By Scott Hilgendorff / Cowboys of the Cross
When you become a Christian, you don’t give up being a cowboy; you become something more as a Christian cowboy.
You don’t give your strength as a man to become a Christian but the need to let go of pride and humble ourselves can be one of the biggest stumbling blocks to someone having a saving faith in Jesus.
Pride and the need to make ourselves humble rub against cowboy thinking when we hear God’s plan for salvation and the need to make Jesus the Lord of our lives.
Men work life out for themselves. Even if we know it, we don’t want to accept or admit when we need help. We think it makes us look weak, we think it means we can’t take care of ourselves or provide for our families. We can end up missing out on God’s entire plan for salvation for us because submitting to Jesus feels like letting go of who we are.
We have this mistaken idea of Christian men being weak because they’re asked to treat others with kindness. We fail to understand just how hard it is and how much strength it takes
We see self-control as weak. Popping someone in the mouth who has offended us is seen as a show of strength, failing to understand the meekness, holding back that show of force, takes real strength.
We misunderstand what the Bible means when we hear people say, “Jesus is love.” We think that means walking around hugging everyone and smiling all the time.
What it really means is the most physically powerful man on Earth loved us so much that he suffered incredible beating and torture to die horrifically as a sacrifice in our place so we could have eternal life. And that we don’t have to do anything to earn it or deserve it.
Ephesians 2:8-9 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.
The faith being spoken about by Paul in this letter to one of the early churches is what it means to have a saving faith in Jesus. We first believe that Jesus was the Son of God, that he did in fact die on the cross to take the punishment meant for our sins and that he was resurrected to Heaven and lives there now. That’s the faith part of a saving faith. Our salvation comes from understanding God is going to punish any and all sin. It’s how He is fair to us all. But how He also loves us, Jesus’s sacrifice on the cross was meant to take God’s full judgment and wrath in our place. By first our faith and then repenting of our sin and asking to be forgiven, we don’t have to do anything else and we receive that forgiveness and the gift of eternal life in Heaven.
You don’t give up being a cowboy. God already made you one. When you become a Christian, a follower of Christ, you become so much more than you already are.
You don’t suddenly stop being a cowboy, but what does change is your desire to understand the Bible and live out the teaching found there, especially the teachings Jesus left behind for us.
God will use every strength and skill He gave you from knowing how to manage a herd of cattle to working on a car to serve Him and help others while living out what is still your normal day-to-day life. Some of us will gradually go on to bigger Christ-centered work through churches and ministries but those become welcome changes.
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.
We should be excited that God already has plans for us and the strength He has given us.
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