More Than a Dog

They're famous, funny and arguably tacky works of art - paintings showing dogs around a table, playing poker.

You may have laughed at them. Some people have spent serious money to purchase originals of them. But did you ever stop to think seriously about them? In other words, why don't dogs play poker? Why is it that only humans do?

We heard a speaker today remind us that there's one main difference between humans and dogs - and it's not how dogs use their "hands" as front feet. The difference is in their brains. Or, better put, what has been added to them....

For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the man's spirit within him?.... - I Corinthians 2:11

Some kind of "spirit" in human beings allows us to think, in ways dogs and other animals cannot. For instance, it allows you to figure out whether or not to play two poker cards. And God wants you to use that spirit in other ways....

The lamp of the Lord searches the spirit of a man; it searches out his inmost being. - Proverbs 20:27

Believe it or not, God is probing your mind. He wants to know if you're thinking on His wavelength, or some other one....

As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. - Ephesians 2:1-2

We think that other "ruler" is Satan, or the devil. We all need to tune that ruler out, and stay close to God. Perhaps this blog can help you with that - so you act more like God than a dog, when you're at a poker table.