It’s a sad thing…

Well, we weren’t quite sure when it would happen, but one of our puppies died today. It’s quite unfortunate. She was the runt and was born with a defect in her left hind leg. As a result and as hard as we tried to keep this from happening, she wasn’t strong enough to fight her bigger siblings for her mommy. Survival of the fittest I guess… We tried to keep anything from happening to her so we brought her and Maddy inside so she could eat herself. Over the past few days, however, she gave up. She refused to open her mouth and eat even though her mother was right there with her all the time, trying to nurture her back to health. The puppy never left her side…wherever Maddy went her puppy went with her, and I mean everywhere. Maddy held her in her arms even, but the puppy simply refused to open her mouth.

I know this is kind of a gross story, and it’s definately a sad thing for us (first time to ever experience this). But there is a special lesson for all of us to learn from this.

How often do we come to God and ask for Him to fill us without opening our mouths? It’s a sad thing… We have these one-sided conversations that we disguise as prayer to a God who desires to do more with us in our relationship with Him. And it’s interesting how we come to God with all our problems and all the bad things in our life, desiring to be filled with Him, because that’s what every person who claims to be a good Christian wants, and yet we never open our mouths for Him to fill us! We don’t listen to Him. And when things don’t go the way we think they should we give up. We give up on ourselves and God. Psalm 81:10 tells us that God will fill us if we just open our mouths to eat. We are the ones who tend to starve ourselves to death spiritually when we come to God with our junk and don’t give Him a chance to speak. And when we starve ourselves spiritually it has an impact on us physically as well. We don’t feel. We don’t care. We remain in self-pity. Again, it’s a sad thing.

Please understand that I’m not suggesting that we don’t talk to God ourselves, but rather that we start letting God talk with us…that we carry on conversation with God instead of just to God. He wants to hear from us and He desires to tell us something. What He has to say to us is valuable and perfect for us. We need to decide to listen to Him, and we DON’T GIVE UP!

The other side of the story that I haven’t told you is this: just like Maddy never left her puppy’s side while she suffered, God doesn’t ever leave our side either. No matter what we’re going through it won’t cause God to leave. We all have heard that God is omnipresent, or, He’s everywhere. Hebrews 13:5b says that God won’t ever leave us or forsake us…that means that in pretty much everything and everywhere we go God is right there with us.

That should mean something to us. In our lives, those moments when we think God couldn’t be farther away, we need to remember that He’s still there by our side, holding us in His arms even when we suffer. Now it’s your turn to move…open your mouth and let Him fill you. Check out the Bible…