Let God Take the Reins

When a bit is placed in a horse’s mouth, the horse surrenders completely to his trainer; but the process that the trainer took the horse through to get to this level of trust and submission was frustrating and painful. God’s relationship with His people profoundly parallels the one depicted between a horse and trainer.

            Over the past seven months, I have been breaking my horse Dream, beginning with groundwork, on to the first ride and now finishing. Once we are done, Dream will respect me enough to submit to my authority in any circumstance. Throughout Dream’s schooling, I adapted my training aids to reinforce the reality of my authority. To start, I trained using only a halter, placing pressure on certain areas of his head to gain control. As Dream started pushing his limits, I increased the intensity by adding thin twine to the halter, directing pressure to his airways, and restricting him from making wrong choices so easily. Dream has a tendency to bolt for the door when he does not want to deal with the changes he needs to make. So, when twine was no longer effective, I had to go further by placing all the stress on Dream’s mouth with the bit. The discomfort this causes when a wrong decision is made prompts the horse to think twice and obey. Once I had control with the bit, I could go back to just the halter and still have complete control. I like to think of these three levels as having a place in a human’s life as well. While humans have free will and emotions, we still possess pressure points where God can really get our attention when He feels it is necessary. Our halter is our friends and family who pressure us to make choices we would not make on our own. The twine is our pastor who challenges us to live how God desires. We have added conviction when making decisions, but we also have the opportunity to get out of dealing with the things we need to. The pressure on the bit is where the Holy Spirit gives us the choice – live for God, or live for yourself. You cannot do both. This is where I was found at the beginning of senior year.

            I had plenty of friends and family speaking encouragement into my life, but the choice was ultimately mine. The pressure from the outside became too great, and I succumbed to what I always said I never would. I had experiences that truly made me want to change; but my selfishness and stubbornness outweighed what my spirit really wanted, and I did not put forth the effort to make the changes I knew I had to. When I reached senior year, I had hit rock bottom. I was not making choices that could single-handedly ruin my life forever. They were just occasional little slip-ups that I justified as being just that: a slip-up. As these became more frequent and easier, I also found it easier to make excuses to bolt for the door. Work, homework, and training my horse became reasons why I no longer had time to spend with God or go to church. Eventually, I lost most of my desire to work at my relationship with God because I was so tired from trying to do everything on my own strength. In her book Secrets Young Women Keep, Dr. Jill Hubbard claims, “Sometimes we ignore God because we think we know it all or we have all the answers, but we don’t.” I would sit and argue with God just because I was living to please myself, and I thought I could do better than He. Romans 9:20, though, challenged me with the question, “Who are you to argue with God?”  And a very good question that was. Who was I to be arguing with my Master Trainer? He is the only One that knows where my life is taking me. Growing up in the church, that concept was simple, yet I found it very complex to accept for myself. I had a hard time giving someone else the reins to steer my life. I did not like the sound of words like abandon, hand over, or entrust, all synonyms for surrender as found in Webster’s Thesaurus. These words scared me when it came to God. Why had it been so easy to give in to the devil, then? Because of the weakness in my relationship with God, I was extremely vulnerable to the wrong authority. That is what made the devil’s way so much easier – it took no work. At this third level of correction, though, I had to choose. Just as Matthew 6:24 explains, “No one can serve two masters. For you will hate one and love the other; you will be devoted to one and despise the other.” It was time to choose, but I was confused and frustrated, buried deep in everything I had piled up all this time.

In the middle of my mess, I couldn’t see that by turning around and submitting to God I could be truly happy again. It took until December for me to realize that I had tired myself out beyond what I could handle alone. I was getting sick constantly, my grades were falling, and I had no passion for life anymore. I made my choice. God had proven that His authority would win out. Once I accepted this, God took me back to the halter, knowing that my friends would push me through to the end. It took one girl that I didn’t know very well reaching out to me for God to finally breakthrough. The week after Christmas break, she asked how things were, and something inside me forced me to be honest with her. I realized on my own there just was no turning back. I was in so far that the thought of getting out was overwhelming. My newest friend loved me unconditionally and challenged me to become who God has always desired me to be. On a Tuesday night in January, I finally broke down, repented, and surrendered my life back to God. The process God took me through was not desirable. In fact, I am not even sure why I kept going, except for that deep longing to be back in God’s love; but the results of that one choice have been incredible and strengthening. Because I knew the truth, I was responsible for it. As Josiah Charles Stamp said, “It is easy to dodge our responsibilities, but we cannot dodge the consequences of dodging our responsibilities.” I was held accountable for all the actions that I had known were wrong but still chose to engage in; but I was also overwhelmed with a peace and joy that can only come from the forgiving grace of our Lord. I had a new sense of hope. There were still things to work on, still are, and always will be; but I know that I can make it over the obstacles of life with His help. Dr. Hubbard states that, “Even when we lose sight of God, He is always there for us.” God was always there waiting for me to make my choice.

            When finished, Dream’s main discipline will be jumping. This means that he has to trust me wholeheartedly to make it over hundreds of obstacles successfully. Some of these obstacles are going to be scary, but he if he trusts me the way I trust God, nothing can stop us.

God used Dream to show me how He works with us. Now that I have surrendered to God, Dream and I are making remarkable progress. For both of us, learning the truth of surrender was frustrating and painful; but we are stronger now more than ever before. God’s relationship with His people has many parallels to the one between a trainer and their horses, and it is a relationship that God, the Master Trainer, is never going to give up on.