The Glaze of Fervent Lips

Earthen words
Cracks concealed
Gilded guise
Hearts unchanged
Righteous tones
Deceiving ears
Hollow ring
A walk betrayed

Beyond the meeting, is Jesus near?

Shift in heart
King enthroned
Clay transformed
Hearts renewed
Lips aligned
Now hands and feet
Tell of grace
Here, marks the change

“What you are speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson

“The most exhausting thing in life is being insincere.”
Anne Morrow Lindbergh

“In every walk of life each man puts on a personality and outward appearance so as to look what he wants to be thought; in fact you might say that society is entirely made up of assumed personalities.”
Francois de La Rochefoucauld

If the tongue is fire, does it burn away the dross? If lips pour forth passion, do they guide the feet to tread holy ground? The weight of words is not in their fervor but in the obedience that follows. A glaze may gleam on pottery, but beneath—has the fire purified it? Or does the heat reveal fractures unseen? “Like the glaze covering an earthen vessel are fervent lips with an evil heart” (Proverbs 26:23, ESV). This is no mere poetry. The Hebrew does not speak of gold or any purified covering, but of slag —the dross, the refuse left behind after refinement. A veneer, not a transformation. The distinction is crucial. Refining removes impurity that falsehood only conceals. A thin coating may shine, but the substance beneath remains unchanged. So too, our speech may be laced with Christian language, our attendance unwavering, our proclamations bold—but do our lives align with the allegiance we profess? Do we honor God with our lips on Sunday yet live for self the rest of the week?

Pious Pretenders
Scripture is relentless in exposing this divide between what is proclaimed and what is practiced. Israel spoke Yahweh’s name but bowed to Baal in secret (Jeremiah 7:9-10). The prophets denounced hands lifted in worship yet stained with oppression and idolatry (Isaiah 1:15, Jeremiah 7:9-10). The Pharisees uttered lengthy prayers while devouring widows’ houses (Matthew 23:14). Jesus rebuked those who pursued the prestige of public piety yet neglected justice, mercy, and faithfulness in private (Matthew 23:23). Paul warned the Romans against hollow conformity, calling instead for transformation by the renewal of the mind (Romans 12:2). The condition of the heart and not the eloquence of the lips determines our standing before God (Matthew 15:8). Passionate speech does not equate to nearness to God. A deceived heart can cry out with the same zeal as a devoted one. The difference is not in volume, nor in fluency, but in fruit (Matthew 7:16). There are those who move among the faithful, fluent in the language of God, yet their feet never tread the narrow way. Do they know? Or are they deceived? The tragedy is not merely hypocrisy, but blindness—lips that cry, “Lord, Lord,” yet remain unknown by Him (Matthew 7:21-23). What use is a polished vessel if it holds nothing but dust?

Worship Without Cost
Modern worship culture has no shortage of lifted hands and fervent voices. Emotion floods gatherings—we sing with abandon, we weep in sorrow, we rejoice in triumph. The Psalms are filled with such expressions and there is no shame in this. But are we worshiping God, or are we worshiping the feeling? Do we chase the song that moves us, the moment that stirs us, the experience that affirms us while resisting the surrender true worship demands? Emotion is not the enemy, but when we begin to measure our worship by what we feel rather than by the One we worship, we have already strayed. True worship is not simply what stirs the heart, but what surrenders it. “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship” (Romans 12:1, ESV). A living sacrifice is not an emotional rush. It is the daily laying down of self. The bowed knee. The yielded will. The whispered yes when everything in us resists obedience. True worship does not seek affirmation, it does not rest in the comfort of an emotional high but presses into the refining fire of God’s presence. It is not concerned with whether we feel close to Him, but whether we are yielded to Him. The test of worship is not found in the experience but in the obedience that follows. “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15, ESV). And this is where we falter. We mistake intensity for intimacy, passion for presence. We forget that the deepest worship is not in the crescendo of a moment but in the unseen sacrifices of a life laid down. “Has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to listen than the fat of rams” (1 Samuel 15:22, ESV). Worship that costs nothing is worth nothing. It is not about what we receive but about what we give. Our will. Our desires. Our comfort. Do we still worship when obedience costs us something? When prayers remain unanswered? When worship is not an outpouring of feeling but an act of costly surrender? Because if our faith is built on the emotional swell of worship, it will collapse when faithfulness demands more than feelings can sustain. David knew what too many refuse to grasp —to bring God that which costs us nothing is not devotion but convenience (2 Samuel 24:24). “Through Him then let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that acknowledge His name” (Hebrews 13:15, ESV). Sacrifice is the currency of true worship. Cheap praise —void of endurance, absent of surrender—carries no weight. When suffering comes, do we still sing? When prayers go unanswered, do we still bow? When obedience demands more than we are willing to give, do we still call Him good? Faith built on the shifting sands of emotion will crumble when tested. Passion that cannot endure the fire was never faith at all.

The Heart, Unmasked
Jesus, relentless in His exposure of hollow righteousness, left no room for illusions. In Matthew 15:17-20, He dismantles the religious leaders’ obsession with ritual purity, cutting straight to the heart of the matter—defilement is not an external corruption but an internal condition. The unwashed hands they feared were never the issue. The unyielded heart was. Proverbs 26:23 sharpens the image—a vessel coated in glaze, its surface polished, its substance unchanged. Religious fervor can embellish a life, but it cannot sanctify it. The glaze masks, but it does not purify. Scripture does not soften this truth. “Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life” (Proverbs 4:23, ESV). Jeremiah 17:9 (ESV), “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” No outward display of devotion can alter what remains corrupt within. If our worship is to be more than a thin veneer of piety, if our lives are to bear the weight of genuine godliness, transformation must go deeper. We cannot manufacture it. We must yield to the refining fire of the Spirit.

The Hands That Shape
God does not ask for perfection in ourselves, but He does require surrender. Worship was never meant to be a showcase for the polished but an altar for the broken. We do not wait until we have mastered holiness to lift our hands in praise, but neither do we dismiss the call to transformation. The Spirit who raised Christ from the dead dwells in us (Romans 8:11), and where He moves, nothing remains unchanged. We are not called to mask our fractures but to allow His light to break through them (2 Corinthians 4:7). Authentic worship is not the presentation of a curated self but the offering of an unguarded one—laid bare before the Potter who alone reshapes us into His image (Colossians 3:10). Glaze may lend a pot the appearance of refinement, but beneath its sheen, the clay remains coarse and unformed. A potter does not merely coat the clay; they press, knead, and refine. In the same way, God does not settle for surface-level reform. Trials are not arbitrary afflictions but the careful weight of His hands, stretching, strengthening, sanctifying. He does not gloss over imperfections—He transforms them. His Word seals, His fire purifies, and in the end, what emerges is not a brittle, hollow vessel but one tempered and made fit for His glory. Glaze can only conceal, but the Potter’s hands remake. No embellishment, no eloquence, no fervent display will alter what remains unchanged within. True spiritual formation is not cosmetic but consuming. Growth is slow, deliberate—a continual yielding, an unrelenting trust. The kneading, the pressing, the reshaping—it is not random, nor is it cruel. The Master Craftsman sees beyond raw material, beyond fractures and distortions, to what He intends us to become. And He does not cease His work until the reflection of Christ is unmistakable in the remade vessel. So, we fix our eyes—not on the fire, but on the hands that hold us. Not on the breaking, but on the purpose. Not on the flaws, but on the faithfulness of the One who reshapes. And in the end, what remains is not a life thinly coated in borrowed righteousness, but one wholly, irreversibly transformed for His glory.

Where do we go from here? Let us stop offering God what costs us nothing. Let us have the courage to ask if our devotion is rooted in feeling or fortified by faith. Let us acknowledge where we have settled for appearance over substance, where we have spoken of surrender while resisting refinement. And then—let us yield. Fully. Without hesitation, without excuse. Dear reader, press on. Not with fleeting passion but with unwavering perseverance. Not with empty fervor but with the substance of a life truly given. He who began this work will finish it (Philippians 1:6). Only in the hands of the Potter does the clay become what it was meant to be.