Don’t be a Christian gunsel

Don’t be a Christian gunsel

By Scott Hilgendorff / Cowboys of the Cross

In the sport of rodeo, the term gunsel gets used to describe that person who wants everyone to know hes’ a cowboy by walking around the arena an hour before the show with his chaps and spurs on or he still has his spurs on at McDonald’s after the show. But he also gets one or two-jumped when his bull or bronc leaves the chute or hold on to the gate and lets go on his way out.

For a Christian, while it still can be about calling attention to himself, it can be a little less about that and more about doing the things he thinks makes him a Christian without ever understanding what it means to have a real, life-changing relationship with Jesus.

We see him praying before the rodeo, he has a cross around his neck and a tattoo of a Bible verse on his forearm.

These things aren’t wrong when they are just part of a person who is genuinely living out his faith but there’s a problem when that’s the beginning and the end of the cowboy’s faith. He never opens his Bible to learn from it and never applies a lesson he hears at cowboy church. Nothing in his life shows that he is becoming more like Jesus, which is evidence that our salvation is real, when our life is being transformed.

James 1:22-25 But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. 23 For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. 24 For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. 25 But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing.

James is teaching us how foolish it is to know what scripture teaches us and then to do nothing about it. He is stressing how important it is to actually live out what the Bible teaches.

It’s important to understand this doesn’t earn us anything from God. To be saved, we have to recognize who Jesus was as the Son of God and that he died on the cross to take the punishment that is meant for our sin. When we understand we’re all sinners and that God cannot allow us into his presence as sinners, we can be made right with him by confessing we know we have sin in our lives, believing what Jesus did on the cross for us to take the punishment meant for us, and asking to be forgiven.

It’s out of understanding and thankfulness for what Jesus did for us that we want to become more like Jesus and to do that, we do what James is saying and become doers of the word, living out what the Bible teaches.

Jesus called out the religious leaders at the time, known as Pharisees, who were making a show of their faith by carrying out actions that called attention to themselves while ignoring acting in important ways towards others that for us, become ways of showing Jesus to an unbelieving world.

Matthew 23:23 “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former.

Instead of showing God’s love to others, they were becoming a road block getting in the way of people who were discovering Jesus was teaching a new way of living out their faith in God that allowed everyone to become closer to Him.

To just walk around wearing crosses and Bible verse tattoos and nothing more doesn’t help anyone come to a saving faith in Jesus. It just makes us Christian gunsels.

Queen or struggling horse owner, we all submit to God’s authority

Queen or struggling horse owner, we all submit to God’s authority

By Scott Hilgendorff / Cowboys of the Cross

With the recent passing of the Queen of England, a lot of strong feelings were expressed from both liberal and conservative views, either attacking abuses of colonialism or stirring the patriotic feelings of American independence and a desire to have nothing to do with the monarchy.

There’s a reason though for Christians to think bigger than those thoughts and to be reminded that while we have to fight to preserve our beliefs here, there’s more to our faith than that. The United States isn’t the only country where Christians exist and where non-believers need to hear the gospel, who Jesus was and is and how his death on the cross gives us a way, through belief and repentance, to be saved from our sin and given eternal life in Heaven.

The Constitution gives us the freedom to practice Christianity but it also gives people the freedom to celebrate other religions as well. That’s why it’s important that we share our faith with others both here and abroad.

And it’s the Constitution that gives us the freedom to carry out the Great Commission, which was Jesus’s call to all believers to tell others about him in the hope they would find a saving faith in Jesus and the salvation from eternal punishment meant for our sins that only he can give.

So why should we care about the death of a queen through all of this?

It can serve as a reminder of a couple important things about our faith.

Romans 13:1 Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God.

Whether we liked her or not, the Queen of England was placed there by God. The worst of the world’s leaders and the best of them are all authorities that have been placed there by God.

And whether they know it or not, they are to submit to His authority as well. That means, yes, we do respect their authority and even though we might not like all the rules and laws, we respect the ones that don’t contradict God’s commands for us and cause us to go against the Bible. That’s uncomfortable for a lot of us but again, in the United States, it means we have a Constitution that gives us the freedom to practice our beliefs and the right to tell others about Jesus. But it also means that our leaders, no matter what their beliefs, are still subject to God and face the eternal consequences of the choices they make in how they lead their people and whether they ever believe in salvation through Jesus Christ.

Philippians 2:10-11 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, 11 and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

We like to see immediate consequences. It’s hard for us to grasp how short our time is here and what eternal suffering will be like for those who reject Jesus Christ.

Whether a king or queen, a wealthy oil baron or a person struggling to buy their first horse in southwestern Texas, we all have the same opportunity to believe in Jesus and in the end, when it’s too late for salvation, even those who didn’t believe will realize Jesus is Lord.

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