Auctioneers, book keepers, back pen workers, truck drivers. Those are just a few of the people needed to get the cattle onto the sales arena floor and back out the door in someone's stock trailer for a sales barn to be successful.
Judges, secretaries, back pen workers and truck drivers. Those are just a few of the people needed to get the stock loaded in the chutes and the rodeo off the ground for a successful event to be held.
To larger or smaller degrees, each person already has specialized skills or has to be trained to fill each roll but together, they all play a part in the event being able to come together.
We may not see how it all fits together, but for Christians, we all have a role to play in what we know as The Great Commission, where Jesus commanded us to tell others about him and to teach those who choose to believe and follow him.
1 Corinthians 12:12-20 — "For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. 13 For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body — Jews or Greeks, slaves or free — and all were made to drink of one Spirit."
14 For the body does not consist of one member but of many. 15 If the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. 16 And if the ear should say, ...18 But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. 19 If all were a single member, where would the body be? 20 As it is, there are many parts, yet one body.
This is just one of several sets of verses that show how we have different strengths and gifts. Those gifts together still make up the body of Christ, who we all are as believers, and how we all work together for God's purpose.
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."
With a saving faith in Jesus through his death on the cross for us, we are then given work to do that God has prepared for us. We know the biggest part of that is to tell others about Jesus while also helping other believers to grow in our faith. Each of us has been given different strengths that God will then use as we go into the world to serve and minister to others in the places God places us.
Together, all our strengths and gifts work to accomplish the 'good works' that God has prepared for us to do as Paul mentions in Ephesians. Just like it takes a team to run a successful day at the sales barn, God uses us all together for His purpose.
Cowboys of the Cross is a rodeo/bull riding ministry that leads cowboy church services at events and maintains an online presence to share the gospel and make disciples among the ranch and rodeo community. They can be found at CowboysOfTheCross.com
