Who determines Olivia’s destiny? The kind of girl / lady she’ll end up? The course her life will take?
John and Emma would love to think it’s them, I’m sure. Parents, godparents, friends – all have an influence, but they don’t determine anything. Sorry.
There are two people who do decide the outcome of Olivia’s life.
To see who they are we’re going to have to visit a pottery. Or at least, join the Old Testament prophet Jeremiah on his trip. Jeremiah watched him work, and then God spoke. What Jeremiah had just seen was a visual aid for how the lives of people, families, and whole nations are determined.
Two big truths about God that Jeremiah wants to tell us having visited the potter’s workshop:
The God who’s in charge
First, we see the God who’s in charge. The God who’s in charge.
Verse 5: Then the word of the Lord came to me. He said, ‘Can I not do with you, Israel, as this potter does?’ declares the Lord. ‘Like clay in the hand of the potter, so are you in my hand, Israel?’
Jeremiah has just watched the potter work. He chooses each lump of clay, and he decides what to make it into. He’s in control of what happens to each piece of clay.
God says that he is like that with us. He’s in charge. He doesn’t just have a say. He doesn’t try to swing things his way. He’s in charge. The God who’s in charge. Not just potentially in charge. Actually, really in charge.
We have a saying, that someone can be like putty in someone’s hands. Usually, we mean a person who is a bit of a wimp, a bit weak, gave up too easily. Let someone else hold all the cards.
Jeremiah’s not saying that we are a pushover. He’s saying that God is our maker, that he’s strong, and he’s fully in control. He can make of us what he wants.
Most children love watching someone with modelling balloons. I can’t blow them up, and they pop as soon as I try to twist one. But the expert can make any of a thousand different models from one balloon in about 10 seconds. Only they all look like a giraffe.
God’s much more wonderful than that. He made everything there is. He can make anything he wants of any of us, of all of us. Most of us think that we’re in charge, we make the decisions. The fact is, we’re not. God is.
The poet William Henley wrote a short 4-verse poem called Invictus. You might recognise the last two lines. Here’s the last verse. “It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.”
Only we’re not, are we? God determines our destiny. He is the master of our fate. God is the captain of our soul. Not us.
The God who’s in charge.
The God who changes his mind
Second, we see the God who changes his mind. The God who changes his mind.
It’s not that he can’t make his mind up, like someone dithering over pizza or pasta in an Italian restaurant. He relates to us, with a real relationship.. He responds to what we do, to the decisions we take.
Look again at Jeremiah at the potter’s house. Verse 4: 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.
The pot didn’t respond to the potter’s touch. But he didn’t lose control. He screwed it back into a ball, and made something different out of it – what seemed best to him.
God responds.
Which cuts both ways.
On the one hand, imagine someone follows God, so he promises to bless them. But then they turn away, they stop following him, no longer live God’s ways, stop responding to his potter’s touch. God will rethink his plans. The promised blessings will be cancelled.
On the other hand, imagine someone who’s not following God. Their behaviour does not please him. Their heart is in the wrong place. So God is right to be angry, and he promises to judge, to punish. Only then, they change. They turn, come back to God, say sorry, start to live for him. God will change his mind with this person too. The promised judgement will be cancelled. A different pot is called for. God will be good and kind instead.
Children too young to drive a car can still use a driving simulator. But only very young children enjoy the toy cars outside a shop. Put 50p in, and no matter what you do with the steering wheel, the car rocks up and down, with the same rolling road on the video screen. As they get older, they want a game that responds. Turn left, it goes left.
That’s the point here. God’s in charge, but we’re also at the controls. They’re not dummy controls that make no difference to what happens.
The person who starts following Jesus is on the road to life. If they take a turning, abandoning him, switching to a life that doesn’t care what he thinks, they’ve made a real decision that God will respect. They’re now on the road to destruction. But equally, the person who’s on the road to destruction can take a turning too. If they choose to come back to God, to trust in Jesus, to ask his forgiveness, then God will respect that choice. They’re now on the road to life.
The God who changes his mind. Not on a whim, but in response to what we do.
All of which means that you could put it the other way. It’s not God who determines our destiny at all. It is us. Because God responds to what we do.
The God who changes his mind.
Us and God
So there we are: God is in charge. But God changes his mind, as he responds to us.
We’ll work out what this means for us in a moment, but first, aren’t you glad it’s both?
Imagine God was in charge, but we made no difference. God would be a tyrant. We’d be God’s playthings, helpless victims in his set plan.
That’s the world of some Shakespeare, and the writer Thomas Hardy. Both wrote many tragedies. Fate rules. The stars are set. Cruel coincidence happen that makes life go tragically wrong. It all seems so unfair. Both King Lear and Tess of the d’Urbervilles contain this line: “Like flies to wanton boys are we to the gods – they kill us for their sport.”
But imagine we could make real choices. God responds to us, so much so that he’s not in charge at all. You’d have a God who was powerless, a God we can manipulate to suit our ideas. We become snake-charmers, as God dances to our tune. There’d be no security at all as to how life would go.
Wonderfully, we have both. God is in charge. Yet he responds to our decisions. So he speaks to us, calls us to follow him, warns of the hurt that will follow if we don’t. And if respond to his voice, we can be sure he’ll keep his word.
Applying to us
Where does this leave us? It leaves us with two things
A God we can’t ignore. He’s in charge. He determines our destiny, our future. The one thing we cannot do is dismiss God as irrelevant. How our life will play out is entirely in his hands.
We’re left with a God we can’t ignore. But second, we’re left with a real decision to make. Because God’s control is not fate on a set path. We’re in his hands, and his hands respond to us.
Do you remember, Jesus’ story of the two house builders? One built on sand, and his house collapsed in the rain. The other built on solid rock, and his house stood firm. And then Jesus applied it to himself. Our lives are like those houses. They’ll either fall flat, or be established. It all hinges on how we respond to him.
That’s an extraordinary claim. The decision we make, the one that determines how life turns out, is whether or not we follow him. Let him call the shots. Dance to his tune.
That’s not a decision we make once. On the day of our baptism, for example. God changes his mind, his plans for us can change. So it’s a decision we face daily.
Conclusion
So who determines how Olivia’s life works out? Two people: God, and Olivia.
She’s had a good start. She’s been baptised, and we’ve heard God promises to bless her in the process. We now need to support John and Emma as they bring her up into a life of trusting and following Christ.
And for the rest of us, our lives and our futures are in the hands of the risen Jesus as well. He’s a God of extraordinary mercy. He speaks to us, telling us it’s never too late to turn, or to return, to him. God’s plans for us can change. So will we go through life with Jesus today, and will we keep doing so for the rest of our lives.