Good Morning Girls!  Our dog Max loves 2 things: his tennis ball and water.  Actually, the word love is not a strong enough word for how he feels about these things.  He is passionate about them.  He is obsessed with them.  He is in fact, a slave to his tennis ball.  When we are at the cabin he will spend the entire day on the dock with his tennis ball.  If you don't throw the ball in for him, he will throw it in himself and leap off the dock to retrieve it.  He does this over and over again for hours.  By the 3rd day, he can hardly walk.  He limps and his paws are bloody and raw from the rocks.  He tries to take a break, but he can't.  The pain he feels when he walks is insignificant to the pain he feels if he is not retrieving the ball.  He will lie down for a minute and then he pops up again and carries on with his routine.  It is fascinating, and also sad to watch.  By the end of the week, he will throw it in and sit there on the dock crying, trying to gather up the energy to jump in and get it.  He is the only one that loses 5 pounds at the cabin, and on the 22 hour drive home, he doesn't move.  The ball is his master, he is the slave.  As I watched him one morning I started thinking about the different things that have ruled me over the years.  The pain I was willing to endure in order to continue doing the things that gave me bloody paws.  The things that I was in bondage to.  Living as a slave, in bondage, is not the way God wants us to live.  The only thing God wants us to be slaves to is His love.  He doesn't want anything to have a hold on us.  He doesn't want us serving anyone, or anything other than Him.  He is not doing this to rob us of any fun.  He knows that the things that our flesh becomes slaves to, are never good for us.  They pull us away from Him, away from the good life that occurs when you walk in God's will.  Take a moment today and ask the Lord if there is anything that you are a slave to other than His love.

Romans 6:17-18  Thank God!  Once you were slaves of sin, but now you wholeheartedly obey this teaching we have given you.  Now you are free from your slavery to sin, and you have become slaves to righteous living

Love you all-
Jen