Cared For Carefully Trained

1/19/2016

Philippians 4:7 Before you know it, a sense of God’s wholeness, everything coming together for good, will come and settle you down. It’s wonderful what happens when Christ displaces worry at the center of your life. — St. Paul (MSG)

I have a friend named Spooner. His first name is Lennie, but most everybody I know just calls him Spooner. Great guy, avid sportsman. Talented singer and guitar player. Spooner has hunting dogs. To Lennie, his dogs are useful tools for him. They are well cared for and carefully trained. They aren’t pets; they are hunters, spotters, retrievers. They are part of a collective experience and they were born to do what they do: help the master of the hunt.

When Spooner’s dogs get out of their kennels they aren’t looking for someone to pet them or rub their ears – they’re looking to do what they were born to do: hunt. The first thing they’ll do is begin to use their noses to scour their surroundings to find the game they naturally assume is there. Hunting dogs are a special kind of animal because of their breeding and training: their focus is to hunt.

As I read the above version of Philippians (three p’s, three i’s, one L) 4.7, I thought of Spooner and his dogs. When we refuse to worry, according to Scripture, before you know it, a sense of God’s wholeness, everything coming together for good, will come and settle you down. It’s wonderful what happens when Christ displaces worry at the center of your life. We, if we can accept it, are a lot like those dogs: born and bred to know and settle down into that sense of God’s wholeness, displacing worry and receiving peace. We were created for peace.

Okay, Turk, why then do I worry and fret? Well, I think only you can answer that, but my first guess would be you’re not adequately trained for what God had created you to do. We are created to walk humbly, quietly, and creatively with Almighty God – not worrying or fretting about things at all. When we are let out, the first thing we seek is what the Master has trained us to do: live in this world in harmonious peace with Him.

Peace is a decision. The decision to live in peace requires an understanding of God that He, and He alone, is in charge of this perceived precious life of ours which we feel is ours alone to manage. Nothing could be farther from the truth – but that is the way we are trained by the world, the flesh, and yes, the devil. Our training is fruitless and futile. God’s training is difficult for the untrained but when accepted, it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. (Hebrews 12.11).

Spooner’s dogs (at least to me) are an example of work, and training, and satisfaction – they do what they’re supposed to do because they are expected to do so. We’re just a human form of that: doing what we’re supposed to do because we’re expected, in Christ, to do just that. Why worry? Because we aren’t doing what’s expected. That simple.

Lord Jesus, don’t keep Your hand from carefully training me so that I may yield the peaceful fruit of righteousness in a world so desperate for someone to actually do so. In all I do this day, may I experience the wonder of what happens when You displace the worry at the center of my life. For Your pleasure and satisfaction, amen.