Two Object Lessons (Nov 16, 1996)

The Lord often speaks to me through object lessons. That is where He calls my attention to something in the natural and then uses it to teach me about something spiritual. Recently He as spoken to me about two object lessons that I thought I'd share with you.

Putting ourselves in His path:

This morning I got out of bed and went into the kitchen for a drink. When heading back upstairs, I noticed that Lucky, one of my two dogs, had placed himself squarely at the head of the stairs... laying down and looking at me expectently with those big brown eyes of his as I headed up the stairs towards him. Now anyone who owns and loves dogs knows that look. It means "Pet me! Love me!" Lucky is a big dog (a 110 lb German Shepherd) and was pretty effectively blocking my path... I would not be able to get past him without stepping over him. I bent down and gave him a good pet, rubbed his tummy and kissed his forehead. As I did so, I could hear the thump thump of my other dog's tail wagging. She was still laying on her bed, over to the right on a wide platform at the top of our staircase. I knew she wanted to be petted too. I finished petting Lucky then I went over to pet and love my other dog.

Then the Lord quite upexpectedly spoke to me. "Teresa, why did you pet Lucky before you petted Salsa? Do you love him more than you love her?"

"No, Lord, of course not. I love both of my dogs the same."

"Then why did you pet Lucky first?" He asked.

"Because Lucky had planted himself in my path. Therefore I ran into him first."

"Exactly," the Lord said. "He watched where you had gone and predicted where you would be going and placed himself in your path. Meanwhile Salsa just stayed where she was at, in her bed. So which one did you give your attention to first? To the one who planted himself in the middle of your path."

God continued. "It's like that with Me and My children too. I love them all equally, but the ones I will deal with and minister to first are those who watch where I'm going and place themselves in My path. I will meet the one's who just stay where they are, waiting for Me. But first I will meet those who go out of their way to seek me and who put themselves in My path. So Teresa, continue to watch where I am going and continue to plant yourself in the middle of My path, and I will continue to meet you there."

Tailgating:

For my commute to work, I drive for about 20 minutes to a BART (like a subway) station, and then take BART into San Francisco and walk to work. On Tuesday morning I left for work. Almost as soon as I left my driveway, someone started to tailgate me (and I was not going slow). Shortly after that person stopped, I got on the freeway. Immediately someone came up behind me and started tailgating me. I moved over to the rightmost lane to let them pass.. though it would not do much good as the car in front of me was going the same speed I was going. They moved over behind me and continued to tailgate me. Finally the turned off the freeway. Almost immediately another car came out of nowhere and began to tailgate me... this was starting to get annoying.

"Lord," I prayed, "this is getting annoying. Would You please lose the tailgaters for me... I don't want to end up in a wreck."

"Why is it annoying?" The Lord asked.

"Because they are trying to force me to drive unsafely by tailgating me... trying to get me to drive above the speed limit."

"In short," the Lord said, "They are trying to pressure you to change your behavior from what it should be to something else to meet their own desires?"

"Yeah. Exactly."

"Does it make you uncomfortable?"

"Yes."

"Has it changed your behavior?"

I looked at my speedometer... I was going 10 MPH over the speed limit. I slowly eased my foot off of the gas to slow down, hoping the person behind me would not run into me.

"Yes," I admitted, "it changed my behavior.. I was driving too fast."

"Well, Teresa, that is happening in the Spirit to a lot of my children. People have their own expectations and desires that do not line up with Mine. My children place their own expectations on each other. They pressure each other to change away from what I'm calling them to do and be. They begin to mode each other into something I am not molding them into. Thus they put yokes and bondages around each others necks."

He continued, "I am going to begin to break those yokes of false expectations off of My children, to free them to be the men and women that I have created them to be. It's time for My children to stop putting unreasonable expectations and judgements on each other. It's time for them to stop tailgating each other."