Thanking God for my furry family members
God has blessed me with a wonderful nuclear family. In addition to my amazing husband and two incredible boys, my two dogs also play a big role in bringing me joy, reminding me that I have purpose and bringing a sense of stability to my life. They can be an inconvenience at times, but I am so thankful for my little furry friends.
Just like my two boys, Missy and Rose have very different outlooks on life. Missy’s focus is on relationship. She may indicate that she wants something from time to time, but it is obvious that her main desire is just to be with me. She is happy to sit beside me or in my lap, and to snuggle up against me for long periods of time. She is attentive to what I am doing, and if she thinks that I am addressing her, she comes running towards me, eager to please.
Rose, on the other hand, does not seem to care very much about relationship. Her main focus is on getting what she wants at any given moment — being perfectly willing to become persistently pushy in an effort to get it. She accepts my attention when I approach her, but there are no signs of excitement to speak of as I shower her with my love. She looks for ways to get by with things of which she knows I disapprove. When she is caught in the act, she tries to play it off as though she has done nothing wrong. Her behavior would seem to indicate that she would generally prefer not to have a relationship with me as long as she was still able to successfully obtain whatever it was that she wanted.
Even though Rose doesn’t seem to care that much about me, I wouldn’t say that I love her any less than I love Missy. I love both of my dogs and try to treat them as equally as possible. Missy, however, tends to experience more of my affection because she stays near me, while Rose tends to receive fewer demonstrations of my love and gets scolded more often because she is more apt to misbehave and doesn’t tend to linger in my general vicinity.
Recently, God began to show me that the different ways in which my dogs interact with me are a picture of how we as His children, often choosing to relate to Him. Although there may be some occasional inconsistencies in our motives, we have an overall tendency to either approach God with a goal of relationship (expressing our needs to Him only within a context of connection and mutual trust) or to try to use Him to get what we want (desperately attempting to convince Him to act on our behalf).
When we choose to pursue a relationship with God and have spent time with Him and getting to know His character, we become aware that we can trust that He hears us, and that He is willing and able to work everything out for our good and for His glory.
On the other hand, when we tend to be more focused on our desires rather than on our relationship with Him, we do not get close enough to Him to believe that He sincerely wants to meet our needs, so we try to pressure and manipulate Him into giving us what we want. Unfortunately, if this is our mindset, we often forget about Him as soon as our needs are met and continue on our merry ways until another need arises.
God has made it clear throughout His Word that He wants to be in a loving relationship with you, but if you’re being honest with yourself, do you desire to be close to Him? Do you want to know Him more than you want to obtain something from Him, or do you keep your distance and only approach Him when you need something — when life is not at its best and there is nothing that you can do about it in your own strength?
To be clear, God absolutely loves you either way. He doesn’t love you any less if you only come to Him when you need a miracle, but there is so much more available to you if you will choose to cultivate a relationship with Him.
If you’ve never had any kind of relationship with God — close or otherwise — I encourage you to ask Him to forgive your sins and to bring you into His family. He will lift the dead weight of sin from off of your shoulders, and you will experience a freedom unlike anything you’ve ever known before. Getting to know Him — as opposed to just knowing about Him — is truly the most incredible decision you will ever make!
If you have known Him, but you are not currently snuggling in close to Him, I beg you please make spending time with Him a priority. Read His Word. Pray and listen for Him to speak. When you snuggle in close to God, you will find that you don’t have to dance around and paw at Him anxiously with your prayers. You get to experience His peace and affection while you are waiting for your needs to be met because your proximity to Him has helped you grow to trust in His love and faithfulness.
Having encounters with God’s miracle-working power is amazing, but nothing compares with being close to Him. In His presence is where true peace is found, and where experiencing His miracles becomes no longer the exception to the rule but the norm in and through our lives.
Milligan is a Poteau resident who went on a mission trip to Guatemala just before Labor Day 2021.