by admin | Aug 15, 2024 | Behind the Bucking Chutes
By Scott Hilgendorff / Cowboys of the Cross
Of course we should care about our rights and freedoms. But what good does it do when we have the freedom to tell people about Jesus and never exercise it?
Many announcers will say a version of this in their openings: “In our great country, we have the freedom of religion and we’re going to exercise that right by going to the Lord right now in prayer.”
That’s fantastic that prayer is an important part of most rodeo events in the country, but for a lot of Christians, that’s the beginning and the end of where we exercise that freedom.
We’ll be loud and proud oi we think someone is threatening our freedom of religion and sit silent or motionless when God gives us the opportunity to tell someone why we believe what we believe—something Jesus calls everyone to do in Matthew through what’s known as the Great Commission.
Rodeo creates a comfortable setting to practice praying in public or talking openly about God but we’ve got to get out of our comfort zone and take our faith everywhere we go. If we’re truly saved and Christ is in us, we can’t help but be driven to do that.
Matthew 5:14-16 You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. 15 Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. 16 In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.
Here in Matthew, Jesus is making it clear that we represent him to everyone and when our faith is real and we are living it out, people are going to see it the same way they can’t help but see a city that was built on a hill while traveling.
Even more though, Jesus is encouraging us to live out our lives as authentic believers so that others will see us living out those lives and point others toward God. While he doesn’t specifically say it points them to their need for a savior, that remains an important truth about living out our lives in a way that others see us different form them—they see our ‘light.’
We don’t live a Christ-like life to call attention to ourselves but to honor God.
Using the prayer example at a rodeo, an easy way for someone to get started and used to being out of their comfort zone is to pray before a meal when in a restaurant. It’s not that we never see that happen, but it can stretch some of us. If we’re comfortable with that part, before we pray, how about asking the server at your table how you can pray for them? That’s a real way to show Jesus to someone. Be open for ways we can be intentional about our faith when we’re our and our light will shine.
by admin | Aug 1, 2024 | Testimonies, The Team
I am 28, married to a beautiful lady, and blessed with 5 beautiful children!
- To begin with my testimony, I would say that Jesus means everything to me! I have often been
reminded of how blessed I am, to have had a mother and father active and together — as well as
who had myself and four other siblings in a church and desired that we would have a relationship
with Jesus Christ.
- I have been blessed to be in an atmosphere and family of which I have always desired to know
Christ and have His divine presence in my life as much as possible. My desire, since a child, has
always been to serve God. Meanwhile, throughout this life, there were times I wasn’t
mastering that desire.
- I would say that from the beginning of my life, even when I was about seven years old — while
living out in Alberton Montana — I had unique spiritual encounters with good vs evil, and at
that age, tormented by the evil, but specifically prayed over and delivered from the terrors that
might bother some throughout their whole life.
- We moved to a little town called New Middletown, Indiana (right as I was turning nine) and that is
where I grew up.
- Let me back up for a moment, around the age of 11, I had a clear calling in my life — no
doubt — that God called me to preach His Gospel! I’ve always desired this calling!
- Around 16, life had some interesting moments in our world/family/church etc… and my
brother Chris got into the Rodeo world!
- At 16, I began riding novice bulls at XB Arena, in Loretto, Kentucky. Unfortunately, I finished
that journey around August of 2018 out in Oklahoma — due to my Jaw and a bulls horn meeting
up with each other, and I lost that battle.
- I have always loved the rodeo world, always desired to use my degree in ministry within the
circles of the rodeo — to which working with Cowboys of the cross is an exciting opportunity!
- I am a firm believer in Jesus Christ, I believe that our job in life is to Make Much of Jesus —
and so if I could leave you with a little tidbit of a takeaway:
JESUS CHRIST MEANS EVERYTHING TO ME, HE IS MY FRIEND, GUIDE, REDEEMER,
and HOPE! I WILL DO MY BEST TO SHARE HIM WITH OTHERS, KNOWING THAT HE IS
THE SOLUTION TO YOUR LIFE AS WELL!
by admin | Jul 9, 2024 | Behind the Bucking Chutes
By Scott Hilgendorff / Cowboys of the Cross
Right now, in at least the two counties around me, people widely believe women are being sex-trafficked out of busy parking lots in broad daylight with drugs being sprinkled on everything from $20 bills to green tomatoes lying on the ground in a parking lot median. Yet no one has been abducted.
Meanwhile, people constantly scoff at the warnings of the dangers that bears pose with populations at all-time highs. The animals are becoming fearless of people who, locals and tourists both, continue to feed them or leave insecure garbage for them to get into. While there are no reports of women actually being hauled unconscious out of their vehicles after they crash their car from the drugs they absorbed through their skin, there are 11 bears that have been euthanized this year so far because of close encounters with people the included “scratches.” If you’ve seen the size of bear claws, these scratches required emergency room care.
We pick and choose what we want to believe is true but with the amount of false information that spreads online constantly, like a new trend of posting missing children that aren’t really missing, it takes more work than people are willing to put into checking if something is real. Instead, they just share it and now people are literally afraid of green tomatoes on the ground but are not afraid to try to pet a bear.
For Christians, many of us treat the Bible the same way. We aren’t afraid of the consequences of not repenting of our sin and putting our trust in Jesus, but we’re afraid of missing out on the wealth and prosperity we falsely think is ours if we have enough ‘faith’. We aren’t willing to put the time into reading scripture for ourselves or following teachers we know we can trust to help us know what is true. Instead, far too many of us spread false ideas about we think is in the Bible. We are willing to put people’s entire eternities at risk if they should die before they’ve found a saving faith in Jesus. Around here, that could literally be from trying to pet a black bear because no one told them it was dangerous, just like no one told them the truth about Jesus or what’s really in God’s word about salvation.
James 1:23-24 For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like.
James takes this one step further.
He’s telling us that when we do hear the truth about God’s word, we need to take it seriously and live it out. To not do what we know God wants us to do, is as dumb as forgetting what we look like right after seeing our own reflection. But in order to do what God wants us to do, we have to know what is right and true from scripture, not just what we want to hear or what sounds good coming from others.
by admin | Jun 13, 2024 | Behind the Bucking Chutes
By Scott Hilgendorff / Cowboys of the Cross
When we face a struggle, it can feel like we’re alone. We can vent or unload to a friend about what is going on but often be left feeling they just don’t understand.
Sure, a rodeo or ranch friend can understand and sympathize with having to sit out events or work because of a bust femur, but it’s harder for them to appreciate the struggle when the steel rod that was needed isn’t set right, there’s an infection and the down time has now increased because of a second surgery. Meanwhile, the bills are piling up and the friends that helped with some meals have got busy with their own lives. Far more than anyone can understand, the struggle you’re facing is very real and very difficult.
The same can be said when, as believers, we’re fighting to overcome a sin in our lives but we keep falling back into it. The rodeo lifestyle in particular floods us with opportunity to party hard and make the terrible choices that go along with that from cheating on a wife or girlfriend to finding ourselves in need of rehab while rodeo fines have piled up and there’s no way to pay entry fees anymore.
First, when it comes to what are referred to as trials in the Book of James, we see from James himself both an understanding of the struggles a person can face whether in his time period or ours and he offers and encouragement.
James 1:2-4 Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, 3 for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. 4 And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.
This can be really hard for a person to accept and a difficult attitude to adopt when you’re in the thick of trial or struggle but James is offering us an assurance that we can try to see it as a good thing and take joy in it because that struggle will be used to help build us to be more like Jesus. When we have a saving faith in Jesus, we begin a process called sanctification which means that our lives become about making us more like him. While we will never become fully perfect before we get to Heaven, we will become more and more like Jesus as we learn from the Bible, live out what we’re taught and grow in our faith.
In that process to become more like Jesus we find there are sins in our lives we want to rid ourselves from and Hebrews offers a great encouragement for those particular struggles.
Hebrews 4: 15-16 For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. 16 Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
Jesus is the high priest being referred to here and what we see is just how great a company we keep as Christians—followers of Christ. Jesus himself, even though he was perfect, still faced temptations and God loves us so much and understands the struggle, that through our saving faith in Jesus, we have God’s grace and mercy for when we fail and to give us the confidence and encouragement to get up again and press onward each time we feel like we’ve fallen.
Count it all joy, my brothers,[a] when you meet trials of various kinds, 3 for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. 4 And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.
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.
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