Ephesians 1:11
…being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will:
We love the idea that God has a will.
We just struggle when it is not ours.
Isaiah asked the question that silences every argument.
Isaiah 40:13
Who hath directed the Spirit of the Lord, or being his counsellor hath taught him?
If we are honest, we try.
“Lord, You may not be seeing this clearly.”
“Lord, this situation is getting out of hand.”
“Did You hear what they said?”
As though heaven pauses and waits for our insight.
But Paul asks the better question.
Romans 9:20
Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus?
Jeremiah struggled too. Forty years of preaching and almost no response. It would have felt like failure. Confusion. Silence from heaven.
Then God sent him to a workshop.
Jeremiah 18:3–4
Then I went down to the potter’s house, and, behold, he wrought a work on the wheels.
And the vessel that he made of clay was marred in the hand of the potter: so he made it again another vessel, as seemed good to the potter to make it.
Round and round the wheel spun.
Pressure from skilled hands.
What looked like ruin became redesign.
There are seasons when life feels exactly like that wheel. You are spinning. Pressed. Reshaped. Nothing feels stable.
But here is what changes everything.
The hands applying the pressure bear scars.
The foot that turns the wheel once walked up a hill carrying a cross.
The Potter was pierced.
Communion matters because it answers the question our pain keeps asking. If He gave His body and shed His blood, then His shaping is not cruelty. It is craftsmanship.
A lump of clay on the wheel might interpret pressure as punishment. It has no perspective of the finished vessel. We often live inside the spin, unable to see the design.
The world says suffering disproves love. The Cross says suffering can be the very proof of it. A God who predestines but refuses to bleed would be terrifying. A God who predestines and is crucified is trustworthy.
You are not spinning out of control.
You are spinning under control.
And the One shaping you has already proven His heart.
One response to “The Wheel You Do Not Control – Ephesians 1:11”
The image of the marred vessel being remade is one of the most tender in all of scripture, and you draw it out beautifully here. The line about the potter having scarred hands is the kind of observation that stops you cold and makes you sit with it for a while. I think many people in difficult seasons interpret pressure as abandonment, so reframing it as craftmanship from someone who has already proven His love through suffering is genuinely helpful. The contrast between a God who predestines but refuses to bleed versus one who predestines and is crucified is such a sharp and honest theological distinction. Really grateful for this reflection.