Go down to the potter’s house, and there I will give you my message.
Have you ever been waiting on an answer? Has your life been radically thrown off from the plan you originally had for it? Have you ever been placed in an unfortunate circumstance? Have you ever been uncomfortable?
Discomfort is one of many challenges believers will face during the course of their lives. It is unavoidable and inevitable. How we view our discomfort, and how we choose to frame it, however, is what ultimately determines how that discomfort affects us. The fact is, God uses our discomfort in mighty ways. God uses tragedies, heartbreaks, and life-changing circumstances to significantly shape us to be more like Him, and to reveal things that He never could while we were in the midst of our comfortable lives. That is, if we let Him.
This explains God’s call for Jeremiah to go down to the potter’s house. Jeremiah was NOT a potter. There was seemingly no reason for Jeremiah to have to go down to a random potter’s house just to hear the Word of the Lord. But God knew that Jeremiah could never hear and accept the Word of God if he was in the midst of his own comfort. Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with living a comfortable life, and absolutely nothing bad about being happy. However, we must understand as believers that God will put us in situations that we have no business being in so that we have no choice but to listen and trust Him. When you are in a place that you are unfamiliar with, or a place that makes you uncomfortable, there are no distractions to draw your eyes away from the Lord. When Jeremiah was in the potter’s house, his usual distractions were not there with him. It was him and God in that potter’s house. It was only then that God could speak to Jeremiah. Read verses 4-6 and watch as God uses an unfamiliar situation to teach Jeremiah a lesson:
4 But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands; so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him. 5 Then the word of the Lord came to me. 6 He said, “Can I not do with you, Israel, as this potter does?” declares the Lord. “Like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in my hand, Israel.
The next time you are in an uncomfortable circumstance, big or small, quiet your soul and try to discover what God is speaking over your life. Even more so, take time away from your usual distractions and meditate on what God has done, is doing, and what you pray He will do in your life. When you are faced with a discomfort, big or small, remind yourself of the necessity of trials in the Christian life, and the way God uses them to lift us up, or to speak life into us.
If we are never uncomfortable, we can never be lifted.