You don’t give up being a cowboy to become a Christian

You don’t give up being a cowboy to become a Christian

by | Sep 28, 2026 | Behind the Bucking Chutes

By Scott Hilgendorff / Cowboys of the Cross

When you become a Christian, you don’t give up being a cowboy; you become something more as a Christian cowboy.

You don’t give your strength as a man to become a Christian but the need to let go of pride and humble ourselves can be one of the biggest stumbling blocks to someone having a saving faith in Jesus.

Pride and the need to make ourselves humble rub against cowboy thinking when we hear God’s plan for salvation and the need to make Jesus the Lord of our lives.

Men work life out for themselves. Even if we know it, we don’t want to accept or admit when we need help. We think it makes us look weak, we think it means we can’t take care of ourselves or provide for our families. We can end up missing out on God’s entire plan for salvation for us because submitting to Jesus feels like letting go of who we are.

We have this mistaken idea of Christian men being weak because they’re asked to treat others with kindness. We fail to understand just how hard it is and how much strength it takes

We see self-control as weak. Popping someone in the mouth who has offended us is seen as a show of strength, failing to understand the meekness, holding back that show of force, takes real strength.

We misunderstand what the Bible means when we hear people say, “Jesus is love.” We think that means walking around hugging everyone and smiling all the time.

What it really means is the most physically powerful man on Earth loved us so much that he suffered incredible beating and torture to die horrifically as a sacrifice in our place so we could have eternal life. And that we don’t have to do anything to earn it or deserve it.

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.

The faith being spoken about by Paul in this letter to one of the early churches is what it means to have a saving faith in Jesus. We first believe that Jesus was the Son of God, that he did in fact die on the cross to take the punishment meant for our sins and that he was resurrected to Heaven and lives there now. That’s the faith part of a saving faith. Our salvation comes from understanding God is going to punish any and all sin. It’s how He is fair to us all. But how He also loves us, Jesus’s sacrifice on the cross was meant to take God’s full judgment and wrath in our place. By first our faith and then repenting of our sin and asking to be forgiven, we don’t have to do anything else and we receive that forgiveness and the gift of eternal life in Heaven.

You don’t give up being a cowboy. God already made you one. When you become a Christian, a follower of Christ, you become so much more than you already are.

You don’t suddenly stop being a cowboy, but what does change is your desire to understand the Bible and live out the teaching found there, especially the teachings Jesus left behind for us.

God will use every strength and skill He gave you from knowing how to manage a herd of cattle to working on a car to serve Him and help others while living out what is still your normal day-to-day life. Some of us will gradually go on to bigger Christ-centered work through churches and ministries but those become welcome changes.

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.

We should be excited that God already has plans for us and the strength He has given us.

God is jealous for us, that’s a great thing

God is jealous for us, that’s a great thing

by | 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.