The Wonder Dogs, Wandering, and Getting the Best Snacks

The Wonder Dogs are a little bored with the Hosea project. 

They were thrilled when I first moved my laptop and commentaries to the screened porch to write every day. After a few days, however, they were ready for adventure. 

Yesterday, I let them outside to run around when they got restless. "It'll be time for lunch soon, so don't go far." 

Maggie ran around for a little while then took her favorite spot in the sun. Mamie ran around for a while, then ran around some more.

I stopped for lunch and headed to the kitchen. As I did, I stuck my head out the door and yelled, "Come on, girls. Time for lunch."

Maggie raced for the door.

Mamie did not.

Maggie has a little experience with lunch time, and she likes it. She stayed at my feet while I retrieved roasted chicken from the refrigerator and sliced some to add to my spinach salad. Her big eyes and wagging tail were nearly irresistible (as she knows), so I dropped a few pieces of chicken her way. She gobbled them up and rewarded me with such happy dancing that I gave her a little bit more.

Mamie missed the chicken because she didn't come when called.

When she finally arrived, happy and smiling from her adventure pestering the cat, Mamie went straight to her food bowl. She ate, without any idea that she'd missed the best because she'd been following her own way.

I watched her eat and wondered how many times I've missed God's best because I was following my own way instead of His. How many times I've gotten what I needed instead of the extra God wanted to give because I didn't obey when He called.

Psalm 23 tells us, "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures; He leads me beside quiet waters."

We have those green pastures and quiet waters when we follow the Shepherd who leads us, not when we (like Mamie) go our own way.

Today, let's be the ones who follow close behind our Shepherd, who come when called. It's not just the right thing for disciples to do. It's the only way to position ourselves to receive all the sweetness of relationship with Him. 

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Here's the link to another Wonder Dog story: The Wonder Dogs Run in Circles: The Search for God (http://leannahollis.blogspot.com/2016/02/the-wonder-dogs-run-in-circles-search.html)
Here's the link to yesterday's post: A Gift God Doesn't Already Own (http://leannahollis.blogspot.com/2016/05/a-gift-god-doesnt-already-own.html)
#WonderDogs #WednesdayWisdom #disciple #follow

Already Gone

And he left everything behind, and got up and began to follow Him. (Luke 5:28 NASB)

If you were given these three verbs to arrange in proper order: follow, leave, rise, you'd almost certainly say the rising came before the leaving, but that would be wrong. When Jesus walked up to Matthew and said "Follow Me", He was also saying "Leave this tax collector job behind. Leave your wealth and your fancy house and toys behind, and follow Me."  The first decision to be made in following Christ was whether or not to leave the old life behind. Deciding to leave the old life behind made the rising and following considerably easier. In fact, once the leaving was decided, the hard part was done. All Matthew had to do was stand up and start walking.  

The problem for most of us is that we would prefer to rise and follow Jesus without leaving our old life and ways behind, but that's not the way it works. To follow Jesus, leaving the old life and ways behind is not just a good idea, it's essential. That deciding though, it's the really hard part. We've probably struggled with some "old life" leaving issues ourselves. It's to be expected that the life our loved ones have come to embrace is hard to leave. It's part of the process, but made much easier when we tire of the lifestyle we thought we wanted. 

Today, pray that our loved ones (and we also) would be so weary of their current lifestyle that the leaving will be quickly accomplished, and that, when they rise, it will be obvious that they'd already gone, leaving the mistakes and old ways behind to follow Christ.