Pliability

PLIABILITY

JEREMIAH 18:1-6

Pliability is the quality of being supple enough to bend freely or repeatedly without breaking; it is the capacity to yield to others. God wants to create a masterpiece of His workmanship in your life as He seeks to bring you into conformity with the image of His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Just as a potter works with a lump of clay, so Christ works in your life fashioning it into His chosen vessel. In order for a potter to successfully complete his project he must have clay that is pliable. The clay cannot be too dry or too wet in order to have the right pliability. It must be free of impurities or objects, which would keep it from being flexible in the hands of the potter. Likewise, as believers, for Christ to accomplish His work in you, you must be pliable. When you lose your pliability you hinder what God wants to accomplish in your lives, just as the clay was marred in the potter’s hand resistant to the master touches that were being applied to it. The word marred means corrupted, spoiled, injured, and ruined. When there is resistance to what the Master desires to accomplish in you and you become rigid to His touch you become marred. What causes one to become inflexible and resistant to God’s working? I believe that we become rigid and lack pliability when we…

I. Hold on to Pride

A. James 4:6 "But he gives more grace. Wherefore he saith, God RESISTS the proud, but gives grace unto the humble."

B. Proverbs 30:12-13 "There is a generation that are pure in their own eyes, and yet is not washed from their filthiness. [13] There is a generation, O how lofty are their eyes! And their eyelids are lifted up."

C. Before God can change us we must realize we need changed. The feeling that “I’m O.K. the way I am is nothing more than pride.

D. Romans 9:19-20 "Thou wilt say then unto me, Why does he yet find fault? For who has resisted his will? Nay but, O man, who art you that replies against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast You made me thus?"

E. Habakkuk 2:4 "Behold, his soul which is lifted up is not upright in him: but the just shall live by his faith."

F. The greatest of faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none.

II. Hold on to Possessions

A. Luke 12:15 "And he said unto them, Take heed, and beware of covetousness: for a man’s life consists not in the abundance of the things, which he possesses."

B. “If there were no mixture in your soul, the soul would instantly rush toward the all-powerful, irresistible God within to be lost in Him. But if you are loaded down with many material possessions-or ANYTHING ELSE-this attraction is greatly hindered. Many Christians seize some part of this world or some part of the self with so tight a grip that they spend their whole lives making only a snail’s progress toward their Center.” - Madame Jeanne Marie de La Mothe Guyon (1648-1717)

C. Matthew 6:19-20 "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust does corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: [20] But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust does corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal:"

D. Matthew 6:24 "No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon."

E. Matthew 6:33 "But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you."

F. I once heard of a child who was raising a frightful cry because he had shoved his hand into the opening of a very expensive Chinese vase and then couldn’t pull it out again. Parents and neighbors tugged with might and main on the child’s arm, with the poor creature howling out loud all the while. Finally there was nothing left to do but to break the beautiful, expensive vase. And then as the mournful heap of shards lay there, it became clear why the child had been so hopelessly stuck. His little fist grasped a paltry penny which he had spied in the bottom of the vase and which he, in his childish ignorance, would not let go. – [Helmut Thielicke in How to Believe Again. Leadership, Vol. 6, no. 2.]

G. 1 Timothy 6:17 "Charge them that are rich in this world, that they be not high-minded, nor trust in uncertain riches, but in the living God, who gives us richly all things to enjoy;"