by admin | Sep 28, 2023 | Behind the Bucking Chutes
By Scott HIlgendorff / Cowboys of the Cross
We have a conservative and even Christian culture right now that is turning hard against anything that can be described with the term “woke.”
The obvious ones are the cultural topics around women’s issues that blur into issues about transgender rights that blur into issues about toxic masculinity. Movies and television shows seem to endlessly work these kinds of issues into their storylines while corporations work to champion various causes.
As they do this, boycotts are encouraged and a tactic is used that once seemed to largely only come from ‘the left’–cancellation. Cancel culture is becoming more widely used.
We have to be so careful that as woke agendas spread and efforts to push back against them grow, that somehow we don’t start canceling what Jesus teaches us that sometimes seems to go against our conservative values.
Anything from the pulpit that pushes us to support the poor can begin to sound like it follows a liberal view. Anything that pushes us to be kind to those who are different from us, even if they are trampling on our political freedoms, can begin to sound like it follows a liberal view. For the cowboy crowd, where strength, courage, toughness and independence are encouraged, anything that sounds like it pushes behavior we think of as weak, can lead us to want to rebel and push back.
2 Corinthians 12:9-10 But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
In a culture pushing back against what we consider ‘woke’, Paul admitting to his weakness begins to sound woke as well.
It’s easy to rebel against the idea of being content with weakness and taking insults. It’s easy to miss just who Paul is and what he is really telling us.
Paul turned his life around from being a persecutor of Christians to a someone who converted others to Christianity. Strength. He was shipwrecked and imprisoned awaiting death, yet continued to preach love and forgiveness. Strength.
Boasting in weakness? Strength!
Why?
Because it shows the world around us that when we are weak, and we all suffer times when we can’t handle a difficult circumstance, God’s grace toward us and His power to get us through that situation are made clear to others, giving them a chance to find a saving faith in Jesus. For us to be made strong by God, we first have to experience being weak.
In the months ahead, the worst thing we could do to our salvation and others’ is to start rejecting some of the teachings of Jesus because we don’t like it when he tells us to turn the other cheek or be kind to the person that hurt us.
It’s good for Christians to fight for their rights in freedoms, whatever country they are from. It’s best to do it while putting Jesus first.
Hebrews 13:8 Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.
by admin | Aug 24, 2023 | Behind the Bucking Chutes
By Scott Hilgendorff / Cowboys of the Cross
There’s a sad reality that not all of us had great fathers and while this may not be universal, it certainly is common that most of us want to make our fathers proud.
As toddlers, we test our parents and look to our fathers and mothers to set boundaries for us.
Many of us as we grow up look for our father’s approval either with good grades, doing well at a sport or handing him the right tool as you work on a car together.
I’m sure there are studies out there that debate back and forth how this is learned social behavior or that it is innate behavior that we are simply born with.
Because of my faith, I believe God made us that way.
And He didn’t do it to set our fathers up to fail. Jesus was the only perfect person to walk the Earth and while as children, we can develop high expectations for our parents, we can also suffer tremendous hurt and disappointment.
In rodeo, I get to know some amazing fathers out there and I get to know some cowboys whose fathers have utterly failed them. There are plenty of rodeo cowboys out there competing not for their father’s approval, but to prove something to themselves about their own strengths and abilities.
Whether we had the ideal father who rarely let us down, a father who abused us, a father who just couldn’t get it right all the time or if we had no father at all, God wants us to have a sense of belonging to a father who is perfect and will love us unconditionally.
Ephesians 1:3-6 3Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, 4 even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love 5 he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, 6 to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved.
The idea of adoption is a big part of the gospel, God’s plan of salvation for us.
Through a saving faith in Jesus, our genuine repentance of sin and desire to be forgiven of our sins, God adopts us into a Heavenly family in which He becomes our Heavenly Father. As our Father in Heaven, he loves us unconditionally. He sees us through the sacrifice Jesus made for us which means He sees us as perfect. No matter what we’ve done or how we think we might have failed ourselves or our families or in some part of our lives, He doesn’t see any of that.
Not only doesn’t He see it, He both makes us perfect and gives us a perfect life. No matter how great of terrible our fathers are or were here, there was just no way they could accomplish that. It doesn’t mean we should love our fathers any less, it means we should give them the same grace that God has given us and then embrace the gift of God’s grace that gets us through this life and into that perfect one in Heaven.
by admin | Aug 10, 2023 | Behind the Bucking Chutes
By Scott Hilgendorff / Cowboys of the Cross
Some of y’all got away without a rodeo fine and it shows.
Proverbs 10:17
Whoever heeds discipline shows the way to life,
but whoever ignores correction leads others astray.
The opening line is an attention-getting play on a meme that went around awhile back.
But there’s a truth to it. Where unpaid fines can mean fewer entries, there’s often a fear to issue them if it could affect a show. When it comes to issues like not showing up at a performance, that can have a costly impact on the producer and when there aren’t fines, it can turn this issue into a pattern of bad behavior. Then others, knowing they can get away with, do the same thing.
Rules are in place for a number of reasons: to keep order, to keep people from harm, to keep people from harming others.
Hundreds of verses in the Old Testament are rules that kept God’s chosen people in right standing with Him in addition to keeping order in their culture. Much of it is referred to as “The Law.”
Jesus came to fulfill the law. He died on the cross to take the punishment meant for our sins so that with a saving faith in him, repenting of our sin and asking to be forgiven, we no longer will be punished. Instead, we gain a perfect eternity in Heaven. We no longer have to follow any rules to be in right standing with God. Instead, through our salvation through Jesus, God sees us as perfect.
Even though the Bible is filled with instructions for us, God extends grace to us when we fail to follow them. It is never to give us an excuse to sin knowing we’re already forgiven; it allows us to move forward in this life without the burden of guilt or shame for the mistakes we’ve made.
But knowing we’ve been saved from God’s wrath, knowing the freedom we’ve been given from the burden of our mistakes and knowing the gift of a perfect eternity has been given to us, if our faith and salvation is real, how can we not want to try to live out a life that shows we’re being changed by what we are learning from our Bibles and the good biblical teaching out there? How can we not want to learn enough on our own so that we can also avoid the bad teaching that is out there, because there’s plenty of that to follow as well. Some of it is done with good intentions, much of it is not, all of it will lead you away from Jesus.
Yet many of us ignore the opportunities put in front of us, like this one right here, to learn and grow closer to Jesus, who saved us. For some, the hard reality is that our salvation was never real; our hearts never changed and we still don’t really understand the fullness of who Jesus is and what he did for us or we’ve never truly repented. For others, our salvation may be real but we still take advantage of God’s grace and love for us. Our Bibles sit unopened. We watch countless minutes of videos about anything other than ones posted by others right here in our cowboy and rodeo community that could teach us more. We ignore opportunities to attend cowboy church at a rodeo or we never set foot in a traditional church to learn more deeply than what can be offered at cowboy church.
If you’re in a good place with God and get all of this, what keeps you from sharing messages like this that could help point others to the need for Jesus? What keeps you from passing on to others anything deeper than the occasional self-help-sounding Bible verse or quote that may not even be in any kind of correct context; it just sounds good?
I’m grateful lately that God is showing me more people than ever in more than 20 years of ministry, that are not just listening at cowboy church but applying what they’re learning or, better yet, attending a traditional church when their rodeo schedule allows.
We don’t claim to be the best teachers out there and we can mess up sometimes like the rest of us, but every one of us that serves together under the Cowboys of the Cross umbrella, has a burden for you and the far bigger rodeo and cowboy crowd that are never going to see this message or give time to the other teaching we put out there week after week. We don’t do anything for attention for ourselves, but out of a desire to follow the Great Commission that God gave to all of us– to share the gospel (how to be saved) and to make disciples (teach others what Jesus taught us and God gave us through the Bible.)
We love you and want this for you: a perfect eternity in Heaven and a life transformed through a closer relationship with Jesus as we learn together from God’s word.
There are countless communities and people groups out there that need to hear and learn about Jesus. The cowboy crowd, full of strong, independent thinkers, isn’t an easy one, but I’m thankful God put me in this one because it has some of the most incredible people you could ever want to meet. It can sometimes be dysfunctional like any family, but that’s exactly what you get in this crowd: a family that looks out for one another. Let’s make looking out for each other’s souls a priority in this one.
by admin | Jul 20, 2023 | Behind the Bucking Chutes
By Scott Hilgendorff / Cowboys of the Cross
Your plan might be to make it to the NFR or PBR finals. It might be to double the size of your herd. But God’s plan might be different. Guess which one is guaranteed to work out?
If you could do anything you wanted to do without having to worry about success or failure, how hard it will be to accomplish or what it could cost you to do it, most of us would jump at it, especially knowing the path to success was cleared ahead of us.
Sure, it could still be a lot of hard work but when it’s something we want to do, we are glad to put the work in. And while the path all the way to the end might not be clear, when we know there is a path to success already cleared ahead for us, then there’s really nothing to hold us back from getting started.
When we are doing what God wants us to do, that’s exactly what happens.
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.
God has something prepared for you to do.
We can easily forget there’s a difference between our desires and God’s desires for us. We have to learn to think differently.
Romans 12:2 Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.
Our culture, the ‘world’ the verse in Romans is referring to, tells us how to measure success. In rodeo, it can be making it to the PBR finals or NFR. Locally, it can be seeing your client base as a farrier double or enough horses sold to build that bigger barn you need. It can be raising three kids that turn out to be good citizens.
What if that isn’t God’s will for you?
Paul is telling us we need to shift our thinking toward what God’s direction would be.
When we are trying to figure out what the right thing to do is, if we are being transformed as Paul mentions in Romans, then we know it will line up with scripture and that’s a good way for us to test and know if we’re doing God’s will versus following our own desire.
It could still be winning that rodeo on the weekend or qualifying for the NFR or it could be seeing your horse farm double in size. But if it is those kinds of successes, there will most definitely be opportunities through those to glorify God and point others to Jesus. It will never be just about ourselves.
And if we struggle on whatever path God has placed us on, how we struggle will glorify God. It will glorify Him if we learn from it and grow more Christlike and it will glorify Him if others see us approaching a challenge while remaining joyful.
Jesus has some encouraging words in John.
John 15:5 I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.
When we are following Jesus and his direction, there’s no reason we won’t find success. What we succeed at is determined by God and He we will get us there.
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.
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