A good reminder – God’s Treasure in my Clay Jar

A friend and I were talking the other night and after our conversation he sent me a copy of a prayer letter that he had received. It was a good reminder for me of some truths that I need to keep in mind as I am ministering here, so I wanted to give you some excerpts from that letter:

A ministry is received from God, not achieved on our own… As I sat there [realizing things weren't happening like he wanted or had planned], I instantly began analyzing how I could have done a better job of contacting people, and what strategies I could use going forward. I realized this morning as I woke up that central in my thoughts is what I can do rather than what God can do.

So often I find myself falling into this trap. I analyze and strategize but often forget that it is about God and what He can and chooses to do.

I often want to be successful more than I want to be faithful. Successful is all about me accomplishing something so that I can make a name for myself and have something I can feel proud of. Faithful is about doing what God calls me to do as best I can, and leaving the results in his hands.

Guilty here too! I often evaluate my success based on how closely I came to achieving my plan rather than on how faithfully I have followed the principles in God’s Word. In other words, I can easily have a results-based focus.

Only God can make a person hunger for truth and spiritual life. Jesus said, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.” (John 6:44) … As I talked to [people] I was struck with the fact that I couldn’t do anything to make them interested [in spiritual things] if they weren’t already. In many cases, I could hear the apathy in their voices as we talked about spiritual things.

This was especially challenging and encouraging to me here in our context, where it often seems like people are coming for their physical desires rather than their spiritual needs. I can not do anything to create spiritual desires in people, especially if they’re spiritually dead!

Praying is harder than planning. I plan more than I pray, because planning is easier. Praying forces me to face my inadequacy, my need for God, my dependence on Him. When Jesus said “Apart from me you can do nothing,” I think he meant “nothing good.” I can do lots on my own, but I’m spinning my wheels when I am not trusting him, looking to him, and working so that he would be glorified.

I was particularly struck by this point because it was the second time I had heard it this week – the first time being in the message from last Sunday. I think that I like to plan often because it’s something that I can do and I’m a always-gotta-be-doing-something type of person. But praying is admitting that I can’t do anything and that God must do everything.

I really needed these reminders, especially this week when the pressures of life and ministry really seem to be pushing in from every side. These thoughts brought my mind to 2 Cornithians 4, especially verse 7, which says that we have this treasure (this ministry of the knowledge of God’s glory) in vessels of clay (something ordinary and very fragile) in order that the exceedingly great strength will be shown to be coming from God and not from us, and verse 16 which starts with the idea of not losing hope. It would be easy to lose hope if it all depended on us. Maybe, in those times when we do lose hope, it shows that we’ve also lost our focus and started to believe that it really does all depend on us even though we’re just the ordinary, fragile clay jars used to carry the immense glory of God to a lost world. My pride doesn’t like the idea of being a ordinary, fragile clay jar, but if that’s what magnifies the glory of my Savior than that’s exactly what I need to be.