Just before the Christmas holidays, I receive an unusual call from a friend in a bit of a dilemma , they had to travel for the holidays and the arrangements they had made for the care of their puppies fell through at the last moment, could I have them for a couple of days? He asked, how many I asked? Nine he replied, nine puppies? That’s quite a lot of puppies, but, okay, I said, just to help a friend out, the kids would love the idea of having some puppies to play with and it would be an opportunity to teach them a bit more about responsibility and Bike( my wife) had dogs at their home growing up, so all good, I thought.
However this post is not just about the puppies but the lessons the Lord taught me through them, life lessons that have further deepened my understanding of life, people and the kingdom of God
So here are the lessons I learnt.
LOVE
First I learnt about love, taking the puppies was not convenient, to tell you the truth, notice was short and it meant time had to be spent watching, cleaning and feeding the puppies, my family and I accepted the puppies really as an act of love. I learnt that love and friendship is all about doing what is good for the other party even when it is not convenient and enjoy doing it.
PEOPLE NEED ATTENTION AND HELP
One night the puppies were making a terrible noise; this was about 2am in the morning! This noise continued till I was forced to come down just to find out what on earth was going on, to my surprise it was just one of the puppies that was making such a ruckus, I was like lord ‘what do I do now? To tell you the truth, I felt like putting the puppy in a cupboard somewhere and locking it up. But I did something different, I took the puppy in my hands and began to play with it, stroke it and just comfort it and to my surprise it just quietened down and went to sleep. As I lay down I began to think about this and I came to the conclusion that many people are like this puppy, crying out for attention and help, they do so in ways that we may consider disturbing to say the least but if we would listen to God we would find that sometimes all they need is some attention and help not judgment, critiscm or ridicule. This puppy taught me that.
GOD DOES CARE
A night or two later, we had the same situation, the puppies this time all of them, decided it was playtime at 2am, and they were really going at it. As I lay on the bed I could imagine the neighbors lining up at the gate in the morning complaining about the puppy war they were forced to endure the night before. In my desperation, I prayed and said, Lord, please send the angel that shut the mouth of the lions in Daniel’s time( this is a bible story you can find in Daniel 6) to shut the mouth of these puppies, and guess what? He did, a few seconds or minutes later all I mean all the puppies fell silent and peace at last. I thought about this for a long time and understood what 1 Peter 5:7 meant, cast your concerns before the Lord BECAUSE He cares for you. Can you do that?
I HAVE AUTHORITY
I have learnt that following Jesus Christ is like enrolling in a life time school, Jesus just like he did to his disciples on earth, is always teaching us something if we are willing to learn. A couple of days before the puppies returned home, the puppies began their usual noisy antics, it was about 4am and I was praying, it seemed as if they were in the same room with me, that’s how they sounded, they were disturbing me very much, so I prayed, Lord, could you send that angel again? I waited for a little while and it seemed, nothing was happening, so I asked the Lord , why? And I felt He said to me, you deal with it this time, okay! I knew what to do, so this time I said ‘ ! in the name of Jesus keep quiet, and lo and behold in a few short seconds they feel silent and I was able to continue my time with the Lord undisturbed.
So what did I learn? Well, don’t assume that just because you did something one way, God will want you to deal with it the same way next time, I also learnt that God wants us to grow, Jesus exercised God’s authority over the elements, demons and sickness and he taught us to do same, God wants us to come to the same place of maturity as Jesus was. Closely connected to this is that our authority enables us to ‘speak’ to animals, inanimate objects, sicknesses and they will ‘hear’ and respond to our commands in Jesus name, amazing!
Having those puppies was an experience for all of us, I guess the boys were a bit glad to see them off; it must have been all the cleaning up after them! For me it was a worthwhile learning experience.