by admin | Jan 6, 2023 | Behind the Bucking Chutes
By Scott Hilgendorff / Cowboys of the Cross
As we get rolling on the new year, some of you have set resolutions and goals. I’m not here to say don’t do that, I’m here to say, don’t set yourself up for failure.
Resolutions and goals can be traditional like hitting the gym harder or deciding to win a buckle, event or qualify for a finals. They can also be something harder as a Christian resolving to end an activity, habit or lifestyle choice that is a sin issue for you.
Not a bad idea at all for us to want to fight against sin in our life. It’s often seen as evidence that our salvation in Jesus Christ is real, when we desire to move away from sin and be more like him.
Romans 6:14 For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law but under grace.
So right away, we see an encouragement that sin is no longer in control of our lives because we’re not under law.
What that means for Christians is that once we have a saving faith in Jesus Christ, there is no longer anything else we have to do to be right with God and gain entry to Heaven when we die.
Before Jesus, the Jews had complicated rules that had to be followed in order to be in right standing with God. Then Jesus came so that not just the Israelites, but all of us, could be made right before God and gain entry to Heaven. Many of the rules the Israelites followed involved sacrifices. Jesus came to be a final sacrifice and through his death, he took on the punishment that otherwise would be given by God for any sin we have and that would otherwise keep us from his presence in Heaven and instead be left condemned to Hell. By believing Jesus was the Son of God, died for our sins, also was resurrected, we can be saved from God’s punishment of sin by truly being repentant of our sin and asking to be forgiven.
THEN we have grace, the second part of what is mentioned in the verse from Romans. We are no longer going to be judged by God and there is nothing else we have to do to earn more from Him. Jesus gave himself to give us everything.
It doesn’t give us permission to live sinful lives and do whatever we want to do, but it gives us grace for when we mess it up. It means if we fail at a resolution, fail to make a change, fail to fully conquer a sin we struggle with or fail to live up to any standard we or others set for us, God loves us the same and, through what Jesus did for, sees us as perfect and is waiting to welcome us to Heaven.
You are free to set your goals, make your resolutions, but you’re also free to fail WITHOUT discouragement. Jesus loves you more than you could ever hate your biggest mistake or failure. That’s why he died for you. YOU.
If you haven’t found that saving faith in Jesus, you don’t have to wait for midnight to have it, you can repent and be forgiven right now.
If you are a Christian, well, go get it with the confidence that win or lose, you get it all in the end.
Happy New Year from all of us at Cowboys Of the Cross. We look forward to every opportunity you give us this year to try to serve you, minister to you or otherwise help you know Jesus or become more like him. We’re all works in progress right alongside you.
by admin | Dec 15, 2022 | Behind the Bucking Chutes
By Scott Hilgendorff / Cowboys of the Cross
People who oppose Christianity will sometimes look for contradictions in scripture to prove to them it isn’t true. I did when I was trying to decide what I believed. What they find instead are contradictions to how they want to live their lives. Either way, they walk away from it.
I think that’s one of the biggest struggles for the cowboy crowd: they see it as a book of rules asking them to live their lives differently so they reject it. At best, they decide for themselves, contradicting scripture they will never read, that as long as they believe in God and judge themselves a decent enough human being, they’ll be there in Heaven.
I was raised in church
My grandaddy was a preacher
I talk to God every day in the barn.
I know my blessings come from God.
I go to a good church.
I read my Bible and go to cowboy church at the rodeos.
I believe Jesus was born in that manger
I believe in God and am a good person.
My family are Christians.
None of this saves you from God’s judgment.
James 2:19 You believe that there is one God. Good! Even the demons believe that—and shudder.
James tells us even the demons believe in God. Clearly it takes something else for us to get to Heaven.
They’re missing what it means to have a saving faith in Jesus and while they judge themselves to be good enough, fail to grasp they’re not going to pass God’s final judgment without a life transformed by Jesus.
Instead, a life condemned to Hell is waiting for them, no matter how ‘good’ they believe they are.
But the Bible isn’t a book full of rules you have to follow to get to Heaven. The Bible guides us to how to live more like Jesus but most importantly, it points to him and how to be saved from God’s judgement. Once we have that salvation, we don’t suddenly stop being who are, but God still immediately sees us as made completely new, without sin.
2 Corinthians 5:17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.
We would rather hold on to our old selves than be made new by a saving faith in Jesus. Instead of worrying about what we lose or give up to be a Christian, we should be chasing after that perfect eternity in Heaven harder than we chase after a championship buckle. Without Jesus, the buckle might be the best reward you ever receive.
With Jesus comes a perfect eternity and a life here that becomes more about what we are becoming and less about who we are holding onto. And while following Jesus becomes the priority, it makes every other part of your life better from the wins to the losses. You get so much more than you think you’re giving up; here and especially after.
by admin | Dec 1, 2022 | Behind the Bucking Chutes
By Scott Hilgendorff / Cowboys of the Cross
To get better at something, you sometimes have to increase your level of difficulty setting.
I sometimes get to lead cowboy church at a bull riding practice pen on Sunday afternoons. Most recently, a guy showed up with another bull rider who had never been on a bull before. He asked if he could get on the biggest bull they had. He didn’t do it in front of everyone to call attention to himself and there was no one there for him to impress. If he was going to try bull riding, this guy decided he needed to be all-in.
That illustrates one simple point we know from different teachings in scripture about the need to be committed, serious and all-in when it comes to our faith.
But here’s where it takes an important turn.
The producer and stock contractor was frustrated because he has an amateur division of bull riders who never turn out to practice. They typically buck the more rank bulls at the practice pen with the purpose being to help the riders get better. The frustration comes when these guys have ridden 50 or more bulls at the amateur level and won’t come to the pen to get on stock that is actually less likely to hurt them and more likely to help the build their skills.
Many seem to just seem content keeping it easy. Many of us do the same thing with our Christianity.
Hebrews 5 12-14 In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! 13 Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. 14 But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.
In these verses, the author, possibly Paul, is urging Christians to move from milk to solid food, meaning he wants to see them growing in their knowledge of Jesus Christ and what he had to teach.
Back at the practice pen, the new guy had an amazing experience and while he wishes he had wore a helmet, indicated he would the next time. He jumped into the sport at a harder level and even though he got banged up a little, he’s coming back for more.
You’re only going to learn so much getting on the jump-kicker bulls, you stand a better chance of falling off underneath one and getting hurt and unless you get on some ranker stock, you’re never going to get past that level.
We know as Christians that we will never be perfect like Jesus here in this life. But we know that we’re going through a process that will help us to become more like him, called sanctification. We can sit back and rest in our salvation and resist digging into God’s word and trying to apply it to our lives and situations and God will still welcome us.
But why would we want to settle and not have the chance to be at least a little more like Jesus now?
That’s why Paul urges us to get off milk and onto solid food, practicing what we’re learning and become more Christ-like as we train ourselves here and now for eternity in Heaven.
Back at the practice pen, we’re training ourselves to move up into professional competition where some will become world champions at the NFR or PBR. In our faith, we’re training ourselves to be more like Jesus.
We can understand the basics in scripture, milk, or we can dig in and let God’s word change us as we understand it more, being fed solid food. Solid food is what prepares us to deal with the challenges and consequences of living in
Or we can just keep getting on jump kickers and never be more than an amateur bull rider.
by admin | Nov 17, 2022 | Behind the Bucking Chutes
By Scott Hilgendorff / Cowboys of the Cross
It’s the Thanksgiving season when families gather and give thanks for all they have in a giant meal together.
When the holiday is focused on a big meal, it also causes us to focus on thoughts around provision and ideas around the theme of the fall harvest of crops and how fortunate we are to have som much to eat.
When we look at what we can be thankful for, a lot of it leads us to thoughts about what’s been provided. Cattle prices are good, we’re thankful. If feed prices are low, we’re thankful.
The Thanksgiving season prompts us to be thankful for what we have or are given. We often use the term “blessed” and that is part of what leads us to associating being thankful for the good things we have.
“I was blessed to win the rodeo last night.”
“I won the year end buckle, #blessed.”
Search the hashtag “Blessed” on social media sites and there will be thousands of those kinds of statements from Christians and non-Christians alike across every lifestyle.
So do we ever consider it a blessing when we enter a rodeo eight times in a row and lose each time, or when something far worse happens?
1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 “Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.”
This verse tells us a lot about the state of mind Christians should maintain. We should always be rejoicing, understanding the salvation God has given us through Jesus Christ.
We should always be thoughtful about praying. When we see a situation unfold, pray. When we have a worry, pray. When we are making a decision, pray. When something good happens, pray—giving thanks.
When something bad happens, pray—giving thanks.
It says all circumstances.
But here’s what James has to say about why a bad situation is worth both being joyful and praising and thanking God.
James 1: 2-4 Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, 3 because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. 4 Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.
God can use the worst of our circumstances to continue building our faith and our ability and willingness to persevere through the trial or struggle, to bring about Christian maturity in us—to make us more like Jesus Christ.
Anything that makes us more like Jesus should be worth thanking God for when we learn to value who Jesus is and put our hope and faith in him.
In 1 Thessalonians, Paul who wrote the letter, is telling us that because of our saving faith in Jesus, it’s God’s will for us to rejoice, pray and give thanks in everything.
As the holiday season gives us a reason to think about our blessings and give thanks, be encouraged if you’re going through something challenging or that feels impossible, that God isn’t going to let it do anything but make you more like Jesus and that’s something to be thankful for.
by admin | Oct 26, 2022 | Behind the Bucking Chutes
By Scott Hilgendorff / Cowboys of the Cross
There was a weekly bull riding that used be held on Tuesday nights that I would get to go and lead cowboy church at. A young man there knew everyone, never entered but always talked about the other events he had been at and won.
It was explained to me pretty quickly that he had some kind of social disorder and was making it up. The details he gave and his knowledge was incredible as he would describe being right at one of the entry-level PBR events with JB Mauney and others who, at the time, were working their way up.
Most people just went along with it and would let him tell his stories and occasionally someone knew would come along. It became a problem when he was giving advice to one of the new guys on how to take a bull that he really didn’t know anything about. That guy was pretty upset that no one had warned him not to listen.
It can be easy to be fooled but even easier when we’re being told ideas we want to hear. For example, who wants to hear Bible verses that tell us to expect hardship to go along with being a Christian? We especially don’t want to hear that when we’re struggling and want encouragement.
In what was just that, an encouraging part of Paul’s second letter to Timothy, he warns that as Timothy is out there trying to teach communities about Jesus, others are out there delivering messages that sound good but cause people to miss the important truths—truths like how to come to a saving faith in Jesus Christ. Worse, Paul points out people will put effort into seeking out what they want to hear.
2 Timothy 4:3-4 For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. 4 They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.
This warning came to Timothy almost 2,000 years ago yet in our culture today, there is all kinds of false and bad teaching to be found. It’s profitable to only give people what they want to hear and avoid teaching verses, for example, about sacrifice and denying ourselves.
We have to take time to discern what’s right or wrong and real but when something sounds so close to the truth or has elements of the truth in it, how can you tell when it’s coming from a church or ministry?
Well, we have our Bibles for that and can test anything we’re being taught against Scripture. If you’re still not sure, you can ask others that you know and trust.
And the more time we spend learning real Biblical truths, we can still find all kinds of hope and encouragement in the God’s promises to us in the Old Testament or the messages of a perfect eternity found in Jesus Christ.
by admin | Oct 12, 2022 | Behind the Bucking Chutes
By Scott Hilgendorff / Cowboys of the Cross
If you’ve never been involved in the industries before, then you decide to ‘get into’ horses or ‘get into’ rodeo, it changes you.
You suddenly start wearing different clothes, you learn new terms and expressions that go with what you’re learning about the horse, I mean, not everyone knows what withers are or what a honda is on a rope. The people you spend time with change as you surround yourself with others who share your interest that you want to learn from or ride or rodeo with.
Friends and family will notice the changes when horses or rodeo become important to you and begin making it more a part of your every day life.
When we become Christians, it’s the same thing, only more.
It isn’t an interest we’re engaged in, it’s a complete transformation. Once we have a saving faith in Jesus, God no longer sees us for our sins that He must judge. Instead, He sees us through the sacrifice Jesus made, as perfect, extended grace for the mistakes He knows we will continue to make.
Ephesians 4:22-24 To put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.
There’s lots that can be unpacked in these two verses but we’re going to just focus on what Paul is saying in his letter about being the new self.
God no longer sees the old self that Paul refers to. The old self is corrupt and condemned. The new self is seen as righteous and holy. Really simplified, it means we’re now seen as perfect. This is one of the verses where we come to understand this is how God sees us once we are saved.
Again, it doesn’t mean we are perfect, it means God sees us that way despite mistakes we might continue to make. We start a process of becoming ‘sanctified’ which means being made more like Jesus Christ.
1 Peter 1:2 according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, by the sanctifying work of the Spirit, to obey Jesus Christ and be sprinkled with His blood: May grace and peace be yours in the fullest measure.
We understand that it’s through the Holy Spirit that we begin to change by what’s described as ‘the sanctifying work of the Spirit.”
Our friends and family might start seeing changes in us over night or gradually. For the person who decides to take up horsemanship or team roping, they choose to pursue those interests but as a Christian, the Spirit begins to work out those changes in us. We start to study our Bibles to learn more about how to be more like Jesus and to understand everything God has for us in His word. We connect with other believers we find at work or in rodeo or the sales barn and we find ourselves learning and spending time with them.
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