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

• Language: English
• Publisher: Aspire Publishing Hub, LLC
• Release date: Sep 6, 2023
• ISBN: 9781960758767

Book preview

What Dog Lovers Know About God

Copyright © 2023 by Brenda Ayres

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

ISBN

978-1-960758-75-0 (Paperback)

978-1-960758-76-7 (eBook)

To

Miss Lyssie Poo

May 30, 1991~December 28, 2009

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1Wiggle-butt Christianity

Chapter 2The Last Shall Be First

Chapter 3The Lion and the Lamb

Chapter 4Falling Short

Chapter 5Are There Animals in Heaven?

Chapter 6In the Beginning

Chapter 7Ashes to Ashes

Chapter 8Rainbow Bridge

Chapter 9Pets in the Bible

Chapter 10The Morning after Mourning

Chapter 11Two Are Better Than One

Chapter 12Abandonment

Chapter 13Grace Who Knew No Grace

Chapter 14Shelter

Chapter 15The Groomer

Chapter 16The Turkey Chase

Chapter 17Cocker Eyes

Chapter 18Not A Very Merry Christmas

Chapter 19Blind Love

Chapter 20Jacob’s Ladder

Chapter 21Once Dead and Now Alive

Chapter 22The Leash

Chapter 23I Can See Clearly

Chapter 24Miracle Dog

Chapter 25In My House

Chapter 26A Tale of Two Tails

Chapter 27My Dogs Know My Voice

Chapter 28You’re in My Seat

Chapter 29Chow

Chapter 30Grateful

Chapter 31That Cat

Chapter 32Without Guile

Chapter 33On the Offensive

Chapter 34The Valley of Beracah

Chapter 35Wait

Chapter 36Lifelong Learning

Appendix

Preface

With its chapter-by-chapter narratives, this book may be used as a devotional, a Bible study for an individual, a Bible study for a group, or just a pleasant read. If you want to let it guide a Bible study, scriptural references and study questions relevant to the topic of each narrative are available at the end of each chapter. Regardless of how you plan to use this book, my prayer is that it will help you and others grow closer to God and come to a greater understanding of His love and how He shows His love.

If you want to organize a Bible study that follows a weekly schedule, you might work through one chapter each week. There are 36 chapters, 18 for two semesters of 16 weeks, just like a traditional college calendar. You might arrange to have a week off for Thanksgiving, another for Christmas, and another for Easter, allowing for a 13-week break for summer. Need a chart? See the Appendix.

What is important is that you let the Holy Spirit reveal God’s truth through His Word, which profusely runs through this book. Just pretend that you are a dog like a cocker spaniel, always hungry, always needing to chew on something, and often inclined to hide what you can’t eat right away, in a place you can find it when are ready for it. Unlike a cocker, though, you might want to share your vittles with others.

Acknowledgments

The cover picture of this book is by Jacque Hardy of Jacque Hardy Photography of Hawkinsville, Georgia. It is a photo of my dear Lyssie, a cocker spaniel that lived to be nearly 20. I thank Mrs. Hardy for granting permission for me to use the photo on the cover. Permission was also given to reproduce photos taken by Tanya S. Blankenship of sheaPhotography, www.sheaPhotography319.com. They are of my two cocker spaniels, Annie and Gracie, that I adopted after Lyssie’s passing in 2009.

I would also like to thank Dana Huffman for letting me quote her poem The High Ways to God and Kenny Rowlette for allowing me to reproduce his letter. Kenny is now with our blessed Savior.

Without sufficient words to express it, I am so deeply grateful for God’s love and for Christ’s sacrifice on the cross that made it possible for me to have a relationship with our Maker. I thank the Holy Spirit for making it possible for me to know God’s truth. I thank Him for my salvation, for guiding me in the writing of this book, and for the blessed lessons that I learned through His gifts of cocker spaniels in my life. I also thank Him for you and for the great love that He has for you.

It is my hope that What Dog Lovers Know About God will be a blessing to all who read it. My prayer is that my experiences, God’s wisdom, and God’s Word will lead readers—dog lovers and others—in a closer walk with Him and understand how dog training is not too different from God’s training, with the exception being that we don’t always know if dogs are training us or if we are training them. With God, the trainer, without contest, is our trainer and pack leader. We would not want it any other way.

Brenda Ayres

CHAPTER 1

Wiggle-butt Christianity

Writing this book has been such 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. We would do well to learn the cocker cock. When I talk to my cocker spaniels, they cock their heads with a sincere, intense 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 that with God. I really struggle to grasp what He’s trying to say, but I just can’t figure it out.

More frequently, though, I am like most people: I have a lot to say to God, but 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.

The same is true with dogs.

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 in not knowing 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 any kind of loss, albeit a loved one, job, 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 something else, and that a beginning is possible only because it follows an ending. Under the umbrella, Friedrich says to Jo, I haf nothing to gif back but a full heart and these empty hands, and 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 only one cocker spaniel but two! It was 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).

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 sin, and we can approach God with a clean heart all because of that ending on the cross.

The two cockers whom God put into my life after Lyssie were Annie and Gracie, both victims of puppy mills and then they were 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. They brought these all-but-dead cockers back to life and 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. The same happens to us when we surrender to God.

After being born again, after the surrender, we undergo rehabilitation. Just like Annie and Gracie, we often come to God only after we have been deprived of the one thing humans cannot live without, and that is love. It is only after life has beaten us up and we’re in bad shape that we arrive at the end of our own resources and fall to our knees in desperation. We need to be healed, learn how to trust, and be transformed into what God intends us to be—just as did my newly adopted four-legged creatures. My journey with Lyssie and all 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 or for dogs in general or even for 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, and through these spiritual lessons, 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…. (61:1–2)

In case my words fail to achieve any and all 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 (Isa. 55:11).

We teach our dogs simple commands like, Come. This is all that our own Master should say before we come running to Him. Do you know what many dog lovers call cockers? Cocker spaniels are wiggle butts. Other dogs may be worthy of that title, but the cocker is 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 would you be willing to 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. I sometimes want my babes 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 from Jesus: Come to me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest (Matt. 11:28, NIV). Right at this minute, Annie is scratching on the patio door wanting to be let in. She can’t escape 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. Further, like Annie, there is no escape from an uncomfortable world unless you let Jesus open the door for you into God’s kingdom. Maybe Jesus has come into your life and heart many times before, just as Annie is now used to having entrance to 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 (Rev. 3:20, NKJV).

I pray that the lessons that 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.

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¹ When I quote Scripture, I am using the New American Standard Bible (NASB) unless otherwise indicated.

² Louisa Mae Alcott, Little Women, or, Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy, 1868 (Boston: Roberts, 1880) 573–74, Google Books.

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 two to refer to Christ’s first coming. The other verses are about His second coming. Can you appreciate this interpretation?

2.Jesus quoted the first verse and the first line of verse two 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 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 (Ezek. 27:6).

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

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

2.Think about verse 10. Ignoring the concept of evaporation, can you imagine rain and snow rising upward instead of downward? This is a graphic picture of how the Holy Spirit and the Bible work in our lives.

3.Consider how the parable of the sower (Matt. 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 (Neh. 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 for this book.

Don’t you think that is the way of eternity? You can’t get to chapter 36 until you go through chapters 1–35, and 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 (as of 2021) 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 and 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 that raises the eyebrows of people in the medical community when they look at my history and make me feel as if I have failed some test. I have had no 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 bulges ever since they made their startling appearance in my mid-thirties. I don’t eat only organic food. I am not a vegetarian. 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. 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 got lodged in the bottom of my foot. Just one week before traveling to Scotland where I knew that I would have to walk a lot, I showed up on my doctor’s table. 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 (Isa. 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 just fine, and I pray that they continue to be so.

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 hunkering down in the waiting room and hearing the drill—I get panic attacks. My knuckles turn white as I clench the armrests when the hygienist cleans my teeth, and I whimper like a pup being treated by a vet for the first time when anyone comes near me with a pointy, silver object.

I never had any children, so I did not endure pregnancies and childbirth. 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.

If a cashier gives me back too much money, which often happens, I return the excess even if that requires 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, and 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 a part of Christianity, but I’d rather do without them. Of course, no one who is alive is 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 cares upon Him, for He cares for you (1 Pet. 5:7, NLJV). 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 Paul in the movie A River Runs Through It. Or we might think about waiting in the inevitable 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 and said yourself 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 cherish that assumption, the Apostle Paul has this to say, Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal among you. The purpose of fiery ordeals is to test us. When we are feeling them, we should not think that some strange thing were happening (1 Pet. 4:12). Just as Jesus had to endure testing, so do we. Do you know that Jesus fasted forty days and forty nights, and then He became hungry? If that wasn’t test enough, Satan came along and suggested to God’s Son, the One that would be able to take five loaves of bread and two fish and feed 5,000 men plus women and children (Matt. 14:13–21), that He should command the stones to become bread (Matt. 4:3), certainly something Jesus could have done. He did what we must do when we are tempted and tested, and that is feed on the Word of God (4).

Cares, on the other hand, are sufferings that we are not called to endure. Cares 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 established 117 schools to provide Christian education to over 120,000 children, is widely quoted for 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 for us to rely upon Him. Rely is an interesting word, too. 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 peers 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. 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 (Matt. 11:29–30). This gives me a mental picture of being yoked with Jesus. We are like two oxen who are 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 (in similar words) 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 through 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 do what he said, like 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 (Jas. 1:2–4, NKJV). This is my least favorite Scripture in the entire Bible because I reckon that trials are hard enough, but to be joyful about them seems entirely too much to