by admin | Apr 18, 2024 | Behind the Bucking Chutes
By Scott Hilgendorff / Cowboys of the Cross
If there’s ever a time when people in the cowboy culture pray, it’s at a rodeo or bull riding before competing. Some pray not to be hurt, some pray to win, some pray for the stock and some just use it as quiet time to talk to God.
The Bible gives us lots of examples of praying to God to meet our needs as well as verses that tell us not to worry; that God will provide.
Matthew 7:11 If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!
When we look at just this verse without context and careful understanding of the power a single word in the verses before it, it sounds like God will give us more than we could dream if we just have faith and ask. It’s a common belief but it comes from not having a more full understanding of God’s word.
Here is the whole section:
Matthew 7:7-11 7 “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. 8 For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. 9 Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? 10 Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? 11 if you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!
The word we need to look at closely: “Seek.”
Seeking means we are looking hard into what it is we should be asking God for. Are we trying to follow His will for our lives? Then we would be seeking what we need to follow His direction for us. Are we looking for ways to share the gospel or love our neighbors as Jesus commands us? Then we would be seeking what we need to accomplish that.
And then we would trust that if our parents, who are flawed compared to God’s greatness, are going to meet our needs, then we trust even more that God will give us what we need.
In James chapter 4, he comes at the issue from a different direction, explaining how it’s our nature to want things for our own, selfish desires to the point it can lead to fights and even murder—something we still see in society today. He explains to us that this is why it sometimes seems like God isn’t giving us what we want.
James 4:3 3You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.
It’s okay to want to win the rodeo, but what is our motivation? If we’re digging into what it means to be a Christian, a follower of Jesus, then we should be wanting what Jesus would want us to do or what the Bible teaches us about living out our faith. We know in Scripture that we are meant to live in a way that glorifies God. So how can our win be used to give Him glory or point others to Jesus? It can and if what we pray for lines up with what God wants for us, we could see that win come our way.
And if that win doesn’t come, no matter how hard we were seeking God before we asked for it, then we also trust that our loss, even at a time when we personally needed the money or confidence, is still a better gift than what even our own parents could want for us. It just may take some time to see what God was doing in that moment and we rely on God’s strength to endure what feels like a struggle and trust that everything works together for His good–and we get to be a part of that, even when it feels hard for us.
by admin | Apr 4, 2024 | Behind the Bucking Chutes
By Scott Hilgendorff / Cowboys of the Cross
Sometimes the bad guy wins. There really is a rodeo judge out there that has it in for someone and successfully screws the cowboy over every chance he gets. There really is someone lying and cheating their way to get ahead of you at work. Some of you are victims of crimes in which the person got away with it or the punishment just didn’t seem like enough.
When I get to teach something and it’s one of the ‘difficult’ Bible verses like the one that you’re about to read, I get it. I know it’s easy for me to teach it but it doesn’t mean it’s always any easier for me to live it out when I’m standing there asking you to try.
Romans 12: 19-21 Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” 20 To the contrary, “if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.” 21 Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
This is honestly harder for me to say than you might think because I don’t want to share the bad thoughts as someone who is in a position to teach and minister to you but this is my reality right now: there is someone out there that a small part of me would take satisfaction in taking a swing at with my baseball bat. I’m not joking. And it troubles me that as mature as I would like to be in my faith, that I’m still capable of a thought like this, though I’m grateful and want to be clear it is a small part of me and I would never take that action.
But what it shows about me is that I do get it when I teach verses like this. I’m not asking you guys to do things I either presently find hard or have had a chance to work through myself as I’ve learned more about what’s in the Bible.
It’s hard to see someone get away with evil and be satisfied that God will take care of it when the systems in place fail. But here’s the deal. Adam and Eve decided in the garden they wanted the same knowledge as God and allowed sin to be a part of our world. They wanted to be able to judge for themselves what is right and wrong, rather than leave it to God. It’s a natural part of being human but as Christians, we’re made new and meant to be becoming more like Jesus and less like our old selves.
When we’re dealing with Christians who do wrong to others, there are several Biblical responses to that including church discipline e and a process to make the situation right. A Christian who is truly saved would want to follow these steps, particularly ones laid out in Matthew 18:15-20.
For non-believers, there are two outcomes for someone who has done evil to you, they will repent through God’s grace and mercy
or they will face God’s judgement and spend eternity in hell.
I have a hard time taking comfort or being at peace with someone who has wronged me enough to want to hit them with a bat, suffering for eternity in hell when I know I’ve been forgiven of my wrongs and received God’s grace and mercy through Jesus’s death and resurrection and my own repentance and saving faith in him.
Right now, I’m also having a hard time with the idea of showing kindness to the people who have done evil but they deserve the shot at salvation I received and while they haven’t received the justice that I would hope for them, they don’t find Jesus the lord of their life, hell is the reality they face.
While those verses in Romans are not teaching this, while I continue to wrestle with God’s direction for me to repay evil with kindness, what I can do in the meantime is follow other Biblical teaching that directs us to treat others with kindness so that they could come to saving faith in Jesus.
It doesn’t take away my responsibility to work through these verses and adopt them into how I approach the evil that we do in this world, but it does provide a positive outcome that can impact the world around us for Jesus.
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