Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread,"
Do you know how to tame a wild horse? A wild mustang that could kill you in its violent resistance?
Monty Roberts as a boy watched his father capture and tame them by using violent methods; Monty developed a method that uses gentleness, and what he says is horse language. In other words, he has put himself in the place of the wild horse, thinking as the horse thinks, and understanding the feelings and perceptions of the wild horse, by gentle means he can tame the wildest mustang in a very short time. I watched him do it on a video.
I thought: the wild mustangs are like us wild sinners. We are alienated from God, afraid of Him, we want to get as far as we can away from Him. Paganism, and also apostate Christianity, uses the methods of violence in order to "win" or "tame" wild sinners, using threats of eternal torture in everlasting hell fire, or threats of execution by God in order to secure compliance with the will of God. Monty Roberts says if you "tame" a wild mustang by violence he will do what you want him to do because he is afraid not to; but if you use the right methods he will do what you want him to because he wants to. In other words, if you could say that the horse has a heart, the heart is won.
God wins us by learning our language, like Monty Roberts learned the language of the wild mustang. God became Immanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us. In Christ, God became man, one of us; came close to us; reconciles us to Himself, wins our heart, not with terrifying threats, but as Psalm 18:35 says, "Thy gentleness hath made me great." Paul says to the Thessalonians, "We were gentle among you" (1 Thess. 2:7).
The church on earth is to represent Christ to the world; if we were to understand wild sinners, we could win more of them. The Good News is that it's our privilege to share the joy of the Lord in winning them!
[Monty Roberts is a horse trainer whose 1996 autobiography, The Man Who Listens to Horses, became a best-seller.]
From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: June 2, 1998.
Copyright © 2011 by Robert J. Wieland.
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