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.
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.
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