Free Beauty for ashes: receiving emotional healing by Joyce Meyer Page A
Authors: Joyce Meyer
prepare us for God's blessings in our future.Even Jesus had a time of training for His future. Hebrews 5:8-9 says, "Although He was a Son, He learned [active, special] obedience through what He suffered and, [His completed experience] making Him perfectly [equipped], He became the AuthorandSource of eternal salvation to all those who give heedandobey Him."
There was a period in the life of Jesus in which we are told nothing about what was happening to Him. During this time we know that He wasgrowing.We too have times of growth that we may not be able to talk about to anyone. It is an intimate time of growth that we must endure. There may be things going on inside of us that we do not understand. But when we finally arrive at the place God wants to bring us, we will see how our past prepared us for what God wanted for us all along.
I like the story about the couple who went into an antique shop one day and found a beautiful teacup sitting on a shelf. They took it off the shelf, so they could look at it more closely, and said, "We really want to buy this gorgeous cup."
All of the sudden, the teacup began to talk, saying, "I wasn't always like this. There was a time when I was just a cold, hard, colorless lump of clay. One day my master picked me up and said, I could do something with this.' Then he started to pat me, and roll me, and change my shape.
"I said, 'What are you doing? That hurts. I don't know if I want to look like this! Stop!' But he said, 'Not yet.'
"Then he put me on a wheel and began to spin me around and around and around, until I screamed, 'Let me off, I am getting dizzy!' 'Not yet,' he said.
"Then he shaped me into a cup and put me in a hot oven. I
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cried, 'Let me out! It's hot in here, I am suffocating.' But he just looked at me through that little glass window and smiled and said, 'Not yet.'"When he took me out, I thought his work on me was over, but then he started to paint me. I couldn't believe what he did next. He put me back into the oven, and I said, 'You have to believe me, I can't stand this! Please let me out!' But he said, 'Not yet.'
"Finally, he took me out of the oven and set me up on a shelf where I thought he had forgotten me. Then one day he took me off the shelf and held me before a mirror. I couldn't believe my eyes, I had become a beautiful teacup that everyone wants to buy."
Submit to the Potter's Hands
God has an awesome plan for our lives, and sometimes He starts changing things so fast that we feel dizzy and disoriented, like a lump of clay on a potter's wheel. But we have to trust that He is working out what is best for us (see Romans 8:28). We need to just go with the flow and let Him make us into something beautiful. Isaiah understood this process when he wrote, "You have hidden Your face from us . . . Yet, O Lord, You are our Father; we are the clay, and You our Potter, and we all are the work of Your hand" (Isaiah 64:7-8).
To live a victorious Christian life, we have to be willing to let go of the past, die to self, forgive those who have hurt us, and let God take us on to the place of promised blessings that He has prepared for us. No one can promise that everything we want to be different in our lives will be changed into what we want it to be. Some things may never change the way we want them to, but God can change us so much that we will not care.
73
Our comfort has to be in Christ. We need to forget about what others think about us, or what people have done to us in the past. We are to keep our attention on what God wants to do in us, and with us, and for us now. Paul wrote, "For in Him we live and move and have our being" (Acts 17:28).Letting go of the past involves looking to the future in a new way. In Galatians 2:20, Paul offers us a promise that we, who need to let go of past hurts, can now confess: "I have been crucified with Christ [in Him I have shared His crucifixion]; it is no longer I who live, but Christ (the Messiah) lives in me; and the life I now
There was a period in the life of Jesus in which we are told nothing about what was happening to Him. During this time we know that He wasgrowing.We too have times of growth that we may not be able to talk about to anyone. It is an intimate time of growth that we must endure. There may be things going on inside of us that we do not understand. But when we finally arrive at the place God wants to bring us, we will see how our past prepared us for what God wanted for us all along.
I like the story about the couple who went into an antique shop one day and found a beautiful teacup sitting on a shelf. They took it off the shelf, so they could look at it more closely, and said, "We really want to buy this gorgeous cup."
All of the sudden, the teacup began to talk, saying, "I wasn't always like this. There was a time when I was just a cold, hard, colorless lump of clay. One day my master picked me up and said, I could do something with this.' Then he started to pat me, and roll me, and change my shape.
"I said, 'What are you doing? That hurts. I don't know if I want to look like this! Stop!' But he said, 'Not yet.'
"Then he put me on a wheel and began to spin me around and around and around, until I screamed, 'Let me off, I am getting dizzy!' 'Not yet,' he said.
"Then he shaped me into a cup and put me in a hot oven. I
72
cried, 'Let me out! It's hot in here, I am suffocating.' But he just looked at me through that little glass window and smiled and said, 'Not yet.'"When he took me out, I thought his work on me was over, but then he started to paint me. I couldn't believe what he did next. He put me back into the oven, and I said, 'You have to believe me, I can't stand this! Please let me out!' But he said, 'Not yet.'
"Finally, he took me out of the oven and set me up on a shelf where I thought he had forgotten me. Then one day he took me off the shelf and held me before a mirror. I couldn't believe my eyes, I had become a beautiful teacup that everyone wants to buy."
Submit to the Potter's Hands
God has an awesome plan for our lives, and sometimes He starts changing things so fast that we feel dizzy and disoriented, like a lump of clay on a potter's wheel. But we have to trust that He is working out what is best for us (see Romans 8:28). We need to just go with the flow and let Him make us into something beautiful. Isaiah understood this process when he wrote, "You have hidden Your face from us . . . Yet, O Lord, You are our Father; we are the clay, and You our Potter, and we all are the work of Your hand" (Isaiah 64:7-8).
To live a victorious Christian life, we have to be willing to let go of the past, die to self, forgive those who have hurt us, and let God take us on to the place of promised blessings that He has prepared for us. No one can promise that everything we want to be different in our lives will be changed into what we want it to be. Some things may never change the way we want them to, but God can change us so much that we will not care.
73
Our comfort has to be in Christ. We need to forget about what others think about us, or what people have done to us in the past. We are to keep our attention on what God wants to do in us, and with us, and for us now. Paul wrote, "For in Him we live and move and have our being" (Acts 17:28).Letting go of the past involves looking to the future in a new way. In Galatians 2:20, Paul offers us a promise that we, who need to let go of past hurts, can now confess: "I have been crucified with Christ [in Him I have shared His crucifixion]; it is no longer I who live, but Christ (the Messiah) lives in me; and the life I now
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