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.