Training a Wild Horse in an Hour

This wild horse is about to find out exactly who it is and what it's worth. If you watch its transformation today, the same thing can happen for you. How do you break a horse in an hour? That's why Todd is here. Todd Pierce, welcome to Crossroads. – Thanks, Brian. – You have a crazy gift with horses. Tell us about that. Why? How? – The reason you asked, how can you break a horse in an hour? I don't really know that you can break a horse in an hour, but you can see a transformation take place because the horse realizes that he's just now been caught up in something to where, one, there's somebody super powerful and secondly, that he's kind. And so when you watch what a horse will do in response to that type of presence, it's why we can see things happen at such a rapid pace. – So I got to spend some time, extended time with Todd out west, and I just found that he lit me up. I found that there was things that I was learning and seeing and feeling that were really, really fresh. I said, I got to get this guy to Crossroads. I got to get him to pour into people in a language that only he has to offer. It's really good stuff. And just give us like a little snippet of your story. – Well, I grew up in Idaho in a small town and became the stereotypical teenage wild, crazy partier. And I'd seen just enough of religion to know that I didn't want anything to do with it. Had an encounter one day walking across a college campus and a guy grabbed me and said, hey, did you know that God loves you and has a plan for your life? I couldn't un-hear that. So I came back to him. One thing led to another. I gave my life to Jesus, but it was kind of like with a condition that, Jesus, I love you. I don't I don't want anything to do with your church or your people. And so I believe it was his kindness to use horses to actually start mentoring me because as I was interacting with the horses, all this language started coming that he wasn't trying to put me in a smaller pen. He was actually trying to set me free to where the addictions and the lifestyle were no longer the things that were ruling me. – So how about you? Do you know who you are? Do you know what you're worth? Don't keep going through life alone. What does a horse have to do with that? Let's find that out right now. – I don't know what gives a man the right to speak into another's life. I do know that the greatest teachers that I've encountered have all walked through their own pain and hopelessness. But they've come out the other side with a love and a compassion that drives them to a place of such deep desire to help others that I could literally feel the weight of their words as they spoke. Now, with all the love and the power that I possess, I want to take you on a journey. A journey of one of the world's most powerful animals as he learns how to be free and discover what he was created for. This is my story. It's the gospel. This is the living hope. I don't have a church or a program or some religion that I want you guys to join. I don't ever want to get disqualified as one more person that's coming in trying to fix you. But I'm a man that's had his own struggles with addictions and insecurity and fear and violence. And it damaged so many of the relationships around me that it was this encounter with working with horses that Jesus revealed to me what his world is really like. What it's like to be a part of a kingdom of light instead of darkness. That I wasn't trapped in the walls and the bars that I thought I was trapped in. That everything that I'd learned up until this point was mostly based on lies. He had invited me into this process of being fathered by him. That I could call him Abba. It was Aramaic for daddy. Like it wasn't just dad in the sense that I understood. It was super intimate. And through the vulnerability and the level of connection that he continued to fight for in me, I was set free. Watch that played out in the life of this horse as it interacts with me as its trainer. Put yourself in the horse's position. What is it that you're running from? What is it that you're afraid of? Is your way really working or is it just exhausting you? It's a whole new way for you to consider doing life. Watch it in this horse. See the fact that he didn't even know anything was wrong. He thought his whole life was about staying alive. That's the only instincts that he's got. Eat grass, stay alive and reproduce. He's living out of an instinct. Most people live their lives that way. And if you really look at what they're doing, that's all they're trying to do is stay alive. They're trying to find happiness. They're starting to figure out a way to have relationships. We were created for so much more than that. We get to enjoy those things. But what if the future and the destiny that you're carrying inside of you is something that your mind hasn't even possibly understood yet? This horse will literally spend its entire life running around this trash. It'll spend its whole life being influenced by the ones around it. They can't help him. I have to go after him. And when I find him and he says yes, everything will change. Even with his instincts of wanting to just go back and stay alive. It's my commitment to him and his yes to me that makes it to where this is a forever thing. He said that he'll never leave us and he'll never forsake us. I want you to watch that played out. It doesn't matter how this horse responds. Once he says yes, I'm all in. And this isn't an empty promise that comes from a religion or a person. This is the creator, the author of life, speaking a truth that he's got the power of heaven behind him and all the resources of heaven saying that I'm coming after you. Well, it could have been worse, but that's not the way to start the morning. She is not happy about leaving home. She's never been off this ranch. So no, is this first time in the trailer, but first time to leave this property. But what she doesn't know is she's got a date with destiny until we're willing to step outside the lines of our comfort zone. We're trapped in our own reality. Even if you don't like your reality, not very many people are willing to go through the the challenge of change to see what's better. And that's this feeling is going to have a big challenge right up front is everything's going to be brand new to her. She's never seen anything that she's going to see today. She's never been handled this way. She's never even had an opportunity for change because up until now, she's just been fed and taken care of, kept alive, basically, but doesn't know anything about what she was created for. She keeps going through these phases where I want you, but I don't know if I can trust you. I love what I feel when I'm around you. But there's something calling me to keep moving. Five minutes now, every time hardships come her way, she's turned away from me rather than turning to me. So what we're looking for is what she just did. When she stopped, she looked to me rather than looking over the fence, trying to find a way to escape. The most heartbreaking thing for me, and I know that this has got to be God's heart, is to see men that have been labeled and they've labeled themselves as though you're some sort of animal or your your SID number has something to do with who you are. Who is it that gets to speak identity into you? Is it your past and your story that's telling you who you are? Or is there a higher truth? Is there someone that you can give permission to speak into your identity, that this is who you are? You are my beloved son. My favor's resting on you. You were created in my very image. What would happen if you were actually free right now? What would happen if you were partnering with God himself and he began to teach you how to navigate and gave you all these new tools to where you carry his presence? Every word that he speaks is now directing your life, that you can literally feel your mouth and hear yourself saying the words of God. He told us to guard our hearts with all diligence, protect it because out of it, that's what the issues of your life are flowing from. That's why when Jesus walked through a world that was so filled with pride and hatred and anger and fear and segregation, Jesus walked in the middle with zero agenda other than I'm going to reveal to you a perfect father. And when he did that, 2,020 years later, we're still sitting here having a conversation on how is it that this power is still alive and it's flowing inside of men and women. It's making them to where they don't have to be afraid of being in prison or outside of prison because it doesn't matter where they go. They carry this power, this identity, this hope and a vision that makes them unstoppable. Crossroads is a movement and this weekly message is just the beginning. For 25 years, God has used us to change the world in powerful and profound ways. And all of that is funded by people like you and me. Want to fuel the movement? Well, just take the tithe test. We're a church that tithes, meaning we take 10% of what God gives to us and we give it back to Him. It's a practice set up on the Bible and it's one of the only places God says in the Bible, test me, test me and see if I'm good. So we create a way for you to actually test God. You sign up for the tithe test. And if it doesn't work out, if you don't sense God some way meeting your needs and blessing you in some way for the next 90 days, we will refund your entire amount of money because we're convinced that God is going to meet you and we will go along with that test, no questions asked. So head to Crossroads.net slash tithe test to sign up now. So what happens when you get the horse to look at you? The first time I get a horse to look at me, I'm actually just looking for them to stop looking at everything else. The soul is revealed through the eyes. When I have eye contact with a horse, he's seeing something inside of me that he never would have noticed at first because he would just see me as a threat. Now he's seeing that there's something kind in me that is drawing him towards me. And the eye contact is really just now what am I focused on? I think people say that I just need to live a life that's more focused on Jesus. I think it's deeper than that. We're not just reading scripture. We're not just going to church. We're not just trying to stay in a place of meditation. It's just that our heart, we long for what he longs for. And this horse immediately is going to be asking the right questions for the first time ever. He's going to ask me, what do you want from me? And he's going to be really surprised when he finds out the answer is not, I want you to be broken. I've got stuff for you that I want to give you that you've never even dreamt of. So if he's running around, it means he's trying to get away from you? Yeah. And if he comes towards you, it means? I'm curious. The horse running is very symbolic that I want my freedom. I don't want to be told what to do. I don't know you. I don't trust you. If the horse can actually turn and face me and lock eyes with me, something magical really happens. There's a transition that takes place and you'll see it in the horse. So the horse has a higher purpose in life. It just doesn't know it. I think that's the way we are. There is a higher purpose. We don't know what it is and we don't know how to get to it. How do we figure it out? Horses, above any other animal, discover their purpose in connection. So apart from me, the horse is only going to do so much. With me, it's going to do a thousandfold. And so its purpose is never going to be found apart from me. Horses do better when they're under the authority of a kind person. So when we don't know who we are, how do we go through the rest of life? I think everybody's got an identity based on something outside of themselves. Mostly it's been their upbringing. It's been the culture that they've been exposed to. It's what people have told them they are. Here's your little box. You're never going to get outside of that. Jesus walks on the scene of every person He encountered and He just blew it all up. And He said, your identity is you get to become one of my sons and you've never even dreamt of what it is that you're capable of. Our identity becomes one of the sons of God. And that's why I believe on Father's Day weekend, what a beautiful time for us to celebrate the fact that fathering, whether it's from your natural father or it's just from a man that you've chose to model your life after and connect with, that us as sons and daughters of God being fathered by God is the answer to everything that ails humanity. So once you let God in, you're able to see His power and His compassion. Things start to change. That's what we're going to see next. We're going to go storm the gates like we're going to charge these mountains. We're going to go after people. We're going to be a part of the solution. We are going to become the lights that the world gets to see. There's no longer anything that gets to hold us back. If you've said yes, if you're in and it's game on, then every one of us become brothers. We get to lock arms and we get to hold each other up and we get to inspire each other and we get to have words that come from heaven that flow through our mouths because now we're like living testimonies of what it is that God can do with a life. When Jesus said that if you've seen me, you've seen the father, it makes it to where now we get to look at this man, Jesus, walking around on earth, perfect, without sin, tempted in every way, walking right into everybody's mess. He would walk into the most dysfunctional lifestyles. He would walk into demonic situations. He would walk into religious situations and nothing changed inside of him. He kept the same heart posture to where I represent truth. I embody truth. I love people. I don't judge them. I'm not afraid of their sin. And I can see no matter how somebody acts, no matter what's going on in my life, that his heart posture towards me, his feelings towards me, his words towards me, nothing ever changes. He's constant. And he just continues to remind us of who we are. You can see all of the violence and all of the anger and all of the fear. He doesn't run away from it. He stands right there in the middle of it and waits and says, peace, be still. And when we're done throwing our fits, he's still waiting. What if there's a love that's so perfect that no matter what you've done, whether it's good or it's bad, his view of you is continuous, stays the same. As we partner together, he becomes so sensitive to my ways that he's going to look at the entire world around him differently because he's now seen himself differently. He's actually caught up in this eternal thing that makes it to where not only is he partnering with something that he doesn't even fully understand, he just knows that it's good. That he's got a really, really good father and that this one that he's become one with is now taking him to places that he never would have dreamt of. That there is actually greener pastures. There's great works to be done. That he was built to do things that he didn't even know he was capable of doing. Gifts that were locked up inside of him that he could never release on his own. Incapable of fixing himself, he's now inherited this eternal perspective to where for generations after him are going to be able to eat of the fruit of his life. That his life is now leaving a legacy. Everything that he's doing in his life now is going to last forever. It's not just the works of man, it's the works of God. It's to where our lives get to echo and the echo is not going to sound like pain and hurt and fear and convict. It's going to be overcomer. It's going to be the beloved ones. It's going to be hope carriers. Ones that walk around lit up to where they become the light of the world. Jesus said that he came as the light of the world and then he called us the light of the world. He said we can't hide our lives anymore. Now he wants to put us up on high places to where we'd be like a city on a hill. People would be drawn to us not so that they could honor us but we could point them to the King of Kings because we can't become their source. We can point them to the source. You're going to cause revival, a revolution. It's going to be a revolution that's so filled with love and compassion all the differences are going to go away. In a world that is mostly void of good fathers Jesus invited us into the most intimate way of addressing God. In Aramaic the word was Abba. It was like daddy. Addressing God as your own father. Not like an earthly father but this beautiful picture of what Jesus displayed of love, joy, peace and patience. Kindness, goodness, gentleness, self-control. This is the type of father we have. Jesus was a straight shooter. You've watched as we've interacted with all these horses every one of them is unique but they all had the same problem and they all have the same solution. They had to decide if they're going to turn away from doing things their own way and running around in circles looking for some way to get out or they can turn and they can trust and in that they become free. Sin is the problem. It's not the bad things we're doing it's something inside of us that's separate from God and Jesus fixed that and every one of us get to make this decision. And today is your day. You're either going to say yes or you're going to say no. Jesus didn't play around with it. He said you're either for me or you're against me. Either allow me to teach you and become one with you help you understand what you're created for or turn away and you can keep pursuing every other direction. There's thousands of directions that you can go to serve the world and to serve yourself. There's only one way to the kingdom. There's only one way that we can come into oneness with God and allow him to be this father that's just continuing to pour out this extravagant love on us. It's Jesus. He said that I am the way the truth and the life. Nobody can come to the father except through me. It's the greatest invitation that can ever be extended to mankind that you and I get the right to become sons and daughters of God. Jesus, we put our full trust in you. We thank you for your sacrifice and for the ability to be forgiven. We invite you Holy Spirit to fill us that through the blood of Jesus that you can make us a new creation. My life is yours. I'm giving back to you, the song you sang in me. It is a crazy thing to see something that large and that untamed come into control in such a short time for their benefit, for their future, for their future power. That's what we're like. That's what you're like. Until we come to see God as the one who is more powerful than us and cares for us more than anything we can possibly imagine, there will be a lid on our life. Maybe you want to come under his tutelage right now. Maybe you want to receive him, receive Christ right now. It's really pretty simple. You just have to look at him. You have to look at him and you have to pray something like this. God, I want to come to you and I want to come under you and I want to be unleashed by you. I ask forgiveness for all of my wildness and craziness. I'm sorry for running in circles. Help me be the person you've created me to be and I will follow you the rest of my life. Amen. Hey, if you just prayed that prayer, welcome to The Herd. We believe that God has a plan for your life and this is just the beginning. Crossroads is here to help you on the adventurous life that you're made for. So if you want to get started, go to Crossroads.net slash Get Started right now and subscribe to this channel and check out more videos like this right here. Todd, this has been fantastic today. Thanks for taking us on an adventure and bring us all to a new place. You bet.