Taming the Wild Horse

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Thanks to Pamela for permission to share this teaching!

Taming the Wild Horse

By Pamela Mcdonald

Sep 8, 2018 at 7:32 PM

Today while lying here thinking about taking a nap I couldn’t clear my mind. I kept thinking about the work of the Holy Spirit and the LORD Jesus. As I had just drifted off to sleep I was interrupted a few times by Kathryn coming in my room, asking questions or looking for things. I kept my cool and even hushed any thought of aggravation that tried to enter my mind. Then closing my eyes the YouTube music of Christian Saxophone instrumentals would freeze, then the phone rang. It was a mirage of interruptions and I was still trying to keep my composure and just relax.

I laid back down and something I had said Tuesday to someone came in my mind.

“The LORD looks at me like a wild horse that needs tamed.”

Then in my spirit, I heard, “study what it is like to tame a wild horse compared to your walk with Christ.”

Now mind you I am still wanting to nap, so I thought, I will look that up when I wake up. Immediately the study I did yesterday for someone, came flooding in my mind about grieving and quenching the Holy Spirit. I quickly sat up and began to search out taming wild horses. What I have discovered is amazing and a huge eye opener when I look at myself and my walk with Christ.

A wild horse is “meeked” when tamed, and I do not believe that is worded by accident. Being meek is one of the fruits of the Holy Spirit, and to get a better understanding of what that word means go to the Strong’s Concordance not the Webster Dictionary.

Strong’s Concordance

praus: mild, gentle

Original Word: πραΰς, πραεῖα, πραΰ
Part of Speech: Adjective
Transliteration: praus
Phonetic Spelling: (prah-ooce’)
Short Definition: mild, gentle
Definition: mild, gentle.

HELPS Word-studies

Cognate: 4239 praýs (also listed as 4239a/praupathia in NASdictionary) – meek. See 4236 (praótēs).

This difficult-to-translate root (pra-) means more than “meek.”Biblical meekness is not weakness but rather refers to exercising God’s strength under His control – i.e. demonstrating power without undue harshness.

[The English term “meek” often lacks this blend – i.e. of gentleness(reserve) and strength.]

This same Greek word “praus” is used when taming a wild animal.

“In the New Testament language of Koine Greek the word for humble was ‘praus’. Borrowed from the military, praus related to horse training. The Grecian army would find the wildest horses in the mountains and bring them to be broken in. After months of training, they sorted themselves into categories: some were discarded, some broken and made useful for burden bearing, some were useful for ordinary duty and the fewest of all graduated as war horses. When a horse passed the conditioning required for a war horse, its state was described as ‘praus’. The war horse had ‘power under authority’ or ‘strength under control’. A war horse never ceased to be determined, strong and passionate. However, it learned to bring its nature under discipline. It gave up being wild, unruly, out of control and rebellious. A war horse learned to bring that nature under control. It would now respond to the slightest touch of the rider, stand in the face of canon fire, thunder into battle and stop at a whisper.” Robert I Holmes of Storm-Harvest Ministries

A wild horse never loses its passion it is born with, nor does it lose its strength, but instead learns how to control itself under the authority of its trainer. The horse must learn to trust the trainer.

When a trainer begins training a wild horse, they must show themselves to be trustworthy. A trainer will get the attention of the horse to look his way, when he is sure it is looking at him he will be as calm as possible to show the horse he is not a threat. He will also extend his arm out gently and slowly, so the horse can get used to his scent. When the horse looks away he will scare it making it run away keeping his distance. The trainer will do this several times teaching the horse when it looks at the trainer there is calm when it looks away it gets scared. This causes the horse to trust the trainer and eventually allowing the trainer to approach the horse.

A horse must always feel safe with the trainer. When the trust is established the horse will do whatever the trainer asks of it, because there has been established a level of trust. The horse will be transformed from a wild horse doing as it desires, and become a tamed horse doing what the trainer desires. The horse does not become weak in this process but becomes meeked which is not weakness. The horse now has its power under authority, and its strength under control. A trainer that is consistent and faithful will have the ultimate companion and a bond will be very strong between them.

A horse was created to run, and boy do wild horses enjoy running in open fields and meadows. Even the trained horses enjoy the freedom of running, because that is how God created them. Therefore, we place bits and bridles on them to help control that urge to take off. If a horse is walking in the woods where there is moss covered rocks, tree branches, and big logs, the rider needs to use the reigns to keep the horse from running and possibly slipping and injuring themselves. A horse that is injured would be hard to get out of the depths of the woods and would probably end in destruction to the animal. When the opening of the woods appears, and the open field is in view the horse will take off at full run to enjoy running freely.

When we come to the LORD and are born again we are a new creation in Christ, yet there are things that remain in us that need to be tamed. It does not mean we are not truly born again, it means we need to be reigned in like a wild horse and be tamed, learning not to lean on our own self anymore but to lean on Him.

I am a very passionate person when it comes to the LORD and His Word. At times I sadly allow my passions and zeal to run away from me, and get argumentative, harsh, all the while trying to tell people that Jesus is love and is forgiving! Well, that doesn’t get received very well with an unbridled passion.

I am like a wild horse taking off at full speed and the LORD is using the Holy Spirit to tame me. I can only be of limited use to the LORD in my wild and untamed stage in my life right now, and the LORD is showing me it is time to “let go and let God.” While breaking me during this time of taming, I must let go of my own ways, self-will, being headstrong, selfish and unpredictable. By doing so I will embrace His Will, obedience, allow the Holy Spirit to bridle my tongue and be fit for the Master’s use. My walk in Him will be strengthened and faith will increase as I submit myself to Him. I have been that horse taking off in full speed in the woods and have stumbled and injured myself. But thankfully the LORD did not let destruction overtake me and helped me up leading me to an open field to run for a while.

My passion will not fade during this time but will be harnessed in a Godly manner instead. By allowing the Holy Spirit to be my guide, where He tells me to go I will go, when He tells me to stand still I will stand still.

It sometimes varies the amount of time this will take considering we are all different. Some people are fully trusting and embrace this quickly, while some like myself have been hurt often and been betrayed, so it has taken a bit longer. Even though I am not relying and trusting on another person but on God Himself, believe it or not it is hard to simply let go of my will and follow His Will which is perfect.

But He has been showing me in prayer, through His Word and other Believers He alone can be trusted and He is faithful.

Living a Life Without Limits! Girl Without Hands Plays the Piano

O Love That Will Not Let Me Go

By George Matheson 1882

Matheson said about this hymn:

My hymn was com­posed in the manse of In­ne­lan [Ar­gyle­shire, Scot­land] on the ev­en­ing of the 6th of June, 1882, when I was 40 years of age. I was alone in the manse at that time. It was the night of my sister’s mar­ri­age, and the rest of the fam­i­ly were stay­ing over­night in Glas­gow. Some­thing hap­pened to me, which was known only to my­self, and which caused me the most se­vere men­tal suf­fer­ing. The hymn was the fruit of that suf­fer­ing. It was the quick­est bit of work I ever did in my life. I had the im­press­ion of hav­ing it dic­tat­ed to me by some in­ward voice ra­ther than of work­ing it out my­self. I am quite sure that the whole work was com­plet­ed in five min­utes, and equal­ly sure that it ne­ver re­ceived at my hands any re­touch­ing or cor­rect­ion. I have no na­tur­al gift of rhy­thm. All the other vers­es I have ever writ­ten are man­u­fact­ured ar­ti­cles; this came like a day­spring from on high O Love that wilt not let me go,I rest my weary soul in thee;I give thee back the life I owe,That in thine ocean depths its flowMay richer, fuller be.

O Love that wilt not let me go,
I rest my weary soul in thee;
I give thee back the life I owe,
That in thine ocean depths its flow
May richer, fuller be.

O light that followest all my way,
I yield my flickering torch to thee;
My heart restores its borrowed ray,
That in thy sunshine’s blaze its day
May brighter, fairer be.

O Joy that seekest me through pain,
I cannot close my heart to thee;
I trace the rainbow through the rain,
And feel the promise is not vain,
That morn shall tearless be.

O Cross that liftest up my head,
I dare not ask to fly from thee;
I lay in dust life’s glory dead,
And from the ground there blossoms red
Life that shall endless be.

David and Svea Flood

The following story is true and encourages us that  that God has a purpose for everything He allows in our lives.   We are not to dispise the day of small beginnings!

The full story can be found in “Aggie; A Girl Without a Country” (previously published under the title, “One Witness“), written by Aggie Hurst

 

David and Svea Flood

In 1921, a missionary couple named David and Svea Flood went with their two-year-old son David, from Sweden to the heart of Africa—to what was then called the Belgian Congo. They met up with another young Scandinavian couple, the Ericksons, and the four of them sought God for direction. In those days of much tenderness and devotion and sacrifice, they felt led of the Lord to go out from the main mission station and take the gospel to a remote area.

This was a huge step of faith. At the remote village of N’dolera they were rebuffed by the chief, who would not let them enter his village for fear of alienating the local gods. The two couples opted to go half a mile up the slope and build their own mud huts.

They prayed for a spiritual breakthrough, but there was none. Their only contact with the villagers was a young boy, who was allowed to sell them chickens and eggs twice a week. Svea Flood — a tiny woman missionary only four feet, eight inches tall, decided that if this was the only African she could talk to, she would try to lead the boy to Jesus. And in fact, after many weeks of loving and witnessing to him, he trusted Christ as his Savior.

But there were no other encouragements. Meanwhile, malaria continued to strike one member of the little band after another. In time the Ericksons decided they had had enough suffering and left to return to the central mission station. David and Svea Flood remained near N’dolera to go on alone.

Then, of all things, Svea found herself pregnant in the middle of the primitive wilderness. When the time came for her to give birth (1923), the village chief softened enough to allow a midwife to help her. A little girl was born, whom they named Aina (A-ee-nah).

The delivery, however, was exhausting, and Svea Flood was already weak from bouts of malaria. The birth process was a heavy blow to her stamina. After seventeen desperate days of prayer and struggle, she died.

Inside David Flood, something snapped in that moment. His heart full of bitterness, he dug a crude grave, buried his twenty-seven-year-old wife and took his children back down the mountain to the mission station. Giving his newborn daughter to the Ericksons, he said, “I’m going back to Sweden. I’ve lost my wife, and I can’t take care of this baby. God has ruined my life.” With two year old David, he headed for the coast, rejecting not only his calling, but God himself.

Within eight months both the Ericksons were stricken with a mysterious illness (some believe they were poisoned by a local chief who hated the missionaries) and died within days of each other. The nine month old baby Aina was given to an American missionary couple named Berg, who adjusted her Swedish name to “Aggie” and eventually brought her back to the United States at age three.

The Bergs loved little Aggie but were afraid that if they tried to return to Africa, some legal obstacle might separate her from them since they had at that time, been unable to legally adopt her. So they decided to stay in the United States and switch from missionary work to pastoral ministry. And that is how Aggie grew up in South Dakota. As a young woman, she attended North Central Bible college in Minneapolis. There she met and married a young preacher named Dewey Hurst.

Years passed. The Hursts enjoyed a fruitful ministry. Aggie gave birth first to a daughter, then a son. In time her husband became president of a Christian college in the Seattle area, and Aggie was intrigued to find so much Scandinavian heritage there.

One day around 1963, a Swedish religious magazine appeared in her mailbox. She had no idea who sent it, and of course she couldn’t read the words. But as she turned the pages, all of a sudden a photo stopped her cold. There in a primitive setting in the heart of Africa was a grave with a white cross and on the cross was her mother’s name, SVEA FLOOD.

Aggie jumped in her car and drove straight to a college faculty member who, she knew, could translate the article. “What does this say?” she asked.

The instructor translated the story:

It tells about missionaries who went to N’dolera in the heart of the Belgian Congo in 1921… the birth of a white baby girl… the death of the young missionary mother… the one little African boy who had been led to Christ… and how, after the all whites had left, the little African boy grew up and persuaded the chief to let him build a school in the village.

The article told how that gradually the now grown up boy won all his students to Christ… the children led their parents to Christ… even the chief had become a Christian. Today (1963) there were six hundred Christian believers in that one village.

Because of the willingness of David and Svea Flood to answer God’s call to Africa, because they endured so much but were still faithful to witness and lead one little boy to trust Jesus, God had saved six hundred people. And the little boy, as a grown man, became head of the Pentacostal Church and leader of 110,000 Christians in Zaire (formerly the Belgian Congo).

At the time Svea Flood died, it appeared, to human reason, that God had led the young couple to Africa, only to desert them in their time of deepest need. It would be forty years before God’s amazing grace and His real plan for the village of N’dolera would be known.

For Rev. Dewey and Aggie Hurst’s twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, the college presented them with the gift of a vacation to Sweden. There Aggie met her biological father. An old man now, David Flood had remarried, fathered four more children, and generally dissipated his life with alcohol. He had recently suffered a stroke. Still bitter, he had one rule in his family: “Never mention the name of God because God took everything from me.”

After an emotional reunion with her half brothers and half sister, Aggie brought up the subject of seeing her father. The others hesitated. “You can talk to him,” they replied, “even though he’s very ill now. But you need to know that whenever he hears the name of God, he flies into a rage.”

Aggie could not be deterred. She walked into the squalid apartment, with liquor bottles everywhere, and approached the seventy-three-year-old man lying in a rumpled bed.

“Papa?” she said tentatively.

He turned and began to cry. “Aina,” he said, “I never meant to give you away.”

“It’s all right Papa,” she replied, taking him gently in her arms. “God took care of me.”

The man instantly stiffened. The tears stopped.

“God forgot all of us. Our lives have been like this because of Him.” He turned his face back to the wall.

Aggie stroked his face and then continued, undaunted.

“Papa, I’ve got a little story to tell you, and it’s a true one.

You didn’t go to Africa in vain. Mama didn’t die in vain.

The little boy you both won to the Lord grew up to win that whole village to Jesus Christ. The one seed you planted just kept growing and growing. Today (about 1964) there are six hundred African people serving the Lord because you and Momma were faithful to the call of God on your life.”

“Papa, Jesus loves you. He has never hated you.”

The old man turned back to look into his daughter’s eyes. His body relaxed. He began to talk. And by the end of the afternoon, he had come back to the God he had resented for so many decades.

Over the next few days, father and daughter enjoyed warm moments together. Aggie and her husband soon had to return to America—and within a few weeks, David Flood had gone into eternity.

A few years later, the Hursts were attending a high-level evangelism conference in London, England, where a report was given from the nation of Zaire (the former Belgian Congo). The superintendent of the national church, representing some 110,000 baptized believers, spoke eloquently of the gospel’s spread in his nation. Aggie could not help going up afterward to ask him if he had ever heard of David and Svea Flood. “I am their daughter.”

The man began to weep. “Yes, madam,” the man replied in French, his words then being translated into English.

“It was Svea Flood who led me to Jesus Christ. I was the boy who brought food to your parents before you were born. In fact, to this day your mother’s grave and her memory are honored by all of us.”

He embraced her in a long, sobbing hug. Then he continued, “You must come to Africa to see, because your mother is the most famous person in our history.”

In time that is exactly what Aggie Hurst and her husband did. They were welcomed by cheering throngs of villagers. She even met the man who so many years before, when she was less than a month old, had been hired by her father to carry her down the mountain in a soft bark hammock.

The most dramatic moment, of course, was when the pastor escorted Aggie to see her mother’s grave, marked with a white cross, for herself. She knelt in the soil of Africa, the place of her birth, to pray and give thanks. Later that day, in the church service, the pastor read from John 12:24:

“I tell you the truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.”

He then followed with Psalm 126:5: “They who sow in tears shall reap in joy.”

(An excerpt from Aggie Hurst, Aggie: The Inspiring Story of A Girl Without A Country [Springfield, MO: Gospel Publishing House, 1986].)