by admin | May 15, 2024 | Behind the Bucking Chutes
By Scott Hilgendorff / Cowboys of the Cross
Fly high cowboy, your fees are paid.
Using some form of that phrase when someone in the rodeo cowboy crowd has died is fairly common.
The problem is, most people don’t really understand what they’re saying and it creates the false impression that we call go to Heaven when we die. I see it used by people I thought knew differently but they continually place a cowboy in Heaven who almost certainly didn’t enter that rodeo.
How can you say that? How can you know for sure? That’s judgmental.
Well, the reason I can say it with almost certainty is because I’d had an open and frank conversation with that person in question and he made it clear to me he didn’t believe in Jesus and wasn’t interested in it. He was someone I got along with and was explaining why he didn’t come to cowboy church at the rodeos we were often at together because he didn’t want me thinking it was personal. He made a lot of sinful or what I would consider “dumb” choices at best, but he was a nice guy who was well-loved by all those he partied with every weekend.
Here’s the kicker: most of the time when we share a social media post about a cowboy riding a rank one in Heaven or getting his wings (we don’t become angels), we don’t actually even know what the person believed before they died and we never ask. Most of us pray. Most of us believe in God, but that doesn’t get us to Heaven. James reminds us that even the demons believe in God. A lot of us don’t really know ourselves how to be certain we’re going to Heaven, never mind how to tell someone else.
And sure, one never knows what happens privately between a person and God but we’re also told in scripture that when someone has a genuine, saving faith in Jesus, there will be fruit. Fruit are changes in a person’s life that show Christ and the Holy Spirit in them is moving them away from sin and into a life that’s more holy. By holy, we mean more Christ-like by how we see Jesus in the Bible
John 15:8 By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples.
That made it that much harder personally when he died. It’s important to understand God can draw someone to Him at any time and there’s no telling what happened in his last moments, but the reality is, not only did he not believe, but he openly rejected Christianity.
So how can so many people put him in Heaven?
I think when we love someone, it’s hard to think of them suffering for eternity in Hell. I think we also just don’t think seriously enough about how real both places are. It’s also largely because we don’t really understand what is called the gospel—how through Jesus, a person is saved from God’s wrath against sin and made right before God to be given an eternity in Heaven.
We can’t ‘love them’ into Heaven. Only the love of Jesus gets them there through their faith in his birth, death and resurrection and belief that he took the punishment meant for our sins so that by repenting of those sins and asking to be forgiven, we can be given eternal life in Heaven.
This is where the expression in rodeo that “he paid your fees” comes from. It’s taken from a genuine understanding of the gospel that tells us that Jesus paid the price meant for our sins.
Being liked and loved by others, being popular, being good by how we might measure goodness; none of these ideas gets us into Heaven. Even the kindest most generous person is separated from God by just the smallest sin and none of us are able to get through life without some kind of sin like a moment of anger or a lustful thought.
Ephesians 2:8-9 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.
Grace and mercy are what God has given us through Jesus’s death on the cross. We deserve God’s wrath for our sin, any sin, but we’re given a way through a saving faith in Jesus, to be made right with God. The ‘works’ being referred to is what makes it clear that just being a good person doesn’t earn a place in Heaven. Works are the good actions we do and way of living we might lead. Through an understanding that any sin deserves punishment and no amount of good can earn us Heaven, every single person has the same chance to have Jesus pay his fees.
by admin | Jul 6, 2023 | Behind the Bucking Chutes
By Scott Hilgendorff / Cowboys of the Cross
Whether you run a 40 or 400 head cattle operation, chances are you’re looking for ways to improve the efficiency of the operation from cutting costs to better use of supplements in feed.
A horse training could be working to build a reputation to be the person a buyer goes to for a good roping horse.
That roper in turn puts time and effort to improve his skills with a lasso and to continue training his horse so together, they stand a better chance of winning the next rodeo.
There’s pressure to be better husbands and wives. There’s pressure to be better parents. There’s pressure to be better children. Pressure can come out of any number of difficult situations that put obstacles in the way of what we just want to be our happy lives. We put it on ourselves. or it comes from outside our control.
It can also feel like there’s pressure to be better Christians.
As we study our Bibles, learn from church sermons and are discipled by other believers, it can seem overwhelming to see how Jesus lived, how he taught us to live our lives and to think we’re supposed to be like him.
Philippians 1:6 being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.
With Christ in us, there’s no pressure to change. The Holy Spirit is doing the work in us. That’s called sanctification, and is the process of becoming more like Jesus that begins when we experience salvation.
That’s where grace comes in. The first time we encounter it is in our salvation experience, when we are saved through Jesus’s death on the cross, realizing he took the punishment meant for our own sins. We then continue to experience grace each time we feel like we don’t measure up to the standards Jesus set for us.
Romans 3:23-24 Fall have sinned and fall short of the glory of God and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.
Being justified means that through our salvation, we may not be perfect but God no longer sees our sin. That’s the grace God gives us—that we are no longer seen as sinners. That’s when sanctification begins.
As Paul says in Philippians, a good work was begun in us. That work is sanctification, the process of becoming more like Jesus. But he is clear that process won’t be complete until ‘the day of Christ Jesus.’ We understand that to mean that we won’t be perfect until we pass on to Heaven.
When we understand these things, the grace we’ve been given should be a motivator to want to be more like Jesus. Knowing there is no expectation we will ever be perfect in this life but that God is working in us to change us, we don’t need to feel any pressure to change. It will happen as God wants it to happen.
by admin | Oct 12, 2022 | Behind the Bucking Chutes
By Scott Hilgendorff / Cowboys of the Cross
If you’ve never been involved in the industries before, then you decide to ‘get into’ horses or ‘get into’ rodeo, it changes you.
You suddenly start wearing different clothes, you learn new terms and expressions that go with what you’re learning about the horse, I mean, not everyone knows what withers are or what a honda is on a rope. The people you spend time with change as you surround yourself with others who share your interest that you want to learn from or ride or rodeo with.
Friends and family will notice the changes when horses or rodeo become important to you and begin making it more a part of your every day life.
When we become Christians, it’s the same thing, only more.
It isn’t an interest we’re engaged in, it’s a complete transformation. Once we have a saving faith in Jesus, God no longer sees us for our sins that He must judge. Instead, He sees us through the sacrifice Jesus made, as perfect, extended grace for the mistakes He knows we will continue to make.
Ephesians 4:22-24 To put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.
There’s lots that can be unpacked in these two verses but we’re going to just focus on what Paul is saying in his letter about being the new self.
God no longer sees the old self that Paul refers to. The old self is corrupt and condemned. The new self is seen as righteous and holy. Really simplified, it means we’re now seen as perfect. This is one of the verses where we come to understand this is how God sees us once we are saved.
Again, it doesn’t mean we are perfect, it means God sees us that way despite mistakes we might continue to make. We start a process of becoming ‘sanctified’ which means being made more like Jesus Christ.
1 Peter 1:2 according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, by the sanctifying work of the Spirit, to obey Jesus Christ and be sprinkled with His blood: May grace and peace be yours in the fullest measure.
We understand that it’s through the Holy Spirit that we begin to change by what’s described as ‘the sanctifying work of the Spirit.”
Our friends and family might start seeing changes in us over night or gradually. For the person who decides to take up horsemanship or team roping, they choose to pursue those interests but as a Christian, the Spirit begins to work out those changes in us. We start to study our Bibles to learn more about how to be more like Jesus and to understand everything God has for us in His word. We connect with other believers we find at work or in rodeo or the sales barn and we find ourselves learning and spending time with them.
by admin | Mar 22, 2022 | Behind the Bucking Chutes
By Scott Hilgendorff / Cowboys of the Cross
It could be one of the hardest instructions from Jesus for a cowboy to accept, when he tells us to turn the other cheek.
I remember being at a rodeo a long time ago as a new Christian and I was just taking in everything that was said around me, especially if it was a bible-based conversation. I don’t remember what the conflict was about but I can still hear the young cowboy’s voice expressing his frustration about having already had to turn the other cheek. “I ain’t got but two,” he said, exasperated that whatever had been done to him, it had gone too far.
Stereotypes sometimes exist for a reason and many of them for rodeo cowboys are there for a reason. It’s typically easier for a cowboy to threaten a pop in the mouth or given one out than it is is to walk away from a fight.
Matthew 5: 38-40 “You have heard the law that says the punishment must match the injury: ‘An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say, do not resist an evil person! If someone slaps you on the right cheek, offer the other cheek also. If you are sued in court and your shirt is taken from you, give your coat, too”
In what’s known as the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus offers a vast amount of teaching and here in Matthew 5, he digs into the Old Testament.
And eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth is a common expression that many people no longer even realize comes from Scripture but it was an Old Testament description for what amounts to a legal system meant to stop situations from escalating into feuds. Basically, if I did something reckless to cause you to lose some of your livestock, I would be responsible for replacing the stock that was lost. If I took someone’s life, I would expect to lose mine.
But Jesus takes it a bit further. He isn’t asking us to let everyone walk all over us but he’s urging us not to seek revenge when someone wrongs us.
Just like when we looked at what it means to go the extra mile for someone, which comes later in this set of verses, Jesus is asking us to do more for people who would least likely expect us to treat them differently, or even better, than they have treated us.
If someone keeps hitting on our girlfriend at the bar, instead of waiting to have it out with him in the parking lot after, we simply leave and go somewhere else. That’s a pretty real example of what Jesus is suggesting.
It just goes against how we typically think we should respond to a situation like that. The Bible teaches different ways of handling conflict and many of them open the door to more easily pointing others to Jesus Christ.
It’s really hard to tell someone the good news after we’ve laid them out in the parking lot in the rodeo grounds after reaching what we felt like was the last straw.
by admin | Mar 10, 2022 | Behind the Bucking Chutes
By Scott Hilgendorff / Cowboys of the Cross
Most would say the opposite of war is peace. Peace in many Biblical contexts is something much different.
As we learn more about our faith in Jesus Christ, it can lead us to pursue ways to avoid causing conflict, to find ways to reconcile with others and it can lead some to a firm belief in pacifism when it comes to war.
War is something that has been on our minds a lot lately as we watch the news unfold in Ukraine and our allied countries, at the writing of this, work to avoid being drawn into a full-blown war with Russia.
It’s a good time to talk about peace, but this is the kind of peace that helps us to not feel worry about escalating conflicts. It is a kind of peace that helps us to be okay when the truck breaks down, cattle prices bottom out and a member of our family has chosen this week to pick a fight over who gets dad’s piece of hunting property in the will.
John 14:27 Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.
John 16:33 I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.
Both verses were part of Jesus’s words to his disciples as he was preparing them for his death on the cross. The disciples still didn’t understand and thought Jesus was meant to take over rule from the Romans.
While the Bible stresses in both the Old and New Testament not to feel worry, in these verses, Jesus is offering us a peace that is more profound than how we understand the word in English. In this context, Jesus is offering us more than just an absence of conflict and strife, but in a way, a kind of blessing for us through a stronger peace that comes from our saving faith in him and our assurance of an eternity in Heaven.
It would be much better as individuals to not to be in conflict with one another over personal disputes or to be feeling stress and worry over personal struggles at a job. It would be better as nations for us not to be at war with one another over our borders. But Jesus is offering us a peace that lets us exist in the middle of these conflicts with a sense of hope for what comes after.
When we understand that through our belief in his life here as the Son of God and his death on the cross and resurrection and that through repentance and asking to be forgiven for our sins, we can be sparred God’s punishment of our sin, then we can feel the peace that Jesus is offering. That peace is knowing a perfect eternity is waiting for us where there isn’t conflict and sin.
Recent Comments