Perhaps the Holy Spirit is calling you to bend; to break; to be beaten and moulded by his word and his Spirit. He may be enlarging you and reshaping you, stretching you to shape you for his purposes.
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I was tapping away at my computer, minding my own business, when the phone rang. “Hello. This is Dudley Anderson.”
“Hi Dudley, it’s Barbara,” said the voice on the other end. “Hi Barbara, how are you?”
“Fine. Dudley, I was just praying, and the Holy Spirit gave me an impression of a blacksmith, hammering away at steel on his anvil. As he hammered, sparks were flying everywhere. I feel this is a word for the church. God is shaping us,” she said.
2 Corinthians 3:18
And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.
We chatted a little more and said goodbye. I hung up the phone, thinking about what she had said. As I returned to working on my laptop, I began to sense the Holy Spirit prompting me to pray. So, I walked downstairs and sat in my prayer chair in the lounge, opening my heart to the Lord. In less than a minute, I found myself on my knees calling out to God for wisdom and insight. Then it was as if I felt the Spirit tug at the sleeve of my spirit, and I literally turned my head to hear the word “resilience” in my heart. “Resilience? What do you mean by resilience, Lord?” I asked. I had a notion that it had to do with a negative interpretation of the word, so I prayed against “resilience” in Jesus’ name.
After I felt I had come through in prayer, I returned to my computer and looked up the word resilience. I found it to mean: “The physical property of a material to return to its original shape or position after deformation that does not exceed its elastic limit.” Hmmm, to return to its original shape, I mused out loud.
In Isaiah we read, “We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hands,” and in Jeremiah, “But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands; so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him.” This analogy has to with how a potter forms and reforms clay into the shape he requires it to be. However, for the clay to be shaped, it needs to be malleable and not resilient! Imagine if a lump of clay bounced back to being just a lump of clay after it was shaped into a lovely vase. Likewise, hard steel in the hand of a skilled blacksmith is malleable and not resilient. If these materials were resilient then they would always bounce back to their original shape and be useless to anybody.
The Lord may be doing a new thing in your life. Perhaps the Holy Spirit is calling you to bend; to break; to be beaten and moulded by his word and his Spirit. He may be enlarging you and reshaping you, stretching you to shape you for his purposes. Take courage and allow God to enlarge your boundaries. God’s ways are higher than your ways, and his ways are always for you are good, even when it seems the sparks begin to fly!
God-tracking is being malleable in the hands of the Blacksmith of Heaven.
READ ALL ABOUT IT
Get into the word of God and get the word of God into you.
Isaiah 64:8
Jeremiah 18:1-6
Isaiah 54:2-3
Isaiah 55:8-13
Follow Dudley on Twitter twitter.com/godtracker
Like GodTracker on Facebook facebook.com/godtracker
SUBSCRIBE to the FREE weekly e-devotional GodTracker at, surereality.net
READ ALL ABOUT IT
Get into the word of God and get the word of God into you.
Isaiah 64:8
Isaiah 54:2-3Isaiah 55:8-13
Follow Dudley on Twitter twitter.com/godtracker
Like GodTracker on Facebook facebook.com/godtracker
SUBSCRIBE to the FREE weekly e-devotional GodTracker at, surereality.net
GodTracker
You can track God’s plans for your life with Dudley Anderson, the author of Tracking the Will of God . This post is part of Dudley’s weekly GodTracker devotional series. You can also listen to his GodTracker podcast.
What is GodTracker?
GodTracker is a weekly e-mail Christian motivational thought, written by Dudley Anderson, based on the premise that God has a plan for our lives. His Word calls us to seek his plan by acknowledging him in all our ways and by tracking his purposes, in faith. Most of what you’ll read is based upon the author’s personal experience of tracking the plans of God.
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