How many of you have completed a connect the dot puzzle? You know what I'm talking about...those puzzles that have little numbers or letters with dots all over the page. The activities that helped us learn our alphabet, how to count to 100 or revealed a picture of a bible story?? Well what if I showed you a connect the dot puzzle and asked you to tell me what the final image would be WITHOUT connecting a single dot? Some images would be easy to pick out, but the more numbers or letters that are added, the harder it would become. OK now what if I told you that there was a connect the dot puzzle of your life? Interesting thought isn't it.
OK lets take this one step further. Looking at your puzzle, what do you see? Is it neat and organized with dots that are easy to connect? Or maybe your puzzle is full of clusters of dots here and there? Or maybe your puzzle is ONE. BIG. DOT in the center of the page? Like I said before, this puzzle represents your life. More specifically this puzzle represents the times you've heard God's call/whisper and obeyed.
Take a look at the puzzle again, what do you see? Has God been working in your life? Have you been listening to His voice? Do you know His voice of truth among all the other voices SCREAMING for your immediate attention? Maybe you've started thinking about all the times you've heard and disobeyed...STOP! That's your enemy attacking. He knows your weaknesses better than you do, but he's a liar and can't be trusted. What I need you to do is focus on your puzzle. Your job is NOT connecting the dots. God's already done that! Your job is NOT determining what the puzzle will look like in the end. God's already knows! Your job is NOT critiquing the artist. See Romans 9:22-33 The Message.
Romans 9:20-33 (The Message) Who in the world do you think you are to second-guess God? Do you for one moment suppose any of us knows enough to call God into question? Clay doesn't talk back to the fingers that mold it, saying, "Why did you shape me like this?" Isn't it obvious that a potter has a perfect right to shape one lump of clay into a vase for holding flowers and another into a pot for cooking beans? If God needs one style of pottery especially designed to show his angry displeasure and another style carefully crafted to show his glorious goodness, isn't that all right? Either or both happens to Jews, but it also happens to the other people. Hosea put it well:
I'll call nobodies and make them somebodies;
I'll call the unloved and make them beloved.
In the place where they yelled out, "You're nobody!"
they're calling you "God's living children."
Isaiah maintained this same emphasis:
If each grain of sand on the seashore were numbered
and the sum labeled "chosen of God,"
They'd be numbers still, not names;
salvation comes by personal selection.
God doesn't count us; he calls us by name.
Arithmetic is not his focus.
Isaiah had looked ahead and spoken the truth:
If our powerful God
had not provided us a legacy of living children,
We would have ended up like ghost towns,
like Sodom and Gomorrah.
How can we sum this up? All those people who didn't seem interested in what God was doing actually embraced what God was doing as he straightened out their lives. And Israel, who seemed so interested in reading and talking about what God was doing, missed it. How could they miss it? Because instead of trusting God, they took over. They were absorbed in what they themselves were doing. They were so absorbed in their "God projects" that they didn't notice God right in front of them, like a huge rock in the middle of the road. And so they stumbled into him and went sprawling. Isaiah (again!) gives us the metaphor for pulling this together:
Careful! I've put a huge stone on the road to Mount Zion,
a stone you can't get around.
But the stone is me! If you're looking for me,
you'll find me on the way, not in the way.
Your job is to focus on one. dot. at. a. time. In other words...listen, obey, trust, die to self, let the Spirit take control. Don't take over your life and miss out on what God has planned for you like Israel missed it. God shouldn't be the rock that we stumble upon on this journey of life. He should be the rock we cling to, the rock we build our life on.
Who's connecting your dots?
No comments:
Post a Comment