Jeremiah 18:4—He made it again.
God wants to make the very best He can of each of his children. He puts us on his wheel, and subjects us to the discipline which He deems most likely to secure our greatest blessedness and usefulness. But, alas! how often He finds a marred vessel left on his hands when He desired and sought perfect beauty and strength! This is through no failure on his part; but because some bubble of vanity or grit of self-will has hindered Him.
Alas, how many have marred his work! What might we not have been, if only we had perfectly yielded to Him! It is enough to break our hearts to recall all the wasted and misspent years, when He would, but we would not.
When this has been the case, He does not cast us utterly away; but puts us afresh upon the wheel, and "makes us again." If He cannot do what He desired at the first, He will still make the best of us; and the weakness of God is stronger than men. Let God take your life which has hitherto proved a failure; He will make of what remains of it more than men could make with all earthly advantages on their side, and with nothing to hinder its regular development.
Yield yourself afresh to God. Confess that you have marred his work. Humbly ask that He should make you again, as He made again Jacob and Peter and John and Mark. Only be careful in all time to come—first, to give God sufficient opportunity by waiting before Him; and secondly, to be very prompt to obey all that He may impress upon you as being his holy will. There is simply no limit to the progress and development of the soul which is able to meet God with a never-faltering "Yes." Let the lifelike clay in the potter’s hands be plastic to its Maker’s touch!