If you haven’t met Camper yet, Camper is my food-loving, playful, people-loving, golden doodle puppy. He came as an answer to prayer after going nine years without having a dog. I love dogs, and my friend Mark Frazer told me that God teaches me spiritual lessons through everything, even my puppy. I’ve written many Camper stories in my head, and now I’m starting to blog my puppy God stories.
When Sue and I take walks every night around the Ashland University campus, Camper goes crazy with delight whenever he sees a college student waiting for his attention. Once he gets the next group of students in sight, he’s off to the races joyfully trying to pull my shoulder out of socket to get time with his next new friend. While my dog training pro friend, Diane, recommended holding his leash down with my foot so that Camper learns not to jump up on people, my people-loving Camper needs much more training, and I have lots more to learn.
Camper is a lot like people. He has a hard time dealing with people who ignore him and don’t give him any attention. He’ll just completely stop on our walks and look at people until they’re out-of-sight. Camper has no category to register a reality that people don’t notice him, want him, or stop to play with him. Camper just sits there until I pull on his leash, because he’ll just wait and wait and wait hoping to get people’s attention.
Although my Spirit-Driven mascot, Camper, is so much like Jesus, you might have a hard time with my theology. Why? I can’t tell you how many people struggle to know, recognize, and feel God’s love for them. Although our loving, heavenly Father created us in His loving image to receive and to show His love, many people grew up knowing that they were loved, but they didn’t feel loved. People who have daddy issues may also have puppy issues. Instead of feeling God’s love as God lavishes it upon us through people, puppies, and unexpected blessings, people who haven’t felt loved don’t know how to feel love for God, for themselves, for others, and sometimes for puppies.
Camper goes overboard with lavishing love on people. As soon as Camper sees or hears someone coming, he starts wagging his tail, heading toward people, ready to play with no inhibitions.
While I’m working with Camper on his boundary development, I wonder what it’s like when people who haven’t felt love from God for themselves or from others can get a full dose of God’s love from Camper. I’ll bet it can feel overwhelming when Camper tries to love on them.
The amazing thing about Camper is that he’s so intuitive. When people are struggling and need The Father’s love, Camper knows it and immediately goes to them and demonstrates God’s love by coming close and by putting his adorable face in people’s faces to lick away their tears and to give and receive their love. I can’t tell you how many times, ways, and years I have spent trying to push away God’s love when I needed it. But God is like the hound-of-heaven. He’s relentless in His pursuit to melt us with His love until we surrender to His love and until we deeply feel His love. God will persistently pursue us in love until we replace our urges, compulsions, and addictions with His loving presence in our hearts.
You may stubbornly resist receiving and feeling God’s love, but you won’t win. My God and my puppy will come at me from all angles until I give in. God and Camper want my attention, and they know how to get it. God has endless ways to get my attention, and so does Camper. If I try to do life without God, He makes sure that my days don’t work. If I ignore Camper, he will find anything in the house that he’s not supposed to have, and we’ll have to tag-team to get it out of his mouth. We “play” this game so many times every day. My exercise count gets higher every day. Before long, I’m down on the ground playing with Camper, and he’s happy again.
Just as Camper longs for my undivided attention, God longs for our loving attention. In fact, in Exodus 20:3-5 we find this powerful commandment, “Do not worship any gods besides Me. Do not make idols of any kind, whether in the shape of birds or animals or fish. You must never worship or bow down to them, for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God who will not share your affection with any other God!”
In response to what you may or may not have gotten or felt from your parents, you may have developed attachments, dependencies, and addictions that have become idols that you turn to whenever you’re uncomfortable and when you don’t feel loved. You know the idols don’t satisfy your longing to feel loved, but you may still deeply turn to them for comfort in the moment.
When you come to the end of your rope, God is waiting to show you His love until you know it, you feel it, and you show it.
As Eugene Peterson described it this was in The Message, “You’re blessed when you’re at the end of your rope. With less of you there is more of God and His rule” (Matthew 5:3). Tug and try to pull away all you want, but God’s love will eventually win you.
