Job 2:8 And he took a piece of broken pottery with which to scrape himself while he sat in the ashes. (ESV)

Sitting in church this morning and listening to our pastor speak on this moment in Job’s life, painted an ugly and disturbing picture in my mind. It was one that was not part of the sermon today, but one that I could see, and it disturbed me.

Jeremiah 18:4 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.

Psalm 31:12 I am forgotten as a dead man out of mind: I am like a broken vessel.

Imagine if you would a man that tries to take and remove the ugliness of his condition with the broken pieces of his life. This is the image I was left with this morning.

As pathetic as that image is of Job sitting in the ashes of his ruined life scrapping at those boils with a broken nasty filthy piece of pottery, isn’t that exactly what we do in this life without Jesus? Nothing we can do to make things better with the broken pieces of our lives.

We need to place ourselves back in the hands of the potter to be made into a new vessel.

Even more so should we accept the molding and not try and pick up the broken pieces of the old vessel and try and make them fit into the new one.

But we do just that don’t we?

Hebrews 9:8 The Holy Ghost this signifying, that the way into the holiest of all was not yet made manifest, while as the first tabernacle was yet standing:

Recently I desired to write about comfort. My reasons were based on a comment I made at life group which seemed right and in accord with what I know about my God and Lord. He seeks to comfort us.

As I opened up my bible app and sought the Lord on this matter, I was humbled. Chastened might be a better word, but the end result was the same, to be humbled. Not that I chose to humble myself, but to be humbled.

This morning I seek the Lord again to understand the comfort which I feel. Again humility shows up and I find again what I seek has to take a back seat. We do so like to be at the wheel don’t we? Even when forced to take the back seat, we like back seat driving. It’s in our nature.

Being a new creation in Christ isn’t a resurrection, it isn’t being changed in an instant. Finding the comfort which I know the Lord provides is found in the way everlasting, and not in the old tabernacle.

Saying I am a new creation is not enough to enact the behaviors of the new creature. As a babe we had to learn to walk and talk, it was learned, experienced, exercised and perfected. This new creation is no different. Just because it is easy and familiar to walk in the flesh does not mean you are walking in the spirit as a new creation. Ones steps must be directed by the spirit and not the old tabernacle. We must put off the old ways and walk anew.

Romans 6:4 Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.

Deuteronomy 8:2 And thou shalt remember all the way which the Lord thy God led thee these forty years in the wilderness, to humble thee, and to prove thee, to know what was in thine heart, whether thou wouldest keep his commandments, or no.

Not for the Lord to know what was in our hearts but so that we would know what is in ours.

Comfort comes to those who trust the hands on the wheel.