Barn Sour
The Horse’s Barn
I love horses. I’ve had riding lessons for years, I exercise them for a job, my family even used to lease a horse! As a result, I’ve had experience dealing with a horse that has become barn sour. A horse turns barn sour when it’s used to hanging out in the barn with their fellow herd members and becomes unwilling to leave the barn without accompaniment. This isn’t really a problem when the rider wants to go on a group trail ride with a bunch of other horses and riders, but often such a trail ride is unpractical and it’s up to the horse and rider to go riding alone. This is a hassle. It requires coaxing, constant maintenance and attention, and sometimes a firm seat. Depending on the horse, it may be extremely frightened and become skittish, it may buck and threaten to bolt, or it may whinny very loudly every few steps and draw the attention of everyone around (cringe). Basically, a barn sour horse is nothing fun. Yet, if a horse is ever going to get over being barn sour they can’t give up. The horse must get used to going out alone with only its rider. They must relearn that while many things in the world may be scary (a plastic bag blowing in the wind, a barking dog, etc), the rider is not going to let them get hurt and trail rides can actually be quite fun.
Our Barn
It’s easy to laugh at this situation. Silly horse, a plastic bag isn’t going to hurt you. How could you prefer to stay in your tiny stall all day instead of going out to explore the world? Unfortunately though, we humans are a lot like that too. We don’t like change. We get into our little happy place and refuse to leave our comfort zone. We stay close to our herd members and often times when God asks us to leave our “barn” we balk. Moses gave many excuses to try to avoid God sending him to confront Pharaoh, Jonah refused to go to Nineveh, Ananias was hesitant when God told him to pray for Saul. Can you blame any of them? Being barn sour is normal. But each of these men eventually stepped out (with varying levels of acceptance) and did what God told them to do.
God is going to ask you to do hard things. It’s normal to be afraid of the unknown that lies ahead. But just as the horse must learn to trust their rider, so we must learn to trust our God. He can see things we cannot and he can direct us when we are not sure what path to take, we just have to be willing to step out of our “barn” and trust in him.