by admin | Oct 29, 2025 | James
By Scott Hilgendorff / Cowboys of the Cross
Who knows that rodeo competitor who talks and acts like he wants to be a cowboy and a winner but also chases trouble. It’s often relationship after relationship that totally screws with his head. He draws out because the girl is angry he’s entered or he bucks off or misses his catch because his head is either on the fight they had or what Disney referred to as twitterpated in Bambi—caught up in the idea of being in love with the girl that he’s lost focus on everything else.
That’s a milder example of what can happen when we try to chase two different and opposite pursuits.
Now imagine if that cowboy had been seeking godly wisdom like James instructs us in Chapter 3 and, out of that wisdom, he knows he was called to compete as a Christian, setting an example for Christ. Becoming a top hand on either end of the arena was how God was going to use him to build relationships with others, first as a cowboy but then as a Christian, that would lead others to a saving faith in Jesus.
Being drawn into a bad relationship with a girl who isn’t a believer to begin with is a common mistake guys make and in this situation, could destroy everything God called that cowboy to do.
James 4: 1-10 What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? 2 You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. 3 You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions. 4 You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.
James shows us just how important it is to put God first.
When we find ourselves chasing our own passions, we can find our prayers coming up empty because we’re asking God for materialistic wants versus needs that line up with a life spent following God’s direction. It’s when our desires come from pursuing God that we see our prayers answered because our prayers will look very different when we’re not seeking our wants from Him.
James’ examples are much more extreme than our illustration and yet we can see them played out every day just by putting the news on television or reading through the headlines—we can see endless examples of conflicts leading to murder. James wants us to see that by pursuing our own desires and caring deeply about them can lead to chaos. At the least, our jealousy can lead us into conflict.
When we pursue our own desires, James says it’s like we commit adultery against God by putting our relationship with our desires ahead of God’s call on our life. By doing this, we make ourselves an enemy of God and it should give us pause to ask ourselves if we have a genuine saving faith in Jesus. Without that saving faith, we are all enemies of God because our sin separates us from Him and will fall under His judgment and condemnation when we die.
by admin | Apr 24, 2025 | James
By Scott Hilgendorff / Cowboys of the Cross
There’s an expression about taking a good look at yourself in the mirror. It’s usually said angrily and means the person being yelled at has done something wrong, often hypocritically, but doesn’t seem to get it.
James tells us something just as direct about looking at ourselves in the mirror but with a different point about our faith.
James 1: 22-25 Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. 23 Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror 24 and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. 25 But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in it—not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it—they will be blessed in what they do.
James wants us to take God’s word seriously and uses the example of us looking at our own reflection and then forgetting what we look to tell us how foolish it is to learn from God’s word and then do nothing about it.
In rodeo, this would be like a judge reading the rule book and then ignoring everything in it as he worked the rodeo.
Or a bronc rider being shown how to set his saddle but forgetting he needed a screwdriver and not being able to figure out how to adjust the stirrups after getting his new saddle.
James is stressing the importance of not just reading and learning about what’s in the Bible but acting on it.
What good does it do to know what Jesus wants of us if we don’t act on it? Most importantly, we can’t benefit from the Gospel if we don’t take action on it. Jesus and Paul, through scripture, tell us how to have eternal life, but it takes believing in who Jesus was and is, repenting and asking to be forgiven of our sin. All of these things are actions in response to what we learn from scripture.
But once we’ve embraced a saving faith in Jesus, when our salvation is real, we have a desire to follow Jesus and live out what the Bible teaches us.
James uses an exaggerated example of forgetting what we look like immediately after walking away from our reflection in a mirror as an example of how foolish it is for us to believe the Bible is real and do nothing with it.
When Jesus commands us in Matthew to love others, he wants us to do that. When Jesus shows us how to pray to God through what we know as “The Lord’s Prayer,” he expects us to pray to God. James is stressing to us the need to actively pursue following what God’s word tells us in the Bible.
He also reminds us how perfect that word is, another reason that it would be crazy not to follow it and do it what it instructs.
It certainly isn’t easy to live it all out perfectly but whether you’re a rodeo cowboy or a traditional cowboy on a ranch, who better to take action on the hard stuff than you?
by admin | May 15, 2024 | Behind the Bucking Chutes
By Scott Hilgendorff / Cowboys of the Cross
Fly high cowboy, your fees are paid.
Using some form of that phrase when someone in the rodeo cowboy crowd has died is fairly common.
The problem is, most people don’t really understand what they’re saying and it creates the false impression that we call go to Heaven when we die. I see it used by people I thought knew differently but they continually place a cowboy in Heaven who almost certainly didn’t enter that rodeo.
How can you say that? How can you know for sure? That’s judgmental.
Well, the reason I can say it with almost certainty is because I’d had an open and frank conversation with that person in question and he made it clear to me he didn’t believe in Jesus and wasn’t interested in it. He was someone I got along with and was explaining why he didn’t come to cowboy church at the rodeos we were often at together because he didn’t want me thinking it was personal. He made a lot of sinful or what I would consider “dumb” choices at best, but he was a nice guy who was well-loved by all those he partied with every weekend.
Here’s the kicker: most of the time when we share a social media post about a cowboy riding a rank one in Heaven or getting his wings (we don’t become angels), we don’t actually even know what the person believed before they died and we never ask. Most of us pray. Most of us believe in God, but that doesn’t get us to Heaven. James reminds us that even the demons believe in God. A lot of us don’t really know ourselves how to be certain we’re going to Heaven, never mind how to tell someone else.
And sure, one never knows what happens privately between a person and God but we’re also told in scripture that when someone has a genuine, saving faith in Jesus, there will be fruit. Fruit are changes in a person’s life that show Christ and the Holy Spirit in them is moving them away from sin and into a life that’s more holy. By holy, we mean more Christ-like by how we see Jesus in the Bible
John 15:8 By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples.
That made it that much harder personally when he died. It’s important to understand God can draw someone to Him at any time and there’s no telling what happened in his last moments, but the reality is, not only did he not believe, but he openly rejected Christianity.
So how can so many people put him in Heaven?
I think when we love someone, it’s hard to think of them suffering for eternity in Hell. I think we also just don’t think seriously enough about how real both places are. It’s also largely because we don’t really understand what is called the gospel—how through Jesus, a person is saved from God’s wrath against sin and made right before God to be given an eternity in Heaven.
We can’t ‘love them’ into Heaven. Only the love of Jesus gets them there through their faith in his birth, death and resurrection and belief that he took the punishment meant for our sins so that by repenting of those sins and asking to be forgiven, we can be given eternal life in Heaven.
This is where the expression in rodeo that “he paid your fees” comes from. It’s taken from a genuine understanding of the gospel that tells us that Jesus paid the price meant for our sins.
Being liked and loved by others, being popular, being good by how we might measure goodness; none of these ideas gets us into Heaven. Even the kindest most generous person is separated from God by just the smallest sin and none of us are able to get through life without some kind of sin like a moment of anger or a lustful thought.
Ephesians 2:8-9 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.
Grace and mercy are what God has given us through Jesus’s death on the cross. We deserve God’s wrath for our sin, any sin, but we’re given a way through a saving faith in Jesus, to be made right with God. The ‘works’ being referred to is what makes it clear that just being a good person doesn’t earn a place in Heaven. Works are the good actions we do and way of living we might lead. Through an understanding that any sin deserves punishment and no amount of good can earn us Heaven, every single person has the same chance to have Jesus pay his fees.
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.
Recent Comments