by admin | Jul 6, 2023 | Behind the Bucking Chutes
By Scott Hilgendorff / Cowboys of the Cross
Whether you run a 40 or 400 head cattle operation, chances are you’re looking for ways to improve the efficiency of the operation from cutting costs to better use of supplements in feed.
A horse training could be working to build a reputation to be the person a buyer goes to for a good roping horse.
That roper in turn puts time and effort to improve his skills with a lasso and to continue training his horse so together, they stand a better chance of winning the next rodeo.
There’s pressure to be better husbands and wives. There’s pressure to be better parents. There’s pressure to be better children. Pressure can come out of any number of difficult situations that put obstacles in the way of what we just want to be our happy lives. We put it on ourselves. or it comes from outside our control.
It can also feel like there’s pressure to be better Christians.
As we study our Bibles, learn from church sermons and are discipled by other believers, it can seem overwhelming to see how Jesus lived, how he taught us to live our lives and to think we’re supposed to be like him.
Philippians 1:6 being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.
With Christ in us, there’s no pressure to change. The Holy Spirit is doing the work in us. That’s called sanctification, and is the process of becoming more like Jesus that begins when we experience salvation.
That’s where grace comes in. The first time we encounter it is in our salvation experience, when we are saved through Jesus’s death on the cross, realizing he took the punishment meant for our own sins. We then continue to experience grace each time we feel like we don’t measure up to the standards Jesus set for us.
Romans 3:23-24 Fall have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.
Being justified means that through our salvation, we may not be perfect but God no longer sees our sin. That’s the grace God gives us—that we are no longer seen as sinners. That’s when sanctification begins.
As Paul says in Philippians, a good work was begun in us. That work is sanctification, the process of becoming more like Jesus. But he is clear that process won’t be complete until ‘the day of Christ Jesus.’ We understand that to mean that we won’t be perfect until we pass on to Heaven.
When we understand these things, the grace we’ve been given should be a motivator to want to be more like Jesus. Knowing there is no expectation we will ever be perfect in this life but that God is working in us to change us, we don’t need to feel any pressure to change. It will happen as God wants it to happen.
by admin | Jun 22, 2023 | Behind the Bucking Chutes
PART TWO of TWO Being Canceled
By Scott Hilgendorff / Cowboys of the Cross
Cancel-culture wants us to be held accountable for our words and actions no matter how long ago and how much we have changed since then. Even without being a Christian, we mature and change so that sometimes views we held years ago aren’t even close to those we hold now.
Christians specifically go through a transformation we call sanctification, the process of becoming more like Jesus.
What the cancel culture around us doesn’t understand is what Jesus did for us to start the process of sanctification—he canceled our debt.
2 Colossians 2:13-14 When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, 14 having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross.
The debt referred to her means our offense or sin against God. Jesus canceled our debt by dying on the cross to take the punishment meant for our debt, our sin.
The gospel in really simple terms is built around Jesus paying the price for our debt. It’s our sins that separate us from God and are going to be judged and condemned by Him without Jesus. But Jesus was sent to live perfectly among us to serve as a sacrifice in place of our sins. His death on the cross took the punishment so that by believing Jesus was the Son of God, did in fact die for our sins and was resurrected after his death, and by acknowledging we’re sinners and asking to be forgiven, we can be forgiven of our sin—our debt is then paid for by Jesus’ death.
That’s how we have the phrase or understanding that Jesus paid the price for our sins. Where our culture holds our mistakes against us and wants to take away what we have for our past mistakes, it’s those past mistakes that God cancels through Jesus. He no long holds the past against us and even extends grace to future mistakes we might make.
It’s like having $500 in fines for a fight you got into with the arena boss that got out of hand when he pushed you to nod your head before the bull was off your leg. You weren’t going to be able to enter another rodeo until the fine was paid and knew you were in the wrong for throwing that left hook. You worked hard to set the money aside because you qualified for the finals but there was no way you could save that much on top of entry fees. You call the association office to see if you can convince them to find a way to let you enter only to find out the arena boss paid your fine and your entry fees.
Even though you sinned against him your whole life, your debt was canceled by Jesus and eternity in Heaven is waiting for you.
by admin | 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).
by admin | May 11, 2023 | Behind the Bucking Chutes
By Scott Hilgendorff / Cowboys of the Cross
When we don’t understand what hope is, we set ourselves up to lose it.
“If this situation doesn’t turn around soon, I’m going to lose my truck. I hope I find work soon.”
“That’s two dead calves this spring already, I hope there aren’t any issues with the rest.”
That’s the most common way we’re used to hearing the word, “hope” get used but it sets us up for discouragement when the job doesn’t come and the truck gets repossessed or you lose two more calves in a ridiculously bad calving season.
We put our hope in relationships or friends and family but people are going to fail and we’re going to get let down. As Christians, if we don’t understand what hope is according to scripture, we can get discouraged with God too.
It isn’t easy to change our perspectives but for Christians, our hope is placed in Jesus. That isn’t the same as hoping for a good outcome. “I hope you understand what I’m saying” means I desire a positive outcome that this is helpful. “I hope this job interview goes well” but it still could be a total disaster. With that use of the word hope, there are no guarantees and we can end up feeling defeated.
Hope in Jesus is different. That is something we can be confident in. When we have a saving faith in him, there are no guarantees that life here won’t be hard at times but we are guaranteed a perfect eternity in Heaven. What it means to put our hope in Jesus is that we can face this world’s struggles with the confidence that something amazing is waiting for us in an perfect eternity in Heaven.
1 Peter 3-8 gives some of the explanation.
3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4 and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you, 5 who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. 6 In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. 7 These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.
Peter is showing us that we are going to face struggles here but that when we persevere with our thoughts focused on Jesus, he is glorified through our struggles while God preserves our salvation so that when we leave this world, we move on to that perfect eternity.
We place our hope in Jesus, using the word, “hope” in a completely different context—that we know our salvation is secured no matter what happens to us here.
by admin | Apr 27, 2023 | Behind the Bucking Chutes
By Scott Hilgendorff / Cowboys of the Cross
How do you measure success?
When you run a beef operation, do you consider it successful when you’ve gambled right on when to sell and it paid off at the highest market prices of the season?
Is a finals jacket the target you set for yourself and now that you’ve got two, you can retire from team roping and just keep a couple horses around for fun?
We often look to the success of others to measure whether or not we think we’re successful too. This person seems to have a happy family, that person makes $80,000 a year. But then we can get stuck trying to figure out what is enough. There can always be another goal, the bar can always be raised higher.
It’s okay to pursue success. God asks us to give our best to everything we do.
But here’s the twist—are we chasing our goals or are we pursuing what God would have us do?
As Christian cowboys, it’s okay to celebrate that finals buckle or that record year of profit, but if we haven’t done it in a way that give God glory, that success can end up becoming pretty empty as we find ourselves looking for something more and feeling unfulfilled.
As Jesus knew his time was coming to die for us on that cross, he prayed for the disciples and the people who had come to a saving faith through him and in that prayer, he began by asking God to glorify him, not so that he would get that glory, but that all the work he did for God on Earth would point others to God and give God that glory.
John 17: 4 I have brought you glory on earth by finishing the work you gave me to do.
Jesus was here to bring us all salvation by choosing to believe in him, repent of our sins and ask to be forgiven so that we could be saved through his sacrifice on the cross, taking the punishment that is otherwise meant for our sins. In that process, he worked many miracles, taught thousands and changed immeasurable lives but all of it was to bring glory to God until it was his time to die and ascend to Heaven.
When we have a saving faith in Jesus, there is nothing more we need to do to be made right with God, but we will experience a desire to become more like Jesus and to follow the instructions and commands the are given to us in Scripture. That means seeking out what God has for us to do.
Ephesians 2:10 For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
When we start to understand this, measuring success becomes less important when it becomes about doing what God has prepared for us to do. In this way, even what seems like failure to how we used to measure success can bring glory to God.
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