What Dog Lovers Know About God

By Brenda Ayres

What have dog lovers learned or can learn about God through their relationships with canines? Plenty, especially when the Lord is the trainer. What Dog Lovers Know About God consists of an easy-to-read, entertaining narrative about experiences with dogs that are full of spiritual lessons sure to benefit the individual reader and/or a Bible study group. Through stories about losing a pet and about rehabilitating rescued dogs, this book explains how to: cope with death and loss, have a relationship with God, be confident in ones salvation, be freed from those things that bind us, learn to trust God, study the Bible, do spiritual warfare, identify our true enemy, become more like Jesus, hear God, know His will, appreciate fellowship, endure and understand suffering and trials, embrace our own rehabilitation, have patience through training, love the leash, live in dog-wagging joy, and best of all, know Gods unconditional love.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Apr 19, 2016
• ISBN: 9781512736564

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

Wiggle-butt Christianity

Writing this book has been a unique pleasure. I knew that the Lord wanted to speak many important things to me to pass on to you, so I listened with expectancy. This is a wonderful way to live. Isaiah 55, my favorite chapter in the Bible, includes this delightful promise: Incline your ear and come to Me. Listen, that you may live; and I will make an everlasting covenant with you, according to the faithful mercies show to David (3).¹ If you’re like me, you constantly have a lot to talk to God about. However, it seems He is not as loquacious—or else our ears are not very good at doing the inclining part.

We would do well to learn the cocker cock. When I talk to my cocker spaniels, they cock their heads with a sincere, intensive effort as if they are fully inclined to hear me. Their eyes say, I really want to understand you. Maybe if I cock my head the other way, you’ll make sense to me.

There are times that I do exactly that. I really struggle to grasp what God is trying to say, but I just can’t figure it out. More frequently, though, instead of doing the cocker cock, I am like most people: I have a lot to say to God, and listening is not my strong suit.

Perhaps you are not used to hearing God. Perhaps you think there might be something wrong with people who begin a sentence with The Lord told me or else you are afraid there’s something wrong with you because God doesn’t seem to talk to you at all. The truth is that God does speak to you and me; we simply need to learn how to listen. Dogs are not born with ears—floppy or otherwise—that understand English. They have to learn how to understand their trainers. Just like dogs, we come to recognize and understand our Master’s voice as we develop a spiritual ear with which to hear. We get better at it, especially if we both hear and obey.

I pray that my dog lessons will speak to you. If you are dealing with the loss of a loved one (canine, human, or other) or know someone who is grieving, there are several chapters in this book that can help. I began writing this book when my sweet cocker spaniel, Lyssie, died on December 28, 2009. She had been my best friend and companion for nearly twenty years, so when she passed away, a significant chunk of my heart and mind went with her. If the loss wasn’t painful enough, I had a desperate need to know that even though she was dead, she had not ceased to exist. I had to know that she was with Jesus. It is one thing to be separated from someone in the land of the living, but it’s an altogether different kind of angst to not know what has happened to our loved one after death.

Even though I thought this book would be about mourning and comprehending more about the afterlife, I discovered that Lyssie’s end was just the beginning of a new journey, and that in itself is a hope that we can embrace when we grieve or suffer whether it is due to the loss of a loved one, a job, a house, money, love, friendship, or trust.

You’re probably familiar with Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. At the penultimate chapter when you expect to be at the end of the novel, you discover that endings are just beginnings of other things and that a beginning is possible only because it follows an ending. The last words Christ spoke as He hung on the cross were, It is finished, but oh, what a beginning that followed! His death made it possible for us to have life and a personal relationship with God. His sacrifice of blood cancelled our sins, and we can approach God with a clean heart, all because of that ending on the cross.

Under the umbrella, Friedrich says to Jo, I haf nothing to gif back but a full heart and these empty hands. Then Jo puts both of her hands into his and whispers, Not empty now.² God cannot give us certain blessings if our hands are full already, especially if they are full of things of the world—or in my case, Lyssie. Once my hands were empty, He gave me not one cocker spaniel but two! It is like the end of Job’s story: And the Lord restored the fortunes of Job when he prayed for his friends, and the Lord increased all that Job had twofold (Job 42:10).

Both Annie and Gracie were victims of puppy mills and then discarded at high-kill shelters. Annie, who was only one-and-a-half, was scheduled for euthanasia. Both dogs were rescued by women from two different organizations that, thank God, save dogs, bring them back to life, and then put them up for adoption by posting their sweet, pathetic little faces on the Web. I found them at petfinder.com and was instantly smitten. Since then, they have been my babies. They were born again, as Jesus described in John 3:3. They were given a new parent, a new home, a new life, and hope. This happens to us when we surrender to God.

And then begins the rehabilitation. Just like Annie and Gracie, we often come to God only after life has beaten us up and we’re in bad shape and deprived of love. We have to be healed, learn how to trust, and be transformed into what God intended us to be—just like my newly adopted four-legged creatures who had to be changed into dogs. My journey with Lyssie and all of the lessons that God taught me because of her were over; a new journey with Annie and Gracie with an entire book full of new lessons had begun.

Even if you don’t have a particular love for cocker spaniels, dogs in general, or even animals, please let the Lord speak to you through this book. I’m confident that His purpose for my being His amanuensis is to edify you. These spiritual lessons will help you to know Him better so that you can draw closer to Him, regardless of your situation. Let me say to you what Isaiah the prophet said,

The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me,

Because the Lord has anointed me

To bring good news to the afflicted;

He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,

To proclaim liberty to captives,

And freedom to prisoners;

To proclaim the favorable year of the Lord

And the day of vengeance of our God;

To comfort all who mourn.… (Isaiah 61:1–2)

In case my words fail to achieve any and all of these promises, I will provide Scriptures at the end of each chapter for you to study and discuss. In this way the word of the Lord will spread widely and gr[o]w in power (Acts 19:20, NIV) and accomplish what God desires (Isaiah 55:11).

We teach our dogs simple commands like, Come. This is all that our own Master should need to say before we come running to Him. Do you know what many dog lovers call cockers? Wiggle Butts. Other dogs may be worthy of that title, but cockers are notorious for having docked tails, and they express their joy by wiggling their entire butts. When my dogs respond to my Come, they take joy in obeying me, and they think that they give me joy by obeying me, which they do. They come with their entire butts wiggling. Can you imagine the joy it would give God if we obeyed Him with the same enthusiasm?

I know it might sound corny, but say this out loud: I want to be a wiggle-butt Christian. It’s not so much a matter of saying it as envisioning it. The next time God calls you to Come, will you be willing to obey with a wiggle-butt attitude?

But coming is not always about obedience. When I ask my pups to come, sometimes I just want them to join me on the sofa so that I can give them a bunch of love. The word come is in the King James Bible 2,106 times. The sweetest words in the universe were and still are spoken by Jesus, Come to me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest (Matthew 11:28, NIV). Right at this minute, Annie is scratching on the patio door. She can’t come in from the heat unless I get up and open the door for her. Jesus stands at the door and knocks, but He won’t come in unless you let Him in. Maybe Jesus has come into your life and heart many times before, just as Annie is now used to entering her own home. Yet turning to the first chapter of this book is opening another kind of door, and the promise is just the same: If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and dine with him, and he with Me (Revelation 3:20, NKJV).

I pray that the lessons God taught me through my relationship with three lovable cocker spaniels—Lyssie, Annie, and Gracie—will help you know a wiggle-butt kind of joy that comes from walking with God.

Bible Treats and Bones

Chew on Job 42:10–12 and Job 1:21

1. When did the Lord restore the fortunes of Job? Why is this significant? What should you do when you go through heavy trials?

2. What spiritual wisdom can you take from Job 1:21?

3. What do you make of 42:11? Does God bring evil on us?

Chew on Isaiah 61:1–3

1. Often scholars have understood the first verse and the first line of verse 2 to refer to Christ’s first coming. The rest they think is about His second coming. Why?

2. Jesus quoted the first verse and the first line of verse 2 in Luke 4:18. He said that the Scripture was fulfilled in the hearing of everyone in the synagogue who was listening to Him, meaning that the prophecy was fulfilled in Him. How is this passage a charge for what followers of Christ should be doing?

3. Trees are often used as metaphors in the Bible, but why are we to be called oaks of righteousness? Research oak trees and learn as much as you can in order to better understand why Isaiah chose an oak over any other tree. Here’s one tidbit: the people of Tyre made the oars for their ships from the oaks of Bashan (Ezekiel 27:6).

Chew on Isaiah 55:8–11 and Matthew 13:18–23

1. What is the correlation between verses 8 and 11? Why is the Word so necessary in order to learn about God?

2. Think about verse 10. Ignoring the concept of evaporation, can you imagine rain and snow rising instead of falling? This is a graphic picture of how intentional is the effect of the Bible.

3. Consider how the parable of the sower (Matthew 13:18–23) further explains Isaiah 55:10 and how Jesus is the seed and the bread.

Bury in your soul: Do not be grieved, for the joy of the Lord is your strength (Nehemiah 8:10).

CHAPTER 2

The Last Shall Be First

I had meant for this chapter to be the last because the end of Lyssie’s life, I thought, would be about the final lessons that I learned from a cocker spaniel. I anticipated that Lyssie’s death would be both the climax and the dénouement, or the lessons learned from suffering, sorrow, and loss—the kind of lessons that come only when dealing with death. I wanted to end with the last book in the Bible, with Revelation 21:4, He shall wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there shall no longer be any death; there shall no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain. How final is that? How finally good is that?

Now that I’ve finished writing the entire book and am assembling and revising the chapters, I realize that what I once assumed to be an ending, was just the ending of one chapter that was necessary before the beginning of another chapter. The ending was actually a beginning. What was to be the last chapter is now the first.

Don’t you think that is the way of eternity? You can’t get to chapter 36 until you go through chapters 1–35. Even if you think that chapter 36 is the end, it is only the end of one book before you begin another.

I don’t do pain well. Thus far God has spared me from the afflictions of Job that have visited other people. I have never had cancer; in fact, I have rarely been sick. One time I threw up only because I saw someone else throw up. I have never had hemorrhoids. In truth I am not certain what they are. I never had and never want to have gall stones or kidney stones or even foot bunions. I take only vitamins. I am on no prescriptions, apparently an anomaly which always raises the eyebrows of people in the medical community when they look at my history. Nope, nada, no way for high blood pressure, indigestion, diabetes, cholesterol, depression, or any of the other common ailments of modern society. That does not mean I have a great physique; in fact, I have been fighting the battle of the bulge ever since it made its unwelcomed appearance in my mid-thirties. I don’t eat only organic food. I am not a vegetarian. But I constantly diet just to keep myself at the less-than-desirable weight that I am. My weight never seems to decrease for any great periods of time before it all comes back. I don’t jog—although I used to. I am afraid that if I jogged now, I’d jog something out of place. However, I have exercised in gyms most of my adult life but am very careful not to break anything when I do Zumba. I don’t attempt to do what those young girls do with their abdomens and hips, so although I am not sexy and know it, I am healthy and do know that. As my wise aunts keep telling me, if you don’t have your health, you don’t have anything.

The last horrible experience I had was when a piece of glass or something got lodged in the bottom of my foot that I couldn’t get out. Just one week before going to Scotland for a conference, where I knew that I would have to walk a lot, I showed up on my doctor’s table for her to remove it. I jerked every time she just touched my foot. She tried to inject something that would dull my nerves so that she could dig around. You would have thought she was trying to amputate the way I behaved. But I couldn’t help it.

God has spared me from much physical pain. I really do believe that by His stripes we are healed (Isaiah 53:5) and am shocked when something doesn’t work right in my body, especially after I ask for healing.

I started to wear glasses in my teens and then dealt with contacts, a trial for anyone who lives in windy San Francisco as I did for five years. After that, once I knew that God healed my eyes, I no longer had to wear corrective eyewear.

Sickness and pain simply seem foreign to me, which suits me fine. Just sitting in the dentist’s chair—no matter how comfortable, no matter what music is being played, no matter what Monet prints are on the ceiling—just sitting in that chair—well, even before that, while sitting in the waiting room and hearing the drill—I get panic attacks. When the hygienist cleans my teeth, my knuckles turn white as I clench the armrests and whimper like a pup being treated by a vet for the first time.

I never had any children, so I did not endure pregnancies and child birth. I do not know the pain of feeling helpless when children suffer.

I sat through Mel Gibson’s The Passion of Christ and then bought the DVD, but I never unwrapped it. I could not bring myself to watch the whipping scene again.

Although I did get hungry enough several times while working my way through three university degrees, I still could afford Ramen noodles, spaghetti, and canned tuna fish and tuna fish and tuna fish. In short, I did not starve, and I still like tuna fish.

If a cashier gives me back too much money which often happens, I return the excess even if I have to make an extra trip to do it. So aside from a few short pricks of guilt of doing something wrong without amends, I’ve been spared torment from a guilty conscience.

God put 1 Corinthians 10:13 into the Bible just for me. I have memorized it in the King James Version, which makes it even more authentic and true: There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it. Aside from the salvation scriptures and 2 Timothy 1:7 that reassure me that I really do have a sound mind, the Corinthians verse is my Get Out of Jail Free card and has had more value to me than any credit card.

I quote the escape clause to God whenever I am afraid that He has forgotten it.

God knows that I’m a wimp and that it doesn’t take much to put me under the juniper tree, sighing like Elijah, It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life (1 Kings 19:4).

I can’t imagine how other people survive the truly horrible things in life, but as for me, the little horrors of life are bad enough.

The dreadful trinity—trials, tribulations, and temptations—are part of Christianity, but I’d rather do without them. Of course, no one can be alive and be spared suffering. That’s life in a fallen world. Since we do suffer, the wisest thing to do is to follow Peter’s advice: …cast your care upon Him because He cares for you (1 Peter 5:7, DBT). When we use that word cast as a verb, we are probably envisioning the leisurely throwing of a fish line into a lazy trout stream with the art and grace of the fly fishermen in A River Runs Through It. Or we might think about waiting in a queue to cast our vote. However, a more accurate translation for cast is violently remove or propel or get rid of it with force if need be. To hang onto a care is like holding onto a grenade that is ready to explode.

But cares and trials are not always the same thing. Trials are designed to test our faith and produce endurance, as described in James 1:2–3. We all have them. I am sure that you have heard that once people give their lives to Jesus, they are never the same. Sometimes we get the notion that once we are saved, we won’t have reason to feel badly about anything again. For those who think this, the Apostle Paul had to say, Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal among you. He explained that the purpose of trials is to test us. When we are feeling them, we should not think that some strange thing were happening (1 Peter 4:12). Just as Jesus had to endure the unholy trinity (trials, tribulations, and temptations), so do we.

Cares, on the other hand, are sufferings that we are not to tolerate. Care is the same Greek word for worry as found in Matthew 6:34, when we are told not to worry about tomorrow. It is the same word as anxieties, a derivative of the verb and command in Philippians 4:6: Be anxious for nothing. The rest of that verse directs us by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let [our] requests be made known to God.

George Mueller, an evangelist who took care of over 10,000 orphans and who established 117 schools to provide Christian education to over 120,000 children, is widely quoted in saying: The beginning of anxiety is the end of faith, and the beginning of true faith is the end of anxiety.

Some people teach Matthew 11 as an invitation to surrender our burdens to Christ. Truly He does want to share our burdens and rely upon Him. Rely is a good word in spiritual training, in the way our dogs come to rely upon us to care of them. Of course it means depend upon but it is much more concrete. Are you familiar with the trust game, when you are asked to let yourself fall back and trust that someone will catch you? To rely means that you let the entire weight of your being drop into someone else’s arms, trusting that you will be held. Do you remember that scene in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade when Harrison Ford needs to cross a ravine? He looks over the edge and cannot see the bottom of an abyss, and yet in faith, he believes that if he steps off the ledge, something will support him, even if he cannot see any steps. As he puts his weight down on nothing, a step appears under his foot, and then another and then another until he reaches the other side of the crevice, in pursuit of the Holy Grail. God asks us to step out in faith just like that.

Then too Jesus beckons us with Take My yoke upon you, and learn from Me; for I am gentle and humble in heart; and you shall find rest unto your souls. For My yoke is easy, and My load is light (Matthew 11:29–30). Can you see a mental picture of being yoked with Jesus? We are like two oxen required to drag a cart piled high with boulders. But since Jesus is my partner, He can bear the brunt, and then the yoke is easy. However, Jesus does say, Take My yoke upon you: We do have to pull the burden together. We have a job to do together, and we must fit into the crosspiece with Him in order to accomplish it.

Jesus said, Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up His cross, and follow me (Mark 8:34, KJV). He said it at least five times, and a hundred times more with words that said the same thing. If we are to follow Jesus, the path will constantly take us to Calvary, which is no walk in the park.

The Apostle Paul has always astounded me, not only because he did and thought things that most people find impossible and distasteful, but also because he demanded—not just expected—but demanded us to imitate him. Take for instance, Count it all joy, when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing (James 1:2–4, NKJV). Aren’t trials hard enough but to have to be joyful about them seems entirely too much to ask. Nevertheless, Paul does speak the truth: We should count it all joy when we go through trials because they make us more like Jesus and strangely make us to know deeper joy. It’s not a happy Oh, boy, someone’s throwing a party kind of joy; it’s a deep thing that runs steadily and tranquilly along, like an underground stream in the lowest recesses of the soul. Nothing can disturb it. It never runs dry. You can tap into it when above ground you feel as if you are in a desert or a raging monsoon. You can find rest and peace beside its till waters. But first comes the digging which happens through trials.

I am thinking about that movie again, A River Runs Through It, and I’m thinking about the African-American spiritual, I’ve Got Peace Like a River, and I’m thinking of the first verse to the hymn, It Is Well with My Soul: When peace, like a river, attendeth my way, when sorrows like sea billows roll.³ All of them say what Paul tells us, I have learned to be content in whatever circumstances I am (Philippians 4:11). The only way anyone can be content is to allow a river of peace to run through one’s soul. The Lord promised to extend peace to [us] like a river, to nurse us, to fondle[] us on His knees, to comfort us (Isaiah 66:12–13).

When I wrote the first draft of this chapter, which was the first one I wrote for this book, Lyssie’s death was raw. She had died just two days earlier, and I had to write about it to preserve my sanity. It was God’s extension of the river of peace. I also chewed on Psalm 34 and recited lines 17–19, as I took a walk through my neighborhood for the first time ever without Lyssie:

The righteous cry, and the Lord hears

And delivers them out of all their troubles.

The Lord is near to the broken hearted,

And saves those who are crushed in spirit.

Many are the afflictions of the righteous;

But the Lord delivers him out of them all.

I was definitely broken hearted, and there is no better way to describe my grief other than crushed in spirit. I could not imagine how God could deliver me out of all my troubles without giving back my Lyssie. Don’t we often think that the only way God can rescue us is by giving us a certain exit route, which He has no intention of doing? Besides, I would have been a selfish brute to want Lyssie to still be in pain just so I could hold her again. It is also unrealistic to expect our loved ones to live forever. Regardless, Psalm 34 not only repeats the promise that God delivers us, but it emphasizes that He delivers us out of all our troubles. Furthermore, the verse does not say that He would deliver; it says that He delivers, which is present progressive. God’s deliverance is not always a single event; it’s a process.

There is another verse in Psalms 34 that I was trying to work into my spirit. It is as thorny as: Who is the man who desires life, / And loves length of day that he may see good? (James 1:12). During the two years that Lyssie’s life was failing, I felt that my own spirit was failing, and I desperately wanted to leave this awful world and be with Jesus. I often asked God to take my life except that I couldn’t leave it without my Lyssie. After she died, the question was how could she live without me? Who could possibly take care of her and love her as well? The truth was that once Lyssie went on without me, my thought was How can I live without her? How can God possibly take care of me and love me as well as that little dog did?

Several people who tried to comfort me after Lyssie’s death said, I bet she died peacefully in her sleep. No, she did not. For days she was terribly sick. Even though a vet gave her medication and treatment that should have helped her, they did not. I wanted so much for her to sleep into death. I desperately wanted to hold her and let her feel peace until the last breath would leave her body. Instead, during the last few hours she did not want to be held because her body hurt so much. Her breath was labored, fast, panting. Each breath seemed to rack her body with pain. I sobbed and begged God not to let her suffer. But that little girl of mine fought for life. She would raise her head and appeal to me for help. I was the one who had pulled out her stickers. Why wasn’t I making things all better now? It killed me. There was no more that I could do for her except pray. There comes a time in all of our lives, that there is no way that we can beat death. She wanted to live. She wanted so badly to live. She fought death with every ounce of her being, and I could not do it for her.

You see, unlike yours truly who