We Have a Lot to Learn From Dogs...

Many of us have pets and probably a majority of us pet owners have dogs. Dogs are known for their loyalty, obedience, and discipline. Dogs are cool. They don’t ignore you, they appreciate attention, want to be with you and generally make their owners happy. Cats on the other hand are quite the opposite. Cats do everything out of selfish motivation. They may act sweet, but there is a selfish, little Satan motivation under those “Puss in Boots” eyes. Dogs are cool though. Get a dog.

What I’m getting at is that we humans have a lot to learn from animals. Not cats, but dogs. Cats suck. This actually has nothing to do with cats. But back to what I was saying.

What are the positive qualities that people look for in friends? What about employers in their employees? Loyalty, listening skills, obedience, teach-ability, faithfulness, discipline, patience, trustworthiness, etc., the list goes on and on. All of these things are positive qualities. It’s funny because these are often qualities that are displayed in dogs.

We had our dog Precious for 11 years. She was a family dog, but if you were to ask anybody they would tell you that she was my dog. She displayed many of those faithful qualities I mentioned before. There were certainly times she was stubborn and lethargic, but she was an extremely faithful dog. We found out she had cancer throughout her body just four days before we had to put her down. It came as a shock to the whole family and we were all heart-broken. I remember coming home from school those four days before she died and seeing her just laying on the floor. She could barely keep food down and would stay in the same place all day. I specifically remember, though, that every time I walked in the door during those four miserable days, that she would wag her tail softly and do whatever she could to acknowledge that she saw me. You see, when she was healthy, she would wag her tail and come to the door to greet me. It may have been a sniff-and-go event on occasion, but it was an acknowledgement of her loyalty to me as her master. Now, in her final days, her wagging tail and slow gestures to acknowledge me were the best she could do to show her loyalty. She was dying but did the very best she could to acknowledge me as her master.

Dogs lovingly submit to their masters until their dying day. Precious did, I’m sure my current dog Daisy would too. But this leads me a troubling question: Why don’t we give God that kind of attention and loyalty in our lives? My current dog Daisy freaks out EVERYDAY whenever I get home to the point of peeing all over the floor. She has literally peed all over the floor when I or someone else in my family has arrived home. It’s like she’s on a crack high. Now I’m not saying to pee all over the floor and be on a crack high for Jesus, but why don’t we ever get so excited about Jesus that we just about lose ourselves? We live our day-to-day lives and barely give our creator the rightful credit he deserves.

What’s really sad about this is that we don’t treat our pets anywhere close to as awesome as God treats us, yet our pets show more loyalty us than we show to God. We annoy our pets and some people beat their pets, but our pets keep faithfully coming back to us, their masters. God, on the other hand, loves us more than words are capable of describing, yet we treat him like the town drunk.

Isaiah 1:3 says:

"The ox knows his master,
the donkey his owner's manger,
but Israel does not know,
my people do not understand."

Animals know that they are subject to man and accept that as their place. They instinctly know that their place is at the reins of their master. You’d think we would realize this with God, but instead we try whatever we can to be our own god. We don’t accept that we are powerless to our struggles and that without God, our lives are become unmanageable.

What’s amazing about this is that our domesticated pets are already a step ahead of us. They know that they are subject to their masters. ANIMALS ARE WISER THAN WE ARE! We are so obsessed with being the gods of our own lives that we forget that we are subject to the one who created us; the one who knows what is best for us. If my dog acted as disobediently toward me as I do against God, she would end up in the pound. Yet we as God’s creation purposefully put ourselves in the pound everyday of our lives. What’s even better is that God forgives and keeps us, even when we are disobedient to him.

Matthew 11:28-30 says this:

"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light."

We don’t even have to do the brunt work. I mean seriously people, farmers use oxen to plow the fields FOR THE THE FARMERS. God plows the fields FOR US. It's reversed. God as the master does the heavy lifting, not us as the servant. When we follow him and are obedient to him as the master of our lives, he does the rest. There is nothing else to it. Sure, we will have difficulties in our lives and being a Christ follower is not an easy task, but the strength and trust in God that is produced by following him will get you through any and all trials you will face.

Living for your self is easier in the short run. Things like sex, drugs, and alcohol make life easier. That’s why so many people turn to them. But when life takes a turn for the worse and those problems are put to the n^th degree, those temporary fixes begin failing around every corner. They become the things that bring you down. Life becomes hard and unmanageable.

Living for God on the other hand is tough. It’s tough to say that I’m weak. It’s tough to say that I am incapable of living my life on my own apart from God. But when we do admit those things, we get to see him lead our lives FOR us. Life becomes easier. The really tough stuff becomes manageable, because we are no longer the ones managing it. When the mountainous walls of life come straight out of the ground in our paths, we see that our faithful God is there to carry us over them.

In the craziness of life we tend to forget one of the most comforting phrases in all of scripture:

“Be still and know that I am God.” –Psalm 46:10a

It gives me the chills when I hear that. God is basically saying, “Hey, ADD boy, it’s okay, I’ve got this. You have absolutely nothing to worry about.”

And we don’t have anything to worry about. Our lives here on earth are temporary and short. There is something bigger waiting for us in eternity. Even in death, we can see that there is victory. If we are willing to trust God with our lives and admit that he is the master, he will reveal his already present love that has always been there for you in ways that words can’t describe.

So will you be like my Precious, showing trust and loyalty even when the pains of life come over you in unbearable ways, or will live in denial of God’s love and witness his blessings slip through your fingers like sand. I think we have a lot to learn from animals.