by admin | Apr 15, 2026 | James
By Scott Hilgendorff / Cowboys of the Cross
If you’re a large ranch-owner, could James be writing to you if he wrote his letter today? Originally written to the Jewish churches, James takes an often aggressive and harsh-sounding approach to encouraging us to live out what God’s word teaches us.
At the start of James 5, he turns his attention to wealthy landowners that were in control of a lot of Galilee, though his message would apply to all wealthy people, and he takes a strong tone against any who have misused the power their wealth has given them. He gives them a warning.
James 5:1-6 Come now, you rich, weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon you. 2 Your riches have rotted and your garments are moth-eaten. 3 Your gold and silver have corroded, and their corrosion will be evidence against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up treasure in the last days. 4 Behold, the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, are crying out against you, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts. 5 You have lived on the earth in luxury and in self-indulgence. You have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter. 6 You have condemned and murdered the righteous person. He does not resist you.
When James tells them to week and howl at what miseries are coming, he doesn’t mean an immediate justice for their abuses and actions that have led to defrauding or even the death of some of the poor. James is talking about the eternal consequences that living a wealthy life can lead us to if we abuse that wealth. A person with a saving faith in Jesus, who has repented of sin and been forgiven through the sacrifice on the cross that Jesus made in our place, isn’t going to live like this any more.
But for those who have chosen to continue living this way, abusing their power and taking advantage of the poor, it isn’t likely that they have found the forgiveness of a life in Christ because that life leads to change.
James is writing to those who continue to live their lives focused on themselves with strong language that they have fattened their hearts by living in luxury and face their own day of slaughter, referring to God’s judgment against them. He reminds them that God has heard their cries, meaning God is fully aware of any abuse or sinful living they have enjoyed but that there is a cost to that; without a saving faith in Jesus that moves us away from sin, we face God’s wrath and eternal separation from Him in hell.
It isn’t about having wealth that leads us to God’s judgment, it’s about using our power to our own advantage and not caring for those, like those who work for us.
Most of us our employees but some of us are the ones who employ others, whether it is farm hands and laborers on ranches and farms or the staff of a small or large business we own. Those who own the ranch are naturally going to have the most wealth. That’s okay. But how do you treat the people who work for you or that you trade horses with? James wants us to live a life that reflects Jesus in us, not one that reflects those without a saving faith that are greedily pursuing their own sinful desires.
by admin | Mar 4, 2026 | James
By Scott Hilgendorff / Cowboys of the Cross
If you’ve competed in the roughstock side of rodeo, you know what it’s like to be judged. In that context, the judge is using his knowledge and a rule book to decide what points to award you or, if the book still has a mark-out rule, to disqualify you for missing it.
That same judge could decide to issue you a fine if you cuss within earshot of the crowd, your dog gets loose in the arena, you have an eagle feather in your hat or you’re wearing an unapproved sponsor patch. There are consequences for not following the rules and the judge gets to determine if the rule was broken and hands out the fine or ban. The rest of us may have our own opinions about the rules or the fine that was given but the judge makes the call.
As Christians, we have a rule book to follow in the form of the Bible and James cautions us against judging others, recognizing God is the only judge.
James 4:11-12 Brothers and sisters, do not slander one another. Anyone who speaks against a brother or sister or judges them speaks against the law and judges it. When you judge the law, you are not keeping it, but sitting in judgment on it. 12 There is only one Lawgiver and Judge, the one who is able to save and destroy. But you—who are you to judge your neighbor?
Now, the Bible is far more significant in our lives than a rule book. Those with a saving faith in Jesus know obeying rules do not get us into Heaven. It’s only through repentance and asking to be forgiven of our sins that our belief in Jesus saves us from God’s punishment for our sins by Jesus’s death on the cross, taking the punishment in our place.
It’s because of what Jesus did for us that we want to follow what the Bible teaches but it can be easy to forget the sins we’ve been forgiven from when we see someone else that isn’t measuring up to what the Bible teaches us.
We become judges and it often shows up in the form of us running our mouths about the person’s mistake, slandering them and judging them for what they have done.
It’s important to understand the judging someone is not the same thing has talking to them about their sin. If we can’t help someone understand how their sin separates them from God and will lead them to hell without Jesus, we can’t ever share the gospel. Pointing out to someone that cheating on his wife is a sin isn’t judging them when it is between the two of us and is about pointing them to Jesus. That is offering them hope, not condemnation. When we condemn a person and no longer offer them forgiveness for what they’ve done, now we’ve judged them because we’ve not just identified the sin but we’ve held it against them.
That’s God’s place and a very arrogant place to put ourselves as James is saying.
When we use the rules and teachings we find in the Bible and hold it against a person for failing to live up to it, we’ve put ourselves in God’s position. James is basically saying, “how dare you?”
When we have a saving faith in Jesus, we’ve been forgiven all our sins and God no longer holds it against us. If we’ve been given that when we deserve punishment, how can we judge someone else and punish them?
That judgment, remembering we mean also condemning the person, can show up in the form of us gossiping and slandering the person among others who know them, it can be in the form of taking our revenge against them if their sin was against us personally or it can simply be in our attitude toward them in hearts where we look down on them for what they’ve done.
What they need from us is the same forgiveness we’ve been given through the blood of Jesus Christ.
by admin | Nov 12, 2025 | James
By Scott Hilgendorff / Cowboys of the Cross
There’s a great old country song with the lead of the chorus, “Oh Lord, it’s hard to be humble when you’re perfect in every way.”
James wants us to recognize the seriousness of the harm our pride can do against how much more seriously God wants our devotion to Him.
James 4:5-10 5 Or do you suppose it is to no purpose that the Scripture says, “He yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us”? 6 But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” 7 Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8 Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. 9 Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. 10 Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.
This is hard to comprehend if we look at it like our own often broken or struggling relationships. Our jealousy leads to conflict among our friends, family or others we share connections with. It can lead to evil acts like murder as James taught us in the previous verses in James 4.
Since pride can lead to evil acts, it places us in opposition to God. According the Gospel, God’s plan for salvation, it’s our sin that separates us from Him and that without a saving faith in Jesus, leads to God’s judgment and wrath against us. He is jealous of anything we let come between us and His love for us because we were created to worship Him. Adam and Eve chose for there to be sin and the separation it created but God still wants us with Him for eternity.
Those who do not have a saving faith in Jesus are destined to Hell but God loves us enough that He sent Jesus to take the punishment meant for our sins. When we have belief in Jesus and what he did for us, repentance of our sin and by asking to be forgiven, we can have a perfect eternity filled with worship of God waiting for us. God is jealous enough of us to send Jesus to die for us. That’s a different kind of jealousy than what we typically experience in relationships.
When we do have a saving faith, God knows we are still going to sin and that temptation from the devil can cause us to fall away. He will still receive us into Heaven through his grace, after we’ve humbled ourselves and chosen to submit to Jesus as Lord through our salvation, but He wants us to resist the devil and temptation and turn to Him in order to receive that salvation.
Once saved from the judgment of our sin, God still wants our devotion and He will lift us to a higher position. Once in Heaven, we are made perfect, but until then, God wants us to fight sin as seriously as He wants us to be with Him for eternity. To have God jealous for us to want to give us a perfect eternity full of a joy we can’t comprehend–that’s a great kind of jealousy.
by admin | Oct 1, 2025 | James
By Scott Hilgendorff / Cowboys of the Cross
Think about where there is conflict in your life. Some people certainly have more peace than others but we live in a society in which there is always conflict. It can be between two cowboys on the rodeo grounds fighting about a girl they both dated, a group of ranchers fighting the Bureau of Land Management or against a solar panel project on valuable grazing land. Global conflicts that we otherwise would know little about can impact the price of gas here at home.
There’s often someone on the rodeo grounds who always either seems to be in trouble of some kind or he’s someone who is looking to cause it. I think we even celebrate chaos. The person attracting or causing trouble has no shortage of like-minded friends.
That comes from our sin nature. Regardless of what someone believes in terms of their faith, we are all born into sin; we all have the ability from birth to feel anger or even hate. A saving faith in Jesus changes that. It doesn’t remove our ability to sin but it starts us on a path toward becoming more like Jesus. It doesn’t make us better than those living in conflict and conflict of our own is still going to happen. This world isn’t perfect and while we grow more like Jesus as we grow in our faith, sin around us is still going to bring conflict into our lives.
How we, as Christians, approach it is where it all changes.
James 3:13-18 Who is wise and understanding among you? By his good conduct let him show his works in the meekness of wisdom. 14 But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the truth. 15 This is not the wisdom that comes down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, demonic. 16 For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice. 17 But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere. 18 And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.
If we seek wisdom from God, how we approach conflict changes. Without Jesus, it’s easier to be influenced by bitter jealousy and selfish goals and those attitudes are going to lead us right into conflict. Worse, James says when we seek our own ambitions in a selfish way, our actions progress from being worldly thinking to something that’s even demonic. Just like he shares in James 2 that the words we speak have the power to unleash hell on Earth, how we work to achieve our goals can be the work of hell just as easily. He isn’t kidding around when he tells us to seek godly wisdom as we live out our lives here. Godly wisdom, he tells us, is pure, can lead to peace and giving mercy to others. When our goals line up with what God would want us to do and our actions to achieve them follow God’s instructions for us through scripture, we generate peace around us and demonstrate righteousness.
Producing righteousness means that our pursuit of godly wisdom creates signs of what is good, just and right for others to see. In that way, we can begin to show our saving faith in Jesus is real and transforming us in the hope others would desire this in their lives as well.
It’s up to us as believers to pursue biblical knowledge which is our main source of godly wisdom. If we’re unsure on our own of what God would have us do, we should seek advice from other Christians that we know and trust approach their faith the same way.
Going back to the Old Testament, Proverbs reminds us that as real as the harm that can be done by pursuing our own goals without God, pursuing wisdom leads to results that are more valuable to gems and precious metals.
Proverbs 3:13-15
Blessed are those who find wisdom,
those who gain understanding,
14 for she is more profitable than silver
and yields better returns than gold.
15 She is more precious than rubies;
nothing you desire can compare with her.
Living a life our own way can produce evil, living a life following God’s direction can lead to peace in the chaos around us.
If you’ve been surrounded by drama, gossip and the stress from a chaotic breakup that follows you to the rodeo grounds, who wouldn’t want to roll into a performance and just know peace; to be able to get your horse ready or set your bronc saddle without knowing there was going to be some kind of conflict before the show was over?
Why wouldn’t we want to have that peace around us all the time?
by admin | Aug 18, 2025 | James
By Scott HIlgendorff / Cowboys of the Cross
Ever seen a rodeo cowboy lose it on a judge for a bad call or a producer he thinks has cheated him?
It can get pretty ugly, lead to fines and bans from an association and can even end in throwing fists, a jail cell and assault charges.
Ugly words escalate a situation quickly and hurt all the people around us including ourselves.
James stresses for us the power of our words, referring to our tongues as the source and, even though the illustration is almost 2,000 years old, uses illustrations we can understand from today—especially horse people.
Using the examples of bits and the rudders of ships, he explains how something so small is capable of steering a horse or an entire boat. We know from Jesus and Paul in other parts of the New Testament of the importance of speaking in kindness and using our voices to share the gospel with others, but James focuses on the dangerous power of our tongues.
James 3:6 The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole body, sets the whole course of one’s life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell.
We can ruin our entire lives with the words we speak and a single angry outburst. What we say to our boss in a heated moment can mean the end of a job, missed truck and house payments and family leaving us because we can no longer support them; all because we couldn’t control our tongue.
Worse is the harm we can do to others as James describes the tongue as a fire from hell. He makes it clear our tongues are evil and that while we have been able to tame the animal kingdom around us, no one has ever been able to tame the tongue. James 3:1-12 describe all of these concerns about the words we speak.
In a moment of control, we can give praise to God for something good in our lives but then completely ignore God’s importance in our life by using our words to cut down someone else, forgetting we are all made in God’s image.
Our words, according to James, has the power to do as much harm to the people around us the way a single spark can set an entire forest on fire and corrupts what is good in us. One piece of gossip spread to another on the rodeo grounds or at the horse sale can spread, exaggerate and completely destroy a person’s life.
Yes, when we have a saving faith in Jesus, God still sees us as good and righteous despite all of this, but James is telling us how important our words are and the need to be in total control of the words we speak. They either do good all the time or all the good our words can achieve are meaningless if we also speak harmful words.
We need to hold our tongue, think before we speak, and remain silent if our words could do harm.
And to the beginning of the chapter, those of us who teach or preach are warned to be the most careful about what we say because we are going to be judged more severely by God. I don’t know what the looks like but I personally take pressure for that every time I try to teach God’s word at cowboy church or on social media.
James 3:1-12 Not many of you should become teachers, my fellow believers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly. 2 We all stumble in many ways. Anyone who is never at fault in what they say is perfect, able to keep their whole body in check.
3 When we put bits into the mouths of horses to make them obey us, we can turn the whole animal. 4 Or take ships as an example. Although they are so large and are driven by strong winds, they are steered by a very small rudder wherever the pilot wants to go. 5 Likewise, the tongue is a small part of the body, but it makes great boasts. Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark. 6 The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole body, sets the whole course of one’s life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell.
7 All kinds of animals, birds, reptiles and sea creatures are being tamed and have been tamed by mankind, 8 but no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison.
9 With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse human beings, who have been made in God’s likeness. 10 Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this should not be. 11 Can both fresh water and salt water flow from the same spring? 12 My brothers and sisters, can a fig tree bear olives, or a grapevine bear figs? Neither can a salt spring produce fresh water.
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