Dear Ones,
Hope you had a wonderful Christmas! We enjoyed time with relatives over Christmas and now it is good to be home again too.This morning I am going to Aldi’s and my exercise class and hope to walk the trail this afternoon. 
Devotions from Judy’s heart
  God wants His way in our lives and of course, His way is always, always best. I thought of the song that you have probably sung, “Have thine own way, Lord!/ Have thine own way/ Thou art the Potter/ I am the clay/ Mold me and make me/ after Thy will/ while I am waiting, yielded and still.”  Maybe we can picture ourselves on the potter’s wheel and know He is shaping us into a vessel for Him. We don’t know what it will look like, but at times we may feel like we are crushed down and have to be reshaped in certain areas of our lives.
  I have been in the book of Genesis in my devotions and am reading about Joseph and all he went through. I am quite sure he felt like his clay was crumbled when he was 17 after he unwisely told his brothers of his 2 dreams of the sheaves and the sun, moon, and 11 stars bowing down to him.  His overconfidence and bragging cost him many hardships, pain, even imprisonment, but through those crushing times, he let God form Him and became a man of integrity who God used to save many in the time of famine. He had a choice though, if he would let his adverse circumstances level him, or if he would have a positive response and learn from them. He chose the latter and others recognized God’s was with him.
   Like Paul says in Romans 9:20-21 (God’s Word), “Can an object that was made say to its maker, ’Why did you make me like this?’ A potter has the right to do whatever he wants with his clay. He can make something for a special occasions or something for everyday use from the same lump of clay.”  We do well to let Him work our clay into His desired shape. When the Lord sees our imperfections, He has to crush it down to a lump and begin the process of reshaping again. But if we resist His will, we experience pressure in our lives and need to come to repentance. When we accept what He is forming us into, the pressure is relieved and He makes us into a vessel that He has chosen for us.
   God is sovereign and may we remember that He is the potter and we are the clay.
Challenge for today: When you sense you are resisting the Lord’s work in your life, yield to Him and let Him mold and shape you into something beautiful.
Blessings on your day and prayers and love, Judy