by admin | Jun 23, 2026 | Behind the Bucking Chutes
By Scott Hilgendorff / Cowboys of the Cross
There continues to be a push against what it means to be a family, parents, fathers and men. Christians share the western world with a progressive culture that looks at the world differently from Biblical beliefs and wants to remove what it calls social constructs of what it means to be fathers and mothers. They are taking away biological distinctions and removing terms like father and mother and replacing them with “non-gestating” and “gestating” parent.
For Christians, the Bible is distinct on topics of gender roles and, of especial interest to the cowboy crowd, what it means to be fathers and men.
Not everyone in the rodeo community comes from good parents or had good fathers. There are many guys competing to prove something to themselves because in the rodeo arena, it’s them competing against the animal whether it’s a calf bolting across the arena or a bucking horse. It’s a chance to step out on their own, exert themselves and accomplish something not everyone can do and stand proud as men.
Many go on to become fathers but can be left without the role model they need to know how to be good dads themselves.
But the Bible gives us a clear role model to follow with a clear distinction of just what a father is, no matter how much a culture around us might want to remove those standards.
It’s Jesus Christ himself.
The issue and topic was raised at a father’s day service I got to attend at Castine Church all the way in the midwest in Ohio and much of this message is from that sermon by Pastor Greg Hyre.
While Jesus gives us so many examples of what Christians are to follow throughout scripture, we formally recognize God as not just our creator, but our father.
But Jesus makes something clear to his disciples in John.
John 14:6-11 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. 7 If you had known me, you would have known my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.”8 Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father, and it is enough for us.” 9 Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? 10
Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does his works. 11 Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, or else believe on account of the works themselves.
Jesus is God and God is Jesus.
There is no other example we need to turn to in order to understand what it looks like to be a father.
Jesus is that example and whether we are fathers or men, whether or not we had great dads of our own, it is Jesus who we should be striving to follow. Nothing more, nothing less.
by admin | Aug 24, 2023 | Behind the Bucking Chutes
By Scott Hilgendorff / Cowboys of the Cross
There’s a sad reality that not all of us had great fathers and while this may not be universal, it certainly is common that most of us want to make our fathers proud.
As toddlers, we test our parents and look to our fathers and mothers to set boundaries for us.
Many of us as we grow up look for our father’s approval either with good grades, doing well at a sport or handing him the right tool as you work on a car together.
I’m sure there are studies out there that debate back and forth how this is learned social behavior or that it is innate behavior that we are simply born with.
Because of my faith, I believe God made us that way.
And He didn’t do it to set our fathers up to fail. Jesus was the only perfect person to walk the Earth and while as children, we can develop high expectations for our parents, we can also suffer tremendous hurt and disappointment.
In rodeo, I get to know some amazing fathers out there and I get to know some cowboys whose fathers have utterly failed them. There are plenty of rodeo cowboys out there competing not for their father’s approval, but to prove something to themselves about their own strengths and abilities.
Whether we had the ideal father who rarely let us down, a father who abused us, a father who just couldn’t get it right all the time or if we had no father at all, God wants us to have a sense of belonging to a father who is perfect and will love us unconditionally.
Ephesians 1:3-6 3Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, 4 even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love 5 he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, 6 to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved.
The idea of adoption is a big part of the gospel, God’s plan of salvation for us.
Through a saving faith in Jesus, our genuine repentance of sin and desire to be forgiven of our sins, God adopts us into a Heavenly family in which He becomes our Heavenly Father. As our Father in Heaven, he loves us unconditionally. He sees us through the sacrifice Jesus made for us which means He sees us as perfect. No matter what we’ve done or how we think we might have failed ourselves or our families or in some part of our lives, He doesn’t see any of that.
Not only doesn’t He see it, He both makes us perfect and gives us a perfect life. No matter how great of terrible our fathers are or were here, there was just no way they could accomplish that. It doesn’t mean we should love our fathers any less, it means we should give them the same grace that God has given us and then embrace the gift of God’s grace that gets us through this life and into that perfect one in Heaven.
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