by admin | Apr 4, 2024 | Behind the Bucking Chutes
By Scott Hilgendorff / Cowboys of the Cross
Sometimes the bad guy wins. There really is a rodeo judge out there that has it in for someone and successfully screws the cowboy over every chance he gets. There really is someone lying and cheating their way to get ahead of you at work. Some of you are victims of crimes in which the person got away with it or the punishment just didn’t seem like enough.
When I get to teach something and it’s one of the ‘difficult’ Bible verses like the one that you’re about to read, I get it. I know it’s easy for me to teach it but it doesn’t mean it’s always any easier for me to live it out when I’m standing there asking you to try.
Romans 12: 19-21 Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” 20 To the contrary, “if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals on his head.” 21 Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
This is honestly harder for me to say than you might think because I don’t want to share the bad thoughts as someone who is in a position to teach and minister to you but this is my reality right now: there is someone out there that a small part of me would take satisfaction in taking a swing at with my baseball bat. I’m not joking. And it troubles me that as mature as I would like to be in my faith, that I’m still capable of a thought like this, though I’m grateful and want to be clear it is a small part of me and I would never take that action.
But what it shows about me is that I do get it when I teach verses like this. I’m not asking you guys to do things I either presently find hard or have had a chance to work through myself as I’ve learned more about what’s in the Bible.
It’s hard to see someone get away with evil and be satisfied that God will take care of it when the systems in place fail. But here’s the deal. Adam and Eve decided in the garden they wanted the same knowledge as God and allowed sin to be a part of our world. They wanted to be able to judge for themselves what is right and wrong, rather than leave it to God. It’s a natural part of being human but as Christians, we’re made new and meant to be becoming more like Jesus and less like our old selves.
When we’re dealing with Christians who do wrong to others, there are several Biblical responses to that including church discipline e and a process to make the situation right. A Christian who is truly saved would want to follow these steps, particularly ones laid out in Matthew 18:15-20.
For non-believers, there are two outcomes for someone who has done evil to you, they will repent through God’s grace and mercy
or they will face God’s judgement and spend eternity in hell.
I have a hard time taking comfort or being at peace with someone who has wronged me enough to want to hit them with a bat, suffering for eternity in hell when I know I’ve been forgiven of my wrongs and received God’s grace and mercy through Jesus’s death and resurrection and my own repentance and saving faith in him.
Right now, I’m also having a hard time with the idea of showing kindness to the people who have done evil but they deserve the shot at salvation I received and while they haven’t received the justice that I would hope for them, they don’t find Jesus the lord of their life, hell is the reality they face.
While those verses in Romans are not teaching this, while I continue to wrestle with God’s direction for me to repay evil with kindness, what I can do in the meantime is follow other Biblical teaching that directs us to treat others with kindness so that they could come to saving faith in Jesus.
It doesn’t take away my responsibility to work through these verses and adopt them into how I approach the evil that we do in this world, but it does provide a positive outcome that can impact the world around us for Jesus.
by admin | Mar 21, 2024 | Behind the Bucking Chutes
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 | Dec 7, 2023 | Behind the Bucking Chutes
By Scott HIlgendorff / Cowboys of the Cross
Without a Christian worldview, we’re going to struggle with how to glorify God in everything we do.
In a rodeo arena, you occasionally see a roughstock rider take a knee and point to God. Sometimes it’s only if he wins, sometimes it’s every situation that lets him get back on his feet. On the roping end, the cowboy will point to the sky after a good catch.
On the surface, these are ways the rodeo cowboy is giving glory to God but for many of us, aside from using “glory to God” as a hashtag on a social media post when something great has happened, those are the very few ways we openly give God glory.
Romans 11:36 For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.
This is just one of several verses that point us toward the importance of glorifying God through everything we do. In this instance, we are being reminded that nothing we do is accomplished without God.
A worldview comes from our background and the influences we have in our life that shape how we look at the world around us. A parent of young children might be influenced to look for danger all the time that could impact the children. A soldier looks at the world through his training. A horse trainer can find himself making decisions influenced by the cowboy and horse culture and the conservative politics that come with that.
For Christians, the first way we would should filter how we think about what is happening around us and the decisions that we make should be from our understanding of the Bible.
When we spend time learning what’s in the Bible, verses like this will begin to affect our worldview: Colossians 3:23-24 Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ.
This verse shows what a Christian worldview toward work looks like. We’re supposed to think about God and work in a way that would be pleasing to Him. That in turn will most often be pleasing to our employers, but it’s God who we are thinking of ahead of our employers.
And this view then applies to other parts of our life like how we compete while we’re at a rodeo or a horse show. We put everything into it but we do it in ways we know will please God.
The more we understand what is in the Bible and the more we make an effort to apply it, the more natural it becomes to honor God in everything we do.
Suddenly, that finger point to the sky is just a natural reaction. We begin to look for ways to show others how Jesus has impacted us by how we live our lives in the hopes it creates opportunities to tell others about a saving faith in him.
by admin | Apr 13, 2023 | Behind the Bucking Chutes
By Josh McCarthy / Cowboys of the Cross
I heard a good example that explains Christianity but I’m going to put my own spin on it.
Christianity is like a saddle; it’s as simple as leather, rawhide and wood but as complex as all the work that goes into carving the tree, tooling the leather, engraving the silver on the conchos and everything else in between to make a good, custom saddle. When it comes to things like Christ dying on the cross, taking the wrath for all the sins of everyone who would believe in Him on Good Friday or God raising Christ from the dead, which is what we just celebrated on Easter Sunday, it is as simple as the statements I just made and also way more complex than we could understand.
But the good news of the gospel is as simple as these passages in Romans that show us who we are, who Jesus is and why it matters that we celebrate His resurrection on Easter Sunday.
Romans 3:23
23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,
We are all sinners. We have violated God’s law and because of that we are separated from God and apart from God’s grace, we are God’s enemies.
Romans 5:8
8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
While we were still haters of God, He sent Christ to take the punishment for our sins.
Romans 6:23
23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
We all deserve death for even the smallest sin we’ve committed but through faith in Christ, He takes that sin and suffered the punishment for it on the cross. Through His grace, He gives us the gift of being adopted sons and daughters of God instead of His enemies.
Romans 8:1
8 There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
Jesus took the punishment of all past, present and future sin for all who believe in Him. If you believe in Jesus, God has given you freedom from the punishment of your sins. This should lead us to live a life of gratitude and a desire to follow His commands.
Romans 10:9
9 because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
This is why we celebrate Easter because if we are Christians we do believe that God raised Jesus from the dead to prove that Jesus is who He said He was i.e. the Son of God, the second person of the trinity that came to take away the sins of all those that would believe and save sinners like you and me from an eternity suffering in Hell and by His grace giving us the gift of Easter.
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.
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