Have you ever heard this statement before? If you have not, hear it from me - it is true!
Over the last three years, God has been teaching and molding me to understand what it means to do my best, and let Him do the rest. Our lives are in the Potter's hands, and it is not up to us to understand why many things in our lives do not turn out the way we want them to be. We often go through long processes to work towards a goal to achieve something, but sometimes at the end of it all, that something may turn out to be impractical, inapplicable, or does not fall through as is intended for, or in the way you hope it to.
Take for example a book you are writing which you hope to make known to the world, but somewhere along the way, something happened that requires you to abandon your writing permanently. How would you feel? What if, as an employee, you have worked extremely hard for a project, and just when you are ready to launch the end product, you are told by your boss that the project has been abandon? How will you react? Do you blame God for not letting you achieve what you have set out to accomplish, or do you see God's way of molding you through the whole process, so that you are ready whenever called for to do the task for someone else, or for the purpose of God?
Many of us live our lives believing 'what we do is what we get', but in God's equation, what we do may not necessary be what we will receive at times. Although, there is much truth about reaping what you sow, and being rewarded when you do good, or be punished when you do evil (2 Corinthians 9:6; Galatians 6:8), it is ultimately up to God to decide what is best for you and I. Moses' life is a good example of what this means. He has to go through the wilderness as a shepherd before he is ready to do the task of God, even though long before that he feels ready to do the task as a prince.
What we need to do therefore is to realize our place on earth. Our task is to do our part in the process, to learn what we need to learn as we are molded in the Potter's hands, leaving God to decide on the result.
I [Paul] planted, Apollos watered, but God was causing the growth. So then neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but God who causes the growth. (1 Corinthians 3:6-7 NAS)
