The Bible’s greatest ‘rancher’ sought wisdom first

The Bible’s greatest ‘rancher’ sought wisdom first

by | May 22, 2025 | Behind the Bucking Chutes

By Daryl Skeeter Spaulding / Cowboys for Christ chaplain

The greatest rancher of all time in the Bible was King Solomon. His kingdom stretched many places surrounding Israel. He had the command of the entire region and a multitude of personal staff that no other ever achieved. How would you like to manage and feed that bunch?

Let’s have a look at how he did it. We find it in 1 Kings 4:22-26. “Solomon’s daily provisions were thirty cors (5 ½ tons) of the finest flour and sixty cors (11 tons) of meal, ten head of stall-fed cattle, twenty of pasture fed cattle and a hundred sheep and goats, as well as deer, gazelles, roebucks and choice foul. For he ruled over all the kingdoms west of the Euphrates River, from Tiphsah to Gaza, and had peace on all sides. During Solomon’s lifetime Judah and Israel, from Dan to Beersheba, lived in safety, everyone under their own vine and under their fig tree. Solomon had four thousand stalls for chariot horses, and twelve thousand horses”. (Bold letters and parentheses are added.)

That’s a lot of livestock, not to mention the waterfowl!!! Plus, all wheat and corn for the refining of flour and meal. Solomon was a ranching and farming mogul. It would have been a sportsman’s paradise. He both grew/raised the daily provisions and imported it from the countries under his influence. The definition of “daily” is what really struck me.

But what really made Solomon such a great man? This guy was about 20 years old when King David placed him on the throne. And now King Solomon was in charge before David passed. There are some indicators in Scripture that Solomon was not David’s first choice for his replacement. Being 20 years old with the world setting on his shoulders, does not exactly breathe confidence. This young King knew this as well. Solomon had a dream when God asked him a question. 1 Kings 3:5-15.

Starting with verse 5 we read— At Gibeon the Lord appeared to Solomon during the night in a dream, and God said, “Ask for whatever you want me to give you.” Solomon answered, “You have shown great kindness to your servant, my father David, because he was faithful to you and righteous and upright in heart. You have continued this great kindness to him and have given him a son to sit on his throne this very day. Now, Lord my God, you have made your servant king in place of my father David. But I am only a child and do not know how to carry out my duties. Your servant is here among the people you have chosen, a great people, too numerous to count or number. So give your servant a discerning heart to govern your people and to distinguish between right and wrong. For who is able to govern this great people of yours?” The Lord was pleased that Solomon had asked for this. So God said to him,” Since you have asked for this and not for long life or wealth for yourself, nor have asked for the death of your enemies but for discernment in administering justice, I will do what you have asked. I will give you a wise and discerning heart, so that there will never have been anyone like you, nor will there ever be. Moreover, I will give you what you have not asked for- both wealth and honor – so that in your lifetime you will have no equal among kings. And if you walk in obedience to me and keep my decrees and commands as David your father did, I will give you a long life.” Then Solomon awoke-and he realized it had been a dream.

This is what made King Solomon so great!!! He wanted wisdom from Almighty God above anything else. I want my heart and attitude to be like this and I hope you do as well. Wouldn’t this attitude be great for every government official?

But let’s start with ourselves today. The first thing is to have a relationship with Almighty God through faith in Jesus Christ, reading the Bible daily and finding a good fellowship at church to do life with. All of this will lead to the wisdom we need to live a life pleasing to God.

How a cowboy lives out his faith now is the same as it would have been 2,000 years ago

How a cowboy lives out his faith now is the same as it would have been 2,000 years ago

by | May 6, 2025 | James

By Scott HIlgendorff / Cowboys of the Cross

Ever said something in anger or frustration that you regret at home or to someone you work with after a day where everything went wrong trying to get the branding done or after the fourth weekend of not making a check at the rodeo?

We all know cowboys, or at least of them, who have died in the arena and left a wife and children behind. After the initial fund raising efforts to help with medical costs or funeral expenses, how long after have we moved on with our lives and forgotten those families. If they never have a reason to be at a rodeo again, they quickly fall “out of sight, out of mind.”

And there aren’t many of us that haven’t been tempted by the party lifestyle that surrounds the rodeo industry.

James has already taught us the importance of doing what scripture tell us to and now he’s giving us three specific examples of what we should do if our religion, our Christian faith, is real.

James 1: 26-27 Those who consider themselves religious and yet do not keep a tight rein on their tongues deceive themselves, and their religion is worthless. 27 Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.

We hold our tongues.

We help widows and orphans.

We keep ourselves morally pure.

This isn’t a comprehensive list of what it takes to live out our faith but these are very specific examples from almost 2,000 years ago that James is pulling from the culture at that time. These were issues facing Christians then.

Isn’t it amazing how relevant the Bible is because these are still ways for us to live out our faith today?

And while these are just some of examples what Jesus and the Bible teach or show us are ways to live out our saving faith in Jesus Christ, they aren’t easy. Especially if you look at widows and orphans as representing the people who are most vulnerable or most in need in our culture.

A widow at that time was likely to be poor but in our lives around us, some of us right now are struggling with poverty or are one missed truck payment or a bad hay season away from bankruptcy as we are already hanging on by a thread. We know people whose lives have taken such a bad turn that they have taken their own lives. We have sex trafficking, addictions and mental illnesses that affect people sometimes at arm’s length from us and sometimes in our own homes.

It can overwhelm us if we feel the need or pressure to save every vulnerable person we know while keeping a tight watch that every word we speak is for good and every action we take is morally right. Praise God that He is in control, that we have grace for when we fail to meet these standards but most importantly, that our religion, our faith, is real enough that we have the desire to at least try.

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