Description
WILD
Dog Days
April 29, 2012
Ed Young
Most people don’t mind dogs. Many people like dogs. Some people absolutely love dogs! But however we feel about our canine companions, the truth is that they have a lot to teach us about our relationship with God.
In this special outdoor experience, Ed Young and Fellowship Church welcome everyone and their dog to church…literally. And we see how God can even use man’s best friend to teach us some powerful realities about getting the most out of every “dog day” we have.
Transcript
<singing> Who let the dogs out? Who, who, who, who, who? Who let the dogs out? Who, who, who, who, who? Who let the dogs out? Who, who, who, who, who?
I like it, I like it! Everyone remain standing! Look we got a photographer up there. I think this is the largest dog service in the history of Christianity! Let’s all wave and they’ll take our picture. What’s up?!! Yeah, yeah, yeah! Man, this is awesome. Instead of “Amen!’s” we’re gonna hear, “Arr-arr-arr!” I like that. Please be seated.
I want to welcome our online service. Already we’ve been viewed in 48 different nations and all 50 states have logged in. We have our own campus pastor, our online pastor, Andy Boyd (three cheers from the Asby household!). Now, online does not mean you get a free miss. But if you’re somewhere around the world or somewhere traveling you can log on and watch Fellowship Church Live online. Also, too, yeah, yeah. We can go ahead and clap for that. That’s cool.
Also, I want to welcome all of our different environments. We have campuses in Miami, Downtown Dallas, Downtown Fort Worth, over in Plano, so it is awesome! Thank you, guys, for being here. We’ve been looking forward to this for a long, long time. Dog days. Dog days.
How many people brought their dog? Lift your hand if you brought your dog. Man, that’s ridiculous! Last night we had just a great service. I love to see the different animals. Isn’t it crazy? I mean, is it me or what? We look like our animals. Most of us look somewhat like our dogs. No offense, but oftentimes we do.
Well today I want to give you just a couple of things about dogs. The Bible talks a lot about dogs. You might not realize it but it does. And the sound effects really, really help us to sort of become multisensory learners because we have so many different markings, so many different noises, etc. It’ll be a lot of fun.
Well, my wife and I have five dogs. Two of the dogs are adopted, the other three are dogs that we bought. And every night I say this to the dogs: “You wanna go night-night?” and I clap my hands. And sure enough, all of the dogs follow me (because they know Lisa’s in there and they love Lisa the most, into our bedroom. They arrange themselves on the floor around our bed and we go to sleep. So every night in our bedroom we’ve got five dogs. Three of the dogs weigh over 100 pounds, the other two, the two that are adopted, are tiny. My favorite dog is a dog I’ll talk to you about a little bit later. Her name is Ava. We rescued her from East Texas. She’s a Malti-Poo and I love Ava. My nickname for her is Little Girl. When I come home from work I will go, “Hey, Little Girl!” She’s on the front row. Hey, Little Girl! Yeah, I love Ava, I just love her, love her. And I’m not trading in my Man Card to say that I love the Malti-Poo.
Whenever you sleep with dogs, though, you’re gonna have interesting things that happen. Like when they eat something that does not agree with their system. Have you ever heard a dog eat something and react to something that does not agree with their system? Have you ever heard of a dog, or have you been around your dog, that gets sick. Big dogs will give you a warning. They’re like… <pre-hurling sound effects!>… and when you hear that you better grab them and get them out of the house quick! If not, what’s gonna happen? <more sound effects!> I hate to be gross… <barfing> and it’s horrible. When that’s happened to us we’ve been just totally woken up out of the middle of a deep sleep to that sound. I just grab the dogs, sometimes after they’ve thrown up, take them outside and then Lisa (of course) cleans it up. It’s incredible. That’s not always true, that’s not true.
Now small dogs, they do the quick one. They’ll go <hacking sound>! It’s quick. So when you hear a small dog getting ready to vomit you gotta be quick. But the big dogs <pre-hurling sound effects> … you got about 10 seconds. Dogs vomit. Let’s just face it. Dogs throw up. Dogs upchuck. Dogs reject the contents of their stomach. The Bible says that.
The Bible says that dogs have this nature. They vomit and then, the Bible says, and I hate to just gross you out, the Bible says in Proverbs 26:11, “A dog returns to its vomit, so a fool repeats his folly.” So a dog’s nature is to return to its what? It’s vomit. My nature is to return to my vomit. So a dog’s nature is to return to its vomit. My nature, your nature, is to return to our vomit.
Now the Bible isn’t literally talking about vomit, it’s using a metaphor, a word picture. A dog seeks the scent of its vomit and eats its vomit. The Bible is getting at this. All of us have these things in our lives that trip us up. Let’s face it. We all have these go-to desires that can mess us up. We feed on this stuff, it doesn’t agree with our system, and then after that we have those Dog Days. We get sick as dogs and on top of all that we make all of these pacts and promises.
“I’ll never do that again. I’ll never go there again!” Yet we go around and around and around. I call it the vortex of vomit. We are sucked into the vortex of vomit. What’s the vortex of vomit? Desire. All of us have desires. Desires are good. They’re a God-thing. When we take a desire and use a desire in a God-forbidden way, that’s when we get jacked up. The desire hits us.
From desire we have our diet. What do we eat? What are you feeding on? What am I feeding on? If I say, “God, I’m gonna do what I want to do, I pursue pleasure as my ultimate goal.” Think about it. If pleasure is your ultimate goal or my ultimate goal, it will lead to gratification but not satisfaction. If pleasure is the thing I’m seeking I will be gratified but not totally satisfied. However, if I say, “God, you know what? I’m gonna seek you. I’m gonna turn to you. I’m gonna allow you to lead me, to you to be my master, for you to be my master.” Then and only then can we understand pleasure. And pleasure will be in the context of where it’s supposed to be. I seek God first, then I’ll experience ultimate pleasure. If I just seek pleasure in and of itself, desire, I’ll feed on different types of pleasure, then because God is not in the picture and I’m just seeking pleasure, that runs out and I go around and around and around the circle.
So we’ve got desire, we’ve got the diet, we’ve got the dog days. We make the pacts and promises that we’re gonna change… “I’ll never do it again!” Yet we go around and around… <pre-hurling sound effect…. Barf!> And we eat it back up. This happens time and time again.
What is that thing? That destructive habit? That go-to sin in your life that you deal with? What’s that go-to sin, that habit, that thing in my life that I go to? Maybe it’s anger. Out of control anger. Maybe it’s the ride of pride. You always have to promote yourself or I always have to promote myself. We’re always one-upping the other person. Maybe it’s a substance issue. Maybe, just maybe, it has to do in the realm of illicit behavior. Maybe it’s porn. Maybe it’s greed. Who knows what it is! I don’t know, only you know what it is. And we say, “I’m not gonna go there again. I’m done with it. I’m through!” Yet we find ourselves sucked into the vortex of vomit.
The desire (instead of desiring God we desire desire, and when we desire desire we get pleasure, pleasure away from God, and we pursue pleasure and after the hit, after the buzz, what happens? We get sick, throw it up, experience dog days and we go around and around and around.
If you think about the history of God’s people, the Jews, they were in this cycle a lot. They would always say, “OK, OK, OK! God I want to desire you.” Then, though, they would move their alliances and allegiances toward the desire. From desire they would go to the diet. From the diet to the dog days. Pacts and promises and finally God said, “You know what? It’s time to break free. It’s time to get out of that cycle.”
I don’t know about you but in my life I want to be a cycle-breaker. I don’t want to be sucked into the vortex of vomit. I want to be sucked into the vortex of victory. And victory only comes (check this out) when I allow God to lead me. I will say it again. Victory only comes (check this out) because it seems paradoxical, when I allow God to lead me. In other words, I leash up my life to the master and he tells me what to do. I obey his commands. What’s more beautiful? A wild dog… <barking/snarling sound effect>, is that the most beautiful thing? Or a dog that’s trained, that obeys the commands of its master. What’s the best? Well, it’s obvious. The one that listens to its master’s voice. You have that power and strength in control. We seek the Lord, we seek him, a by-product of that will be pleasure in God’s context. So instead of desiring desire, I desire God. Instead of saying, “OK, I’m gonna resist temptation by myself. I’m not gonna go there. I’m not gonna get involved in that. I’m not gonna frequent that.” Instead of saying, “I can resist. I can resist. I can resist,” move to God and say, “God, I leash my life up to you.” And God will grant you and me the desires of our heart.
The Bible says in the model prayer, Jesus said we should pray this: “Lead us not into temptation.” All these dogs are on leashes, right? Jesus will lead us as we desire him, away from that stuff.
Now I’m gonna bring my dog on stage, Ava, Little Girl. Everybody give it up for Little Girl. Hey, Little Girl! I love her. Anyway, Ava is a year old, a Malti-Poo. She’s tough, though. This dog has heart and let me tell you why. I took her to the beach one time. She’d never been to a beach. Dogs freak out when they go to a beach. Whether it be on a lake or the ocean, they just look around and they’re like, Wow! It’s so giant, it’s so expansive.
Well, when I walked onto this beach it said, “Leashed dogs only.” Leashed dogs only. And I knew what that means. Ava had to stay on the leash. So I’m like, OK, I’m walking her with Lisa up and down the beach with the leash, holding onto the leash. And she sees these seagulls, you know, kind of taunting her. <squawking noises> And she would rear up on her hind legs and you could tell she really wanted to chase those seagulls. So I thought, you know, I’m just gonna… no one’s around… I’m just gonna… no one’s looking… I’m just gonna take her off the leash and let her run around. I mean, no one’s at the beach, I mean. It’s cold and everything. No one will know.
So, I made the foolish mistake of unleashing Ava. When I did, this seagull came up to her, like flew up to her and like <squawking noise> then the seagull began to fly down the ocean. Fly down the beach, fly down, paralleling the surf. Ava turned and she ran, I’m talking about like I’ve never seen her run before. She’s just running and running and running, and I’m going,
“Ava! Little Girl! Ava! AVA! AVA!” And she’s gone! She’s like a little dot chasing that seagull, just chasing that seagull. I’m thinking to myself, what would she do if she caught it? But anyway, the seagull, after flying several hundred yards began to make its way out to sea. And as it turned towards the deep oceans, Ava turned into the waves, into the ocean, into the frigid waters and she was over her head quick! I’m like. Oh no, Little Girl is gone! But I was calling her,
“Ava! Ava! Ava!” And then she came to her senses, turned, and swam all the way back in, riding waves, literally! Her little head, you know, bobbing. And then she ran up to me soaking wet. She was about the size of a rat. I leashed her up, we washed her off, and she’s doing great.
I’ve chased some seagulls before. Have you? I’ve said, “God, I want to get off the leash. Let me off the leash, God!” And here’s what we think. We think when we’re off the chain we have freedom. But in reality, when we’re off the chain we’re oppressed. I will say it again. We think, “Oh, I want to have total freedom, man! Just, I want to be off the chain!” In reality that’s oppression! We run down the beach, we chase this, we chase that. What are you chasing? We chase all these things. We’re chasing pleasure. As I said, pleasure only gratifies, it doesn’t really satisfy. And some of us right now are swimming out to sea. We’re chasing that seagull. Our head’s barely above water!
Here’s the good news. Our Master is chasing us down. I’m talking about Jesus. Our Master has a leash, he’s saying, “Come here, come here, come here! Come here!” He’s calling you. He’s calling me, because he has the best in store for us. All we have to do is turn because he’s running after us, and allow him to leash us up, listen to his voice, talk to him in prayer, read his love letters to us, the scriptures, hang out and rub shoulders with people who are followers of Christ, and we can understand who God is. We can understand that pleasure is a by-product of following him, and we can understand this amazing purpose in life, which is to follow the Master’s voice.
[Ed leads in closing prayer.]