Jeremiah 18:1 The word which came to Jeremiah from the LORD saying, 2 “Arise and go down to the potter’s house, and there I will announce My words to you.” 3 Then I went down to the potter’s house, and there he was, making something on the wheel. 4 But the vessel that he was making of clay was spoiled in the hand of the potter; so he remade it into another vessel, as it pleased the potter to make. 5 Then the word of the LORD came to me saying, 6 “Can I not, O house of Israel, deal with you as this potter does?” declares the LORD. “Behold, like the clay in the potter’s hand, so are you in My hand, O house of Israel.”
Isaiah 64:6 For all of us have become like one who is unclean, And all our righteous deeds are like a filthy garment; And all of us wither like a leaf, And our iniquities, like the wind, take us away. 7 There is no one who calls on Your name, Who arouses himself to take hold of You; For You have hidden Your face from us And have delivered us into the power of our iniquities. 8 But now, O LORD, You are our Father, We are the clay, and You our potter; And all of us are the work of Your hand. 9 Do not be angry beyond measure, O LORD, Nor remember iniquity forever; Behold, look now, all of us are Your people.
The issue of coming to the Lord as clay may seem like a work to many people, but it is far from the work that a man can do, but instead this is the work of the Lord. The clay must be softened by the water of the Word which must be rubbed into the clay by the Divine hand in order for the clay to be softened according to the touch of the Master. The sovereign Lord is the Potter and He makes clay into vessels as He pleases and not all are alike. But for hearts that are hard and stony to be come soft enough to be considered clay is in the hands of God. Instead of working this in himself, man must seek the Lord to do the work. This too, however, is far beyond the ability of man who has no ability in this. The Lord must draw the sinner and part of that drawing is His working in the sinner a sense of helplessness and giving the sinner a sight of grace and of Christ. This drawing and this dying to self may be a longer work or a shorter work depending on the Lord.
It is a startling awakening for a person who thinks that he is the captain of his own ship and has free-will to do as he pleases to be awakened to the fact that he is in the hands of a Divine Potter who has been working hardness in his heart or softening his heart as He has pleased. It is a shock to wake up and realize that God has been working through the person’s illusion of free-will and the illusion of a person doing as s/he has pleased and it is His will being done. There are many, many professing “Christians” in the modern day who breezily go on in life thinking that they do as they please and that they came to Christ of their own free-will and of the faith that they worked up. These people believe that they are serving God by doing things for Him as if He needed them. They hate the biblical teaching that God is the Divine Potter and the Divine disposer of all souls and He does with people as He pleases. They think that God is a gentleman and that He would never impose His will on anyone at any point. But this is to have created a god of their own imagination and according to their own desires.
The horror it is for a soul that is awakened from its humanistic slumbers and sees with a terrific jolt that instead of going on in freedom and in free-will it has been living in bondage of sin and in slavery to the devil. The will was not free at all but it was simply following a nature that was bound fast in sin and in the mastery and delusions of the devil. It sees with horrifying reality that it was not free of the devil, of sin, of its own nature, and of God. It now begins to cry out to God to free it from the devil, of sin, and of its own nature. It cries out to the God who has used the secondary causes of the devil, of sin, and of the sinful nature to harden the person. It no longer wants a free-will at all, but instead it wants to be free from all the things that bind it so that it may live in true freedom which is to be a slave of the Lord Jesus Christ.
This is the soul that now realizes that true freedom is to be worked on by God that it may be as soft clay in His hands and finds freedom to be fully His. The devil fights against God’s sovereign hand in forming clay according to His pleasure. The devil fights to deceive people into thinking that it is their own power and ability that must make them religious and give them salvation. The devil works hard to deceive people into thinking that they can come to God as long as they say the name of Jesus, but he does not want them to see that not only must they come as clay to be worked in and on as God pleases, but that this is true freedom. The soul must learn these things through trials and by grace alone, but it must learn to come to God as clay or it will never learn what grace is, what prayer is, or what freedom is. Coming to the Lord with nothing but Christ as our righteousness and as the object of faith is a great work of God in the soul and totally beyond what man can do. It is, however, utterly necessary.
God Loves... Himself 
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