by admin | Nov 14, 2024 | Behind the Bucking Chutes
By Scott Hilgendorff / Cowboys of the Cross
A question I’ve been asked a lot over the years from the cowboy crowd is, “How do I know what God wants me to do?”
Often times, it has to do with one of two things: sorting out when to retire from the rodeo and find out what else to do in life or what to do about a relationship.
In one case, the young man was sincerely struggling. He was dating a girl and it was getting really serious for him but she was wanting to go back to her husband. He didn’t think her husband was right for her and that he could give her a far better life. He thought she was perfect for him and was hurt deeply that she would leave him after they had moved in together. He didn’t know why God would take her away from him or what he should do to try to convince her to stay.
Now, for must of us, this is pretty straightforward with or without the Bible. You let her go back to her marriage.
But for Christians, this should still be one of the easiest decisions to sort out. Sure, it hurts to lose a relationship that is important to you but the Bible offers lots of teaching against adultery and certainly in Old Testament laws, the punishment for it was severe.
Leviticus 20:10 If a man commits adultery with the wife of his neighbor, both the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death.
While we know when Jesus came, he turned a lot of these rules upside down. He kept the religious elite from stoning a woman to death for it but he still recognized and called out adultery as a sin.
Not everything in the Bible is as clear as this situation and issues can get complicated on what the Bible teaches about divorce and remarriage with some churches still take a hard stand on this also being adultery.
But for this young man’s dilemma, if he truly wanted to know what God wanted him to do, there are verses that make it clear he has no choice but to let her go back to her husband and no longer interfere in that marriage. Further, if he truly seeks God’s will, he would realize his actions were sinful and they both were in need of repenting.
There are many verses that give us clear direction that can apply to countless daily situations. Jesus commands us to be kind to others, he tells us to share our faith with others, he tells us to live in ways that honor God.
For the situations that are less clear, we still have to seek God’s will first in scripture and prayer but also through the counsel of those we trust to also be digging into God’s word for the direction we are supposed to take.
Our second example, of whether or not it’s time to quite rodeo doesn’t necessarily have clear Bible verse, but with a growing understanding of what is in scripture, we can look at issues about how the sport is affecting our family or personal life, our finances, our health and we can find other verses that might lead us to a decision that it is better for us to pack it in. Other verses could show us how the sport has become an opportunity for us to minister to others and share the gospel and there could be very compelling Biblical reasons that God would want us to stick with it.
Sometimes it’s easy to know what God wants us to do and sometimes it’s hard. Always, there are answers and guidance in scripture.
by admin | Jan 18, 2024 | Behind the Bucking Chutes
By Scott Hilgendorff / Cowboys of the Cross
Auctioneers, book keepers, back pen workers, truck drivers. Those are just a few of the people needed to get the cattle onto the sales arena floor and back out the door in someone’s stock trailer for a sales barn to be successful.
Judges, secretaries, back pen workers and truck drivers. Those are just a few of the people needed to get the stock loaded in the chutes and the rodeo off the ground for a successful event to be held.
To larger or smaller degrees, each person already has specialized skills or has to be trained to fill each roll but together, they all play a part in the event being able to come together.
We may not see how it all fits together, but for Christians, we all have a role to play in what we know as The Great Commission, where Jesus commanded us to tell others about him and to teach those who choose to believe and follow him.
1 Corinthians 12:12-20 For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. 13 For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit.
14 For the body does not consist of one member but of many. 15 If the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. 16 And if the ear should say, …18 But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. 19 If all were a single member, where would the body be? 20 As it is, there are many parts, yet one body.
This is just one of several sets of verses that show how we have different strengths and gifts. Those gifts together still make up the body of Christ, who we all are as believers, and how we all work together for God’s purpose.
Ephesians 2:10 For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
With a saving faith in Jesus through his death on the cross for us, we are then given work to do that God has prepared for us. We know the biggest part of that is to tell others about Jesus while also helping other believers to grow in our faith. Each of us has been given different strengths that God will then use as we go into the world to serve and minister to others in the places God places us.
Together, all our strengths and gifts work to accomplish the ‘good works’ that God has prepared for us to do as Paul mentions in Ephesians. Just like it takes a team to run a successful day at the sales barn, God uses us all together for His purpose.
by admin | Apr 27, 2023 | Behind the Bucking Chutes
By Scott Hilgendorff / Cowboys of the Cross
How do you measure success?
When you run a beef operation, do you consider it successful when you’ve gambled right on when to sell and it paid off at the highest market prices of the season?
Is a finals jacket the target you set for yourself and now that you’ve got two, you can retire from team roping and just keep a couple horses around for fun?
We often look to the success of others to measure whether or not we think we’re successful too. This person seems to have a happy family, that person makes $80,000 a year. But then we can get stuck trying to figure out what is enough. There can always be another goal, the bar can always be raised higher.
It’s okay to pursue success. God asks us to give our best to everything we do.
But here’s the twist—are we chasing our goals or are we pursuing what God would have us do?
As Christian cowboys, it’s okay to celebrate that finals buckle or that record year of profit, but if we haven’t done it in a way that give God glory, that success can end up becoming pretty empty as we find ourselves looking for something more and feeling unfulfilled.
As Jesus knew his time was coming to die for us on that cross, he prayed for the disciples and the people who had come to a saving faith through him and in that prayer, he began by asking God to glorify him, not so that he would get that glory, but that all the work he did for God on Earth would point others to God and give God that glory.
John 17: 4 I have brought you glory on earth by finishing the work you gave me to do.
Jesus was here to bring us all salvation by choosing to believe in him, repent of our sins and ask to be forgiven so that we could be saved through his sacrifice on the cross, taking the punishment that is otherwise meant for our sins. In that process, he worked many miracles, taught thousands and changed immeasurable lives but all of it was to bring glory to God until it was his time to die and ascend to Heaven.
When we have a saving faith in Jesus, there is nothing more we need to do to be made right with God, but we will experience a desire to become more like Jesus and to follow the instructions and commands the are given to us in Scripture. That means seeking out what God has for us to do.
Ephesians 2:10 For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
When we start to understand this, measuring success becomes less important when it becomes about doing what God has prepared for us to do. In this way, even what seems like failure to how we used to measure success can bring glory to God.
by admin | Mar 9, 2023 | Behind the Bucking Chutes
By Josh McCarthy / Cowboys of the Cross
It’s calving time where I am and we’re just starting what cowboy poet, Baxter Black called the month of Mud so for anyone in the cattle business that means long days, short nights and plenty of time in five buckle overshoes. It really helps if a new calf will just jump up and start sucking, getting that colostrum and milk he needs to survive. The example of a new born calf is similar to that of a Christian . 1Peter 2 tells us, “2Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation”
The pure spiritual milk is the Bible as Christians we are to desire reading God’s word and applying it to our lives. Much the same way a new born calf needs milk or it will die, a Christian not reading his Bible regularly will be starved spiritually. I’ve had calves that’ll jump right up after birth and get all excited and root around every part of that cow but never latch on. if they don’t get help, they’ll end up like the seeds on rocky soil in Matthew 13 “5 Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. 6 But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root.”
We need the root of God’s word. Sometimes a person will go to a church service or some type of
meeting, get all emotional and decide to “give their life to Jesus.” They might pray a prayer and feel really good for a few days but they’re like that calf that jumps up but doesn’t latch on, the moment is done, it’s back to normal life and they fade and become spiritually starved. I’ve seen it where for some reason a calf isn’t sucking, you’ll come up on him and the cow will have a big ol tight bag and the calf can barely move, if you don’t get busy quick that calf will die. The same thing will happen to Christians we just talked about–he gets all excited at the meeting but then never reads his Bible or gets involved in a local church. He will starve spiritually which is why the Bible is so important.
2 Timothy 3:16-17 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.
Psalm 119:105 Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light on my path.
James 1:22 Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says.
These passages show us the importance of the Bible and hearing it preached at a local church on
Sundays. so I would encourage all of you to take it seriously, study it regularly, and take it in and apply it to your daily lives so you won’t spiritually starve.
by admin | Aug 31, 2022 | Behind the Bucking Chutes
By Scott Hilgendorff / Cowboys of the Cross
Foreign exchange students are getting the chance to hear the gospel and Cowboys of the Cross is getting to play a small part in that—and you can too.
One of the great cultural changes of the times we’re in; that we’re all connected more easily wherever we are in the world. at Commission in unique way.
When the disciples were first given the what we know as the Great Commission, they were tasked with sharing the gospel everywhere from the people around them to “the ends of the earth.”
Matthew 28:19-20 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
This was a command from Jesus to his disciples but it extends to you and me.
Then, travel to communicate or send a letter, it was primarily by foot. Today, there are still isolated parts of the world in which missionaries work to earn the trust of a community in order to minister to them and preach the gospel but at the same time, we can get a coded message to a missionary in China with a few taps on an app on our phone.
Technology makes it easy for Cowboys of the Cross to be partnered with cowboys from the ranch to the rodeo sides of the cowboy culture across the United States and Canada.
Jesse Horton was a North Carolina bull rider that has gone on to become the pastor of Bethel Baptist Church in Pink Hill, NC. He continues to work with Cowboys of the Cross contributing to The Short Go and other teaching series we put together. He is a valued ministry partner and part of what has shaped into a leadership team that works at helping each of us grow and stay accountable to God’s different callings in our lives.
The common ground our little group shares is our strong response to God’s call on all of us to share the gospel from the people around us to the ends of the Earth.
Jesse is currently getting a chance to do that as he, his wife Sarah and their children host two foreign exchange students for the next ten months.
One arrived last week from France and the other, a Buddhist from Vietnam, arrived this week.
But here’s the extra cool thing: while the program is not Christian-based, the woman seeking host families in this region of the United States, Meegan, is a Christian. Because of her belief in sharing the gospel with others, she tries to find as many Christian host families as she can.
Finding Jesse, his family and his church, was a windfall for Meegan and she expressed her excitement for it recently when she spoke with Cowboys of the Cross as a reference for Jesse. The two students will attend church with the Hortons and get to experience Christian living with a pastor. Having known Jesse for more than 15 years now, these students are going to not just be presented with the gospel in words, but they will see Jesse’s passionate desire to see others grow and be discipled in their faith, especially the extended church family God has given him to shepherd.
And not only has their first of the two students had a chance to attend a Bethel Baptist Church service, he’s also been with the Horton’s to a rodeo and seen Jesse lead cowboy church behind the chutes. It’s hard to find a better American experience than the pride-filled experience of a rodeo Saturday night and a worship service on Sunday in a 106-year-old church.
That’s where you come in.
These exchange programs are desinged to provide students from other cultures with an American experience but Education Travel & Culture (ETC) is looking for more Christian families as hosts so that they can also be presented with the gospel.
Imagine what God might do if a Buddhist student found a saving faith in Jesus and returned to Vietnam to share the gospel with family and friends there. The Great Commission was given to us by Jesus about two thousand years ago yet here it is being lived out across multiple countries through the intentional use of an exchange student program.
That’s something we can pray for together to help Jesse and Bethel Baptist Church in this mission and if you would like to learn how easy it is to host a foreign exchange student, just get in touch with us and we will share your contact information with someone at ETC who will contact you.
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