Teen Tree of Life. The Potter's Wheel of Progress. Part 1.

BEFORE we begin, if you are a believer in Jesus Christ, take a moment to name your sins to God the Father. This will allow you to be filled with the power of the Holy Spirit as you read this booklet (EPH 5:18 & 1JO 1:9). IF YOU HAVE never believed in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, you have that opportunity right now. Simply tell God the Father that you are believing on His Son Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. If you make that decision, you are now a believer and will always be a child of God! When you die, you will spend eternity with Him forever in heaven! (JOH 3:16 & ACT 16:31).

As we studied last week, in order to be humble, you have to respect authority. If you reject authority, you are arrogant and therefore, not humble. Rejection of authority produces resentment, bitterness, and implacability toward unfair authority and with a child, guarantees he or she will be a loser in life. The adult takes responsibility for his decisions. This introduces the concept of the Potter's Wheel in ROM 9:19-21: You will say to me then, “Why does He still find fault? For who resists His will?” On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God? The thing molded will not say to the molder, “Why did you make me like this,” will it? Or does not the potter have a right over the clay, to make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for common use?

The Potter's Wheel is God's basis for humility. It is not God who makes the vessels of honor and dishonor. God established a system by which a vessel of honor can be molded. Rejection of His System molds a vessel of dishonor. Decisions are each person's responses or reactions to what God provides. The Sovereign Will of God and the free will of man must coexist in human history. So, whether a person becomes a vessel of honor or dishonor depends on the function of his own volition toward Divine Authority. It all starts with your attitude toward your parents, nation, pastor, and so on. Now, what does the Potter (God) do with vessels of honor? He keeps them. And what does He do with vessels of dishonor? He smashes by administering Divine Discipline. Divine Authority establishes and preserves those with humility and destroys those with arrogance. The vessel is molded as the vessel responds to God's system, the Potter's Wheel and humility is the key!!

But how do we humble ourselves under the Mighty Hand of God? We do this by casting all of our cares on Him so that we do not open ourselves to the distractions of this world. God established authority as the environment of freedom for the function of human volition. Freedom without authority is chaos and authority without freedom is tyranny. When children are allowed too much freedom they develop no respect. The home is the system of organized humility and parents are the authority designed to provide enforced humility. In the rearing of a child, freedom should be given gradually as trust and virtue build. The child's positive response is genuine humility. Sparing the rod (discipline) is why so many children have a terrible start in life. They have managed to bypass the first system of authority and so emerge into the world at a severe disadvantage! Negative volition to the authority at home can easily result in a lifetime in the cosmic system.

Parents teach children the principles of self-control, self-discipline, poise and restraint by the use of volition which will result in the child being humble. The sooner genuine humility develops as a result of enforced humility, the sooner the child matures. Genuine humility develops a sense of destiny and the foundation for good decision-making. Once you leave the home you revert to Divine Institution number one: volition. This is when you should begin to take responsibility for your own decisions. Ultimately each of us is responsible before God for the decisions we make.

Once you leave home, your soul needs organized humility. This becomes the most powerful thing you will possess in your lifetime. If organized humility is lacking, it is a great detriment. It is from our instruction under the system of authority, under the laws of Divine Establishment, that we obtain orientation to life. The vessel of honor accepts what is taught in humility. The vessel of dishonor rejects these things in arrogance. When children reach adolescence, the vessels are formed in two categories: the vessel of honor – humble and teachable and the vessel of dishonor – unteachable and resistant to authority. The only hope for the vessel of dishonor is regeneration and if a person is already saved, the only hope is positive volition toward the Word of God.

After the home environment comes institutional authority. Institutional authority includes school, job and church. With one exception (volition), all authority in life is institutional which means that authority does not depend on love for its function.

There are three factors in any institution: the authority of the organization; the purpose of the organization; and the policy of the organization. These factors are a part of all divine institutions except the volition of the soul whose authority is the mentality of the soul. This is where decisions come from. Positive volition toward authority means good decisions and negative volition toward authority means bad decisions resulting in cosmic involvement. This is true of divine institution numbers three – family and four – government. But in divine institution number three – marriage – impersonal love and capacity for life is required. Authority in marriage is found in EPH 5:22: Wives, be subject to your own husbands, as to the Lord and EPH 5:33: Nevertheless, each individual among you also is to love his own wife even as himself, and the wife must see to it that she respects her husband.

Marriage (divine institution number two) is a system of organized humility. The husband is the authority over the wife, not because he is deserving of this authority but because it is God's Divine Order. Yet the woman cannot be subordinate to (under the authority or control of) her husband if she is not first subordinate to (under the authority or control of) the Lord. The function of volition in marriage is not for the development of genuine humility but for the response of love. Marriage requires genuine humility to secure its success. And you cannot truly love without being truly humble.

The chain of command under God's system of authority throughout our lives is each intimately related. It starts in the home and is carried over to the soul, to the marriage, to the family and to your nation. Therefore, if authority is rejected in the home, a damaged soul emerges and enters into marriage without the proper capacity. After that, what generally happens is a break in the marriage which effects the family and produces arrogant children to emerge from the home. This all culminates into a great evil which makes up the societies which form a nation — a nation sick with multitudes of those who reject authority and have no humility.