There is a reason Scripture keeps bringing us back to pottery wheels, reshaping hands, and vessels remade in the fire. God never chose random metaphors. He chose the one that exposes the real battleground of discipleship:
Will I yield to the Potter,
or will I keep fighting His hands?
Most believers don’t fall short because they lack information. They fall short because they keep stiffening at the wheel—demanding control, clinging to old identity, resisting the very hands shaping them for glory.
Discipleship begins right here, where the clay stops pretending to be the potter.
1. The Potter’s Wheel: Where Discipleship Actually Begins
When Jeremiah walked into the potter’s house, he didn’t see perfection—he saw a ruined vessel in the potter’s hands (Jeremiah 18:1–4). The clay was flawed, uneven… and yet the potter did not throw it away. He pressed harder. He reshaped. He formed it again “as seemed best to him.”
That’s discipleship.
Not self-improvement.
Not spiritual performance.
Not trying harder.
Discipleship is yielding.
Discipleship is surrender.
Discipleship is letting God undo and remake.
We do not become Christlike by effort—we become Christlike by remaining soft in the hands that already know the shape we were created for.
2. The Resistance of the Clay: Why We Fight God’s Hands
Every believer knows the moment when God’s thumb presses into an unyielding place.
- A habit.
- A wound.
- A desire.
- A fear.
- A mindset.
- A hidden compromise.
- A place where you want Jesus as Savior but not as Lord.
And what do we do?
We stiffen.
We justify.
We negotiate.
We hide.
We pray for “clarity” when God already spoke.
We call disobedience “processing.”
But a clay vessel that resists the potter forces Him to break and reform it—not because He’s cruel, but because He refuses to leave His children half-formed.
When God Pressed Into Me
I learned this the hard way.
One afternoon, while reviewing an email draft about my testimony, the weight of God’s faithfulness hit me—how He had carried me through trials, losses, and sins I never want printed on paper. I sat alone in my basement, humbled and grieving the years I had spent half-surrendered… clay trying to shape itself.
And then it happened.
A sound like a rushing wind filled the room—nothing moved, yet everything changed. And in my head, not my ears, a voice spoke:
“I was faithful with the things you surrendered.
And I will be just as faithful with the things you have not yet surrendered—
if you give them to Me.”
I broke. Not in fear—in revelation.
God had been shaping me all along, but there were corners of my life I kept shielding from His hands. And the very areas I withheld were the ones collapsing under their own weight.
That moment didn’t make me “special.” It made me accountable. It reminded me that the Potter’s hands are not the threat—our resistance is.
3. The Shaping: How God Forms Us in Daily Life
God reshapes His people through three main pressures, woven through all of Scripture.
A) The Pressure of Conviction
Not condemnation—conviction. The Spirit presses into a place that needs repentance, cutting away, cleansing.
You feel it long before you obey it.
B) The Pressure of Scripture
The Word confronts your opinions, wounds, assumptions, and self-constructed identities.
You are not shaped by what you “feel God is like.” You are shaped by what God has said.
C) The Pressure of Providence (Circumstances & People God Uses)
God doesn’t only shape us through trials—He shapes us through people. Sometimes He brings a believer into your life whose walk with Christ exposes the cracks in your vessel.
For me, that person was Alverta—a widow with a third-grade education and a childlike faith that could thaw the coldest heart. I met her after my first divorce, while I was longing—desperately—to find even one believer who lived the way Scripture describes.
And God sent me one.
Alverta discipled me not with books or programs, but by embodying the Light.
Her joy was unmanufactured.
Her faith was unembarrassed.
Her love was relentless.
Her devotion to the forgotten—the sick, the elderly, the overlooked—was pure religion in motion.
Standing beside her—singing hymns in nursing homes, praying with the afflicted, watching her fearless witness—I saw, in flesh and blood, what I had been chasing in churches that felt lukewarm and spiritually sleepy.
She was the answer God gave to my prayer:
“Lord, give me one believer who walks the walk.”
But I didn’t realize the treasure He’d given me until it was gone. And when she passed, the void exposed something painful—that I had depended on her light instead of learning to walk in the Light myself.
God used Alverta to shape me. And He used losing her to break me… so He could shape me again.
4. Practical Discipleship: How to Yield Like Soft Clay
Here is the simple, daily rhythm of a surrendered disciple:
1) Ask God where you’re resisting Him.
And mean it. A disciple does not fear the answer.
2) Respond to conviction immediately.
Delayed obedience hardens the clay.
3) Submit your “right to understand.”
You obey first; clarity comes later.
4) Practice daily surrender.
A simple prayer:
“Father, shape me.
Break what needs breaking.
Remove what doesn’t look like Christ.”
5) Accept the fire.
Pottery is not finished until it passes through the kiln.
Trials don’t destroy surrendered disciples—they seal them.
6) Stay on the wheel.
Don’t run when God presses a tender place.
The wheel is not punishment—it is mercy.
5. Encouragement for Weary Clay
Maybe you feel marred.
Maybe you feel like you’ve failed too many times to be reshaped.
Maybe you’re exhausted from being broken open again and again.
Hear this truth:
Clay is never ruined in the Potter’s hands—only in its own.
As long as you remain on the wheel—surrendered, yielded, willing—the story isn’t over.
You’re not done.
You’re not discarded.
You’re not disqualified.
You are being remade—stronger, truer, purer, holier.
And one day, when the Potter lifts His hands and the vessel is finished, every pressure, every trial, every breaking will make perfect sense.
Until then, stay soft.
Stay yielded.
Stay willing.
The Potter knows exactly what He is shaping you into.