God speaks to me a lot through nature:
This is puppers:
Puppers was raised to be a guard dog. He was trained to fear man and out of that fear to attack and defend himself and his property. You have to be careful when petting him. If you move to fast, pat him or try and play with him he will most likely react and bite you. Over the last three weeks that we have been in Mongolia we have slowly been loving on puppers. This love has begun to transform his life, deminor and reactions. He gets excited to see us, enjoys being pet now and will even allow us to pet his stomach and head. Love has broken through his fear, has allowed him to let go of the need to defend himself and be loved.
I definitely can relate to puppers, and I believe we all have been able to relate to puppers at one point in our lives. Past hurts, how others have treated us and lack of unconditional love has caused us to come up with defense mechanisms, coping mechanisms and has established triggers in our lives that cause us to “bite” people when they do certain things. I have found that the only thing that changes this and can bring healing is Gods unconditional love. The more I experience His love through others and through spending time with him in the places of hurt the more I can receive God’s love and others.
A quote that I think describes this is from a book called Spiritual Slavery to Spiritual Sonship.
“Although we were created by Perfect Love so we could receive His love and give it away, we became insecure with this unconditional love as a child. Insecurities and fears then filled our uncomforted areas of our heart. First John 4:18-19 infers that you can out cast out these fears but that you displace them by introducing an orphan to Perfect Love. Then the orphan must make a choice; he either risks opening up his heart and submits to love, or he continues to put up walls of self-protection and rejects love once more. ” There is no fear in love; but perfect love cast out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love. We love because he first loved us” 1 John 4:18-19.
When we encounter the Love of the father all fear is cast out and all our wounds are filled with his love. We start acting out of being loved instead of acting out of fear/pain reactions. Then we love others because He first loved us.
