Staying Close and Malleable
Small group notes for Staying close and Malleable on 3/5/20
Main scriptures : Jeremiah 13:1-11; 18:1-7 Isaiah 64:8; John 10:27-28 Romans 8:11
Jeremiah has two prophetic illustrations a linen waistband and a potter’s wheel. These are actual items that God uses to describe the relationship between himself and his people.
In the first he is saying his people were meant to be like a linen waistband ‘clinging’ to him made to be a people of renown, praise and bring glory to God; however he tells Jeremiah to put it in a crevice near the Euphrates river and in a few days it turns mouldy and unfit for purpose. This is what has become of his people as they’ve stopped listening to him, become stubborn and gone after foreign gods.
We also need to stick close to Christ, it’s what we’ve been created to be. The good news under the new covenant is that God’s spirit lives inside of us, not just close up on the outside of him. ( Ro 8:11 )
In the second picture Jeremiah is taken to the potter’s house and sees him working on his wheel. The clay pot gets misshapen somehow, but the potter is not fazed by it, he simple reshapes it according to his pleasure. ( v 4)
We can allow ourselves to get worried about the change in circumstances that the COVID 19 has caused, how it will affect my future, my exam results, future job prospects, by investments, but we need to know that God, like the potter, is well able to reshape things according to His pleasure. We have put our lives into His hands, and we need to know that he can get good out of anything, and our future is in no better hands!
Questions:
What things are you concerned about right now regarding your future?
Jesus tells us to ‘Abide in the Vine’, just as Jeremiah is saying to ‘cling to God’, what does this tell us about how we should respond right now in this crisis?
Seeing ourselves as a ‘clay pot’, and God as the potter, helps us to see our current state in it’s true perspective. What does it speak to you about?
Have you got any illustrations recently, in nature, cooking, or around the home that have helped you see your relationship with Christ better?
Pray for each other with the areas stated in question 1, and ask God to help them trust him for all that he is and wants them to be.