Do any of you watch “The Today Show?” I really enjoy it, and one of my favorite segments is in the fourth hour, with Hoda and Kathy Lee (now with Hoda and Jenna). It’s the Ambush Makeover. They pick someone out of the crowd and bring them in and give them a total makeover. The transformation is incredible! They don’t even look like the same people when it’s all done! They get new hairstyles, makeup, clothing and shoes. Their friends or family members come on stage to see them when they come out, and the expressions on their faces shows just how incredible the difference in their appearance is. And the people who get the makeovers don’t see themselves until they come out in front of the audience, so you get to see their surprise and their satisfaction with the results.
The story of the potter and the clay is a story about a total makeover. Jeremiah was a prophet who lived during the time of the Babylonian conquest, which led to the destruction of the temple and royal palace in Jerusalem, and the death and exile of thousands of people. Jeremiah is often called the weeping prophet, because he felt so much pain over the suffering of his people. He often didn’t like the messages that God wanted him to bring to the people, because they were messages of judgment for the evil that the people had done and predictions of the punishment that was coming their way. People were asking difficult questions: How could God allow the suffering of so many people? How had things gone so terribly wrong? Had God abandoned the people? Would they find a way to preserve their faith in such stressful and painful times?
One day God sends Jeremiah to the potter’s shop and he tells him to watch what the potter is doing. The potter has a pot on the wheel, but the jar was not turning out the way he wanted it to. Maybe it was uneven on one side, or the proportions were not what he had pictured. In any case, the potter decided to just start over, so he squashed the jar into a lump of clay and began all over again. In this case, a simple tweak wasn’t going to do it. There was no correcting what had gone wrong. A total makeover was the only thing that was going to work.
I can relate to this image in my own life. There are times when I have headed off in the wrong direction, just veered a little bit off the path that God intended for me. I made a mistake, I chose poorly, I got distracted. And God gently called me back on track. Just a little bit of adjustment was needed. But there have been other times when it seemed like I had gotten so far off track that a simple adjustment wouldn’t do; only a total makeover was going to work. So, I had to get a whole new hairstyle, a new wardrobe, and fresh makeup. And the transformation was beautiful.
But it wasn’t always easy. You’ll notice that the potter didn’t just rearrange the clay on the wheel; he had to squash it back into a ball in order to start over. When we get too far away from God, too far away from God’s will, it can be painful when the total makeover occurs. The choices we have made have unfortunate results that leave us battered and beaten. The people we have taken up with turn on us or get us into trouble that we can’t get out of easily. We have to pay the price for our bad decisions. We have to live with the consequences of our mistakes. Sin can bring its own punishment that is hard to bear.
When I read the Bible, I discover that many of the characters that God used in incredible ways – most of them – were very flawed people that had to undergo total makeovers before God could use them. Think about Moses, for example. He was born a Hebrew slave, and yet grew up in the palace of the pharaoh. He killed an Egyptian who was mistreating a slave and had to escape into the desert to avoid being punished. He eventually became a shepherd. One day he was taking care of the sheep and saw a burning bush, and out of that bush God called him to become the one who would deliver the people from bondage in Egypt and lead them to the promised land. He tried to get out of this mission by making a number of excuses, until finally he asked God to just send somebody else. But God had made his choice and insisted that Moses was the one to lead the people to freedom. God turned a murderer into a liberator.
And what about Saul, later known as Paul? He was the earliest persecutor of the Christians and was responsible for the arrest and execution of many people. But one day God literally knocked him off his horse, made him temporarily blind, and told him that he had been chosen to take the gospel to the Gentiles. Paul preached all over the Mediterranean world, finally arriving in Rome, where he became a martyr for his faith. God turned a persecutor into a preacher and missionary.
And how about Peter? He was a simple, uneducated fisherman. He followed Jesus from the beginning, but at the time Jesus needed him most, Peter denied even knowing him. But God turned him into a Rock, the foundation of the church, and an eloquent speaker who was responsible for the conversion of thousands of people through his powerful sermons. There was Mary Magdalene, who was possessed by demons, and yet God transformed her into a loyal follower of Jesus, who went all the way to the cross with him and was the first to see him after his resurrection from the dead.
There are so many examples of people who were going in the wrong direction until God totally made them over and they became strong and faithful believers. I think about the story of John Newton. He was born in London in 1725. His mother was a devout Christian and brought him up to have faith in Jesus. He could recite the catechism and sing hymns by the age of four. But his mother died when he was just seven years old, and his father, a sea captain, did not share her religious beliefs. John was sent to boarding school, and at the age of 11 he went to sea with his father. Later he served in the British Navy, but he deserted. When he was caught, he was put in irons and whipped in public.
At that point, Newton chose to live a life of such evil and sinfulness that his friends even questioned his sanity. He signed on to a slave ship, and before long became master of his own ship, carrying boatloads of Africans into the monstrous evil of slavery. He was often drunk and frequently gave in to his lust and sank deeper and deeper into a life that was far from the ways of God.
The turning point in Newton’s life began with a storm at sea when he was just 23 years old. The ship was in danger of sinking and he was faced with the possibility of his own death. Soon after, he read The Imitation of Christ by Thomas a Kempis, and it began to work on his heart. In 1754 he left the sea and went to work as a tide surveyor in Liverpool, where he soon began hearing the preaching of George Whitefield and John Wesley. He underwent a complete transformation, a total makeover.
By 1758 he had begun to preach and was later ordained as a priest in the Church of England. He was appointed as curate of Olney, Buckinghamshire in 1764, and published a collection of hymns with William Cowper in 1779. In 1780, Newton became vicar at St. Mary Woolnoth in London, and continued to preach until he was 80 years old. He joined forces with William Wilberforce and others to work to abolish the slave trade in England. In the later years, he had trouble with his vision, and a man would stand beside him in the pulpit to help him find his headings in his manuscript. When he was no longer able to read, he was advised to give up preaching. But he replied, “What, shall the old African blasphemer stop while he can speak!” He died in 1807 and was buried in the churchyard there. His gravestone bears the epitaph that he wrote for himself: “John Newton, Clerk. Once an infidel and libertine, a servant of slaves in Africa; was by the rich mercy of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, preserved, restored, pardoned, and appointed to preach the Faith he had labored long to destroy.” In that same year, the British Parliament finally abolished slavery throughout its domain.
You might not know the name John Newton, but I bet you know one of the hymns he wrote. It goes like this: “Amazing grace! how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me! I once was lost, but now am found, was blind but now I see.” God worked a total makeover on life of John Newton, and the former slave trader and sinner became a tireless priest and activist to end the slave trade.
I don’t know whether you have ever required a total makeover; maybe your life has been managed with little tweaks. But I do know this: our God is in the business of makeovers. He is the Creator, and he has not finished his work of creating. He makes all things new. He makes us new. He gives us new life, new hope, a new future, a new purpose. So, if you need it, allow God to give you a total makeover. The results will be absolutely amazing.