PowerPoint Bible Study Wk 1 connect the dots

connect the dots - God's purpose, plan, will and call in your life

God’s promise and purpose for your life

Connect the dots

Week 1

Take home questions

1. What desires and intentions do you have for your life?

2.  Read Genesis 37, 39-45.  Think about Joseph’s dreams and how they came to pass.

·      Do you think his dreams came to pass when and how he expected them to?

·      What do you think God accomplished in Joseph by delaying the fulfillment of Joseph’s dreams?

·      What do you think God has accomplished in you by delaying the fulfillment of your dreams?

3.  Read the following excerpt from an article written in Guidepost magazine by Catherine Marshall:

Like most people, when I first began active experimentation with prayer, I was full of questions, such as: Why are some agonizingly sincere prayers granted, while others are not? I still have questions. Mysteries about prayer are always ahead of present knowledge—luring, beckoning on to further experimentation.

But one thing I do know; I learned it through hard experience. It’s a way of prayer that has resulted consistently in a glorious answer, glorious because each time, power beyond human reckoning has been released. This is the Prayer of Relinquishment.

I got my first glimpse of it in the fall of 1943. I had been ill for six months with a lung infection, and a bevy of specialists seemed unable to help. Persistent prayer, using all the faith I could muster, had resulted in—nothing. I was still in bed full-time.

One afternoon I read the story of a missionary who had been an invalid for eight years. Constantly she had prayed that God would make her well, so that she might do his work. Finally, worn out with futile petition, she prayed, All right. I give up. If you want me to be an invalid, that’s your business. Anyway, I want you even more than I want health. You decide. In two weeks the woman was out of bed, completely well.

This made no sense, yet the story would not leave me. On the morning of September 14—how can I ever forget the date?—I came to the same point of abject acceptance. I’m tired of asking, was the burden of my prayer.I’m beaten. God, you decide what you want for me. Tears flowed. I had no faith as I understood faith, expected nothing. The gift of my sick self was made with no trace of graciousness.

And the result? It was as if I had touched a button that opened windows in heaven; as if some dynamo of heavenly power began flowing. Within a few hours I had experienced the presence of the Living Christ in a way that wiped away doubt and revolutionized my life. From that moment my recovery began.

Through this incident, God was trying to teach me something important about prayer. Gradually, I saw that a demanding spirit, with self-will as its rudder, blocks prayer. I understood that the reason for this is that God absolutely refuses to violate our free will; that, therefore, unless self-will is voluntarily given up, even God cannot move to answer prayer.

·      What does this speak to you regarding God answering your prayer about your plans for your future?

4.  What is motivating your dreams for the future? 

5.  Do you have any dreams you need to surrender to God?

6.  Have you unintentionally put finding your purpose ahead of pursuing your relationship with God?

7.  What does Jeremiah 29:11 speak to you personally?

Ability Awareness

Last week a friend of mine invited me to hear a couple of people speaking at the local university.  They were focusing attention on the issues that people with disabilities face.  Both speakers were born with birth defects.  They described the kind of obstacles that might have caused them to be bitter, filled with self pity and anger.  I can't say that I wouldn't have responded that way.  But these two men, rather than focusing on their disabilities, saw the abilities that God gave them.  The ability for one to play baseball, the other football.  Both men played college ball, one played professionally for four years.  Neither allowed his disability to handicap him.  In fact, it seemed that his disability made each of them more aware of his abilities than he might have been otherwise.

As one of the speakers said, we are all born with handicaps.  His was visible.  Not all impairments can be seen.  Sometimes the biggest handicaps people face aren't physical.  They are the handicaps of fear, doubt, distrust, rejection, hopelessness, and despair.  How do we overcome those handicaps and keep them from robbing us from achieving what God has planned for us?

Do we overcome by focusing on our limitations and our disabilities?  Or do we overcome by focusing on our strengths and our abilities?  I am inclined to believe that you get more of what you focus on.  The best way to grow your fear (or insecurity, or hurt, or whatever is holding you back) is to focus on it.  When you do that, it is like you feed it with the attention you give to it.  Or, you can choose to starve it by focusing on God, the abilities that He has placed within you, and the power and strength that is yours in Him.

What is your disability?  Recognize it for what it is.  Then turn your attention to your abilities.  I empathize with those with disabilities and support efforts to raise awareness of their struggles.  But maybe it would also be helpful for us all to set aside our own Ability Awareness Week.  To focus on the potential within us, both through what we are born with along with what the Holy Spirit gives to us.  Concentrate on God's strength and abilities that He has placed within you to help you overcome whatever threatens to disable you from achieving your goals and dreams.  

I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. -- Philippians 4:13.

For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith. -- 1 John 5:4

Today is the Day

Today is the Day.  For what?  I don't know yet.  I know what is on my schedule.  My haircut at 11:30.  My class at 7:00.  What I need to accomplish in between.  But regardless of what is on my calendar, God has appointments lined up for me that I don't even know about yet.

I can look back on days past and see chance encounters where I had the opportunity to pour into someone else's life.  I also see days where other people ministered to me when they had no idea they that they were impacting me.  Those were appointments God had planned from the time I was conceived.  Mind boggling, I know.  But Psalm 139:16 says: all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. 

Today is the Day.  God has something lined up.  He has appointments for me today, too.  Maybe they will relate to my haircut and 7:00 class, maybe not.  Maybe they will be totally unexpected.  But he has given me the hours in this day to unwrap, like a package.  Today was part of the birthday present He gave me years ago on the day I was born.  Every day is like a package, waiting to be opened.  I get to open today, October 19, 2012, today.  Tomorrow I get a new package to open.  But today, this one is full of surprises, waiting for me to embrace, enjoy, live.

Today is the Day!

This is the day which the Lord has made; we will rejoice and be glad in it. (Psalm 118:24)