by admin | Jul 17, 2025 | Behind the Bucking Chutes
By Daryl Skeeter Spaulding / Cowboys for Christ
I feed my horse every morning before I head out for work. A few things come to mind that have really
been a blessing in my early morning adventure.
First, it’s been such a delight to be out there before dawn. The stars and the moon are truly amazing
without cloud cover and it’s a wonder to behold. When I look up there is no doubt in my mind that I’m
looking at God’s creation. Genesis 1:16 recalls the creation of sun, moon and stars. We can’t have a
bright moon without the sun and on a clear night the sky comes ALIVE!!! Almighty God really knew what
He was doing. The Big Dipper is one of my favorite constellations to gaze at. It will point you right to the
North Star. If you follow the two stars that make up the end of the dipper you will see it. It’s faint, so you
must train your eyes to look for it.
Secondly, I’ve been reading my Bible while I have my horse in one of the outdoor feeding stalls enjoying
his breakfast. It takes him about 20 minutes to finish his feed. I spend that time with my
Bible opened laying across the fence rail. If it’s still dark, I use a head lamp so I can read. I have found so many amazing
passages of scripture. Some whole chapters are exciting to read. Then I find these nuggets tucked in a
sentence that just catches my eye. One such instance is about having a willing heart and mind to serve
the Lord that’s found in 2 Chronicles 28:21. When I read that, I asked the Lord to give me a true heart of
worship and a willing mind to follow Him. That’s what I want!!!
Thirdly, one dark morning due to heavy cloud cover, I did not find my horse up at the feeding stalls like
usual. The light from the barn wasn’t much help. I thought to myself, “where is he”? as I went through
the gate and then looked for him momentarily. I was getting ready to pound on the gate with the brass
latch that we keep the gate closed with, it’s how I call him up when I need to. Then, I heard him nicker, I
know that nicker of his. He stepped out of the shadow. He was up there the whole time; I just didn’t see
him in the dark.
From time to time, I’ve heard the Holy Spirit whisper or nicker at me at just the right moment. It’s
always when I wasn’t expecting it. Most often it’s a particular verse in the Bible I’ve memorized, a
worship song on the radio or hymn I heard in church. I can’t necessarily explain it but it’s a faith builder
for sure.
This is why it’s so important to be in God’s Word as a regular habit, just because you love being in it. We
find proof of this in Romans 10: 17 So faith comes from hearing, and hearing the word of Christ. Jesus
also promised us the Holy Spirit in John 14:16 And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another
Helper, to be with you forever. And a little down in verse 26 we read, But the Helper, the Holy Spirit,
whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all
that I have said to you. (All scripture is ESV)
Do yourself a favor; spend time in God’s Word and you just might hear the Holy Spirit nicker at you.
by admin | Jul 17, 2025 | Best Sermons
PART ONE OF TWO
By Scott Hilgendorff / Cowboys of the Cross
There can only be darkness if there is no light.
Matthew 5: 14-16“You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. 15 Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. 16 In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.
Jesus was describing in verses 14 and 15 how, when our faith is real, we can’t hide it. We know through our saving faith in Jesus that we become something new and that others will see it in us. They’ll see the mistakes we still make and some will call us hypocrites for them. When Jesus says a city on a hill can’t be hidden, he means we can’t hide that our faith has changed us and others can’t help but see it. He then uses the example of a lamp and how the light from the lamp serves a purpose so we wouldn’t light it and then hide it so no one else, including ourselves, benefits from that light.
But in verse 16, Jesus is encouraging us to be purposeful in letting others see how our faith has changed us through our actions. By doing good, others can see Christ in us and God is glorified.
Our actions and how we handle our mistakes or sinful moments show to others that we’ve changed and are different from how we were before. When we are saved, we don’t suddenly become perfect. We start a process called sanctification and through that process, we start becoming more like Jesus; we want to understand the Bible and live out what it teaches. Even is we make mistakes, the people who truly know us will know that we’re living life differently.
A lot of rodeo cowboys struggle with thinking they don’t measure up. Many enter the sport because it appeals to their feelings of being an outsider. For others, they want to prove to themselves or others they can make it in a difficult sport where, in almost every event, it’s your individual power, strength and ability that will take you to a paycheck.
Your identity before you were saved and the outsider nature that can be found in rodeo might feed the idea that you don’t live up to what you think the Christian standard is; ;that you need to get your life together or in a better place before you can talk to God or walk into a church. But when you are truly saved through a real faith in Jesus and a genuine repentance of sin and desire to be forgiven for it through Jesus’s sacrifice on the cross that took the punishment meant for our sin, God sees you as perfect. However much good or sin has been in your life before then, God sees us all as perfect when we’ve made Jesus the Lord and Savior of our lives.
That means, even the smallest act of kindness or helpfulness you are able to do brings light into this broken and sinful world.
No matter how you’ve lived your life or how others have made you feel about yourself, you have as much power as the best preachers and godliest people you know, to affect the world around you. Even when you feel at your worst, the smallest act, a kind word, can glorify God and bring light into someone else’s darkness.
Even the toughest cowboy or blackest sheep in the family has the power to drive away darkness when they have a saving faith in Jesus.
by admin | Jun 30, 2025 | James
By Scott Hilgendorff / Cowboys of the Cross
James aggressively raises the bar when it comes to expecting Christians to live out their faith.
There’s something about a cowboy and bad relationships that seems pretty common. There are great exceptions but many go from one relationship to another where the girl he picks manages to make him feel bad about himself—useless.
Sometimes our families or an employer can do it and sometimes we can do it to ourselves where a buck off streak or a series of misses on the roping side of the arena, lead a rodeo cowboy to think he’s becoming a failure.
If we read James without a fuller understanding of the Bible, he can make us feel pretty useless too.
James 2:20 “Do you want to be shown, you foolish person, that faith apart from works is useless?”
There’s not much explanation needed here as James makes it clear our faith is pointless if we don’t live it out.
He then proceeds to give us some examples from what we have as the Old Testament to show us what genuine faith looks like.
James 2:21-26 Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar? 22 You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by his works; 23 and the Scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness”—and he was called a friend of God. 24You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. 25 And in the same way was not also Rahab the prostitute justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out by another way? 26 For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead.
James uses the accounts of Abraham and Rahab to show what faith in action looks like. Abraham had been asked by God to sacrifice his son, Isaac. God didn’t require him to go through with it, but his willingness proved his faith. James uses it as an example to show us that if our faith is real, we will do what God asks. Now, we have both and Old and New Testament to help us know what God and Jesus ask of us.
Rahab was a prostitute who hid spies as Joshua was preparing to lead the Israelites to take the city of Jericho as commanded by God. Rahab showed that she believed God was the true god by hiding and allowing the spies to escape discovery and help carry out God’s plan. She demonstrated her faith by her actions.
Our actions can’t save us from God’s wrath, but when our salvation is real, our desire to follow Jesus and what he commands become proof that out faith is real. We don’t ever have to do anything more than believe Jesus was and is who he said, repent and ask to be forgiven, to be saved. James tells us that is dead faith; useless. But if we’re wondering how to tell if we are truly saved, one piece of evidence is our desire to live out what we learn from the Bible.
by admin | Jun 30, 2025 | Behind the Bucking Chutes
By Scott Hilgendorff / Cowboys of the Cross
When is a corn dog not “just a corn dog”?
When our reaction to a couple stolen corn dogs completely undermines who Jesus is and what he did for us on the cross—the gospel.
A post from a cowboy justifying stealing a couple corn dogs from a gas station self-checkout because of a flaw in their system sparked a lot of back and forth from people raising the issue of stealing while a majority thought it laughable to call it stealing because it was “just a corn dog.”
One of the comments read like this: “like God doesn’t care if you steal a freaking hot dog, He’s got bigger things to worry about.”
Actually, He does care. If stealing a corn dog was the only sin that had ever been committed by anyone, Jesus still would have died on the cross for that person to have a chance to find salvation.
Yes, it’s that serious and to laugh it off or dismiss God’s response to any sin, is to outright reject what Jesus did for us on the cross. Not understanding why it’s a big deal and looking at it as stupid or trivial doesn’t somehow avoid the consequences of not comprehending the gospel. And it’s actually a ticket straight to hell.
Yes, it is that serious.
Romans 1:19-20 For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.
In a nutshell: God has revealed Himself through everything He made and we all have a chance to realize He exists and is real.
And the way so many people were reacting to a small-time theft shows how little a lot of people understand about the gospel and how to find eternal life in Heaven instead of eternal damnation in hell.
Those of us who have found a saving faith in Jesus and understand the gospel have a responsibility to share it with others so that they can know how to be saved from God’s judgement.
God won’t allow sin in His presence and will judge and condemn us for our sins. The punishment is eternal separation from God and for God to be a just and fair, we’re all condemned for any sin, big or small. A stolen corn dog is enough for God to judge and condemn you without a saving faith in Jesus.
Because God is a loving and fair God, He made a way so that we could all be saved from his wrathful judgement. He sent Jesus to live among us and eventually die on the cross to take the punishment for all our sins in our place. He took on the full wrath of God so that by us believing He was the Son of God, died and was resurrected three days later and by repenting of our sin and asking to be forgiven, we could be saved from hell and given a perfect eternity in Heaven when we die here.
As silly as it might seem to some, God doesn’t have bigger things to worry about than a corn dog. He cares about every one of us and wants us all to have a chance to not just acknowledge He exists, but to come to a saving faith in Jesus so we can be united with Him in Heaven for eternity.
2 Peter 3:9 The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.
There are a few things beyond a lack of understanding for the need of a savior that frustrate me about the comments around this issue.
Some of the same people who would holler and make a fuss about wanting The Ten Commandments posted in public places forget number eight on the list: “You shall not steal.”
One of the people seeing the post saw it as just another reason to see Christians as hypocrites and reject the Gospel. Our attitude toward a situation some made out to be trivial because it was just a $3 item of food actually helped push someone further away from wanting to ever be a Christian. That’s a pretty high price to pay for a corn dog.
The number of ways people justified stealing from it being the gas station’s fault for expecting us to check ourselves out to how much profit they make anyway, shows just how important it is to cling to our ‘freedom’ to sin. Our ignorance of the consequences doesn’t allow us to escape God’s judgement when our life here is over.
So no, it’s not just a corn dog. It’s one more chance to embrace Jesus or one more chance to ignore the gospel. There’s consequences to both: one horrible beyond our understanding and one better than we can possibly imagine. If you don’t have a saving faith in Jesus and you’re reading this, right now, you have just been faced with making a choice to ignore Jesus or pursue him.
by admin | Jun 19, 2025 | Behind the Bucking Chutes
By Daryl Skeeter Spaulding / Cowboys for Christ
Have you ever met someone who always finds fault in a church fellowship?
A great Baptist preacher I knew had a wonderful statement he said all the time, “Every time you point a finger at someone, you have three pointing right back at yourself”. How true that is! There are some folks who are never happy for very long in one place. We all have an expectation of what a church should be like in our own minds, but we as Americans are used to having things our way.
Attending church is so important to our spiritual growth, but it’s not a place to just park our carcasses down and expect to be served. We should go to be “a part” of something. “a part” does not mean idle. It’s good for all of us not to think too much of ourselves,” get out of our box” as the saying goes.
I have great memories being in Brazil for a summer mission trip. We worked in somewhat of a remote area constructing a building for a youth camp. The kitchen crew worked under a lean-to and each day they boiled large pots of water at a roll for 20 minutes for drinking and cooking for the following day. Our team traveled each Sunday to a different church to sing and talk about the work we were doing as part of the service. I’ll never forget seeing poor people travel by a small boat down river just to get to church. At other places they walked to get to church. And you can forget the fancy wood pews.
Maybe, you yourself have served on a mission trip here or abroad. Worked in a food pantry preparing boxes to give to those in need in your community or collected items for Samaritan Purse Christmas shoe boxes. At the “Brand of The Cross”, the cowboy fellowship where my wife and I attend, we collect items for those shoe boxes all year long for a packing party along with a chili cookoff competition. The whole fellowship gets involved; it’s a lot of fun.
Jesus was the perfect model for us when it comes to serving others. He washed the disciple’s feet just before His arrest. He needed to show them how to serve each other.
We find in the gospel of John 13:12-16. After washing their feet, he put on his robe again and sat down and asked, “Do you understand what I was doing? You call me Teacher and Lord; and you are right, because that’s what I am. And since I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you ought to wash each other’s feet. I have given you an example to follow. Do as I have done to you.
When you and I serve others, it takes the focus off ourselves. It’s a great remedy to becoming a nitpicker. God bless you as you go serve!
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