by admin | Oct 23, 2024 | Behind the Bucking Chutes
By Scott Hilgendorff / Cowboys of the Cross
Whether on the ranching, rodeo or horseman side, a cowboy is known for being tough, independent and taking care of work and life on his own. There are times when there’s no way around it and we just need some help, but otherwise, it’s seen as being weak to not be able to take care of ourselves, our animals and our families.
For Christians, we have to look at it a little differently by letting go of at least some of our pride. People who don’t have a saving faith in Jesus just see their strength as their own and their circumstances are whatever they made them.
With Jesus, we realize that nothing we do is accomplished without him. That can hurt our egos a little until we start to understand better what it means to “walk with Jesus.”
John 15:3-5 Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you. 4Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. 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.
These verses are most often taught to show us that when our faith in Jesus is real, we produce fruit through having Jesus as a deep part of our lives. Fruit are the good, God-honoring actions and attitudes we produce in our lives and when we have been saved through our faith in Jesus and our repentance of sin, he abides in us. We can’t help it and as a result, everything we do is through Jesus.
More of the verses teach us that without Jesus, we are eternally separated from God, unable to do anything in this life that would be seen as fruit—actions and attitudes that honor God.
While life can still be difficult and we can face struggles and challenges we haven’t even imagined yet, if we take the time to think through these verses, we can realize we aren’t alone in our struggle and we’re going to have the strength we need from having Jesus in us.
Ephesians gives us something similar that we can also found encouraging.
Ephesians 2:10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
God created us to to good works, which is also another word for fruit. Even when we struggle, God has plans for us that are already set out. That means we have Christ going through it all with us. When we are following what God wants us to do, Christ is there to give us the strength to do it, working along side us as we saw in John.
That means we can pursue what God wants us to do with every expectation of it working out the way God intends it to. Life can still be hard and not go the way we want it to, but God will use us in ways that build up His kingdom. There is hope and purpose for us if we can understand and accept that as true.
by admin | May 2, 2024 | Behind the Bucking Chutes
By Scott Hilgendorff / Cowboys of the Cross
For Christians in the cowboy crowd, or those who at least believe in God, one of two things seems to happen when a cowboy hits rock bottom.
The first: he shares publicly with everyone who will listen how bad things are, how bad he feels about it and how much he wants to change. It often includes social media posts and that generate lots of encouragement, especially when he says he wants to get things right with God and is going to make some serious life changes.
The second: he shares with a couple people close to him the struggle and asks for help coming to Jesus as he experiences a deep feeling of repentance and a desire to understand what it really means to be a Christian; a follower of Christ.
The first has good intentions but is likely dealing with guilt or self-pity over whatever circumstances have led to him finding himself at rock bottom which can be any number or combination of these examples or plenty of others that aren’t mentioned here: lost marriage or girl friend, lost job, impending jail time, loss of visitation rights with children.
But when feeling guilty over what has happened is the dominant reason for professing to want to change, it’s far less likely that any lasting change will take place.
The first happens far more often than the second and that’s just how it is supposed to be because scripture tells us that the number of people who make it to Heaven is going to be a small percentage of the population.
I’ve shared with the first person free access to an otherwise paid Christian teaching service with all kinds of videos and lessons, many of them short and simple, to help a person grown and “get right with God” as they have said they want to do. The Cowboys of the Cross website and YouTube channel have more than 300 videos and written devotions and sermons to help and usually when I send that to the first person, he tells us he’s going to take a look at the site but never does.
When rock bottom brings about real repentance, you have the second person and God begins to do a work in him to bring about real change and transformation.
Ephesians 4:20-24 17 Now this I say and testify in the Lord, that you must no longer walk as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their minds. 18 They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. 19 They have become callous and have given themselves up to sensuality, greedy to practice every kind of impurity. 20 But that is not the way you learned Christ!— 21 assuming that you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, 22 to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, 23 and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, 24 and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.
In this letter from Paul, he is describing both types of people: the ones whose hearts are not ready for change and the ones who are and have become new ‘selves’ transformed by their faith in Jesus and becoming more like him; more righteous and holy. By that, we understand we aren’t perfect and if we’ve hit rock bottom, we may have a long way to go to ever become like Jesus but like all Christians, day by day we begin to grow and change more into his likeness.
Without a saving faith in Jesus, we can climb back up from the bottom but nothing about our nature is truly changed.
by admin | Apr 18, 2024 | Behind the Bucking Chutes
By Scott Hilgendorff / Cowboys of the Cross
If there’s ever a time when people in the cowboy culture pray, it’s at a rodeo or bull riding before competing. Some pray not to be hurt, some pray to win, some pray for the stock and some just use it as quiet time to talk to God.
The Bible gives us lots of examples of praying to God to meet our needs as well as verses that tell us not to worry; that God will provide.
Matthew 7:11 If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!
When we look at just this verse without context and careful understanding of the power a single word in the verses before it, it sounds like God will give us more than we could dream if we just have faith and ask. It’s a common belief but it comes from not having a more full understanding of God’s word.
Here is the whole section:
Matthew 7:7-11 7 “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. 8 For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. 9 Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? 10 Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? 11 if you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!
The word we need to look at closely: “Seek.”
Seeking means we are looking hard into what it is we should be asking God for. Are we trying to follow His will for our lives? Then we would be seeking what we need to follow His direction for us. Are we looking for ways to share the gospel or love our neighbors as Jesus commands us? Then we would be seeking what we need to accomplish that.
And then we would trust that if our parents, who are flawed compared to God’s greatness, are going to meet our needs, then we trust even more that God will give us what we need.
In James chapter 4, he comes at the issue from a different direction, explaining how it’s our nature to want things for our own, selfish desires to the point it can lead to fights and even murder—something we still see in society today. He explains to us that this is why it sometimes seems like God isn’t giving us what we want.
James 4:3 3You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.
It’s okay to want to win the rodeo, but what is our motivation? If we’re digging into what it means to be a Christian, a follower of Jesus, then we should be wanting what Jesus would want us to do or what the Bible teaches us about living out our faith. We know in Scripture that we are meant to live in a way that glorifies God. So how can our win be used to give Him glory or point others to Jesus? It can and if what we pray for lines up with what God wants for us, we could see that win come our way.
And if that win doesn’t come, no matter how hard we were seeking God before we asked for it, then we also trust that our loss, even at a time when we personally needed the money or confidence, is still a better gift than what even our own parents could want for us. It just may take some time to see what God was doing in that moment and we rely on God’s strength to endure what feels like a struggle and trust that everything works together for His good–and we get to be a part of that, even when it feels hard for us.
by admin | Mar 21, 2024 | Uncategorized
By Scott Hilgendorff / Cowboys of the Cross
Do you ever get frustrated that someone you know rejects God and the Bible but always seems to come out on top?
Maybe it’s a team roper or bull rider who lives how he wants, parties hard, treats others badly but just won that year- end buckle while you’ve tried to live right by God’s word and always come up short in the money. Maybe you’ve been tithing faithfully
You aren’t alone. Asaph expresses those frustrations in Psalm 73, 3,000 years ago.
In this Psalm, he describes the wicked as seeming to gain more and more. He openly shares his own envies as their status increases while he is left to feel like God is punishing him.
Through it all, he describes how faithful he has been to what God commands, doing what is right while others continue to flourish.
He realizes his negative thoughts toward God are causing him to stumble and he reminds himself of who he is to God and that the wicked are going to perish while he will be with God for eternity.
He shares frustrations many of us have experienced. We do everything we can to follow God’s word and somehow, those who live how they want to live in sin, seem to be the ones getting ahead and we feel like we’re getting further behind.
As he shares your frustrations, he still comes back to the reality that God is still everything to him.
Psalm 73:26 My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.
Life may not always go as we want it to, but we have to remind ourselves that when we have repented of our sin and asked to be forgiven through a saving faith in Jesus and what he did for us on the cross by taking time punishment meant for our sins, we have a perfect forever waiting for us in Heaven.
We are sometimes mislead by the idea that becoming a Christian means life will keep getting better and better. We forget this is a fallen world and that because Adam and Eve chose sin, we live in a world where bad things really do happen to good people. It isn’t God that does it to us, it’s God that has offered us an eternity free of this sinful world when we pass away while those who do not have a saving faith suffer an eternity in hell.
That doesn’t mean we should take joy in knowing what waits for those who reject God and the way to salvation through Jesus; it means we should take comfort in knowing our hope is in eternity.
“God of the is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.”
It’s hard for us to understand how short our time here is and even if nothing ever goes the way we want it to, we have a perfect eternity waiting for us. We have a time fast approaching where everything is made right and it will last forever.
by admin | Oct 12, 2023 | Behind the Bucking Chutes
By Scott Hilgendorff / Cowboys of the Cross
Waiting to do cowboy church at a rodeo recently and just wandering around behind the chutes at a rodeo, I saw a young bull rider with a Bible in his hand. It’s not a common sight anymore so that in itself was encouraging. Was he giving it to someone? Did he want to share something from it with one of the other guys that might have asked him a faith-based question?
Nope, it was with him to read it.
In all the noise and commotion around him with music blasting, rodeo cowboys getting their gear ready and countless other distractions, he stepped off to the side and leaned on a low section of wall around the arena to open his Bible up and read from it.
He spent about 10 minutes with headphones in, ignoring everything around him, reading from his Bible. Afterward, I asked him what he had been reading and it was a chapter in Isaiah.
Even at a rodeo you can find a little of what is referred to as quiet time. ‘Quiet time’ is kind of a church-speak phrase but it takes its example from the Bible. In church terms, quiet time is usually time spent alone studying the Bible and in prayer, obviously with the idea that you’re doing it somewhere without distractions.
Many Christians strive to make this a part of their daily routines to grow closer to God as they talk to Him and learn from His word to us in the books of the Bible.
People didn’t have a Bible to carry around then, all of what we know as the New Testament, hadn’t even been started, so there are no specific verses directing us to make this quiet time with our Bibles. However, there are plenty of scriptures that give us an example of Jesus taking time away from the crowds to spend with God.
Several times, Jesus would go off by himself to spend time with God.
Mark 1:35 And rising very early in the morning, while it was still dark, he departed and went out to a desolate place, and there he prayed.
The verse in Mark was between an intense period of time Jesus spent teaching and working miracles. He broke away from the crowds to be alone to pray. Then in Luke, early is his time teaching, he had just healed a man with leprosy and word was spreading of the miracles he was working. It was causing crowds to gather and follow him. The work he was doing was essential to God’s plan for salvation, but he still broke away to spend time alone with God.
Luke 5:15-16 But now even more the report about him went abroad, and great crowds gathered to hear him and to be healed of their infirmities. 16 But he would withdraw to desolate places and pray.
The clearest example is for us to make time to pray but as Christians, now armed with Bibles we understand is the main way God speaks to us, it only makes sense that we follow Jesus’s example and take time to not just pray but also read what we know to be God’s word to us.
And while the example Jesus gave us was to go away in isolation, even in a crowded place, this cowboy still managed to make a quiet place for himself to spend a few minutes in the Bible to put God first before getting his mind on the business of competing.
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