by admin | Jul 28, 2026 | Behind the Bucking Chutes
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 creep in.
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
by admin | Jun 23, 2026 | Behind the Bucking Chutes
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.
by admin | Feb 5, 2026 | Behind the Bucking Chutes
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.”
by admin | Dec 13, 2025 | Behind the Bucking Chutes
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.
by admin | Dec 3, 2025 | Behind the Bucking Chutes
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.
by admin | Oct 14, 2025 | Behind the Bucking Chutes
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.
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