Tenacious. That’s what a pit bull is. When it grabs on, it never lets go, even when it should.
In May of 2015, in a peaceful upscale North Carolina neighborhood about an hour east of Raleigh, a man took his small fluff of a dog into his backyard. The neighbor’s pit bull came under the fence and leaped on the smaller animal. When the man pulled his small dog away, the pit bull wasn’t content to back away. It circled, snapping at the smaller dog, even biting the man’s arm when it got in its way.
It was time for the pit bull to give the small animal up. Yet, despite multiple entreaties and enthusiastic yelling from numerous adults, it wanted what it wanted, and it couldn’t see the damage it was doing.
Do we act the same way, sometimes? We grab hold of what we shouldn’t, and we refuse to turn loose, even when God snatches the thing away and tells us to stop? We are that pit bull, tearing through the yard, still circling, and hoping that thing will still be ours.
Job 41:1-2 speaks of God’s power evident all around us:
“Can you draw out Leviathan with a fishhook? Or press down his tongue with a cord? Can you put a rope in his nose or pierce his jaw with a hook?”
Give it up, people! What God removes from our grasp is no longer ours to pursue.
2 Kings 19:28 warns us of God’s wrath:
“Because you have raged against me and your complacency has come into my ears, I will put my hook in your nose and my bit in your mouth, and I will turn you back on the way by which you came.”
Do we want to be chained by God, and forced to listen to him no matter what it takes?
Rather, it’s time to give our desires up to God. Exodus 19:5 tells us:
“If you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine.”
We don’t have to snap and growl, chasing desires that are not ours to claim. We only need to hold to our Father, and he will give us the blessings of his profound love. Anything else is barking up the wrong tree.
When we release our lives to God, we no longer desire that which he wishes to take away.
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Code: FGO.F.10.15b.vp.esv