Free Will and a Leashless Pup

If God wants us to follow Him all the time, why does He give us free will?  Why doesn’t he just make us robots that are 100% obedient and are in a constant state of worship?  Wouldn’t that bring him more glory?

Last night I had a revelation as I was taking Pup Pup out for a run, and I couldn’t stop smiling as I continued to think about it!  I’ve been following these track workouts pretty close, because I’m going to run in a meet next weekend.  So yesterday, I just didn’t feel like running.  I kept putting it off the whole day, making up things I had to do to justify not doing my workout yet.  But about 7:30 pm, I figured I had put it off long enough, and needed to do at least a few miles.  I decided to run outside because I knew that Pup Pup wanted to come so bad.  It was cold, and there was a treadmill upstairs, but knowing how much he LOVES running with me, I decided to run a few miles around the neighborhood.  I put his leash on, and was talking to Michael for a few minutes, when all of a sudden I noticed he’d been chewing on the leash out of excitement, and he broke it.  Initially, I was angry, “Bad dog!” But he was so naïve, and still so excited to run, he didn’t even realize the leash was broken.  So rather than just going without him as a “punishment,” I decided to try to fix it.  I took a piece of rope and tried to tie the two parts together.  The knots were pretty tight, and I thought it might work.  So I took him outside, and within about 10 seconds he starts to pull and the leash is broken again.  Not much of a surprise.  Pup Pup tends to run away, and is very hard to catch because he is so fast.  But for some reason, even though the leash is broken, he stays right next to me.  I make him sit, and stay for a few minutes. Then we start to walk slowly, and he stays right next to me, looking up at me every few steps. Then I start to jog, nice and slow.  I hold my hand out and he stays right next to my hand. I can’t believe it!  He’s running right next to me, and not running away!  I’m still very hesitant, thinking that at any moment he will see a squirrel or a bunny and he’ll be a gonner.  But mile after mile, he stays right at my side.  He looks at me with these puppy eyes as I commend him, “Good boy Pups!” At one point, he sees another dog, and I see him look at the dog and look at me, not knowing what to do. Everything inside him wants to leave me and sprint over to the dog and say hello.  He starts to run, but I call him back to me, and he stops.  We pass the dog, and he comes with me.  The smile on my face is SO BIG as he stays by my side after passing another dog!

As we’re running, I start to think about free will.  The concept just pops into my head.  If God wants us to follow Him all the time, why does He give us free will?  Why doesn’t he just make us robots that are 100% obedient and are in a constant state of worship?  When I take Pup Pup running with me, and I put him on a leash, it doesn’t make me happy that he is staying next to me.  He has to.  I am in complete control of where he goes when I am holding his leash.  When he is no longer wearing a leash, however, he has the freedom to run wherever he wants to.  He could run so far away that I would never see him again. He could also stay right by my side. It’s risky because I don’t know what he will choose to do.  Here come the analogies:

1.  God Delights In Giving Grace

From the beginning of the story… I love Pup Pup and want to see him happy.  I am not looking for an excuse to tell him no and go run without him. Even when he breaks the leash, I still desire to give him grace and take him outside, because I want to see him happy. It brings me joy to know that he is having so much fun.  A lot of people have this skewed view of God, making Him seem like the Terminator.  He delights in giving us grace, in providing us with second chances. He wants to do good things for us!

2. Glory From Free Will

Next one… when Pups has the freedom to run away, but chooses to stay by my side, it makes me so much happier than if he were to stay by my side when he had a leash on. God giving us free will is risky, yes, because so many people decide to run far, far away from the one who allowed them to go outside in the first place.  This surely hurts God.  But for the ones who have the freedom to run away, and choose to stay right by His side, there must be the biggest smile on His face!  It brings God more glory to give us free will, because wechoose Him.

3. Temptations

Next part… when Pups would see a squirrel or see another dog.  These are like temptations in our lives to stray from God.  Why would God allow us to have such desirable temptations?  At the time, they seem so appealing!  What could possibly be better than going to play with the other dog?!  But the master tells him to stay.  Decision time.  When Pups stayed by my side even though it was so hard to withstand the temptation to run after the other dog, it made the smile on my face even bigger.  He loves me so much that he is willing to stay by me even when he probably doesn’t understand why I am commanding him to stay, and he has the free will to sprint away.  When we worship God’s Creation rather than the Creator Himself, it is like we are running after squirrels or other dogs on our walk.  God gets more glory when we are tempted, but stay faithful to Him anyway.  Our whole lives should be devoted to bringing Him glory. In this, temptations are great, because they provide us with opportunities to bring God more glory!  We get to make Him smile even bigger when we stay by His side when squirrel after squirrel goes by.  James 1:2-4 “Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.”

4. Abusing God’s Grace

Pups knows that I love him very much, and that even if he ran away, I would still take him back.  Even if he ran away time and time again, I would still be delighted when he finally came back to me.  I would still hold out my arms and let him run into them, and hug him when he finally returned. I would still take him home, and give him his dinner, and love him.  God is the same way. We can run away, and know that He will still take us back. He created us!  He loves us with a perfect love.  But when we decide to run away over and over again because we know that He will take us back, and still provide dinner for us when we get home, it still hurts Him.  Abusing His grace is not ok!  The mindset, “He will forgive me anyway,” does not give us the green light to live however we want to!  Rom 6:1-2 “What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?”  Free will is great because we have the chance to bring God glory, but it also means that we have the ability to grieve Him.  We want to live to bring God glory, and that means following right next to Him. 

5. Claiming the One we Love

I am thankful that this situation did not happen during our run last night, but I was thinking about it nevertheless.  Let’s pretend that Pups and I are running along, big smile on my face as he stays right next to me, when suddenly a man comes up from behind me and starts to beat me up.  What would Pups do?  He loves me dearly, and I know that he would attack that man- 100%.  He would do whatever he could to protect me, because he loves me!  But let’s pretend that I am getting beat up, and Pups is just watching it happen.  He decides it’s a good time to lay down in the grass and lick his paws. I would be thinking, “Pups! Don’t you love me?! Come fight for me!”  I think this is similar to the way it makes God feel when we disown Him.  Someone asks, “So you’re one of those Jesus freaks now?” and we say, “No, dude. I mean I go to church, but I’m not like super religious, ya know?”  Think of how offensive that is to God, that He claims US (wretched sinners, whose most righteous acts are like filthy rags before Him, see Isaiah 64:6) as His children, and yet so many times we are ashamed of HIM and do not claim Him as our Father. 

6. Every Tribe and Nation and Tongue

So I know this might seem like kind of a weird analogy, because I am so unworthy of being followed, but a vivid image came into my head while we were running last night, and I feel like I have to include it. Getting so much satisfaction from one dog following me, I started to think of what it would be like with multiple dogs following me.  Then I thought of all dogs, all breeds, all shapes and sizes and colors, following me and staying right by my side. When I turned, the millions of dogs following all turned that same direction.  This is what God says will eventually happen with people.  One day, every tribe, language, people, nation, will bow down before Jesus and declare Him as Lord (Rev 5:9).  One day, “at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Phil 2:10-11).  There will be no more running away, or disowning Him. EVERYONE will declare Him as Lord!  Amazing.  God gives us free will, but ultimately He is in absolute, complete control.  Yep, He is SOVEREIGN.  

Her First Snow

Between Christmas and New Year's, I got to be a part of an amazing experience with a good friend of mine, Monique.  She came to visit St. Louis to stay with me for a couple days, along with another coworker from our summer together in Tampa, named Katie.  Monique has lived in Florida her entire life, and had never seen snow.  I remember skyping with her in November, and her asking me the question of whether or not snow would be a possibility.  December's usually pretty cold, and I told her there would be a pretty good chance! I started praying that God would bless her time in St. Louis and provide snow, so that she could experience it.  As the days got closer, it was 60 degrees in St. Louis two days before Christmas.  I started to get worried that she wouldn't get to see any snowfall, but ultimately knew that our time together would be great no matter the weather!  We weren't expecting any snow in the forecast, and it was rainy the day I picked the girls up from the airport.  We went to dinner, and spent some time with my mom.  The next morning, I was asleep in the basement, and saw that Monique was calling my phone.  I answered the call in my raspy still half asleep voice.  "Lyndsey... it snowed," I heard her say.  A huge smile came onto my face, and I went upstairs to find her standing outside on the deck barefoot in the inch or so of snow.  She was making snow balls, and feeling it in her hands, and taking picture after picture.  She was absolutely delighted, and that delight was so contagious.  We went outside and made her first snowman.  We threw snowballs.  And crazy Monique made a snow angel, not caring one bit about getting her jeans wet.  The snow didn't last long; it was mostly melted by that afternoon.  But it was such a clearly answered prayer, it was like it was just for her.  Just a little gift from God that He knew would bring her such joy.  He loves to give us good gifts!  So many times, we think of God as this Being who is always condemning us and saying no to our prayers and putting difficult circumstances in our lives and saying, "Take that!"  We think of Him as a God of No, rather than a God of Yes.  Seeing the pure, innocent joy that Monique had from God's creation blew me away.  We can't get that kind of delight from the latest version of an iPad or television.  Nothing manmade can bring us the kind of joy that God does.  His very presence in our lives is what our joy is founded on.  All of His creation is just a tiny sliver of the goodness of Him, and the magnitude of how big He is.  What a sweetly answered prayer, a wonderful gift for my cherished friend!