Surrender Control // Learning To RelaxSample

Renewal and Dreams

I am in the business of renewing your mind. It is one of my favorite things to do. Renewal takes cooperation with me, an agreement, on your part, to let me in. That’s why I love it, the process of renewal. It means you are trusting me, wanting to accept my love and make you new again. You know how I love to make things new.

Jesus modeled new life with me. He showed you how anything is possible—and how surrendering your heart to me resurrects what was once dead in you. With surrender comes resurrection—a promise of new life for heart, soul, and mind.

Do you want me to make you new again? Do you want your old life with its old problems and old mistakes to remain? Or go away? Would you rather I show you a new way to look at your life, your job, your relationships, your past? It is all new, all possibilities ahead, you see.

There is much to learn from your past—and also so much to learn from promises—promises you may have forgotten I have told you that I want to remind you of again. Promises of hope, of the laying down of old dreams and the picking up of new ones.

I have more to show you, and only I can help you to see it; only I can help you take hold of the dreams I have written on your heart. But you must agree to surrender control of what you can change—and let me change what I can.

I am your view of your future. I am your view of your past. All dreams and hopes, all possibility, happen through me. And I can teach you to dream wider and deeper—and with more freedom and hope—than you ever could on your own.

So consider how I have made you. Consider what I have made you to love. Let me remind you what activities make you feel close to me, what experiences make you smile!

The desires I place within you are opportunities to partner with me, to see me work in you, to trust me and let my power in you shine.

So come close now. Let me show you what I see in you. Let me replace your doubt with conviction, a turning over of what was lost. Dreams are the reminder that new is here. Dreams are the promise that you are found. 

Exercise:

Do you trust that God can change you—that He can do something new and good in you? Or do you ever believe you’re just too far gone to be molded by loving hands, shaped by the One who knows you, who adores you? Do you believe in His original plan for your life—that you are glorious, victorious, shining bright with His light as His love fills you again and again?

Imagine yourself now with your Father God, the Potter. Imagine His studio, the light spilling through an open window and illuminating the work table, the tools, the damp clay clumped together so lovingly by the Potter’s two hands.

The Potter studies the clay, works it, massages it, shapes it into what it was always intended to be. For it was never intended to remain just a lump of clay. No—it’s meant to become a beautiful vessel held by the Father: His love pouring in, filling until it overflows, and spilling out again and again and again.

It is slow work. It is deliberate and careful. It is measured and sure. When the clay rebels, resisting the hands of the One who loves, the Potter does not force it to move, to bend, to soften. He waits. He watches. He adds drops of water. He keeps it moist, so it doesn’t dry. He stands guard over the clay day and night, loving what it is, even now, yet imperfectly formed. For the Potter sees what the clay truly is. The Potter sees what the clay, in His hands, will be. 

It is the Potter who sees all possibility ahead. And it is our faith that gives us hope to believe in this possibility for ourselves. There is so much more for us in this life, more than what our eyes can see. But the Potter sees it now. So it is what He sees, what our Father sees, that we must trust.

Are you willing to be clay in your Father’s hands? Are you willing to ask Him what He sees? How the cracks in your heart can be mended by his love? How your mistakes are forgiven and your life made new again? How your weakness, declared with conviction and hope, points to the Father’s strength and love and goodness in you, right now?

In the hands of the Potter, anything is possible. When we let Him shape us. When we decide to trust Him and His hands upon our life. When we allow the healing hands of the Potter to make what has been broken and weakened into something glorious and resilient and brilliant.

He sees it—the possibility of newness, of life, of freedom—and we have the opportunity, if we want to, to see it too.

So, right now, as you stand in the studio, watching your Father, the Potter, lovingly mold the clay that is your life—that is you—watch His eyes as He studies the clay, notice the deftness of His fingers, the strength of His forearms, the kindness of His gaze. He loves you.

How is he inviting you to be molded? How is he inviting you to be renewed, in his hands? What dreams does he see—and shape—even now?

Being renewed begins with letting yourself be loved. Stay in the studio. Stay with your Father, and just receive His love.