©2002 Larry Huntsperger Peninsula Bible Fellowship

1/6/02

Being Loved By God

1/6/02 Being Loved By God

We were going to start our study

of the 12^th chapter of Romans this morning.

In fact, I was so sure we were going to start that study

that I even wrote up the notes for it.

But they are notes that will serve as well

for next week.

Because this week,

this morning

there are some other things I want to share with you.

It has been three weeks since we were last together.

They have been a remarkable three weeks for our family

and I want to take this morning

to catch you up a bit on our lives

in what will end up being a very personal account in some respects,

and in the process

I also want to share with you some things

that I have learned about my Lord

as a result of what has taken place.

Some of you were aware

that before we left on December 18^th

Sandee and I had the hope that we just might be going on a 7 day Christmas Carribean cruise

with Holland America Cruise Line.

For the past two summers

our daughter, Joni, worked as a tour director for Holland America here in Alaska,

and when she signed on with them

she was told that after two years

she could take herself and a friend,

or herself and both parents on any Holland America cruise free of charge

as long as there was space available.

She did the paperwork

and placed our names on a waiting list

for a 7 day cruise leaving from Ft. Lauderdale, Florida on December 23^rd.

In mid November it looked as though

there was still plenty of room on the ship

so we got our plane tickets

and planned to go.

But then early in December

in a matter of a few days

the cruise suddenly booked solid,

and for the two weeks prior to our departure from Alaska

it was listed as a “fully booked cruise”.

We already had our plane tickets, though,

so we decided to go to Florida anyway

and see what happened.

The cruise was scheduled to leave Sunday afternoon, December 23^rd,

and we arrived at our hotel across from the docks about midnight on Saturday.

I got up early Sunday morning

and walked over to the dock area,

looking for someone to talk to

about the possibility of getting on the cruise,

but after an hour and a half

I couldn’t even find our ship,

much less a representative from Holland America.

I finally return to the hotel

and dug out the only phone numbers I had for contact with Holland America.

The first number was the employee stand-by information number.

I called it

and listened to a recording telling me

that office hours were 8-5 Monday through Friday.

The second number was one I’d found on the Holland America internet site

for people wanting to book a cruise.

I called it

and a real live human being answered.

I explained our situation to the booking agent,

telling her we were on an employee stand-by list for a cruise leaving in a few hours.

The first thing she said was, “Fun, isn’t it?”

Then she said she would put me on hold for a few minutes and see what she could find out.

About five minutes later

she came back on the phone

and said, “OK, you’re all booked in

to a mini-suite with a private balcony. Her is your booking number...”

Apparently that morning

a “Mrs. Goldberg” had called and cancelled her reservation.

For the next 7 days

the hardest decision I faced

was whether to have the lobster

or the fillet...or both for dinner.

Now, if you are thinking I have shared all of that with you

so that I can now draw from it

some profound spiritual truth,

you may...or may not be disappointed.

I’ll just tell you

that when I got off the phone with that booking agent

I found myself utterly overwhelmed

with the love of my Lord for me.

If we would not have gotten on the cruise

it would certainly not have caused me to doubt His love,

but for some reason He had decided

to show me that love in an amazing way that day

and the memory of that morning

will stay with me forever.

And I’ll say, too,

that it was an incredible thrill

to go blasting into our darkened hotel room,

where Sandee and Joni were still asleep,

with both of them having gone to bed

knowing there was no way we would ever going to get on that cruise,

and bellow out,

“You two had better get moving

or we’re going to miss our ship.”

And the second thing,

and the heart of what I really want to share with you this morning,

I need to illustrate

with our little dog, Pepper.

For the past 14 years

we have had a miniature schnauzer as part of our family.

Those of you who have been here

for any length of time

already know lots about Pepper

because in the most remarkable ways

that little dog’s relationship with me

has enabled me to better understand

my relationship with my Lord.

During this past year

Pepper’s age has become more and more evident to us.

There was a time

about a year and a half ago

when he began sleeping more and more

until he was sleeping all but a few hours a day.

But then, when we were in Texas a year ago last fall,

we me a Vet

who prescribed a medication for Pepper

that literally transformed our little dog overnight.

His energy level dramatically improved,

his interest in life returned,

and even his breath got better.

Sandee and I called it “doggie Prozac”

and for most of the past year

he’s been doing great.

There were some rather significant things

the doggie Prozac didn’t cure, though.

Both his hearing and his eye sight have been failing until, just before we left for vacation

he was almost completely deaf

and could only see general movements around him.

And then, to add to his offensiveness,

for the past few months

he has been losing bladder control

to the point where

if I did not get him outside about every two hours

he just couldn’t hold it any longer.

He was still making it through the night

assuming I would take him out at 11:00PM

and then make sure I was up again by 6:00AM.

I will be the first to admit

that by any objective evaluation

Pepper was a dog who had completely outlived his usefulness

and most sensible, rational people

would never have continued to put up with him any longer.

I will also admit

that his liabilities made him an extremely hard dog for any but Sandee, Joni, and I to love.

But during the past few months

I have noticed something fascinating

in my relationship with Pepper.

My love for him

has nothing whatsoever to do with his usefulness.

His deafness and blindness

has made him utterly worthless as a watchdog anymore.

There have been many days

when he has been so overwhelmed

with the fear of just going up and down the stairs

that I have had to carry him back and forth to the loft

where we put his little doggie bed.

He’d become an extremely high-maintenance dog,

and yet his growing worthlessness

and dependence only seemed to intensify my love for the little rat.

I have thought a lot about this during the past few months,

trying to figure out why this is,

and I’ll tell you the conclusion I’ve reached.

All of Pepper’s obvious liabilities during this phase of his life

have not prevented him

from fulfilling the one thing

that really gave him

such tremendous value to us -

through all that has been going on in his life,

he has still continued to love us,

and to want to be with us,

wagging his tiny tail when we come home,

and standing at the window

and watching us drive away when we go.

From the first day he entered our home 14 years ago

he has loved us unconditionally.

And it is that exchange of love

that has given him

such tremendous value to our family.

He was a good little watchdog

back when he could hear and see,

and he did a great job of keeping the other dogs

out of our yard.

But from the very beginning

it has never been about what he could do for us.

It has been about

what was happening between him

and the rest of our family.

When we left for our cruise on the 18^th of December

we once again imposed on our extended family

to take charge of our now very high maintenance little dog.

We knew before we left

that our departure would be hard on him,

but there simply was no other alternative

and our extended family courageously rose to the call

and took on the project of his care in our absence.

The day before we left

I had constructed a little wire pen

outside the back door of the house he would be staying in

to keep him contained during his frequent trips outside.

New Years Eve day

he broke out of that little pen,

and, I think, used his escape

to try to find out why it was taking dad and mom

so long to come back for him.

Somewhere in the process

he became confused about where he was

and how to find his way back,

and he wandered out onto the highway

and was hit and killed.

Though the knowledge of Pepper’s death

has made a painful end to our vacation,

this, too, was every bit as much an expression of my Lord’s remarkable love for me and kindness to me

as was that voice on the phone a week earlier

announcing that we’d been booked into a mini-suite with a private balcony.

Had Pepper lived

I know that this next year

would have been a very difficult time

for both us and our dog.

We met a Christian vet on our cruise

and I talked with him a little about Pepper

and he told me he would likely not live out the year.

When that little dog

had fulfilled the purpose

for which God brought him into our family,

the Lord removed him.

And in the process

He has helped me to see some things

that I have never seen with such clarity before.

By all logical standards

the quality of our living

has taken a dramatic step forward in Pepper’s absence.

There are no longer little chunks of dog food

scattered around his dog dish.

There are no little yellow pools on our kitchen floor when we don’t get home in time.

There are no longer any offensive odors

invading our loft,

and no desperate dog

needing to be carried outside at 6:00AM every morning.

For the first time in 14 years

we live in a dog-free environment,

and it’s awful.

Because it has never been about being neat,

and tidy,

and controlled,

and comfortable.

From the very beginning

it has always been about love,

about the giving and receiving of love.

And giving and receiving love

has always been a very messy business.

Those of you who have listened closely

to what has been happening in my teaching

during the past few years

have probably noticed

the birth of a central theme

in nearly every idea I find stirring inside me at this point in my life.

You see, after more than 30 years of Bible teaching

I am just beginning to realize

the utter simplicity

of the purpose for which God has brought this world into existence.

From the very first instant of creation

there has been one purpose driving everything God has done.

He has created all that is

to serve as His tools

with which to work for our discovery

of the depth of His love for each of us.

I am certain

that God created dogs

and gave them their remarkable capacity

for bonding with us

and us with them

because they have the potential

of giving us tremendous insight

into the true nature of our relationship with God.

Once again we’ve gotten it all wrong.

When we think of God,

more often than not

we believe his big concern

is the moral clean-up of the universe.

We think He wrings His eternal hands

over all the moral mess in the world,

and fervently runs around poking at people

to try to get them to clean up their act.

But if a morally spotless universe

was the motivating goal of God

He could have it in an instant

by turning all our oxygen

into carbon dioxide for five minutes.

For 14 years our family endured

the inconvenience,

and the mess,

and the odors,

and the noise brought into our lives by that little dog

because we loved

what was happening between us and him.

And now that he’s gone

our neat and tidy world feels very empty.

And folks,

there are some striking parallels

between Pepper and our family

and us and our Creator.

Life is so easy now,

so neat, and clean, and convenient,

and empty without Pepper.

There are no nasty little yellow pools on the kitchen floor,

no long, cold waits at the back door,

no unpleasant odors wafting up from the couch.

All the things I grumbled about so much,

all the stuff that use to drive me crazy about that little dog are gone.

And I hurt in my neatness,

and ache in my clean and controlled little world.

And even now my little dog continues to talk to me about my God,

telling me things I could never have known without him.

For I, too, have made such messes

in my Lord’s once neat and tidy world.

I have left stains,

and created odors every bit as offensive to my God

as the yellow pools my little dog left me in his final days.

This world in which we live could have been...would have been

so very much nicer

had we not drenched it in our sin, our immorality.

I will certainly not pretend that I have come to understand

even a tiny piece of why our God did what He did.

But in his own perfect way

Pepper has given me a glimpse.

For I would gladly have all of the mess back again

if I could have him back beside me on the couch,

or curled up on my office rug as I write.

We’ve had it all wrong.

From the very beginning we’ve had it all wrong.

It has never been about cleaning up the world.

I has never been about defeating sin.

It has always, only been about one thing -

us and Him and our entrance into His love.

Listen to this:

HEB 12:1 Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance, and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us,

HEB 12:2 fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

“...who for the joy set before Him endured the cross...”

That cross

was the ultimate statement

of the moral mess of the universe,

all of which flowed from just one source -

us, you and me.

And the joy set before Him,

the thing that was a more than adequate motivation

for all that He did,

the source of that joy is the same thing

that produced the mess - it is us, you and me,

and the exchange of love

that would take place between us and Him

because of that mess.

Following Pepper’s death

as I adjusted to his absence,

the most remarkable thought crossed my mind.

It will sound strange when I put it into words.

Could it really be

that God loves me as much as I loved my little dog?

The obvious, theologically correct answer

is that, of course He does, and far more.

I would not have died for my dog.

But on an emotional level

it was a brand new thought,

and one that made me realize once again

how little I understand

of what is really going on between me and my Creator.