Your fees are NOT paid without a saving faith in Jesus

Your fees are NOT paid without a saving faith in Jesus

by | May 15, 2024 | Behind the Bucking Chutes

By Scott Hilgendorff / Cowboys of the Cross

Fly high cowboy, your fees are paid.

Using some form of that phrase when someone in the rodeo cowboy crowd has died is fairly common.

The problem is, most people don’t really understand what they’re saying and it creates the false impression that we call go to Heaven when we die. I see it used by people I thought knew differently but they continually place a cowboy in Heaven who almost certainly didn’t enter that rodeo.

How can you say that? How can you know for sure? That’s judgmental.

Well, the reason I can say it with almost certainty is because I’d had an open and frank conversation with that person in question and he made it clear to me he didn’t believe in Jesus and wasn’t interested in it. He was someone I got along with and was explaining why he didn’t come to cowboy church at the rodeos we were often at together because he didn’t want me thinking it was personal. He made a lot of sinful or what I would consider “dumb” choices at best, but he was a nice guy who was well-loved by all those he partied with every weekend.

Here’s the kicker: most of the time when we share a social media post about a cowboy riding a rank one in Heaven or getting his wings (we don’t become angels), we don’t actually even know what the person believed before they died and we never ask. Most of us pray. Most of us believe in God, but that doesn’t get us to Heaven. James reminds us that even the demons believe in God. A lot of us don’t really know ourselves how to be certain we’re going to Heaven, never mind how to tell someone else.

And sure, one never knows what happens privately between a person and God but we’re also told in scripture that when someone has a genuine, saving faith in Jesus, there will be fruit. Fruit are changes in a person’s life that show Christ and the Holy Spirit in them is moving them away from sin and into a life that’s more holy. By holy, we mean more Christ-like by how we see Jesus in the Bible

John 15:8 By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples.

That made it that much harder personally when he died. It’s important to understand God can draw someone to Him at any time and there’s no telling what happened in his last moments, but the reality is, not only did he not believe, but he openly rejected Christianity.

So how can so many people put him in Heaven?

I think when we love someone, it’s hard to think of them suffering for eternity in Hell. I think we also just don’t think seriously enough about how real both places are. It’s also largely because we don’t really understand what is called the gospel—how through Jesus, a person is saved from God’s wrath against sin and made right before God to be given an eternity in Heaven.

We can’t ‘love them’ into Heaven. Only the love of Jesus gets them there through their faith in his birth, death and resurrection and belief that he took the punishment meant for our sins so that by repenting of those sins and asking to be forgiven, we can be given eternal life in Heaven.

This is where the expression in rodeo that “he paid your fees” comes from. It’s taken from a genuine understanding of the gospel that tells us that Jesus paid the price meant for our sins.

Being liked and loved by others, being popular, being good by how we might measure goodness; none of these ideas gets us into Heaven. Even the kindest most generous person is separated from God by just the smallest sin and none of us are able to get through life without some kind of sin like a moment of anger or a lustful thought.

Ephesians 2:8-9 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.

Grace and mercy are what God has given us through Jesus’s death on the cross. We deserve God’s wrath for our sin, any sin, but we’re given a way through a saving faith in Jesus, to be made right with God. The ‘works’ being referred to is what makes it clear that just being a good person doesn’t earn a place in Heaven. Works are the good actions we do and way of living we might lead. Through an understanding that any sin deserves punishment and no amount of good can earn us Heaven, every single person has the same chance to have Jesus pay his fees.

Canceled! God doesn’t hold our past words against us

Canceled! God doesn’t hold our past words against us

by | Jun 8, 2023 | Behind the Bucking Chutes

PART ONE of TWO Being Cancelled

By Scott Hilgendorff / Cowboys of the Cross

A few years back, I watched a rodeo producer deal with the repercussions of a clown who made a joke that for several on the crowd, crossed the line over gender issues. This was before it was the current hot topic in almost daily news stories.

While it wasn’t a large group that was offended, a few of them carried some pretty big sticks and the incident escalated into media coverage and increasing angry mob that, while not even present at the event to understand the context, were demanding the producer be shut down from putting on events. It didn’t matter that he didn’t make the joke, that some of it was being taken out of context or the intent of the clown who ad-libbed the remark and was more careless than intending offense.

With the use of so many different social media platforms, even in writing, it’s easy to get carried away and say something inappropriate or offensive. But what was seen as offensive ten years ago can potentially be seen as hate speech today.

The current cultural trend to “cancel” anything we disagree with puts anything we’ve ever posted online under scrutiny if a controversial incident occurs, no matter how long ago.

As young adults, students have lost scholarships for posts they made when they were barely a teenager, with those stripping the scholarship away not caring at all that in that time period, a young person is still learning who they are and what they believe and what they think about our culture. What they would have said five years ago is different than what they would say today.

This is especially true of Christians and even more so of adults who come to a saving faith in Jesus. Ideas they were once firm about, having gone through their formative years, have been changed as they learn more about what the Bible teaches and allow themselves to become more like Jesus.

Ephesians 4:21-24 assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, 22 to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, 23 and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, 24 and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.

Once we have a saving faith in Jesus, we are transformed. God immediately will look past our sin to see us as perfect while the Holy Spirit will begin to make us more holy, more like Jesus.

Without Jesus, I know by my 20s, my thoughts and attitudes were different from when I was a kid but once I became a Christian, they changed again. And they continue to change as I continue to learn and study more and allow the Holy Spirit to help me treat others more like Jesus would.

I can’t imagine being canceled for something I said online 10 years ago. I’m not that person anymore. I’m not even the person I was last year in Jesus, we are transformed. God immediately will look past our sin to see us as perfect while the Holy Spirit will begin to make us more holy, more like Jesus.

Without Jesus, I know by my 20s, my thoughts and attitudes were different from when I was a kid but once I became a Christian, they changed again. And they continue to change as I continue to learn and study more and allow the Holy Spirit to help me treat others more like Jesus would.

I can’t imagine being canceled for something I said online 10 years ago. I’m not that person anymore. I’m not even the person I was last year. But even when the world holds our past against us, God, through what Jesus did for us on the cross, will never hold it against us as long as we have placed our faith in Jesus.

(To understand more about a saving faith in Jesus and how to receive God’s gift of eternal life, be sure to read through the “our your entry fees paid” page).

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