Zeal without Wisdom

It is not good to have zeal without knowlege,
nor to be hasty and miss the way.
Prov 19:2

I knew when we got our Fox Terrier, that the only elegance about her would be her name: LADY! Renown for their hunting instincts and nervous character, Lady fits the bill of the breed to the letter.

This morning as I took her out on her iniciations to walking with a leash, the above verse came to mind.

What Lady does not lack is zeal. Zeal to discover the world, smells and naturally other K9's! She has already developed an amazing distain for a family of 3 dogs 2 houses down from us, and pulls with the strength of 10 horses to get in front of their faces and tell them how stupid they are for being behind the fence!(At least that is my human interpretation of the events!!)

Lady is 7th months old and still very much in the process of being trained. She has acquired the sit position and laying down position quite well, although any sign of training seems to go out of the window as soon as someone new walks on the scene, i.e. visitors! Lady cannot seem to contain her zeal of meeting someone new and have them "experience" her excitement too by consequently jumping all over them, whether they like it or not!!!

Zeal: excessive fervor to do something or accomplish some end

Yes , Lady is another reminder to me of the Process, and that Process involves time and energy. It is often true that the process involves more time and energy than we would care to dedicate to it!

Not only that, Lady has a natural zeal on the onset of her discovery of life that will dissipate as time goes on. It will dissipate due to training and learning what good dog manners are, but also because of maturity.

Lady's zeal expressed itself in full apparel this morning as her nose led her bounding (or at least as much as I allowed it as I continued to firmly yank her backwards saying "heel" whenever the leash tensed more than I wanted it to.) towards the gate of a neighbour, where obviously another K9 aboded.

Her nose tucked under the gate as much as possible, trying to make somekind of a statement, but to Lady´s surprize was met with what I assume to be a much larger dog, who literally scared the fur off of Lady´s back and she jumped away as fast as lightening! Her zeal had lead her somewhere where she didn´t want to be!!!! Wisdom and knowledge learned from this and other experiences, will teach Lady to curb her zeal and not be so quick to investigate another K9's territory next time!

For I can testify about them that they are zealous for God, but their zeal is not based on knowledge. Rom 10:2

So like Lady, my zeal needs to be based on knowledge. There has been many a time in the past that it has just been based on zeal itself...

Lady is beginning to show signs of responding to the training (process!!!) and the rest of the walk was done at my pace rather than hers! But due to her breeding, I don´t think Lady will ever loose all of her zeal. She will always be a bright and nervous creature. Like the saying goes, she even makes coffee nervous!

Likewise, the Bible says we also should not loose our zeal. So even though we mature, may the traces of our breed, that of being in Christ, be that we never loose our zeal in knowing Him.

Never be lacking in zeal,
but keep your spiritual fervour,
serving the Lord. Rom 12:11

Do not let your heart envy sinners,
but always be zealous for the
Fear of the Lord.
Prov23:17

Separation

"...a peculiar people, zealous of good works." Titus 2:14