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.”
Submitting to the Spirit’s operations is like being laid naked upon a table to be cut for the stone.—Mortification carries death to the enemy of it, and is a stab at the heart. Nature’s conclusion is, “Therefore, not today.” (Thomas Adam, Private Thoughts on Religion)
In the picture God gives His people of the clay and the potter, the clay has no feelings and is simply worked on as the potter pleases. God is the Potter and can do with His people as He pleases. However, the people (the clay) do feel this work and it is painful. To pursue the Potter with a heart that longs to be as the Potter would have it is to pursue what will bring trials and hard things. One picture is indeed the Potter forming the clay as He pleases, but the other side of the picture is the person being taken with nothing on and in the hands of another to take out that which is really hurting (a stone) though it will take surgery to do so.
But involved in this is a lot of self-deception. The soul tells itself that it is not really hurting that bad and it will get better if it is just left alone. But the Potter may let loose the raging passions of the soul and perhaps stay His hand and the soul “feels” like God has left it and has left it forever. But the Divine Physician has infinite wisdom and a steady hand in the work of the scalpel, so the cutting is always in just the right spot. The patient may not want this to happen and flee from it and the pain that it will cause, but God knows what He is doing and the patient should submit completely in His hands and know that despite the suffering and the pain it is best.
In prayer the soul is to seek the face of God, though many mistake prayer for a simple asking God a list of things. In prayer the soul must come to God as the sovereign and it must learn to seek Him regardless of what He asks the soul. The soul must learn to seek the sovereign God even when the soul is being buffeted by trials and hard things in life. The soul must learn to seek the sovereign God even when the soul feels like the person on the hard table without medication and being cut open by a scalpel. The soul must learn to seek the face of God even when the soul feels like it is a small boat on the open water in the middle of an ocean in a fierce storm. The wind and the waves are far more powerful than the little boat and it has the sense that it has not hope, but the wind and the waves are exactly the force that the sovereign God has assigned to it. The wind and the waves cannot overcome the smallest vessel if the Lord upholds it.
Those who love the Lord must come to Him in prayer as the Potter, but also they must come to Him as those who are going to the surgery table. Those who love the Lord will shrink at times from the mortification of sin, but this must happen. Those who love the Lord will look at themselves in great horror as the thoughts and desires of their hearts and mind seemingly overwhelm them, but they must look to the mighty power of the grace of God in the blood of Jesus Christ. There is no help in anyone else and much of the time it seems as if no one else can understand the dying throes of self, but regardless of that the soul must seek Christ.
The Lord Jesus Christ went toward the cross out of His infinite love for the Father and He loved the Father the whole time He was on the cross. The pain and the suffering that He endured during His life and then while on the cross cannot be imagined by a finite mind. When all the blackest and most horrible of sins of the elect were imputed to Christ, He was the guiltiest criminal that the world has ever seen. He was the guiltiest of all since He bore all the sins of all the elect. How horrible must it have been to His holy soul to have had sin counted as His own and He must pay for them if they were to be paid for. How utterly unimaginable must it have been for such a perfectly holy being to be guilty of the most vile of sins. Who can imagine what must have went through His holy mind and heart to have those vile things counted as His. He alone can understand how some are tormented by their own sin. But He alone suffered and died for them so that the elect would never suffer for them in hell.
This is the Savior that we go through in prayer. He alone is our great Mediator and He alone can sympathize with our vile hearts when we don’t feel like we can pray. But even in those times Christ understands and Christ calls us to pray. It is in those times that the people of God are being fashioned into instrument of glory in ways that they cannot understand. So we must look through the pain and agony of our own sin and look to Christ in prayer and know that we are our own worst enemies and yet God is using these things to mortify the flesh. We learn a lot in prayer, but many times we also suffer in prayer and yet that is to teach us to truly pray.
God Loves... Himself 
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