From The Desk of a Geek: Cowboy

From The Desk of a Geek 

Cowboy Up

When I (on rare occasions) ride horses with my wife, I always imagine I'm a US Marshall like Wyatt Earp, or a gunslinging gambler like Doc Holiday.

I love to watch Western themed movies. It doesn't matter if it's the Lone Ranger of the 1950's, The Good, The Bad, The Ugly with a young Clint Eastwood, or the movie I watched tonight...

The Magnificent 7, a remake of a 1960's classic. 

The story goes like this..

Looking to mine for gold, greedy industrialist Bartholomew Bogue seizes control of the Old West town of Rose Creek. With their lives in jeopardy, Emma Cullen and other desperate residents turn to bounty hunter Sam Chisolm for help. Chisolm recruits an eclectic group of gunslingers to take on Bogue and his ruthless henchmen. With a deadly showdown on the horizon, the seven mercenaries soon find themselves fighting for more than just money once the bullets start to fly.

In old western movies, when trouble came and you had to get away from the bad guys, the stagecoach driver was the one that kept the wagon moving so not to give the bad guys an easier way to get control of the wagon. But there was another guy up front that carried a shotgun and would use it to protect the driver and passengers from the would-be attackers. This is where we get the famous phrase, “riding shotgun".

1 Corinthians 16:13 reminds us..

"Be on your guard, stand firm in the faith, be courageous, be strong".

From this Scripture, one could say that the stagecoach driver is God, and He is calling us to ride shotgun. The verse tells us to “be on our guard” and spot the dangers that could destroy us and our precious cargo (which in most cases, would be our family). We are called to guard our families from the devil and his evil schemes! How do we do this? We are to pray, love, and protect our spouse and our kids.

We are told to be courageous, to be strong, and stand firm when the enemy attacks. We are to build our family up through providing words of encouragement and acts of kindness so that when temptation rears its ugly head, they aren’t lacking these things and fall to temptation. We need to fill our kids’ minds with the truth of Scripture so that they can stand firm in the face of an attack. We need to take advantage of every opportunity to show them how to fight spiritual battles with the supernatural weapons of God.

Satan would love nothing more than to destroy us and our families. This is why we as husbands and wives and fathers and mothers need to ride shotgun—always on guard, standing firm in our faith and being courageous!

At the end of the movie 

The Magnificent 7, Ms. Emma makes a great and truthful quote.... she says

"What ever they were in life, here, at the end, each man stood with courage and honor. They fought for the ones who couldn't fight for themselves, and they died for them, too. All to win something that didn't belong to them. It was - magnificent."

What ways are you riding shotgun for your family? 

What areas do you need to be more on guard in order to protect yourself and your loved ones?

Lonnie..