Ever watched a lump of clay being transformed into something beautiful? If the potter wasn’t shaping it, the clay wouldn’t change. Isaiah says, ‘We are the clay, and you are the potter. We are all formed by your hand.’ With God shaping us, we’re transformed into something even more beautiful than we were before. The things that we struggle with, our worries, phobias, habits and temptations, can all be left behind when we let God start to shape us. We might feel that we can’t change, that we’re going to be trapped by the things we struggle with forever. But that’s not true. There’s hope and a promise of freedom for us, because God works with us to create a beautiful life. In Jeremiah 18, God paints the picture of a potter who, when the pot didn’t go quite right, reshaped it into something else. That’s what God does with us too. When we feel broken or have lost our way, He takes us and reshapes us. All we have to do is place our lives in His hands. Trying to change ourselves only leads to stress because when it doesn’t work, and we go backwards, we can feel like we’ve failed. God wants to help us change permanently, He wants to gently mould and transform us. When we stop trying to change ourselves and surrender to God, true and lasting change can take place. And He won’t give up helping us to change, the Bible says: ‘he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus’ (Philippians 1:6 NIV).