While I was refreshing my memorization of Isaiah 64:8 yesterday, a thought came to me that I want to share. Here is the scripture: "O Lord, thou art our Father; we are the clay, and thou our potter; and we all are the work of thy hand."
For clay to be workable in a potter's hands, it must be moist. If the clay is dry, it becomes brittle and unyielding. What are the sources of moisture? "Living water" (John 4:11), which is the gospel of Jesus Christ. In other words, the water that we are invited to joyfully "draw . . . out of the wells of salvation" (Isaiah 12:3; 2 Nephi 22:3).
Two of the primary sources for that water are humble prayer and reading, pondering applying the words of prophets both ancient (the scriptures) and modern (the Ensign, etc.).
To stay moist and moldable, we need to earnestly pray and to study and apply the scriptures each day. As we do, we will receive impressions which, when followed will allow the Savior to shape us incrementally to become more and more like Him.
Tyndale understood this process, as described in these words: ‘The nature of God’s word is, that whosoever read it, . . . it will begin immediately to make him every day better and better, till he be grown into a perfect man’” (Quoted in S. Michael Wilcox, Fire in the Bones: William Tyndale—Martyr, Father of the English Bible (2004), xv) (Elder Robert D. Hales, “Preparations for the Restoration and the Second Coming,” Ensign, Nov. 2005, 90).
