by admin | Sep 20, 2018 | Testimonies
I found a link to a video of us team roping the other day at Cowtown (the oldest weekly rodeo in the United States in New Jersey) and it made me think a lot about this rodeo. I first showed up there as a 21-year-old bull rider, 21 years ago. My traveling partner, Craig, and I were getting ready, and next to us was a small tent outside of the entry office.
The lady there had some cowboy Bibles on the table with Lane Frost on the cover. Craig and her were talking on and on about Lane, who was one of Craig’s heroes, and she new Lane’s folks. Well I didn’t understand it at the time but she was telling Craig about Lane’s testimony. She then asked Craig if he was saved!? He said, “Yes, when I was 13.” I was just sitting off in the near distance listening. She then asked him, “Is your buddy over there saved?” He said I don’t know even though I had been raised in the church, went to a Christian school and my grandpa was a pastor.
Well I just sat there and thought, I don’t know!?!
Then she proceeded to bark at Craig, “What do you mean you don’t know? You guys travel all over the country riding bulls, and you don’t know If he’s saved?” Then she looked over at me and asked me if I was and I told her I didn’t know. She asked if I wanted to be, and I thought, “Why don’t I know?” and I told her I wanted to be. She read to us some out of Romans, Chapter 9 and then I recited what’s known as the sinner’s prayer with her and asked Jesus into my heart.
I was on fire from the star and I remember being in the bar that night that used to be there right next to the rodeo, I was telling people about Jesus. I remember the whole trip home whenever I wasn’t driving I was reading that Bible she gave me. I was definitely changed.
As an Ohio cowboy, I was just thinking though why I still go to this rodeo, it’s darn sure not because it’s so close to home or the amount of money. I think I’m actually drawn to it because it’s where I met Jesus my Lord and Savior. Suzie Grahm still has that little tent out back of the entry office, and she’s still standing back there telling the truth and offering salvation through Jesus!
by admin | Aug 29, 2018 | Blessed
By Scott Hilgendorff / Cowboys of the Cross
Without Jesus, we’re cursed.
And that curse that we are now under goes back to Adam and Eve and a story many of us our familiar with. The couple had a perfect life, created to enjoy fellowship with God. They were given literally everything except for a single tree whose fruit they were instructed not to eat from. The serpent (Satan) used some tricky thinking to convince Eve that it would be good to eat from the tree and that God surely didn’t mean what He said. She was convinced to doubt God and she and Adam ate from the tree gaining the knowledge of sin from which they had been protected. God will not tolerate being in the presence of sin and Adam and Eve were cast out of the garden as He said, “cursed is the ground because of you.”
Genesis 3: 17 -19 17 And to Adam he said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; 18 thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. 19 By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”
Adam and Eve now knew what good and evil were and brought sin into the world which would see us all separated from God who, in His perfect goodness, must judge and condemn sin.
Instead of believing in God’s perfect word and trusting His instruction to them, they were deceived and believed a lie instead of God, much like the majority of our culture today. Believing that anything other than a saving faith in Jesus can restore us to God is also believing a lie and sees us trapped under this curse and ultimately condemned to Hell because we’re left with unforgiven sin.
Galatians 3:10 For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, “Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law, and do them.”
The law was what we are given in the Old Testament. The Israelites had to follow the law perfectly to be seen as right before God and not condemned for their sin. Because of the curse from Adam and Eve, it is impossible for us not to sin. Knowing it was not possible for the Israelites to obey the Law fully at all times, God gave them a system of sacrifices that could be carried out to atone for their sins. Eventually, He would send us Jesus so that through Christ’s sacrifice on the cross, we could all be saved from God’s judgment and punishment of our sins.
Galatians 3:13 Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree”
Christ became our curse, our sin, and took the punishment for it from God on that cross as he died as a final sacrifice for our sins that if we have a saving faith in him, we can be freed from the condemnation that comes from the curse of our sin.
Adam and Even brought the curse into the world, but Jesus frees us from it.
by admin | Apr 26, 2018 | Behind the Bucking Chutes
By Scott Hilgendorff/Cowboys of the Cross
I was talking with a young bull rider about a second walkout at his school over gun control at a bulls, broncs and barrel race in Tennessee in April.
As a supporter of carrying firearms, the graduating student was frustrated by the walkout and went outside to ask his classmates why they were out there and what they thought it would accomplish. He said no one had an answer. For that reason alone, their cause lost any ability to have influence over someone they were needing to reach if their reason for being out there was really to bring about change. It only pushed the bronc rider further away from their cause.
Many barrel racers go down the road alone and we know some of them are armed, if not of their own choosing, often by husbands and boyfriends concerned about what happens when they stop at 2 a.m. for gas in the middle of nowhere. Some of us think reforms are necessary. Many rodeo cowboys and bull riders carry.
But this isn’t about gun control and what side of the issue we’re on. It’s about needing to know what we stand for and how to defend it as Christians.
The message gun control advocates had for this young bronc rider was completely lost when all they could say was they were ‘for it’, not knowing what ‘it’ was.
Many of us will tell people we’re a Christian, but when we’re asked about what we actually believe, we don’t have an answer. We’re ‘for Jesus’ but we don’t necessarily know what we mean by that.
If we don’t have an answer, we’ve lost credibility in a culture that is more and more skeptical or even aggressive against what we believe. If we don’t have an answer, we can’t share what, according to our beliefs, is the most important
It’s like telling a dying person that you have the cure for cancer, you just don’t know how to tell him what it is. Think about that for a moment, please, because it really is that serious. Christians believe in Heaven and Hell and that we know the only way to be sure of going to Heaven is a saving faith in Jesus Christ. We have to be able to tell others about it because it’s the difference between someone gaining eternal life or eternal suffering.
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,”
Jesus is the hope that is in us and Peter is telling us we need to be ready to tell someone about him at any time, especially when the faith comes under attack. In this section of scripture, he acknowledges we may suffer for our beliefs but that we need to be prepared to defend them.
The second part of this verse speaks to another side of how we’re to communicate our beliefs: with gentleness and respect. Whether it’s gun control, police brutality or the fight for a living wage, the message is often lost in shouting, riots or any kind of manipulation or force. As Christians saved be grace through faith in Jesus Christ, nothing matters more than getting our message of hope out there in a way that people will be willing to listen.
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