciple], he must deny himself [set aside selfish interests], and take up his cross [expressing a willingness to endure whatever may come] and follow Me [believing in Me, conforming to My example in living and, if need be, suffering or perhaps dying because of faith in Me]. For whoever wishes to save his life [in this world] will [eventually] lose it [through death], but whoever loses his life [in this world] for My sake and the gospel’s will save it [from the consequences of sin and separation from God]. For what does it benefit a man to gain the whole world [with all its pleasures], and forfeit his soul?

But the good news is He loves us. He is kind, faithful, caring and loving.

Romans 8:35-39 Who shall ever separate us from the love of ^[a]Christ? Will tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? ³⁶ Just as it is written and forever remains written, “For Your sake we are put to death all day long; We are regarded as sheep for the slaughter.” Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors and gain an overwhelming victory through Him who loved us [so much that He died for us]. For I am convinced [and continue to be convinced—beyond any doubt] that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present and threatening, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the [unlimited] love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

We can trust Him. He is faithful.

Numbers 23:19 “God is not a man, that He should lie, Nor a son of man, that He should repent.
Has He said, and will He not do it? Or has He spoken and will He not make it good and fulfill it?

Lamentations 3:22-23 It is because of the Lord’s loving kindnesses that we are not consumed,
Because His [tender] compassions never fail. They are new every morning; Great and beyond measure is Your faithfulness.

He will continue His work on us as long as we stay on the wheel.

Philippians 1:6 I am convinced and confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will [continue to] perfect and complete it until the day of Christ Jesus [the time of His return].

Check out the full video teaching: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F190z-gcnp8

Blessings,

Nichole Henson, Fullness of Joy Ministry

Find us on FaceBook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/351690279198647