Trying To Connect the Dots

It was one of those far ranging conversations you can only have with someone who knows your heart and soul. Bunny and I were talking as we headed out about how God is at work in our individual lives, and then as so often happens, I started talking about what I think God is leading me to do as a teacher/preacher.

I'll condense the conversation for you. :)

For many of the people in our congregation, the most important thing I can do now is to connect the dots of what they know about the Bible together so that they can see God's overarching plan - and their place in it.

I am fully convinced that a lot of people know a little bit about the Bible. A great deal more of the people I see week in and week out know a pretty good bit about it. But most have never really changed the way they live day to day as a result. When they trusted Christ for salvation, it was a moving event. But then another day came and went, and another, and they still weren't in heaven.

So they went back to living.

Maybe they were more considerate as they remembered Jesus' love. And perhaps they TRIED harder to "live a good life and treat people like they would want to be treated."

They had plenty of facts, but no story to place them into. They knew they ought to love because they were loved, but they never connected it to NOW and to the people they found themselves living with. They just could not see where anything they did could really make any difference.

And yet the Bible is brimming with examples of ordinary people doing extraordinary things because God was with them. And when you move into the New testament from the Old, you find that those who knew the most "Bible" seemed to have the poorest handle on what it really called them to do.

So what if we could transmit the Big Story - the HUGE narrative of how God worked, and how He is working, and how He can work through us and create opportunities for each of us to live it out?

What if we could connect the dots?

Stay tuned for Sunday. As we look at Acts, we'll try to tie the work of the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament to His coming on Jesus and to His living in us today to God's plan to change the world.