Dog Obedience. Day One.

We had a great new addition to our family this past summer in the form of a Boston Terrier/American Bulldog mix. She is so much fun and really loving but has split personalities to say the least. She jumps on counters and hates a collar with a passion. She could find mud in the desert. She terrorizes the senior citizen dog like crazy. However, this past week, she ran towards the road after who knows what and wouldn’t stop. So I enrolled her in obedience classes. The first class was tonight without the dog. The basic deal we learned tonight was to use a collar and a short leash. If she tugs or refuses to walk properly or wanders…we are to jerk the collar kind of quickly. I thought that will never work with Lila but am willing to give it a try. As I watched this lady demonstrate the quick jerk technique, I could not help but think about God. We have all heard the expression if you give someone enough rope, they will hang themselves. The class tonight was about the small, quick jerks that bring the dog back to where it needs to be. The instructor said that dogs are extremely situational, meaning that as the surrounding change, the demonstration of the collar jerk has to be done again. Oddly, supposedly most dogs get it after a couple of jerks. What about us? If we are Christians, then the Holy Spirit lives in us. He guides us and corrects us, but are we obedient? Let’s face it; it takes us way more small jerks for us to stop sometimes. It’s really sad if you think about it. God gives us these tugs but we ignore them at times. So, then we end up in a place in our lives that is totally out of whack. We find ourselves saying what is up with this in frustration or even get mad at God about it. However, all along, God was giving us gentle tugs. Unfortunately, when we don’t submit to God, we do find ourselves at the end of that rope. Thankfully God is still there when we finally give in to Him but what a mess we have made. I am so thankful that God loves me enough to correct me and gives me those tugs that I need to remind me to submit to Him in obedience.