Relationship

I talk a lot about relationships; especially the one with a horse and how it compares to the relationship that God desires to have with us. In my new book I review the relationship with the horse and show how it correlates with the one that God desires with us. I have also put together several messages on the subject to be ready for speaking engagements should they come.

We have begun sending out flyers to different camps and such to line up some speaking engagements in preparation for the release of the book. In putting these together I did an intense study on the book of Genesis and the relationship that Adam had with God and His creation.

The truth is that we get a glimpse of the relationship with the life of Christ. Throughout His ministry He continually speaks of doing the will of the Father. The way that He treated people and the compassion that He had is enough to show us the desire of God in regards to a relationship with Him and how that relationship affects the one that we have with others.

As I took a walk through the creation story yet again I was amazed at how much stood out to me during this trip. With the help of Matthew Henry's commentary I looked closely at each of the verses and compared them with what Henry had to say. While the verses are straight forward there are things that we can tell by what is transpiring at the time. During creation God gave names to all that He created but yet He gave Adam the honor of naming the animals. This provides us with a glimpse of the relationship that God had with man before sin entered into the world. It pictures a loving father who gives his son the honor of naming a family pet. The closeness of the two is ultimately shown because after all Adam was His creation as well. He is maintaining that the heavens; which include the entire universe is His, He has named it all including the earth, and gives the name to the sea, but that which is on the earth He turns over the responsibility of to Adam.

As I read this I several thoughts came to mind. I thought of when dad first taught me how to mow the lawn and the excitement that I had as he turned over that chore to me. I also thought of our first hunting trip together and how both of these were pivotal points in my life because it became a time that dad was not just dad; he was also a friend. There was still that hierarchy there and he was still the authority figure but at the same time he was now a friend that I could talk to and share things with. As he slowly turned over more and more responsibilities to me it revealed his faith and trust in me and I was bound and determined to not let him down.

I am certain that Adam felt the same way here and I am also certain that he took extra care in naming the animals. He was given the responsibility of tending the garden and I am sure that he lovingly attended to all his duties; not because he had to but because he wanted to please his Creator and father. Yes, I am sure that the relationship that they had was exactly what God had intended for us for all times. We are told in Genesis chapter 9 as Noah leaves the ark that God re-establishes our covenant with the animals but this time it is based upon the fear of us and not the love that was evident in the garden.

In Genesis 5 however we see the relationship with a man that must have been reminiscent of the one that God had with Adam at creation. Not 6 generations later we find a man named Enoch who had such a relationship with God that God took him. He did not die but was translated up to heaven. We find the message that he preached in the book of Jude. It would not be long before God would destroy the earth with the flood because of the wickedness of man but in Enoch we learn that he walked with God. Adam was 622 years old when he was born and would die 57 years before God would translate Enoch but he must of impacted the life of Enoch with his tales of the Garden of Eden and how he walked with God then.

As I read all of this I considered how it was that God revealed the relationship that He desired through the horse. In order to work with the horse it must first be willing to place itself under my authority; it must submit to me and that is the same thing that God asks each of us. We must be willing to forsake all and follow Him. Christ goes on to say that he who does not forsake all is not worthy of Him, but just like I don't immediately give up on a stubborn horse, He does not and has not given up on us. He knew that many would reject Him but He still sacrificed His life for them. He knew that only one leper would return and thank Him but He still healed all ten and He knew that the multitudes who He fed would follow Him simply because He provided them with food but He still had compassion on them.

In the book of Acts we read the condition of the early church and the reputation that they had; not simply within the church but with all men. I am sure that when Peter told the lame man to rise up and walk he had absolute confidence in the church coming along side of this man and ensuring that he would be able to make a living. They knew the needs of the people within the church because they went house to house daily. I am also certain that we do not have a relationship with Christ if we do not have the same love for others. If we are more concerned about our own well being than that of others I firmly believe that we are in disobedience to God. It is no different than me expecting the horse that I am working with to anticipate my desires. If they do not respond I keep repeating the lesson until they do.

The only difference between them and us is that 9 times out of ten they will get it right and we can go on to the next lesson or receive a treat. We on the other hand can't seem to grasp the idea.

Establishing Dominance

It is difficult to write a blog every day when your internet is in the barn. Of course I had a heater in the barn office but I took it out to put it on my front porch to start my plants, so it gets a little cold out there. My brother-in-law is using the upstairs loft of the office as a room so there is heat there but it doesn’t drift down.

As parents it is becoming more difficult to establish dominance over our kids. Even when you think that you have a good position of authority over them; they come home from school and tell you what their rights are and what you can or cannot do. With my older two all I had to do was to give them a dirty look when they were young and they would settle down. With my middle two is was the change of tone in my voice and with my youngest one it doesn’t matter what I do he still tries to rule the roost. Since we are a blended family he has two siblings that live with us who were to his mother’s ex-husband. The older of the two is autistic and the other has some learning issues as well so when he sees them not getting into trouble for things then he thinks that he can do them as well. I have tried to instill in my wife that they should all have the same consequences for poor behavior regardless of their disabilities because at 5 years old Chase doesn’t fully understand that they have problems. It’s a little humorous because I told my wife that she wouldn’t let her horses get away with as much as she lets her kids get away with. Over the years I have developed a pretty solid way of establishing my dominance over the horse without breaking the horse’s spirit. In the majority of the horses that I have dealt with it has worked as planned; while in the ones that have not accepted my position immediately I was able to eventually establish it. In those cases I was able to glean from the experience different ways to deal with the different personalities of the horse. I have since created a personality profile for horses to be able to better understand how to work with each of them.

I begin to work towards establishing dominance the moment I begin my introduction. Having watched horses when they have been introduced into a new herd I studied how they interacted with each other and how they decided whether to accept or reject the new horse. This decision was based upon the new horse’s personality and their willingness to accept the authority of the lead horse. If the lead horse accepted it then the others would as well although in some cases they would have to work out the pecking order as to who the next in charge would be.

The ease of the establishment of the dominance over the horse depends on where the horse is in regards to that pecking order. The more docile the horse or the lower on the rung it is the easier it is to establish dominance. The one thing that I found is that when I put the lead horse under my authority in the presence of the others it is easier to gain their trust and acceptance.

Again my objective is to not break their spirit but to develop in them a desire to want to please me, obeying my commands not out of necessity but because of the desire to please. They were after all created for this and it wasn’t until after the flood that God put the fear of us in them so what we are attempting to accomplish is inherently created in them and we are simply working towards re-establishing that initial bond that was between us at creation.

Since I have watched the horses react to each other I use the same method that they do in establish dominance over them; I then turn my back to them and walk away. If they follow me then I know that I have made that connection but if they don’t I return to them and go through the process again, until they do. Now just because they followed doesn’t mean that the dominance is automatically established. There is still more work to be done but each process of the development of the relationship puts us that much closer to the complete dominance over the horse.

The horse is following Cheryl without a lead while Chase is learning to rein.

The same is true in our relationship with Jesus Christ. He wants dominance over our lives not because He wants rule over us as a tyrant but because as our Creator He knows what is best for us much in the same way we know what is best for our children. When I was four or five we were over at Grandma and Grandpa Tillia's. As we walked up to the barn dad saw me looking at the fence so he said don’t touch it. It will bite you. As he continued to walk to the barn I stayed there looking at the fence. He knew that I wasn’t following him and he also knew that I was going to touch the fence. He could have grabbed my arm and led me away from the fence but he also knew that I had to experience the result of it myself. He was establishing dominance over me by allowing me to experience the pain that was sure to follow so that I would learn that when he said not to do something that there was a pretty good reason to listen; basically because he was right about the outcome.

As I stood there looking at it I can still remember thinking; how is this thing going to bite me, it has no teeth. As I reached out to grab it I was a little hesitant because dad had told me not to, so I looked around to see if anyone was going to stop me and when I didn’t see anyone I grabbed a hold of it and within seconds I was up in the air and headed to the house screaming. The funny thing was that my boots were still there by the fence standing straight up.

When we trust Jesus to be our Savior we are surrendering to Him, or at least we should be. I have a hard time believing that if we do not submit to Him at that time that we have actually accomplished anything. I have seen people go forward, claim to have trusted Jesus and continue living in the same manner that they had always lived and then I have seen people like my brother-in-law who after he trusted Christ there was a complete turn-around in his life. Jesus told Nicodemus that “you must be born again”. It was not going back into his mother’s womb but becoming like a child whose complete dependence for their survival is on their parent. They place all their trust and faith in that parent but unlike a parent who can make mistakes, He never does. Jesus said; “he who does not take up his cross and follow Me is not worthy of Me”. If we are not willing to forsake all that we have and are then have we really accepted Him as our Savior or are we merely going through the motion of thinking we have insurance from Hell? The truth is that if there is no evidence of fruit there should be doubt as to the realness of your relationship with Him.

The evidence that I know I have dominance over my child is that they obey me, not out of fear but out of love. It is the same evidence that I have when I have established dominance over my horse. It obeys me not because it has to but because it wants to. These relationships develop over time to the point where I simply have to change the tone of my voice or place a hand on them and they will immediately cease their bad behavior. One problem is that it takes much longer to get to that point with a child than it does with a horse.

Why? The answer is simple because we are born of Adam. We are born in sin and with the free will to sin. The horse is not. It was created to glorify God and to provide us with enjoyment and while the fear of us was placed in it after the flood it will accept us in the position that God gave us. We on the other hand have the propensity to sin; even after we turn our lives over to Christ we will sin but we shouldn’t run towards it. As our relationship develops with Him, the Holy Spirit will lay upon our hearts things that are displeasing to Him. This is a whole other topic because there are many who think certain ways but the truth is found in God’s word and I won’t get into it now. Perhaps at a later time as we look into some of the other aspects of the relationship development.

The Introduction

Do you remember the day that you accepted Jesus as your Savior? I do; I was twelve years old and our pastor was preaching one October evening and I realized that I needed Him. I had thought I had gotten saved when I was 5 years old but that night I fully understood that the sins that I was committing was against God and not man. For those who have grown up in the church we have been introduced to Jesus from the time we were old enough to understand John 3:16; however our knowledge of Him is somewhat blurred by the lives of those we are around the most. For many youth growing up in the church this directly affects their perspective of Christ and their decision later in life to either follow Him or go their own way. Some of us are still susceptible to the leading of the Holy Spirit and return to the fold while others fight it continually until they reach a point where God says, no more and takes them home. Then there are those who never really accepted Him as Savior. They might not wander from the flock but they do not belong to Him. They can say and do all the right things but their heart is far from Him. In many cases they might actually believe that they are saved but the evidence is clear based upon their works that they are not. Jesus said that a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. It might appear to be good but the truth is that it was grown on false pretenses. In the story of the rich young ruler, Jesus knew the heart of the young man and showed it to the disciples; however when you look at the story of Nicodemus, you can see the condition of his heart in his willingness to surrender. How can we know what the difference was between them? The answer lies in the introduction. In the case of the rich young ruler, he was not going to Christ to find out the truth but to assure himself that his way was enough while Nicodemus recognized who Christ was and who he was not before Him. Many of us would have had this rich young ruler down the aisle and in the baptismal pool before the end of service never stopping to insure that his introduction to Christ was right. He would have been serving in our church under false pretenses; never having been fully redeemed. As I begin to work with any horse, I always want to insure that I have made the right introduction. I do not want any false pretenses to be delivered because my goal is to have it fully submit to my authority. 1 John 5:14, and this is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He heareth us. How do we know that it is in His will? Because we have developed a close relationship with Him according to the way that He has designed for us, we have the proper image of Him and have fully surrendered to Him that it is no longer us but Christ through us. This is what I want with the horse and when I am working with a youth, it is what I am conveying to them. Any other way is simply going to give me a horse that is compliant not because it wants to but because it has to or simply because it is expected of them. If I have done my job correctly then the horse has the confidence in me to lead and protect it. It knows that I am going to not only provide for its well-being but that my love for it extends beyond all that it has experienced before. Although domesticated the horse still has many of its wild attributes that God created them with but now (if done correctly) will relinquish all those behaviors and willingly surrender themselves to me. Think of David, hiding in the cave from Saul, only to have Saul come and rest in the cave; Daniel and the lion’s den, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the fiery furnace; each of them did things that was against logic and reason but their trust was in God and not man. Logic would tell us to kill Saul because he was trying to kill us, bow or pray to the king or his image because failure to obey would result in our death and yet each of them did what was against their nature. Not because God made them but because their love for Him was such that they could do nothing less and like Esther going before the king; was willing to say, “if I perish, I perish”. These were not relationships built on the wrong methods but right relationships with their God and just as we see relationships with God that were based on the wrong things we will also see them when it comes to working with horses and youth. I can get a horse to do what I want it without going through the whole process but again I am not going to have a horse that will respond in the way that I want it to respond. I want it to anticipate my commands because we have that deep relationship, based on love and mutual trust. The mutual trust between God and us is that we are seen through the blood of Jesus. Not that we cannot sin but when we do we have that covering that allows us to be seen through Him. There are times where it might take me several attempts to introduce myself to the horse while at other times it is accomplished the first time, just as there are some among us who are more susceptible to the leading of the Holy Spirit. We might never have gone through that time where we allowed the world to influence us. We were saved when we were young and upon reaching adulthood went on to serve Him. However; there are those of us who are still fighting God for lordship over our lives.

New Insights

New Insights After 43 years with horses I can honestly say that I still do not know them. The same can be said about our relationship with Jesus Christ because no matter how many times I might read a passage each time I do I find something new in it. Of course the truth is that just like developing a relationship with the horse you also have to develop the one that really matters; the one you have with Christ. I can go to church every time the doors are opened and listen to the preacher but unless I actually take the time every day to cultivate that relationship it is going to go nowhere fast. It is the same thing when you are working with a horse. You can’t just do it once a week or even three times a week; it has to be done every day or the horse will never learn the lesson that you are trying to teach it. In many cases even if you did spend every day with it for a month and then started skipping days or weeks or months, the horse will revert back to its old behavior. The same goes for the quality of the lesson. If all I do is get the horse to ride and nothing else I am going to have a horse that will probably just follow the other horses. I will have to fight to get it to turn the way I want it to and stop when I want it to stop. This is not the type of horse that I want so I invest time into it on a continual basis. I don’t want to have to fight it to get its obedience so I instruct it to the point that the slightest prompt will cause it to react appropriately. However this can still not be accomplished in a positive manner if the horse is doing it grudgingly, so I develop a relationship with it. I introduce myself to the horse by letting it get used to my scent, my voice and my touch. I then establish dominance over it; placing myself in the position of the leader, I strengthen the bond with the horse by the time I spend with it and finally I develop the relationship by continuing in that time. I cultivate the relationship with love and trust and in return the horse is obedient, not because it has to be but because it wants to be. I am not talking about the mushy baby talk love but one that is mature and heart felt. I reward my horses with the palm of my hand and rebuke with the back of it. They come to long for the palm and when they do misbehave all I do is lay the back of my hand against them and they will settle down. I instill trust in them because I do not hesitate when I am working with them. Everything is done with purpose to develop the trust that as their leader I need to have. In turn their love is not only because of the time I spend with them but also in the assurance that I will protect them and care for them. Imagine a relationship with Christ that was built in this way? We know that it is His desire because we see it in the investment with the disciples. Even though He went back to His place by the Father, He provided them and us with another comforter; the Holy Spirit. But just like I cannot get the response from the horse without investing my time into them, He cannot get a response out of us if we refuse to invest our time in Him. In my book “Developing your Camp Horse Program” we go through each step of the relationship process, hopefully providing you with a clear enough picture so that it can be taught to the staff who are working with the horses and the campers however it is not just for youth camps. Any equine facility or horse lover can use the program to share Jesus with others. The importance of it is that it forces you to take a second look at the relationship that you, yourself have with Christ. It also pushes you to become a better horseman; not just someone who knows how to ride a horse. While for most people and the camp youth the relationship with the horse is sometimes brief the relationship with Jesus will last an eternity.

Updates

Well the time has come that I get back into writing on this blog. It has been over a year and a lot has happened in that time. I have just finished writing a book called "Developing Your Camp Horse Program" "A Complete Guide to Using Your Camp Horse Program to further the Kingdom" In It I discuss how we can use the relationship with the horse to demonstrate the relationship that God desires with each of us. I also review my training and teaching techniques with the horses and how I convert that to spiritual truths when I am working with youth. I decided to write the book after speaking to the National Director of a camp ministry. We had been discussing the use of horses in the ministry and I mentioned to him what we have been doing which peaked his interest in the program. As I went through each of the processes he realized how most camps are failing to fully utilize their horse programs in reaching the youth for Christ. The main thing that I stressed to him was that not only does the program touch the youth but it also affects the lives of the staff and once the kids go home it affects those closest to them. In the process of developing a relationship with Christ it changes their outlook on their own behaviors oftentimes resulting in positive behavioral changes in their lives. In using the program the youth are placed in positions of authority of the horse thereby developing servant leadership skills which generates leaders in our youths; because they are placed in this position of authority they are in turn understanding how their behavior affects those in positions of authority over them. Since they are experiencing the good with the bad with their horse, they begin to realize the consequences of their own choices; not only in actions but in relationship decisions. Since we have instituted this training into all of our riding lessons we have recognized a tremendous difference in the behaviors and attitudes of our students in regards to their interaction with their parents. The most amazing changes came from our therapeutic riding classes in which we not only deal with special needs children but those with behavioral development issues. Not only did we see a remarkable increase in their confidence levels but they began to interact better with other students. When we take out trail rides with youth groups we perform the initial introduction to the horse and allow them to generate a bond before we go out on the trail. As we ride we allow them to experience the different behaviors the horses might have and upon arriving back at the barn we will have a lesson time after the horses are unsaddled and I will share different relationship experiences and how God used that relationship with the horse to teach me. Because they have just experienced the horse and its attitude, realized a bond with the horse they grasp the lesson that we are sharing better than if we had simply just talked about it. In most cases I have heard that the youth retained the lesson longer than their normal lessons and while they might not have been able to quote the all the verses that I used they remembered them. We are praying that through this that God will open the doors for me to be able to go out and share with others; not only through the book but speaking engagements and clinics. This is not to be for me but to glorify God in the talents that He gave me. As this blog changes to incorporate this I hope that we can get it out to more people.