Experiencing the Potter

My Jesus is not a microwave Jesus.

First off, you may be thinking: “okay what the absolute HECK did this girl just write? Jesus does not belong in the microwave!” Well, yes, I know this, but hang on for a second while I explain my odd expression.

In our society, we expect a certain level of efficiency. Faster is better. The more quickly I can get my popcorn to pop in the microwave the happier I am as a human, and the faster I can get my double double animal style at In-n-Out, the better–am I right? Sometimes, we expect God to work the same way; everything that we expect or want needs to happen in our time, not in God’s time.

I hate to break it to ya friends, but it doesn’t really work that way. Let me throw some scripture references at y’all to add some context before I get into the brunt of this post.

First, Ecclesiastes 3:11 says that “He has made everything beautiful in its time,” (NIV) and secondly Romans 8:28 “We know that all things work together for the good of those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.” (NIV) Both of these pieces of scripture reference in some form or another, the Lords timing–His perfect timing.

The past month has been amazing but so unbelievably challenging. I have experienced things here that I thought that some people only hear about happening on missions trips. Well guys, crazy stuff happens when the Lord is at work; and sometimes that crazy thing is called silence. When we were at training camp, I was on a spiritual high. I had the most intimate contact with the Lord that I have had in a very very long time–hearing from Him in some pretty rad ways; but then we got a week and a half into our time here in Macedonia.

And then the silence hit.

When I say silence, I don’t just mean in prayer. The silence from the Lord hit across all scopes and aspects of my faith; prayer, service, scripture…if you can think of it, He was silent. And I was not having it. I became increasingly frustrated, discouraged, and rather annoyed that the Lord would bring me to this place of service where I would be impacting lives and forwarding the Kingdom and needing directions from Him and then in turn received absolute silence. There are pages in my journal that are folded in half because they are full of rants at God, to God. Some of you may be thinking that I’m crazy, but actually having an open link of communication to rant at God and express your frustrations to him is something that is encouraged in scripture. The Lord feels what we feel, He cries with us, is happy with us, and is sometimes frustrated when we are.

The silence went three weeks before I had an absolute mental and emotional breakdown. It was a Sunday, I was sitting on the floor of our kitchen ranting at God and listening to worship music; and then I absolutely zoned out. When I zoned out I experienced one of the most intense spiritual attacks that I have ever encountered in my entire life. The enemy filled my mind with thoughts that I have not experienced since I was going through depression my Sophomore and Junior years of high school.

When I zoned back in I called for Michelle and started sobbing uncontrollably. I was scared–deeply scared. We sat and talked through what I had experienced, I spilled my guts about literally everything that went through my head, and we talked about how the thoughts that had entered my mind were not of the Lord but were of the enemy. Over the course of our conversation, I expressed my frustration with the Lord and how he would allow these things to happen and why He was placing me into a season of silence–I was so confused as to what I did wrong in my faith to feel this way. And then she pulled out the parable of the potter; Jeremiah 18:3-8. In this parable, it talks about a potter who takes a piece of clay that is marred, or flawed, and breaks it down to build it up to hold a larger capacity.

At the end of the week, I was having a very intense conversation with my boy Patrick about my frustrations, and how I did not know what I was doing wrong in my faith nor did I know how to fix it– and then a Jesus-filled truth bomb was dropped on me.

Sometimes, the silence of the Lord is a sign of intimacy and trust. There are a TON of examples of this in scripture. It appears in the book of Job and in the book of John specifically. In these books, the Lord’s silence is used to draw us into a new kind of closeness with Him.

Maybe I am experiencing both of these things; and let me tell you friends, being spiritually broken down hurts, a lot. But see, in order to grow as a person, a child of God, and a working part of the Kingdom, we need to have these moments of complete dependence on the Lord. When we go through these seasons, we come out on the other side being able to hold more. When we grow and exercise those faith muscles, the Lord gives us more to hold. Being drawn into a new kind of closeness with the Lord without knowing that it’s occurring is also super confusing; but through these experiences our boldness increases, our trust increases, and our ability to listen and feel the spirit increases.

The latter is what happened to me; and in no way am I suggesting that my period of silence is over. My ability to hear the Lord through prayer has not improved much; but my ability to feel the Spirit lead has. Last weekend the Lord used me to heal one of my teammates as a result of this new kind of closeness. If the Lord worked in my timing, maybe this moment of stepping out in obedience wouldn’t have happened, and my teammate would not have been healed.

But I’ll save that story for my next blog post.

I encourage y’all to find the Lord in the mundane, in the exciting, and heck, even in the flowers. He is at work all around us, all we have to do is pay a little bit of attention to it.

Until next time,

Mads