Study Desk

To all the cowboys riding for the Lord around Colossae, we pray your grass is green, your cattle are fat, and that all the great things of God surround you.

We've heard about your faith and love for all of God's herd.

But y'all aren't keeping the good news secret—and you shouldn't! It's changing lives and hearts all across the world every single day. It did the same for y'all when you first heard about God's amazing grace.

Y'all heard the message from the cowboy, Epaphras, who went out for Christ in search of strays. He found y'all and you listened.

This is the reason we always pray for y'all. We never stop praying for y'all. We ask that God fill your hearts with knowledge, your life with wisdom, and your heads with understanding.

You will also please the Lord by being thankful for being able to ride for his outfit, to share in the inheritance of his glorious kingdom that is a ranch of a thousand hills. You are his cowboys. You are his beloved children.

For he has rescued us from a life of worthlessness and deemed us worthy and honorable. He did this through his Son.

It is through him we have found purpose for life and forgiveness for sin.

This truth had been kept hidden since the beginning, but now it has been revealed to cowboys and cowgirls who ride for the brand.

No longer are God's riches reserved for those who are well-papered. These wonderful riches are now available to those who are grade (unregistered, thought worthless, without pedigree). Here is the secret in black and white, Christ lives in you. And you get to share in his glory.

I want y'all to know how hard I'm riding for y'all and the others in Laodicea. This also includes all the cowboys who I have yet to meet personally.

My goal for them is to be a complete crew, being able to accomplish any task God sets before them. This can only be done by loving one another. Then they can have complete confidence in understanding God's mysterious plan. This plan isn't a thing, it's a person. That person is Jesus Christ.

Don't just ride for Jesus, you've got to learn to ride in him. Turn your toes out and take a firm seat of faith in him. Then you will be anchored in place when life starts to pitch and buck.

You rode to the grave with him in baptism and you'll ride with him in the new life you have when he brought you out of the grave just as God did for him.

Through the cross, your debts were paid in full—once and for all time. No longer are you condemned in your actions, but now you are consecrated by his.

Don't let anyone judge you for not following their religious rules or ceremonies.

Don't listen to the false promises of those who insist on fake humility or the worship of angels. Just because someone says they've had a vision of these things doesn't make it the truth. They are pointing at themselves for salvation, not to Jesus.

They don't ride for the Lord, but for themselves. They ride for their own brand and their own agenda. Jesus is the ramrod of our crew and he holds it together with his own perfection. This is where growth and maturity come from. It doesn't come from following man-made rules.

These rules are just human ways of trying to do what can only be done by riding for Christ.

Ride off from all the things you used to ride for—sexual nastiness, corruption and desecration, lustful thoughts, and greed, which makes money and possessions your god.