Musings from the Merry Heart

One morning I woke up feeling our new puppy Dov katan moving around restlessly on the bed between my husband and me. I know that it is a bad habit we allowed the puppy to get into, but under the circumstances we are in for now, it was the only way to keep Dov quiet so as not to disturb the couple who so graciously lent us this apartment until our new trailer is set up. Normally, I would have crate-trained the puppy which entails listening to puppy cries of unhappiness for a few nights.
I lay there pondering on how to re-train Dov out of this habit when we move to our own home. The Lord brought to my mind this true story.
There was this woman who had a rather large dog that insisted on sleeping on the bed; he had managed to get his own way from puppyhood into the first two or three years of adulthood.
One day the dog's mistress decided that she had had enough of dirty paw prints on her quilts and wanted to teach the dog to stay off the bed and sleep in his own dog bed on the floor. She tried coaxing him off with doggie treats, but as soon as the treat was gobbled up the dog quickly jumped back on the bed and refused to budge. She tried pleading, she tried talking tough---all to no avail. Then she tried pulling him off the bed, but he would give a low growl and hunker down even more. The only time the dog got off the bed voluntarily was when the downstairs door-bell rang announcing company. Then he would jump off the bed, run down the stairs to bark at the front door.
So the mistress decided she would use this to her advantage. She quietly opened the front door, rang the bell, and shut the door; then as her dog was running down the stairs, she passed him on the stairs as she was running up the stairs: she quickly shut the bedroom door behind her before the dog knew what was happening.
Whenever the bedroom door was inadvertently left open, the dog would boldly walk in and once again take up his position on the bed. The mistress used her trick a time or two more and they dashed by each other on the stairs. The last time she shut herself in the bedroom and lay down to take a nap with the whole bed to herself. She could hear the dejected whimpers of the dog outside the bedroom door. She smiled to herself thinking she had finally won the battle of wills. His bad habit would be forever broken.
Her reverie was broken by the sound of frantic barking and the dog running downstairs to the front door. The mistress threw open the bedroom door, and as she ran down the stairs to open the front door, her dog dashed up the stairs past her, into the bedroom and onto the bed. Needless to say there was no one at the door.
When I was little, I used to try to teach my dog Buster tricks, and when he didn't learn them either as fast or as well as I thought he should I would become impatient or disheartened. My father noticed my puzzlement one day and said, "Linda, when you have a smart dog and want to teach it something, you need to be smarter than the dog."
Since then I've learned to seek out expert advice on dog training? According to Paul you can: "This I say, therefore, and testify in the Lord, that you should no longer walk as the rest of the gentiles walk, in the futility of their mind, having their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart; who, being past feeling, have given themselves over to lewdness, to work all uncleanness with greediness. But you have not so learned in Messiah, if indeed you have heard Him and have been taught by Him, as the truth is in Yeshua: that you put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and that you put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness." (Ephesians 4:17-24) Paul continues, "And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God" (Romans 12:2) Strong's definition of "renewing" is: "the adjustment of the moral and spiritual vision and thinking to the mind of God, which is designed to have a transforming effect upon the life." Like dogs and others of God's creatures, we humans form habits of mind that have an effect upon our lives, for good or for bad, depending on the habit. The more we repeat a thought or action, the deeper the pathway is cut into our minds, until these patterns of thoughts and actions become so automatic we no longer have to consciously plan them out. They become spontaneous: for good or for bad.
Our thoughts can make for us crooked paths. "Their feet run to evil, and they make haste to shed innocent blood; their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity; wasting and destruction are in their paths. The way of peace they have not known, and there is no justice in their ways; they have made themselves crooked paths; whoever takes that way shall not know peace." (Isaiah 59:7-8) Strong describes these "paths" a beaten track. You've heard of a one-track mind. These thoughts lay tracks or paths of habit.
"For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) nothing good dwells; for to will is present with me, but how to perform what is good I do not find. For the good that I will to do, I do not do; but the evil I will not to do, that I practice. Now if I do what I will not to do, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me. I find then a law, that evil is present with me, the one who wills to do good. For I delight in the Law of God according to the inward man. But, I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?" (Romans 7:18-24)
Paul has a problem with bad habits, that like the dog of bad habits on the bed, rushes back up the stairs to regain his position as Paul rushes down the stairs to answer the door-bell call to good habits.
So it is much easier to train a puppy into good habits than to train bad habits out of an older dog. It is the same for us humans. "Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it." (Proverbs 22:6) How do we do this? "And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up." (Deut. 6:6-7) Consistency is the key for training both children and puppies. This method lays the paths of good habits in thoughts and actions.
But what about those of us who have never had this guidance and training in the way we should go? Well that is where the Expert Trainer comes in. First you must find one. "Seek the Lord while He may be found, call upon Him while He is near. Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts. Let him return to the Lord." (Isaiah 55:6-7) We are told to seek and we are guaranteed to find our Expert---our one and only Yeshua. He knows that our habits (ways) and our unrighteous thoughts need to be forsaken. We need renewal. We each must ask "Search me, O God, and know my heart. Try me and know my anxieties. And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way of everlasting." (Psalm 139:23-24) As each of us has been the product of our environment, upbringing and education, we each have our own individual pathways that need to be renewed by the Searcher of hearts.
When we are training children or puppies, we reward them for good responses. Our Yeshua does likewise with us. "But without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him." (Hebrews 11:6) What reward? "You will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on You, because he trusts in You. Trust in the Lord forever, for in YAH, the Lord, is everlasting strength." (Isaiah 26:3-4)
But when children or puppies are willfully naughty we chastise them. Our Yeshua does also with us. "My son, do not despise the chastening of the Lord, nor be discouraged when you are rebuked by Him; for whom the Lord loves He chastens, and scourges every son whom He receives. Now chastening seems to be joyful for the present, but painful; nevertheless, afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righeousness to those who have been trained by it." (Hebrews 12:5, 6, 11)
We never punish a puppy or child for something they do not understand or are not able to accomplish. Neither does Yeshua in his parenting of us. "For if there is first a willing mind, it is accepted according to what one has, and not according to what he does not have." (2 Cor. 8:12)
Now that we know the training methods, we must ascertain our goal. What do we want to accomplish with our training program? Yeshua has a goal set for us: "Let this mind be in you which was also in the Messiah Yeshua." (Philippians 2:5) Yeshua's goal for us is have a mind like His.
A good trainer/teacher uses the best helps available to help their student, puppy, or child succeed. So does Yeshua. He has shown us our need and so we ask: "Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me away from Your Presence, and do not take Your Holy Spirit from me." (Psalm 51:10-11)
Yeshua provides our helper. "But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my Name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you." (John 14:26)
Here is where the similarities of our two training programs diverge. We cannot write upon the heart of any of the creatures of God's creation. But Yeshua says, "For this is the covenant that I will make with the House of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my laws in their mind and write them on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. None of them shall teach his neighbor, and none his brothers, saying 'know the Lord', for all of them shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them. For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more." (Hebrews 8:10-12)
So let us all say with Paul, " I thank God through Yeshua haMashiach our Lord." (Romans 7:25)
contributed by Linda