Motivational Monday | Puppy Love

Mike and I got a puppy back in the middle of December. We had barely been married a month when someone dropped off two tiny puppies at the homeless shelter I worked at at the time. In my five years there no one had ever dropped off anything other than people, toiletries and old clothes. So even though we had decided we weren’t ready for a dog, I took it as a sign and after seeing my excitement Mike gave in and came and picked up our puppy which was the smaller and more frightened of the two. We named our tiny runt Kilgharrah after a dragon and called her Gharrah for short. 

    I would not recommend newlyweds get a puppy or really sign up for any new responsibility in the first 4 to 6 months of marriage. Luckily for us, we adapted well and Gharrah was the sweetest little ball of crazy energy ever. I have never loved anything inhuman as much as I love this crazy dog. I love her more than most people I think. I understand the temptation to become a crazy cat/dog lady now. Their love is just so unconditional it’s humbling. Their excitement and desire to just be near you is inspiring. 

That’s what inspired this post. I have been thinking about writing this for weeks now. I was going to inspire you all with beautiful words and cute puppy pictures to evaluate yourselves. I was going to encourage you to take a lesson from cute, happy puppies all over the world and strive to be as excited about our heavenly Father as puppies are about us. I was going to tell you that we should be pumped to enter into His presence with joy and thanks giving just like my big puppy is when Mike or I get home after being away from her.

I was going to share passages like Psalm 100 (NKJV) which says:

Make a joyful shout to the Lord, all you lands!
Serve the Lord with gladness;
Come before His presence with singing.
Know that the Lord, He is God;
It is He who has made us, and not we ourselves;
We are His people and the sheep of His pasture.
Enter into His gates with thanksgiving,
And into His courts with praise.
Be thankful to Him, and bless His name.
For the Lord is good;
His mercy is everlasting,
And His truth endures to all generations.

I would have even thrown in Psalm 51:12 (NKJV) which says:

Restore to me the joy of Your salvation,
And uphold me by Your generous Spirit.

I was going to share all of that until today. Today I was thinking about this post and all that excitement that Gharrah has and I was awestruck by God’s excitement to be near us, to have us come to Him and to cry out to Him never lessens or waivers. 

So instead of encouraging you to be excited to come before God, I want to remind you of how excited God is for us to come before Him. I think the latter will stir you up to go after the first. God loves us. I always love the idea of God up there wooing us to Himself. When Mike and I were trying to figure out dating, which was a loooong uphill battle, I always used to tell him “I want you to pursue me!!!” That’s exactly what God does. He pursues. He loves. He cleanses. He heals. He restores. He redeems. He is excited every time we call on Him. Whether it’s been forever since we’ve acknowledged Him, we’ve chased after things that are contrary to Him, or we just got so catch up in performance and religion that we forgot Christianity is about relationship He is excited to receive us and our praise. Even if we just haven’t prayed since yesterday and you regularly chat it up with Him, He is still excited about you. That is super exciting to me because I get super tired of people sometimes, but that is my flesh! God is not like that! We can not exhaust Him..which is good because people are exhausting.

If that doesn’t cause you to want a puppy like faith and excitement…go back and reread. :p

Happy Monday everyone! I hope you guys have an awesome week! Be sure you're signed up for our email list so you don't miss a post!

Love y'all!!