Sometimes, when I am asked to speak to a group of people about my faith I start by giving them some play dough to make something with.
The activity is a lot of fun and it is amazing what people come up with. This Armadillo that someone made recently was pretty good!
As I explain the activity, I guess people could think it is just a fun icebreaker (of course, they could also be thinking in that moment ‘I wish we hadn’t asked Graeme to speak!’)
The reason I share the activity is not just to have fun though.
I believe that God is at work shaping our lives and the activity is designed to challenge us to consider who we are becoming.
Play dough is quite hard to work with when you want to make something intricate.
How does God find us as material to work with as he tries to shape us?
God longs for us to see clearly who he created us to be and for us to believe that we can become that person.
Jesus calls Peter ‘a Rock’ (a sign of reliability and security) when Peter is still hopeless, getting things wrong and letting Jesus down. At the time Jesus calls him a rock, Peter was pretty much the exact opposite but a few years later, Peter was the key leader in the early church. He had become someone you could depend on.
Jesus saw who Peter was meant to be and he helped to shape him into that person.
Gideon felt hopeless but God called him a mighty warrior. Gideon found it hard to accept that he was a leader but as he believed God, he began to change and he led the armies of Israel. You can click here to read more about Gideon and his journey towards becoming the person who God had made him to be.
God saw who Gideon was meant to be and he helped to shape him into that person.
How do you feel about yourself?
How does God feel about you? Who did he create you to be?
God sees who you are meant to be and he wants to shape you into that person but will you cooperate?
The Bible says
‘O Lord, you are our Father. We are the clay, and you are the potter. We all are formed by your hand’. (Isaiah 64.8)
Honest about my faith 