Mark Your Trail

God spoke to Jeremiah and told him: “Set up road signs; put up guideposts. Mark well the path by which you came.” (Jeremiah 31:21). It is a pretty simple command, but one we often fail to heed. God is basically reminding us that there is a difference in taking a trip and marking a trail.

Far too many people spend their lives just making the trip from birth to death. Far too few actually mark the trail for those that will come after them. The first group personifies consumerism. They are here to consume all that life has to offer. The second group personifies legacy...they are here to make a difference!

And what we often fail to remember is that it is in simple, daily choices and decisions that we make that we either mark our trail or simply make the trip. I hope to live my life by marking the trail.

A Flexible Attitude

We are looking at three attitudes, found in Jeremiah 18, that we must possess in order to shape the things to come in our lives. The first was a teachable spirit. The second attitude is flexibility. We must stay pliable in the hands of the Potter.

Jeremiah 18:4 says, “But the jar he was making did not turn out as he had hoped, so he crushed it into a lump of clay again and started over.” The phrase "the jar he was making did not turn out as he had hoped" is a fascinating phrase to me (see my post on January 11, 2013..."Even In His Hands, We Can Become Marred). But that is not the point of today's post.

The emphasis today is this...the clay was flexible and pliable enough that the Potter could continue to work with it. Have you ever heard someone say, "Well, that's just the way I am...live with it." Why do we think we can do that and expect to succeed in any arena of life, especially our spiritual lives. Try telling your boss "Well, that's just the way I am...if you want me to work here...live with it." Try telling your bank, "Well, I just spend a lot of money...live with it." We instinctively know to shape our future on our jobs or in our finances, we have to be flexible, pliable. Why in the world would we think we could tell the Potter that deep-seated flaws are just the way we are...live with it?

And here's the deal about our Heavenly Potter: If we are not pliable, He will moisten us and crush us (read verse 4 again) until He can work with us. The choice is ours. We can choose to be flexible in His hands, or we can become bitter, brittle, and hard. The results of our choice will be obvious.

A Teachable Attitude

An attitude that we must possess in order to shape the things to come in a successful manner is to be teachable. When I was a basketball coach, I would often ask my players, "Who is the greatest golfer in the world right now?" (At that time it was Tiger Woods). When they would answer, I would say to them, "Did you know that Tiger Woods has a coach?" You see, if Tiger and his coach played a round of golf, you know who would win every time, don't you? Tiger. But he recognizes that even though he is a better player than his coach, he needs an external perspective to help him see the things he can't see about his swing. The good and the things that need to be corrected.

In verse 1, 2 of Jeremiah 18, the Lord told Jeremiah, “Go down to the potter’s shop, and I will speak to you there.” We all have a potter's house, a place where God can teach us. But the reality is, the potter's house is not so much a geographical location as it is an attitudinal quality. 

God uses His Word to teach us. He uses pastors, preachers, and teachers to help us gain insight. He uses common ordinary things, like pottery, to teach us. In fact, when you have a teachable spirit, you will discover that God speaks to you all the time, through small events, through conversations, through circumstances, and through preachers and teachers.

When you are teachable, you will discover that God always has something for you to learn. An old adage says, "When the student is ready, the teacher appears." If we fail to cultivate a teachable spirit, we will miss opportunities to shape the things to come in our lives.

There's Still Time

George Eliot is quoted as saying, "It's never too late to become what you might have been." That is certainly the message in Jeremiah 18 as Jeremiah made his trip to the Potter's House. What we have discovered the past three weeks, all of us are on the Potter's wheel. And like clay in the potter's hands, we also have times where we become marred, either by our own choices or events that are out of our control. Things don't go as we had planned, and are not even as the Potter had planned (read Jeremiah 18:4....the jar he was making did not turn out as he had hoped).

But the great hope of this amazing living illustration is there is still time. God is a master at redesigning the flaws of our lives, whether created by our own failures or not, and make something beautiful in our lives.

The point we will drill down on this week is this: we have a say in how shapeable we will be. There are things we can do that will determine the shape of things to come in your life.

It's Never Too Late To Mess Up

We began this week talking about some of the great comebacks in the NFL playoffs this past weekend. But you know, for every team that had a great comeback, there is also a team that...blew it. In the 2008 Super Bowl, the New York Giants and Eli Manning had a great breakthrough comeback and defeated the New England Patriots. What we often forget is that the Patriots were 35 seconds from having a perfect season...and they let it slip through their fingers. Don't you know those players have relieved those 35 seconds over and over during the past 5 years.

While Jeremiah 18 and the story of the potter's wheel reminds us that it is never too late to turn things around, it is also true that we never get to the place, this side of heaven, that we reach the place where we can coast in our spiritual disciplines. The same disciplines that it took for me to become established in the faith are required for me to finish my race faithfully.

The Titanic. Enron. Lehman Brothers. Blockbusters Video. What do they all have in common? At some point in their history, they seemed to big to fail. But they all fell. You never get to the point where you can coast out your life.

That's why Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 10:12: “If you think you are standing strong, be careful not to fall.” He's reminding us that it's never too late to mess things up. I'm not trying to be negative, but I am reminding us...we need to be careful.