Behind the Bucking Chutes
Pride can keep a cowboy from salvation
By Scott Hilgendorff / Cowboys of the Cross
When it comes to God, many cowboys have an authority problem and it can be one of the biggest reasons a man holds back from giving in to a saving faith in Jesus.
Whether on the ranch or rodeo side of our cowboy cultures, there is a lot of reasons a cowboy needs or develops a sense of independence. It can be a ranch hand sent out to check and mend fences after a storm or a bronc rider depending on his own strength to make that eight second ride.
Physical strength and hard work generate rewards from a herd getting to market to a bulldogger making the pay window. We’re proud of our accomplishments and our independence, but when pride keeps us from recognizing it’s God who even allowed it in the first place, it becomes a sin.
Proverbs 21:4 A haughty look, a proud heart, and the plowing of the wicked are sin.
Cowboys honor strength and independence and the idea of submitting to a higher authority can be tough, yet we’re told every person will submit, one way or another.
Philippians 2: 9-11 Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
Paul is explaining in this letter that everyone will come to a realization that Jesus is Lord, meaning we submit to and follow him now through a saving faith in Jesus or we realize later, when it’s too late, how real God’s authority was through Jesus. We realize this as we see the truth of Heaven and Hell and face God’s judgment.
But God wants us all to be with Him and through a saving Jesus, we all can have an eternity in Heaven. James uses strong language as he urges us to submit to God.
James 4:7-10 Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8 Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. 9 Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. 10 Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.
James is telling us we need to resist sin and temptations that keep us from a saving faith. But that takes recognizing our pride is a sin we have to resist in order to recognize Jesus is Lord of our lives. Being humble can be hard but it’s necessary to recognize God’s authority.
When we can do this, you don’t lose the feeling of independence out there fixing fence with just you and your horse. You don’t lose the sense of success when you make your first eight second ride. You gain an understanding that it was through God’s will and authority that you are where you are and we begin to seek ways to honor and glorify Him in all we do.
Dolly Parton or the American Dream aren’t where we find hope
By Scott Hilgendorff / Cowboys of the Cross
Everyone talks like they knew “Dolly” on a first name basis because in a sense, Dolly Parton belonged to everyone through her work, personal way of communicating and her giving.
Christians claim Dolly as theirs because of her expressions of faith.
Progressives claim her as theirs because of her support of loving others even if they’re different from you.
Everyone claims her as their because she literally personifies the American Dream no matter what your politics. She came from nothing here in Sevier County where I get to live, and built herself an entertainment empire that will continue on likely until Jesus comes back.
Dolly’s story gives everyone hope that with hard work and dedication, they can make it.
My reason for being on social media is primarily to be connected with the rodeo and ranching cowboy communities through Cowboys of the Cross. I’m writing this encouragement for you.
Whether you like country music, whether you were born 75 years ago or 15, you know who Dolly Parton is. Many of you have made the trek to Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge and I’ve seen many of you post right from Dollywood.
Whether ranching or rodeoing, you guys know you can’t make it without hard work and dedication. And we know we live in an imperfect and unfair world where not everyone makes it.
Being a Christian cowboy is the same thing. Where Dolly’s success story gives us all hope in what we can achieve here, there’s one more important hope we need to let her faith point us to and that’s the hope that comes in Jesus Christ. It’s an eternal hope where we know even if we don’t make it here, there’s something even greater waiting for us after this life if we put our hope in Jesus.
A saving faith in Jesus, one that guarantees us Heaven, comes from this understanding:
God, who we know is perfect, will not allow our imperfect sin into His presence. He will actually judge and condemn it. Jesus, as God’s son, was sent to live in this world and eventually die on the cross as a sacrifice meant to take God’s full wrath against all of our sins. When we believe in who Jesus was, and is, and what he did for us, we then need to repent of our sin with a sincere desire to be saved and forgiven from God’s judgment. When we do this, God will no longer condemn us but see as us perfect regardless of who we are and we’re given a perfect eternity with Him.
Dolly Parton advocated kindness and to love everyone. This is how God does it—by giving every one the same chance to be saved and spend eternity with Him, no matter who we are and what mistakes we’ve made. He loves us all and wants us with Him for eternity.
That’s a hope that transcends the American Dream and gives us everything we need, success or failure in our own eyes or the eyes of others who wrongly judge us, to make it through this life and to the perfect one waiting for us.
Ephesians 2:8-10 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. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
When Jesus tells us to love, it isn’t a feeling, it’s an action
By Scott Hilgendorff / Cowboys of the Cross
One little four-letter words from the New Testament can be big stumbling block for someone living a cowboy lifestyle: love.
The reason we stumble is because we don’t understand the meaning of the word in a biblical context.
Many scholars focus on three main Greek words that translate to “love” and appear in the scriptures we get our English translations from: agape, phileo and eros. When we see the word in the Bible, it is mostly as agape or phileo and we need to know which Greek word it connects with. Agape means an unconditional and sacrificial love. Phileo means a deep friendship or brotherly love. Eros is the romantic word that we most often associate with the word love.
Almost every cowboy, believer or not, has encountered the first form of the word in the verse from John 3:16, For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
It isn’t a romantic love that led Jesus to die on the cross for us but a sacrificial one that caused him to give up his own life knowing it would create a way for any of us to be with him in Heaven. This comes to us through our repentance of our sins, our desire to be forgiven of those sins and our belief in who Jesus was and what he did in that loving, sacrificial moment.
It’s this kind of love that God used to draw me away from a successful career and into ministry full time, living for a time in my van just to make it work. Negative stereotypes exist for a reason and give people reasons to find the cowboy crowd pretty unlovable, or even unlikable, sometimes for the way they live or conduct themselves. God built in me a deep caring, love, if you will, for the cowboy community and it’s why I’m available 24 hours a day if any from the ranch or rodeo side reaches out to talk or in need.
Love from the word “phileo” is demonstrated in the story of Lazarus and his resurrection by Jesus. John 11:3 So the sisters sent word to Jesus, “Lord, the one you love is sick.” People Jesus had a close personal relationship with sent for Jesus when he was gravely ill and referred to the deep brotherly love he had for Lazarus.
This is a love most rodeo cowboys should be able to understand. While many may not use the word, “love” to describe how they feel about the other competitors they are closest to but they still understand the deeper connection they have for that person that causes them to care about the person’s life and successes or failures more than they do someone they don’t know as well.
The love we most often associate the word with is eros yet it doesn’t even appear in the New Testament. This is the romantic love we all know and understand and while the Greek word isn’t used, this type of love still exists in scripture from the Song of Solomon to New Testament teachings on marriage.
It’s the first way we understand the word love that should motivate a Christian cowboy to take action. Jesus calls us to live out a sacrificial love for others, even our enemies. This is action, often difficult and not something that should ever leave us thinking love is a weak word. Love takes sacrifice and is seen more than it’s felt. It’s seen when we give money to a homeless person and it’s seen when we take time to tell someone about Jesus and his own demonstration of love on that cross. Because he loved us in that way, he asks us to love others sacrificially as well.
That kind of love takes strength and because of that, should appeal to the cowboy crowd.
Neither brotherly love or sacrificial love should challenge a cowboy’s sense of masculinity. In fact, think about the men and cowboys you know out there and more often than not, it’s the ones who demonstrate these words in their own actions that are likely looked up to the most.
Jesus offers cowboys masculinity that isn’t toxic or weak
By Scott Hilgendorff / Cowboys of the Cross
Who we are as Christian men should be defined by Jesus’s teachings, the rest of the Bible and the work of the Holy Spirit as he works inside us as he helps us become more like Jesus.
There’s a real push from the political left against what they call toxic masculinity and many ideas from the Bible like man’s position in the family, upset people with those views who find those ideas offensive.
Then the political right pushes back against empathy, treating it like it’s a sign of weakness and goes against masculinity. It offends people with those views to suggest a man should care more about giving a family food than why they haven’t worked hard enough on their own to have what they need.
But let’s just focus on masculinity as a whole. A Christian man or cowboy’s masculinity can’t be toxic when he’s following Jesus but we have to be sure it’s his teachings we’re following, not our own versions. That’s where ideas that empathy is entirely wrong can creep in to our thinking.
There’s no weakness in loving our neighbors. We can’t confuse that with the word “love” as an emotion toward your neighbor. We don’t even have to like them. In this context, love is an action and takes real strength; especially when it’s our enemies we’re also called to love. Love as action is helping others, encouraging them, correcting harmful behavior, speaking what is good, right and true, building a home for a family in Africa, volunteering at a homeless shelter near you or taking food to the neighbor you don’t like when his wife is in the hospital. And especially, it is pointing others to a saving and life-transforming faith in Jesus Love is in how we treat others, what we do for people and what we say to them.
Following Jesus will strengthen any man. He will take you places you never thought you could or would go and show you gifts and abilities you never knew you had. When they’re used to honor God and point others to Jesus, they can’t ever be toxic. But Jesus challenges us.
Luke 6:27-28 But to you who are listening I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28 bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.
There’s plenty of direction for how we’re to treat everyone from family to neighbors to strangers but the hardest might actually be doing good for someone who hates us. Living out just those two verses isn’t for the weak.
1 Corinthians 16:13 Be on guard; stand firm in the faith; be courageous; be strong.
Cowboys and bull hands, horsemen, cattlemen and ranchers, don’t let our society’s view of masculinity or our lack of understanding of what the Bible teaches about love keep you from pursuing a life-changing relationship with Jesus. The Bible calls us to be strong, firm and courageous in our faith. There’s neither weakness or toxicity in any of that.
Cowboys of the Cross is a rodeo/bull riding ministry that leads cowboy church services at events and maintains an online presence to share the gospel and make disciples among the ranch and rodeo community. They can be found at CowboysOfTheCross.com
We have a big example of how to be fathers and men
By Scott Hilgendorff / Cowboys of the Cross
There continues to be a push against what it means to be a family, parents, fathers and men. Christians share the western world with a progressive culture that looks at the world differently from Biblical beliefs and wants to remove what it calls social constructs of what it means to be fathers and mothers. They are taking away biological distinctions and removing terms like father and mother and replacing them with “non-gestating” and “gestating” parent.
For Christians, the Bible is distinct on topics of gender roles and, of especial interest to the cowboy crowd, what it means to be fathers and men.
Not everyone in the rodeo community comes from good parents or had good fathers. There are many guys competing to prove something to themselves because in the rodeo arena, it’s them competing against the animal whether it’s a calf bolting across the arena or a bucking horse. It’s a chance to step out on their own, exert themselves and accomplish something not everyone can do and stand proud as men.
Many go on to become fathers but can be left without the role model they need to know how to be good dads themselves.
But the Bible gives us a clear role model to follow with a clear distinction of just what a father is, no matter how much a culture around us might want to remove those standards.
It’s Jesus Christ himself.
The issue and topic was raised at a father’s day service I got to attend at Castine Church all the way in the midwest in Ohio and much of this message is from that sermon by Pastor Greg Hyre.
While Jesus gives us so many examples of what Christians are to follow throughout scripture, we formally recognize God as not just our creator, but our father.
But Jesus makes something clear to his disciples in John.
John 14:6-11 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. 7 If you had known me, you would have known my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.”8 Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us.” 9 Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? 10
Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does his works. 11 Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, or else believe on account of the works themselves.
Jesus is God and God is Jesus.
There is no other example we need to turn to in order to understand what it looks like to be a father.
Jesus is that example and whether we are fathers or men, whether or not we had great dads of our own, it is Jesus who we should be striving to follow. Nothing more, nothing less.
It’s okay to ask God, “why?” There’s more to it though
By Caleb Crouch / Cowboys of the Cross
Do You Ever Ask Why?
Here’s a few words from Jesus Himself:
Matthew 5:45 AMPC “…for He makes His sun rise on the wicked and on the good, and makes the rain fall upon the upright and the wrongdoers [alike].”
It’s fully human to ask “why.”
But, it’s the enemy’s desire to create doubt toward God during these awful moments that cause us to ask this realistic question.
◦ It’s vital to understand Who is in control.
◦ It’s vital to understand the only just One.
◦ It’s vital to understand Who’s on your side.
◦ It’s vital to know that God makes no mistakes, if He allows it or brings you to it, He will bring you through it!
◦ It’s vital to accept the forbidden earthly journey, and say as Christ also said in the last moments of the garden: “Not My Will, But Thy Will Be Done.”
◦ It’s vital to surrender to whatever the Father allows, decides and wants — He will continue His work, working in and through you, and He will continue working ahead!
◦ God will be Who He’s always been, through eternity, and so will our adversary.
◦ One day, the adversary and all his slaves will be in hell forever!
◦ That same day, all who have chosen God — will be in heaven forever!
Guard yourself, if you ask “why,” just know there’s two directions this can lead you: to God or digging deeper into who God is, recognizing our dependence on Him and humility in our true position.
◦ Guard to always choose your trust God
◦ Guard to resist the devil and his awful lies, plans, and terror.
◦ Guard to not mislead those around.
God will always, always, always come through.
God is always working, even in the face of impossibility.
God will bring you through it, if you can stand the pull!
His presence has never been limited by man’s limitations!
It’s okay to ask “why,” but do it with humility toward God, surrender to Him which will likely need you to fill that gap, and to understand you belong to God.
God knows where we are, exactly what we face, and most important: He cares about you!
Going further by Philip Crouch:
It is okay to ask “why,” but I must make sure the attitude of my heart is right.
This is accomplished by remembering that God is good (always) and any evil that may befall me cannot come from Him (even though He allows it). “God is light and in Him is no darkness at all.” 1 John 1:5
This is accomplished by practicing “in everything give thanks” 1 Thessalonians. 5:18. This is easy to do in the good times but also easy to forget to do. It’s vital that I make this a habit during the “good times” so that when the hard times come praise and thanksgiving to God will be my first instinct.
This is accomplished by remembering “that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.” Romans 8:28
Choose praise over complaining.
Choose trust over fear.
Choose thanksgiving over want.
Choose peace in the midst of turmoil.
Choose joy in times of grief
This is how I guard the attitude of my heart when asking “why.”
A humble birth we should still be praising
By Scott Hilgendorff / Cowboys of the Cross
Chances are, Jesus wasn’t born in a stable. That doesn’t make his birth any less humble.
The idea of donkeys and cattle being gathered around is not as likely either.
Those ideas, while appealing to cattlemen, ranchers and cowboys, came along later and now, we grow up singing Christmas carols and songs that reference them and as kids, we grew up with television specials that depicted those kinds of images. Those images are everywhere from expensive pieces of art and home decor to jigsaw puzzles and Christmas cards. It’s understandable that we would make these assumptions when we consider the Christmas story.
I remember as a new believer, hungry to learn more from God’s word every day, that I was looking forward to adding reading what we call the Christmas story from Luke 2, into my Christmas traditions. Christmas morning, I opened my Bible and settled in to read through it. By verse seven, it was all but over in less than a minute of reading.
Luke 2:7 “And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.”
There was no urgent knocking on doors in effort to find a place to stay as Mary was in labor. There was no description of the stable or animals gathered around. The story does continue with an angel of the Lord appearing before shepherds and of their journey to see the newborn Savior but there are very few details describing that manger scene we can all picture in our minds.
The manger, a feeding trough, is our clue that there likely were animals present and Jesus’s birth most certainly was still humble, but according to Steve Mathewson from an article with The Gospel Coalition. Most English translations of the Bible use the word inn but the Greek word being used is “katalyma” which, in two other places of the Bible, Mark, 14:14 and Luke 22:11, translate to “guest room.”
In that time period, historical understanding tells us there was often a downstairs room where animals might be kept for their heat and to keep them protected and it’s likely because there was no room in the guest room where they hoped to stay, Jesus was born in a downstairs family room where a feed trough, a manger, would still be present to feed the animals brought in there at night.
It just doesn’t leave room for donkeys and cattle.
It doesn’t mean we should stop singing, “Away in a Manger” and “The Little Drummer Boy;” it means we need to remind ourselves how careful we have to be with God’s word. It’s easy to let our culture influence how we interpret scripture when it’s scripture that needs to influence our culture.
As we think about the Lord’s humble birth and being placed in that manger, a powerful scene from our Christmas stories of an angel of the Lord appearing to a group of shepherds, an ancient version of modern cowboys, to tell them of Jesus’s arrival.
Then, even more stunning, in Luke 2:13, “Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God…”
The shepherds went to see Jesus and from all their experiences, went home praising and glorifying God.
Whether or not Jesus was born in a stable, Jesus’s birth was still both humble and spectacular from the manger to the presence of countless angels before the shepherds.
These are details we know for certain from Scripture and are our inspiration to praise the arrival Jesus just the same as the shepherds this Christmas season, letting our celebration be one that praises God for what He did for us in sending a Savior to die for our sins. His death and resurrection gives eternal life to those repentant of their sins, seeking forgiveness through a saving faith in who Jesus was, born that day in a manger, and who he is now in Heaven.
Loving enemies is what we’re commanded to do
By PRCA Rodeo Photographer, Dave McKissick
Psalms 119:71 It is good for me that I was afflicted, that I might learn your statutes.
This verse has been a staple in my life the past few months. It has reminded me over and over that when afflictions or adversity come, the Word must always be the first place I look for answers and my guide on how to respond.
While I don’t enjoy the adversities, I greatly enjoy the opportunity to grow in my intimacy with Father through it.
For the past year I have been developing some discipleship material. Because the concept and principles of discipleship are so broad and interconnected it has been a very slow process. However, I believe that I am finally narrowing in on the true concept of discipleship, LOVE!
John 13:34-35 “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
The mark of Jesus’ disciples is love. Obviously, we are to love God, (Deut 6:5), our brothers (1 John 4:7-21), our neighbors (Lev 19:18), but we are also to love our enemies (Luke 6:27-36)! The world tells us that we have many enemies and that we are to turn our backs on them or try to destroy them, but Scripture commands us to love them! No options, no exceptions!
Scripture tells us that our words and actions come from our hearts (Pro 23:7 and Mat 15:18-19). Therefore, the first step towards discipleship must be guarding our hearts, filling it with godly thoughts and allowing the Spirit to control our responses to the world. Apathy and inertia (I don’t care and if I did care, I wouldn’t do anything about it) are not love and they may actually be the opposite of love. Either way, they are tools that Satan uses to keep us from loving. He fills us with the hate of the world and convinces us that it is right to hate “them” because of what they have done or because they are different from us. But that is not how Jesus tells us to act.
We all have “those people” who we don’t want to love but we must, WE MUST, overcome those biases and prejudices that allow us to be comfortable in our apathetic inertia, or actual hate towards them.
Seeing people as anything other than God’s creation, someone who God loves and Jesus died for, indicates a prejudice/bias towards that person. That is not love. Let us not forget that at one time, we were all enemies (haters) of God. How did He respond to us? (Rom 5:8-10)
The Christmas story is the best love story in history. May this be the year where we start embracing God’s example to love our enemies and to love like Jesus loved.
Be the reason someone asks you, “why?”
By Scott Hilgendorff / Cowboys of the Cross
Be the reason someone asks you why.
Not, why would you get on the back of a bull or why you’d risk your thumb roping.
But… Why did you pay that guy’s fees when you know you aren’t going to see the money again?
Why did you help that guy change a tire when you were already late for the rodeo? Why did quit drinking? Why did you just now decide to apologize for your part in that fight we got into last year?
Let your faith in Jesus change you so much that people start noticing it and asking why. And then, most importantly, be ready to explain it with your own clear understanding of the gospel: God’s plan for salvation that changed you.
2 Corinthians 5:17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!
We know we aren’t going to be perfect the moment we have a saving faith in Jesus but God sees us as perfect anyway. When we have a saving faith in Jesus, that means the Holy Spirit is now at home in us and through that, we are now something new. Through the Holy Spirit, or sometimes we refer to Christ being in us as Paul says here, we begin a process known as sanctification; becoming more like Jesus every day. Whether we experience big changes all at once or little ones along the way, it can be different for each but proof to ourselves of our salvation is that we are different than we were before. When our saving faith is real, we are not left the same as we were.
Those changes are what people begin to notice and they may start asking different questions like why don’t we go to the bar with them anymore.
Sometimes our friends might feel like the changes we make mean we suddenly think we’re better than them or that we’re judging them when we start living differently from them. Sometimes they might see such a positive shift in our attitude that they want to know why or what happened.
Whether they approach us out of a negative or positive reaction, we need to be ready to explain it to them.
1 Peter 3:15 but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect,
The hope Peter is referring to is our understanding that a perfect eternity is waiting for us in Heaven no matter how hard life here can get. He wants us to be ready to explain it to others who see we look at life differently now as Christians. This is a major way that others can come to a saving faith in Jesus through us.
If you identify yourself as a Christian but nothing about how your life is changing, let me ask you the hard question: why isn’t it?
Then let us offer to help you dig deeper into your faith and find a closer, changing relationship with Jesus.
Just because we can express an opinion doesn’t mean we should
By Scott Hilgendorff / Cowboys of the Cross
Just because we can, doesn’t mean we should. Social media gives everyone of us the ability to share our opinions. But does that mean we should? We are out there every chance we get expounding on what we think about issues. I mean, it’s our right after all, even when we don’t even know for sure if we’re right.
Proverbs 1:7 The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge,
but fools despise wisdom and instruction.
To fear the Lord doesn’t mean to be afraid of God but to approach Him with deep respect for who He is. Part of that is the source of all knowledge we should follow. A fool would ignore godly advice and instruction that they know comes either from their own reading of scripture or someone they know and trust is careful in how they teach it.
Proverbs 12:15 The way of fools seems right to them,
but the wise listen to advice.
For Christians, the first knowledge or biblical truth we should master is the gospel, God’s plan for salvation. When we have a saving faith in Jesus, a desire grows in us to become like Jesus and we do that by seeking knowledge and wisdom from scripture. As we learn, when we know it’s biblically correct, it’s ours to teach to someone else as we build relationships with other believers. We should all have people we know and trust are wise in the biblical counsel we give. As we grow, we should also become that person who others can trust.
We have to always be aware of fools in all things. There are fools sharing all sorts of ideas about every subject and issue you can imagine that can lead someone to harm and into false ideologies. There are Christians who mean well, and some who don’t, that share ideas about their faith that can actually lead us further from Jesus instead of toward him.
We have to be careful who we follow and as Christians, before we post an opinion we are burning to put out there, we should ask ourselves some questions first:
Do I know this is true?
Does it edify (lift another person up)?
If someone believes differently from me but knows I’m a Christian, does this make someone else want to pursue Christianity or does it turn someone away?
If it’s a believer seeing it, does it draw them closer to Jesus or away.
If it doesn’t help, and just adds to all the noise, maybe it’s best left unsaid so we can be thought of as wise and not a fool.
Proverbs 17:28 Even fools are thought wise if they keep silent,
and discerning if they hold their tongues.