Connecting the Dots

[HKHaugan]

Life is a series of encounters, events and happenings. Each of us is central in what we experience in them. We process them, log them in our memory and use them as focal points in our development. Each presented its good or bad effect. Each one was a learning. But regardless, as disciples of Jesus, we can hold them in the light of His image and determine how they affect us for the glory of self or the glory of God. He is the scale we use to weigh life in all its perspectives. He is the stability that makes us balanced. In Him we connect all those encounters, events and happenings to see His hand shaping us from our earliest memory to today's present moment. They are the dots and He is the connector. That connecting is done by His grace and His truth. It is His grace that makes the difference. Without His grace we are lost in a myriad of strategic anxiety ridden strategies and manipulative game playing. This is where religion and relationship part company. Religion in all its forms from atheism to deity centered systems as well as denominational exclusivity always ends up glorifying the self through dependency and pride in being a member of one group or another. But being a disciple of Jesus is all about having a personal relationship with God, consciously following Him and serving Him moment by moment. Having that kind of a relationship with Jesus always ends up glorifying Him even in the worst moments of disobedience in a disciple’s life.

What I mean by 'worst moments' is even in our most brazen disobedience, when we may have sinned grievously, it was the Holy Spirit through the Word who made that clear and got us to remember and return to Jesus, whose presence in our hearts, always stood ready to reconcile us. Like Cain, religionists will always seek a combination of self-justification, excuse, self pity, ritual practices and 'working to be better,' as a methodology for self-forgiveness. “After all I'm a church member and do a lot of good things in my community.” But the opposite is the disciple who knows his sin full well. He knows that it's the Holy Spirit operating relationally bringing him back to the Cross. It is at the foot of the Cross where he knows the forgiveness only Jesus can offer. It is at the foot of the Cross the risen Jesus touches our hearts and minds with His presence. Thankfully He is always one step ahead of us.

That very sin-laden 'Cain-like' attempt at self-forgiveness needs to be radically challenged. When we get to looking back at the past and some of our supposedly 'unforgiveables,' we might have found ourselves saying “I don't think I can forgive myself.” It's an expressive attempt to say I am forgiven because I feel bad about it. And if I can feel bad enough about something then that solves the issue. It's a vain attempt and a lame substitute for God's real forgiveness.

Let's ponder that idea for a moment. Can we really forgive ourselves? Consider the following in the light of God's Truth:

If we could forgive ourselves in any way by our own means then we wouldn't need a Savior. Nor would we need a Lord. The Cross of Jesus would be meaningless and His presence on earth unneeded. Not only that but the idea of forgiving one's self, when carried forward, leads us to become our own god. Then sin's meaning evolves simply to being personally correctable mistakes just like the modernist who says evolution trumps Creation. What is the consequence of that conclusion? Sin subtly elevates its power in us and produces its inevitable toxicity in our relationships with others.

Sin doesn't allow us or want us to connect the dots except in the most self centered way possible. Excuses, rationalization, denial of sin, self pity and self-justification are the bad dots. They connect us to eternal aloneness. This brings us to the issue of guilt. Guilt is more than a feeling. It is the spiritual reality of sin in us. Only Jesus can give us freedom from it as we open ourselves to His sacrifice on the Cross. He bore death on the Cross and canceled the power of sin. When He tells us to take up our cross that is our key to freedom from sin through repentance, immersion in Scripture, giving Him our all in prayer and receiving His forgiveness. Those come in many moments. They are the good dots, the memories, the events that give us eternal fellowship with God and the whole Kingdom of believers. This is salvation in its fullness. This is what He saved us for.

However, while we are in this world the dots are not that apparent at the moment of their happening. It takes spiritual insight to make sense out of the dots. The connection may come later in a few moments or maybe even days, months or years later. The point of our conversion, when we accepted Jesus as our personal Savior, is the core dot to figure out how all the rest fit into a pattern of recovery the Lord is masterminding in us. What initiated it? What were the circumstances, the ignition points, the pressure points that rose to the surface turning us to Him? For some it was an addiction. For others it was emotional isolation in the midst of conflict. Also some have had a direct confrontation with the Lord, the most humbling of moments. Again it may have been the death of someone close or the realization that all our success was momentary and the question was raised, “Is that all there is?”

Our personal history makes sense only after we allow the Lord to be the focal point to connect our dots. In my experience it was a four month rebirth prompted by the Holy Spirit. A series of circumstances took me from one dot to another until I realized it wasn't me or anything I did that turned my life to Him. It was the recognition of His resurrected presence and the realization that He cared for me and my family in our precarious circumstances that turned my head toward Him in response. I finally understood I was a spiritual person with a mind and heart designed for His purposes. There are lots of connecting points that came together in a pattern. They all pointed to His hand directing the traffic for my restoration. And they still do.

What makes it even more interesting is the fact that sin never left me but the awareness of it increased and the work of the Spirit increased with it. I know when sin is at work and when the Spirit makes me aware of it. Those are dots that the Spirit connects for us. How they connect is our testimony. They reveal the Lord's prevailing grace is amazing and the truth of His Word is downright astonishing in its depth and personal insight. I know that spiritually geared minds and hearts grasp the depth of life because we are spiritual beings first and human beings second. We are spiritual beings having a human experience. That is the big dot the Lord uses to get our minds and hearts turned around.

Then, when you realize the Lord's gift of the Scriptures and its treasury of insights, something happens. We find in them His way of connecting the dots in our human experience. In fact it becomes clear in them how Jesus spent a lot of His teaching connecting the dots of man's history to God's will. And starting with Genesis Creation itself is a connection of events He initiated to give us a relationship with Him. Everything physical is spiritually connected by the meaning, the invisible significance, behind them. Mankind is not just a bundle of cells and molecules arriving by chance. Mankind is created by God to be an image and likeness of Him. Mankind thus becomes individually, personally and spiritually identified. Each of us has a mind, heart and spirit that is unique and created to have relationships with Him and others.

Scriptures all point to Jesus and the reality is His coming into the world enables us to connect all the dots in a way that makes sense out of everything visible and invisible. Nothing else does that like Holy Scripture. It identifies what separated man from God and the resulting consequences; a series of connected generations of sin directed behaviors that drew the human race farther away from their Creator. The Prophets came as the spiritual dots exposing those disastrous events and heralding their solution through another series of spiritual dots identifying a coming Savior. Then come the Gospels, another series of spiritual dots that open to us eternal life offered through Jesus. His teachings move us to see in Him inspecting, connecting and correcting the fallen dynamics of our personal lives through the perfect dynamics of His life that bring recovery to eternal life in Him. When we accept those teachings and connect them to our personal spiritual condition they become the dots that take us from being fallen and alone to rising and walking with Him and others.

So we are left with these questions. What are the dots in our personal experience that have brought us to where we are at this point in our lives? What are the negative dots that have surfaced we know are sin produced? Where have we really tried to control circumstances and did our attempts work? In these queries we will discover the spirits that have been warring against us and the distractions that have held us back from being active disciples yielded to God's will. It's all about letting the Lord Jesus connect the dots on both sides of the fence. Then we take it all to Him and let the Holy Spirit rework them in us as we move forward, look forward and act forward in His name.

What we will see in this process of connecting the dots is how much the Lord has done to make Himself available in our every next moment. His grace, His truth and His love have brought us so far from where we were. Now the simple exercise of connecting the dots in our personal spiritual history will equip us to be more confident as we live and spread the good news about Him wherever we are. Holy Scripture shows the Lord's own approach was the same. Remember when John the Baptist was in prison and He sent his disciples to ask Jesus if He was the One or should they look for another? What did He do? He responded by connecting the dots of His activity, “The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised and the good news is preached to the poor. Blessed is the man who does not fall away on account of me (Mt.11:5-6).” After that He connected John to Malachi's prophecy as the prophet who would prepare the way for Him (vs.10, Mal.3:1). And that is just a sample of how Jesus lived a life of connected dots from His birth to His death and Resurrection. “Before Abraham was, I am (Jn.8:58).”

His testimony, His witness, His life, His Cross, His Resurrection: all connected dots to set the wheels of our lives in motion. Now it's our turn. “Therefore go and make disciples...(Mt.28:19).”