I am My Dog

Almost three weeks ago we brought home a Basset Hound puppy.  He is cute, soft, and adorable.  He has the longest ears and huge paws.  I named him Hickory and I love him.  I wouldn't trade him for anything.

Hickory has been teaching me how much God loves me.  One day while I was picking up Hickory's poop I realized that I am just like him.  No, I don't go poop in the yard, but God is patient with me and has to clean up my messes at times.

Just like Hickory, I am stubborn at times.  Basset hounds are known for being stubborn and you need to be more patient with a basset because of it.  God is so patient with me at times I wonder how He can manage to put up with me.  I have time and time again gone against God, and time and time again come back to Him whimpering for forgiveness.

Hickory knows his name now and can sit.  I am teaching him to ring a bell when he needs to go out. Sometimes he needs to go out, but refuses to ring the bell (stubbornness again).  If I am patient I know he will learn and hopefully soon be house broken.

God has lessons for me as well and slowly I am learning.  I think I am house broken now, but I still have a few lessons to learn like: Stay (Don't go off ahead of God's plan)! Beg (be humble)! Heel (Stay beside Christ and walk with Him)! Play dead (die to self)!

Hickory is still a puppy and like most puppies he likes to play and when he plays he bites.  He is slowly learning not to puppy bite and that can be frustrating at times.  I have cuts on my hands where his teeth have playfully drawn blood.  I give a good loud "OUCH!", grit my teeth and pry his teeth from my arm.  I then say through my gritted teeth "No Hickory!  No biting!"  I give him something else to chew while I put on a tourniquet.

Through it all I am learning to be patient.  I look at Hickory and I see past the puppy he is and find a trained basset hound dog which sees me as his best friend.  I see him as completely house broken, never gnaws on me and is obedient.

When God looks at me He sees a mature Man of God.  He is so patient with me now even though I am still a puppy.  I am as much a puppy as my Hickory is, but thankfully I am house broken.

Deeper Teachings About Christ

Do you want to know the deeper things of Christ?  Are you curious about what deep secrets of the Bible might say?  Tired of the mere milk of the Word and want to taste the juicy meat of God's Word?

"Therefore let us move beyond the elementary teachings about Christ and be taken forward to maturity, not laying again the foundation of repentance from acts that lead to death, and of faith in God, instruction about cleansing rites, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgement. And God permitting we will do so." Hebrews 6: 1-3

If you are a young Christian, learning about repentance and faith is God is essential. Being taught about how to go to God for cleansing of sins after you are in Christ, your future with the resurrection of the dead and eternal judgment of those who do not know Christ is something every new Christian should know.  What is beyond that which is true meat?

Those deeper lessons are found in discipleship, daily reading of scripture, and many other Christian life lessons that are led by the Holy Spirit.  We are under the tutelage of the Holy Spirit.  He will lead us in our education as fast as we let Him.  You are under construction by the Holy Spirit to become a beautiful work of God's art.

But there is one mistake too many of us make.  We leave the things we learned before and seek only after the deeper things.  If you ask any coach of any sport what is the most important thing for players to know, it is the basics.  Without the basics you will never flourish in the advanced lessons.

Know the elementary teachings of Christ and go over them again and again as you learn the deeper things of God.  Do not forsake the foundation which brought you this far.  Strengthen it so that God can build more and more upon it.

Photo by David Beale on Unsplash

The Wrong Hope is Frustrating

Someone posted on Facebook: "To hope is to risk frustration. Therefore, make up your mind to risk frustration.:-Thomas Merton  This got me to thinking about hope.  Hope is a strange word in the scriptures because it does not mean the same thing as how we use it today.

In the Bible it is a sure hope.  When hope is mentioned in scripture it means something will definitely happen in the future and when we hope in that event we can be confident that it will happen.  Today it simply means that we have no idea if it will happen, but we wish it would.

So today's hope can bring frustration, but scriptural hope will never leave you frustrated.  But what about when we pray?  Can we become frustrated when we go to God asking for something and not get it?  When we plead with God for healing, for a loved one to be safe, or for the salvation of a friend and it does not happen, how do we feel?

I have been a Christian for almost 50 years now and I have had a lot of prayers not answered the way I wanted.  If God loves me, why doesn't He answer my prayers as I asked?  It has taken a while for me to realize that God doesn't fulfill all my desires, because He does love me.

I don't get frustrated now when I pray for something and it does not go my way.  My hope is not in any event, but in God.  Before I was selfish, but I am now slowly learning that God's plans go far beyond my desires.

Which do I really want, my ways or God's?  Now when I tell God what I think should happen, my hope is not in that happening, but in God to do the right thing.  If my desire is not met, it is because God has a better idea.  I might become sad, but never frustrated.  My plans need to become secondary to God's plans

Photo by Ben White on Unsplash

Why is God Worthy of My Love?

Have you ever thought about what makes God so great? I have heard people praying and recognizing so many wonderful and powerful things about God.  Their prayers talk about how powerful God is.  He is the King of the Universe, all-powerful and mighty.  By simply speaking He is able to create all things.  Nothing can exist without Him.

He is also all knowing, even to the point of knowing how many hairs there are on our heads.  He is omnipresent so that we cannot  hide from Him and there is nothing we can do which He would not know about.  There is nothing new to Him.  All our greatest technology is simplistic to Him.  Our greatest minds are as preschoolers compared to His most elementary thoughts.

He owns everything.  Forget about the richest men in the world.  God owns the universe and could make many more universes if He wanted to.  He rules from a city where the foundations are of precious gems, and the streets are of gold.  He has servants whose only desire is to serve Him and they wait patiently around His throne just to hear what His next words are.

He lives outside of time.  He was before time began, and He will be after time ends.  There is nothing which has ever happened where He was not there and had an intricate knowledge of.  He is more wonderful, awesome and powerful then we can even imagine.

All I have said above is true, but I don’t care about all that.  It is not meaningless but it is not what is truly important about God.  You can take all that away and God would still be more wonderful than anything or anyone living.

What makes God worthy of my love?  It is not because of all I have written here.  Those things are simply abilities and states of His status.  The real reason to love God is found in 1 John 4:19 “We love him, because he first loved us.”

God loves you so much that He actually gave up all the wonderful and powerful things I mentioned the first part of this post.  Jesus gave up all of Heaven’s riches and glory to be born in a barn and live in a primitive world full of sin, sorrow and death.  He had no power of his own except what The Father sent through Him.  Jesus loved us so much that he gave up everything, including his earthly life so that we can know God and live eternally with Him.

Forget about power and riches.  I want to know Jesus and be with him because of his heart’s love for me.  How can I deny such love?  Even if Heaven and eternal life were not promised to me, I would still have to love Him.

Photo by Nathan Anderson on Unsplash

The Lesson of the Two Seas

In Israel there are two seas.  To the north is the Sea of Galilee, and to the south is the Dead Sea. The Sea of Galilee is rich with fish and life, while the Dead Sea is empty of life.  There are no fish or vegetation in its waters because of the salt and minerals which prevent life from inhabiting it.

The Sea of Galilee has the freshwater of the Jordan River entering it from the north.  The waters of the Jordan then exit the sea on the south and flow down to the Dead Sea.  The Sea of Galilee doesn't just take in the waters, but it gives what it has received.

The Dead Sea takes and takes, but never gives.  This allow the waters to become saturated with the salts and minerals.  Not passing on what was given to it only brings death.

God gives blessings to us all and what we do with those blessings determines if we will bring forth life to others or only death.  When we do not share the blessing of salvation to others, we leave them to die in their sins.  When we do not share our food with those in need, we show our hearts to be hard, dark and selfishly hording what others need to live.

God gives to us endlessly so that we might give endlessly, just as the Sea of Galilee does.  To take and never give will only make us like the Dead Sea with nothing to show in the end but emptiness.

Photo Credit: The Dead Sea, Israel by tsaiproject

Was Jonah a False Prophet?

We have heard the story of Jonah and the whale since we were children.  Jonah was to go to the city of Nineveh and proclaim that in forty days Nineveh would be overthrown ( Jonah 3 ).  After running as far as he could, and an encounter with a large fish, Jonah finally gave God's message to the Ninevites.

So after 40 days what happened to Nineveh?  Was the king overthrown?  Were the people destroyed? No! Doesn't that make Jonah a false prophet?  Was God wrong to say that Nineveh would be overthrown?

God is a God of mercy and love.  People point to this event to say "See, God was wrong!" instead of pointing to the fact that out of God's mercy 120,000 people had repented and were saved.  Those men, women and children would live because they had turned from the wickedness they had committed.

Was God still wrong to say that Nineveh would be overthrown when after 40 days the city still stood? The Hebrew word for overthrown is hafak.  Hafak means overthrown, but it also means overturned, changed and converted.  The wickedness of the city was overthrown by the Spirit of God.  The people changed their lives and were converted to follow God instead of the evil that had been in their hearts.

God desires to be merciful more than He desires judgement.  He is willing to appear wrong if it means the salvation of a person. When you have a choice to believe God or believe man's logic, always choose God.

Photo Credit: the Story of Nineveh by Joe More

The Smallness of the Universe

The Hebrew word olam is the universe, this world and all that you see.  When we look at our world it seems so great and powerful in our lives.  We see the stars above and wonder at how vast the universe is.  The olam dwarfs us in so many ways.  Hurricane Harvey is an example of just how powerful a small bit of the olam is and how great it can affect our lives.  Could there be anything in all of existence greater than the olam?  Can anything have more impact to our lives than the olam?

Before the olam came into existence there was nothing.  No, not even space or time.  The olam came into being when God spoke.  Such a small thing as a word from God created all of olam.  The Earth, the solar system and all of the universe came into existence because of the word of God.  The Hebrew word for word is Davar.  Davar gave olam the power, the vastness, and the beauty we see today.

Which than is more powerful, the olam or the davar?  Which can have more of an impact on your life. the olam or the davar?  Which one should you be led by, the olam or the davar?

The word came first and was spoken.  The world followed and obeyed the word.  The world and all of the universe is nothing compared to the word.  We must never follow the world or our circumstances.  The word of God is where the true power is.  Even if all that is occurring in the world and in our lives seems overpowering, we must still follow the word.  It can be tough at times, but trusting God and following His word is the surest place to stand when the world comes against us.

You will find the davar filling the Bible.  The Bible is the most powerful force in the Universe.  It is the Word of God.

Photo by Wil Stewart on Unsplash