Isaiah 64:8 “Yet you, Lord, are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand.”

Adelaide Pollard was frustrated with God. She felt led by God to go to Africa as a missionary, but the funds she needed to raise never came. She was stuck, disappointed, and let down. One night in 1902 she attended a prayer meeting and the words of an elderly woman’s prayer caught her attention, “It doesn’t really matter what you do with us, Lord, just have your way in our lives.”^[1] That night with this prayer stuck in her head she penned the famous hymn “Have Thine Own Way Lord.”

Have Thine own way Lord
Have Thine own way
Thou art the potter I am the clay
Mold me and make me after Thy will
While I am waiting yielded and still.

It is hard to wait on God in the middle of our trials. We want to know what God is doing, where this is going, and how long it will last. Gospel hope causes us to lift our eyes beyond our current pain, to the eyes of the Potter. Gospel hope causes us to trust that whatever we are going through at this time is in God’s hands. God is shaping us and forming us into vessels of honor for his glory and our own good. 

It can be hard to trust the hands of the Potter. The time on the Potter’s wheel is disorienting, the molding of our lives can be uncomfortable, the curing heat of the fire is painful, but through it all we can take hope because the hands of the Potter are pierced hands.  They are hands that suffered and bled on Calvary for us. His love for us was costly so we know that we can trust him with our current trials. 

Have Thine own way Lord
Have Thine own way
Hold over my being absolute sway
Filled with Thy spirit till all can see
Christ only always living in me.

^[1] https://davidjeremiah.blog/what-it-means-to-be-clay-in-the-hands-of-the-potter/