When God asked Valerie Limmer to go to Japan, she jumped at the chance to fulfill her lifelong dream of becoming a missionary. But obstacle upon obstacle blocked her path. Just after arriving, she encountered a debilitating injury that plunged her into a world where God seemed to delight in toying with her shattered dreams and broken heart.
Valerie offers a raw look at love, suffering, betrayal, and broken faith. Her true story about God's sustaining grace and victory will encourage you to go deeper in your faith and intimacy with God, and challenge you to live the life you were meant to live.
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On the Potter's Wheel is a stimulating and inspiring read. Valerie challenges us to reflect differently on time. It is not simply a commodity to be managed and maximized, but rather a moment-to-moment opportunity to hang out with our Jesus. Meanwhile, we wait with delight-filled anticipation, as the beloved children that we are, for what he has planned for us.
—Dr. Marion Goertz, Director of the Family Life Centre, Tyndale University College and Seminary
We often think of love as tender, romantic, sentimental. Yet love is one of the qualities that is foundational to the character of God---and to our understanding of the fatherhood of our God. As Valerie shares with a humble and intimate honesty, He demonstrates His love in ways that often confound and confuse us, trouble and torment us, as well as surprise and satisfy us. Even when we are being tempered in a forge of affliction and isolation, He shows us the simple truth that His ways and thoughts are higher and greater than ours. That His love and faithfulness is inscrutable, and that overarching all of this, He is perfectly worthy. Yes, He is worth it all.
—Pastor Emmanuel Palisoc, Scarborough Community Alliance Church
Published in 2016. Based on Amazon rankings over the course of several months, this book sold well initially. However, it was published by Tate Publishing, which went out of business less than a year after On the Potter's Wheel was released. (A great deal of fraud was discovered at the publishing company.) I never saw any of my royalties, nor did I ever receive a reliable sales report. Since being republished by Green Sap Publications, it has not performed well as all the sales momentum was lost during the year it took to re-publish. Sales may pick up following the release of my second book.
The Bible talks about the need to “run in such a way as to get the prize” (1 Corinthians 9:24-27).
A friend of mine used to babysit and play tennis with a now-famed European tennis star. She once said, “Really, when you’re looking at the top five people in a sport, any of them could win the match. It often comes down to athletes’ arrogance and how much they believe they will win. Eduardo Ricardo is a really arrogant guy. He always has been. That’s why he’s so good.”
How does that arrogance translate into our own experience, when we as Christians are told to be humble? Perhaps the solution lies in the mentality with which we approach our lives. Perhaps the key is to daily claim the victory Jesus has already won on our behalf. How many times have we allowed ourselves to get sucked into defeatist attitudes? How many times do we use ‘perseverance’ and ‘faithfulness’ as terms to insulate ourselves from the reality that we are not living in victory or joy—that we are not living the abundant life Jesus has graciously given us as an inheritance?
The more I think about it, the more I am convinced that living in victory is itself a spiritual discipline. When disheartened, we might be tempted to read these things and respond, “That’s all well and good, but what if in my life there are no apparent victories? What if everything around me is crumbling?”
That, I think, is when true discipline and faith come in. Some of the most joyful, triumphant Japanese missionaries I have ever met shared this verse with us last year:
“We walk by faith, not by sight.”
What if that’s the key?
In those times when sweet triumph is lost in the dissonance of defeat, when our hearts are pummelled and broken, when we grope blindly for hope...
