The God Who Does Not Throw the Clay Away
This is a study about change. Not the kind you promise yourself in January. The kind that happens to you. The Bible says the part of you that makes the decisions is the part that needs the work, which is why you cannot think your way out from the inside. Then it says something better: the one who made that part of you is not finished with it. September tells five true stories from the beginning, with nothing assumed. A prophet in a potter's workshop, a fisherman at two charcoal fires, a vineyard under the knife, a man knocked flat on the road to Damascus, and an old man coming down a mountain with a face he could not see.
God does not throw the clay away. He reworks it in the same hands that made it. Your part is not to become better clay. Your part is to stay where he can reach you, and keep looking at him.
From the Welcome letter, Words of Transformation
Each session is designed for 45-60 minutes of group or individual study. Hebrew and Greek words below link to their full library pages where they exist.
Jeremiah. A priest's son who told his country the truth for forty years while nobody listened, and the afternoon God walked him into a workshop to watch a pot go wrong in a man's hands. Lev, the heart, is the control room. Chomer, the clay, is the cheapest dirt in the shop. The only question is whether it is still soft.
Peter. A rare Greek word for a charcoal fire appears exactly twice in the New Testament, and he is standing at both. Three denials at the first, three questions at the second, and the metal words in between: the dross that was always in the silver, and the refiner who sits and does not leave.
The vineyard. Isaiah's love song that turns into a judgment, a fig tree that gets one more year, and the last night, when Jesus says he is the true vine and the branches that get cut are the ones already bearing. The knife is not the verdict. The knife going away is.
Paul. The man who held the coats at Stephen's stoning, knocked flat on a road he had no business being on, and the long quiet years afterward. Do not be pressed into a mold from outside. Be transformed from inside, day by day, in the same mind that got you here.
Moses. An eighty year old shepherd asks to see God's glory, is hidden in a rock with God's own hand over him, and comes down the mountain shining without knowing it. Fourteen centuries later Paul writes the sentence the month was walking toward: beholding, we are being transformed.
Integration session. Five tools, one craftsman: clay, fire, a knife, a light, a face. In every story the person being changed is never the one doing the changing, and the month leaves you two verbs, abide and behold.