“Opening the cage door was not as easy as Max had hoped. Max leaped against the kennel’s gate, his body hitting the chain link with a loud clang… the next effort was going to have to count. Tensing his hind legs, Max leaped. His paws hit the chain link. The gate rattled. He bent his front paws, straining to hold himself up while his hind feet scrabbled against the concrete. Eyes wide, he forced his snout between the door and the pole. It was a tight fit, the cool metal pressing against his gums as he opened his mouth wide. The taste of acrid metal met his tongue as his mouth wrapped around the latch. He bit down… growling deep in his chest, max clamped his jaws down on the latch as hard as he could. And the kennel door swung open.” -The Last Dogs by Christopher Holt

Max is a dog that is stuck in his cage. He needs to get out. His food and water have run dry. He will starve if he doesn’t get out.

Imagine for a moment that we are actually the ones stuck in there. We are the ones who have run out of resources. No matter what we do we cannot get out… by ourselves.

God is the one who can let us out. When everything is gone and you have nothing left, God can get you out. When we would be crying out to him, “God why has everyone forsaken me!? Why does everyone ignore my cries of distress?!” He is right next to you.

The problem is that sometimes we are too busy calling out to him that we cannot hear him. When you don’t know what to do, God will help you.

God wants to help you. The bad thing is, we wander into situations and the devil puts up walls around us. The devil will only leave one way out and that way will have a foreign lock on it. But God will understand how to undo the lock and how to let you free, but we will be too busy trying to figure out how to undo the lock ourselves, that we will miss that God has already opened a new door.

Think of it like this: On a pet kennel, there are two stubs sticking out that you squeeze to open it. If you are a sheep that goes in and gets locked in, your shepherd can let you out any time. It just might take some pressure somewhere.

Psalm 27:1 “The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?”– if you will trust him to get you out he will help you in any situation.

Sharing Hope for the Next Generation,

Bryce