Study Desk

God accepted Jesus's death on the cross as the perfect sacrifice for every cowboy's sin. The only way to be made right with God is to believe Jesus died for your sins. God showed he was being fair when he withheld the punishment for those in the past who had sinned.

If God only did this for those who obeyed the Code, the faith would be useless.

The promise of God is a free gift we get for having faith. We know this gift is guaranteed through faith, regardless of whether we follow the code of Moses or not. It's about having faith, not following rules. Abraham had this kind of faith and so can we. That's why he is the sire of God's people.

But this isn't just reserved for Abraham and his kin.

It's also for every cowboy who has bent the knee and knows God raised Jesus from the dead.

We ride in grace and we live to ride for Him.

When we were hung up in the stirrup of sin, Christ came at just the right time and saved us by dying for our sins.

It's one thing for someone to die for a good person or an innocent child,

but God sent his son to die for us and we were no good at all.

Don't let any part of you be used for evil purposes. Give yourself over to God like you know you should. Surrender yourself to him.

Don't you know that when ya hire onto an outfit, ya gotta do things the way they do 'em—whether ya hire onto sin's outfit, which leads to death, or ya sign on to ride for the Lord, which leads to life.

Thank God that even though ya used to ride for sin's outfit, ya took ahold of the things you've been taught.

Ya don't work for sin no more. Now you're one of the Lord's hands.

I'm using cowboy lingo because I don't want you to say fancy words tripped you up. At one point, we were all hands in sin's outfit. But now, we ride for the Lord and are slaves of his for his good purposes.

When you rode for sin, it didn't matter how things were done on God's outfit.

But since you don't ride for sin's outfit no more and now you ride for God, the good you get puts you on a trail to bein' more like Jesus and the trail ends with livin' forever in heaven.

Workin' for sin's outfit pays ya in death, but God offers ya eternal life through Jesus.

But we have died with Christ and are no longer bound by the Code that shows our sinfulness. Now we can ride for God, not in sin, but in the new life with Jesus.

The problem is that I don't know why I do the things I do. I don't do what I know I should and I tie hard and fast to things I know aren't good for me.

There is no black cloud of judgement for those who ride with Christ Jesus.