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WAXAHACHIE?From inside a portable corral about 40 feet in diameter, Erick Graham, whip in hand for gentle but firm encouragement and clad with the uniform?Wranglers, boots and hat?worked a shy, 2-year-old Bashkir Curly filly named Callie into a submissive, trusting horse.
Horse trainer and horse had never met, and Callie had never even been saddled, much less ridden.
In an hour, that changed.
For the two-dozen adults watching, Graham, a preacher and bonafide cowboy, was preaching a message of godly fear, trust and obedience with Callie as his Exhibit A.
“Ya’ll have heard of horse whisperers,” Graham told the staff from the Texas Baptist Home for Children in Waxahachie who had gathered on the campus grounds. “This is that technique, although what I will do does not involve whispering.”
RESPECT
“God has taught me how he works in my life through horses,” testified Graham, pastor of Sands Springs Baptist Church in Athens. Scripture says the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, which means “total respect for the authority of God,” he said.
In the wild, a pack of horses will establish rank by pushing each other with their heads and sometimes even kicking. Once rank is established, the lead horse will even provide for the pack.
“That’s what I’m going to do,” said Graham, explaining that he first must get the horse to fear him in a healthy manner. “And you don’t have to crush their spirit to do that.”
The art of breaking horses has similarities to what God does in bringing men into submission to his will and what parents must do to gain respect and trust from their children, said Graham as he gently cracked his whip toward the horse to establish his command in the corral.
Over 30 minutes or so, Graham was able to establish a master-subject relationship with Callie, who finally was moving around at his beckoning and turning toward him as a sign of respect rather than away from him.
“Things will go well when God’s order is followed,” Graham said. “God has his order in the family and in the church. When we get out of his order, chaos ensues.”
Speaking to the TBH staff, where more than 100 foster children live, “most kids don’t have [respect for authority] because they haven’t been taught it,” Graham reminded, noting that horses, like pliable children, will respond to what is least painful.
“The whole thing about training horses is to make the wrong thing hard and the right thing easy.”
TRUST
Once Callie learned to respect Graham’s leadership and to follow his commands?which took about 30 minutes?Graham dropped the whip and approached the horse in what he described as “joining up” with her. Establishing trust is the next step for horse trainers, and trust is a prime component of walking by faith for the Christian, he stated.
Some horses are wary of people, especially if they’ve been mistreated, and in such cases the trainer must be overly patient and gentle.
“It’s not an issue with this horse too much,” Graham said. “But we are going to find those areas where she might not be so trusting.”
He continued, “The Lord says, ‘Be still and know that I am God,'” and “Trust in the Lord with all your heart.”
With that he took a blanket and let her smell it for familiarity, then in a few minutes he placed it over her back to cushion the saddle he would later place on her. After a few more minutes he acquainted Callie with reins, teaching her to turn her head and body at a tug. Slowly, the horse began to trust Graham’s increasing demands.
Later came the saddle.
“This is when it gets scary for a horse. But she might just follow me because I gained her trust,” he said.
Graham worked each side of the horse by standing in one stirrup while she became accustomed to bearing his weight. Horses are one-side dominant, Graham explained, but he teaches them to be comfortable with a rider’s approach from either side, which requires additional work and trust.
Finally, after a few minutes of introducing Callie to the feel of the saddle and Graham’s weight, he mounted the horse and slowly rode her around the corral.
OBEDIENCE
“This horse has had a change of heart, not because I beat it out of her but because she is beginning to understand ‘there is someone over me.'”
In that realization and consequent submission, Graham said, is where the greatest joy is found.
“God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him,” he said, quoting pastor and writer John Piper.
Conversely, Graham said the Old Testament refers several times to the children of Israel as “stiff-necked,” which “you can see in a horse more than any other animal,” as Callie was initially, he noted. After some careful work, the horse became responsive to his leading.
Likewise, “I want to be so soft with the Lord that at the slightest hint of his voice, I listen and I trust and I obey,” Graham said.
Of the seven horses at his home near Athens, one is particularly useful “because he’s sensitive to my leading,” Graham said. That relationship, however, requires a connection between the rider and the horse and familiarity with the rider’s cues.
“Some of these kids feel like throwaways,” Graham said of the young people living at TBH.
But if they experience a connection with their parents or guardians and with the Lord just as a trained horse feels with his rider, they will respond, he said.
