Heated To Bend

 Sitting on the couch on a cool, crisp fall evening, I'm watching a program on how things are made and I'm captivated by the process... 

It's always the process that makes or breaks you anyway. Which way it goes is up to you.

The show is talking about how banjos are crafted - a simple drum with strings attached that's brought musical delight to generations. And who knew it all starts with a willingness to be bent? 

The wood is steamed and then shaped into the perfectly-round mould, layered with more bent wood to strengthen it, hold it. Solidify it. 

I hardly hear the rest of the process because I'm so stuck on the power of this metaphor I've failed to see. This truth I've failed to properly take to heart: all good things are born out of the heat, out of the pain. Resist the temperature being turned up in your life, and you resist the very thing God uses to create a new you. 

Just as there is no banjo without bent wood, there is no transformed mind, no renewed spirit, no redeemed life without the refining of hardship. Bit by bit, the Master Craftsman takes our pile of pieces and begins to re-shape and re-make us so that we can then become a gift to a broken world. So that we can sing His song and re-present Him. But it starts with letting the uncomfortable do its work on you. In you. Through you. 

And perhaps this is the key to any life that ever did something meaningful... welcome the shaping and you learn to welcome the reality of life. We're never meant to stay the same. We're created for change, for growing. And yet, we constantly fight it. Because it hurts. Because it's hard. And those who fail to lean into it miss out on much. 

God's into the process - the process of sanctifying you. Because He's into who you're becoming. And you should be into the process, too. No matter how difficult it is. Because that's how you discover the song you're meant to sing...just like the banjo. Painful things, shaping things, bending things are where the music begins. Songs bourn out of nighttime cries and downcast seasons and heartaches that one thinks will never heal. These come together to form the useful vessel through which God speaks. These are the roots of becoming a broken gift. 

Each one of us find ourself in the steam-oven of life. Maybe you're even there right now, and you wish more than anything that someone would turn down the heat. But what if I told you that God has you right where you're at for a reason? That the heat is actually your friend? That you're becoming pliable, softened here in this place so that the Creator can mould and change you? 

If you truly want to be used by God, you have to welcome the things He uses to make you useable...and that includes pain. Includes moving you in ways you never asked for. Includes building on the re-shaped layers of who you are in order to strengthen you, change you, shape you. 

Slowly, I'm learning in my own life what I really want... 

I want more of God. 

And that means learning how to gladly enter the steam-oven and envision the good that will come on the other side. The me that's becoming that'll emerge once the process is complete. The capable hands of my Father as He turns me, bends me, re-makes me. 

Cause me to be into the process like You are, Lord. For without it, I cannot come to be who You see and what You want. And it's only by continually being under the heat that I am converted, matured, and inclined more and more toward You. It's only through the discomfort that I am actually saved.