Dogs stay, husband goes

Last night on yahoo news, the title of an article caught my eye,

"The lady who swapped her husband for 10 dogs".

Say what?

Here is the subtitle of the article:

10 years ago a Singapore lady gave up her marriage for 10 stray dogs.

Now she has more than 200, and doesn't regret her decision at all.

The more I read about this woman, the more disbelief surrounded me.

I just finished reading Completely His by Shannon Ethridge. Amazing book. One thing she teaches about is how when we have Jesus in our heart, we are the bride of Christ.

Shannon points things out in this book about that role we take on that kept my attention captive, such as this,

"We are all invited into an intimate love relationship with Jesus, regardless of our heritage, our social status, or our gender.

All that is required is that we submit to Him as our heavenly Bridegroom and love Him with a bridal love".

She also points out that before we said yes to God, He knew we'd be unfaithful to Him.

"It's hard to imagine that a groom would commit himself to an unfaithful bride, but this is exactly what God has done with you and me".

The lady in the article mentioned above gave up her marriage for her love of stray dogs.

One day her husband gave her an ultimatum -- either the dogs went, or he did.

The dogs won.

How sad for that man, I thought.

But then I started thinking about my walk with Christ, my marriage to Christ, and I thought of all the meaningless things I have swapped Him out for.

Things that "won".

~Relationships that brought Him no glory

~Ungodly attitudes

~An affair

~Ridiculous spending habits

Gene and I have been married for 10 years. Standing at the altar together if I had said to him,

"I Lelia take you Gene, to be my husband, to honor and cherish, but I'm not going to be faithful to you. I'm going to lie and sneak and cheat on you. Oh and I will get pregnant from this affair and hide my lying life style by having an abortion. In sickness and health, 'till death do us part".

If Gene knew ahead of time that I was not going to keep my vows, he would've said, "See ya" and turned and walked out of that church on 9th and Claremont Streets on that hot summer day in June. Out the door and never to be heard of again.

Same thing with the groom in Singapore. Had he known she would choose canines over him within a decade, no way would he have taken her as his wife. One thing she said about her ex-husband is this, "If he loves me, he should accept me for who I am".

Jesus Christ.

He knows us.

He accepts us for who we are.

And still says I do.

I do want her all to Myself.

I do want to use her ugly past for My glory.

I do love her as is.

I do want to be the God of her Is (present), Was (past) and Is to Come (future).

Are you swapping out anything for Jesus?

Just like the Singapore groom gave his wife an ultimatum Christ gives us one in

Revelation 3:16

So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth.

Whoa.

As that man didn't want dogs to be his wife's #1 priority, God wants nothing or nobody to come before Him.

I need to be swapping out some junk in my life for Jesus.

I need to trust my Bridegroom enough to completely surrender to Him. Every day.

I need to be on fire for the God who loves me regardless of my unfaithful heart beating within my chest. Because being spit out by God is much worse than the sting of rejection that man felt when his wife chose dogs over their marriage.

I love you Jesus!