Playing the hand you were dealt

 

I’m not a card shark by anyone’s definition.  When I was growing up, I had very little use for setting around a table and lifting only a card when I could be outside playing basketball or some other physical activity.  But after seeing Pastor Warren’s spot on Oprah, I wanted take up the game of poker.  I wanted to try and figure out my life based on the hand I was dealt. 

When we sit around the card table of life, we have the most trustworthy dealer available.  Our God serves as the dealer, the officiator of our lives.  He has the last word, literally, in how the game is played and what cards are in the deck.  As He deals the cards, we begin to build our winning hand, our prosperous life of leisure and comfort so that we are assured a winning hand, and ultimately, a victorious game.    According to the rules of the game, we can ask for new cards, hoping that this will improve our hand.  We will often break the rules of the game and grab a card from under the table and place it in our hand.  This card was never part of the original deck, and did not come from our dealer, our awesome God.  But we feel that we needed the card to have a winning hand, therefore it will be ok to take from under the table. 

 

It’s when we take the card from under the table and place it in our hand that we have now changed the composition of the deck.  God did not deal us this card.  It did not come from His deck.  We have now changed the game, and the deck being used by everyone at the table.  The ripple effects can be felt around the table because now the other players have no knowledge of your transgression.  The remaining players are still in the game, but now the deck has been changed. 

God knows that you have changed what He originally dealt. God knows that you have changed the rules for everyone at the table because now the ripple effects from your breaking of the rules can be felt.  God knows, because He has already seen what you would do given the opportunity to build a “winning hand,” but in His eyes it’s a “sinning hand.”  

In life, we all have a winning hand to begin with.  We all have this opportunity to trust the dealer to deal the cards in a manner that allows us to build this winning hand.  But our greed takes over, our desire to always be comfortable, to always have more, to always be winning, and we destroy the hand we were dealt.  

The trick to the game is in trusting the dealer, our God, to give us the winning hand.  If we choose do this, He will provide us with a game winning strategy, but the key is trusting, and playing the hand we were dealt.  “For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.  Then when you call upon me and come and pray to me, I will hear you.  When you search for me, you will find me; if you seek me with all your heart, I will let you find me, says the Lord.” Jeremiah 29:11-13(NRSV) There are a couple of things we have to note about this passage.  When God says He has a plan, it’s His plan, not ours to manipulate.  When God says His plan is “to give you a future with hope,” He means it.  We have to avoid the temptation to change the game (His plan) by sliding a card from under the table, because when we do this, we change the game for everyone playing.  This is where our free will can deceive us.  We want to trust ourselves to make these game altering decisions, allowing us to get ahead in life, allowing us to have more of life, and allowing us to have a better hand than the player next to us. 

This is also when the Dealer steps in and calls attention to the warped deck.  The hands are now different for everyone because we have chosen to change the rules by introducing our own card, or our own plan for our own lives, and refusing to play the hand God has dealt.  Do me a favor and take a good look at your poker hand.  God may have dealt you cards that you can’t seem to make a winning hand from.  Refuse the temptation to make it a sinning hand and simply play the cards you were dealt.  God will make sure we all win in the end, but we have to play fair in order to stay in the game. 

“in the world, not of the world”

Packing for the trip…

Ever stop to think what it would be like to simply leave the house with nothing, no wallet, no keys and no real specific tasks in mind?  If you are like me, you try to leave the house only when you feel you have everything you need in case of nothing short of a nuclear disaster, including the food and water supply to sustain an army.  I have begun to downsize, now that I’m biking all the time. 

Jesus wanted His “twelve” to head out into the world with nothing. No wallet, no keys, no extra clothes, no blankets in case of that surprise blizzard.  I can’t fathom how these guys felt hearing these instructions.  “These twelve Jesus sent out and commanded them saying:  ‘Do not go into the way of the Gentiles, and do not enter the city of the Samaritans.  But go rather to the lost sheep of Israel.  And as you go preach, saying, the kingdom of heaven is at hand.  Heal the sick, cleanse the leper, raise the dead, cast out demons. Freely you have received, freely give.  Provide neither gold, nor silver, nor copper in  your money belts, nor bag for your journey, nor two tunics, nor sandals, nor staffs; for a worker is worthy of his food.’”   Matthew 10:5-10(NKJV) 

 Here’s my question to you.  Would you be willing to simply leave on a trip, no luggage, no spending money, no extra clothing, and for you women, no extra pairs of shoes?  I can hear the gasping now.  “You have got to be kidding me.”  We would never leave on a trip without some forethought.  We would want to plan out our routes, pack a little of everything just to be prepared and call ahead for reservations.  I’m sure we would never simply trust that these things would be taken care of for us.  But that’s what Jesus wanted from His troops.  He was sending them out into a harsh, unwelcoming environment and was telling them to trust God.  Maybe it was a bit easier to do this back in Jesus’ day, but in today’s world, it would be considered nothing short of lunacy. 

Trusting God can help you feel as if you are prepared for the worst.  Having a complete and all- encompassing trust in Him can create the comfort and contentment we need in order to survive in a very uncomfortable world.  Think of it this way, if you were to turn everything around and not have any faith that God was in control, would you be able to survive the next trip solo? 

God is all about God’s great design, His plan for our lives.  He talks of these “plans” in the Book of Jeremiah.  When we simply refuse to trust in our God that He has a grand design, and we try to map out our own route to a happy and comfortable existence, we tend to get lost and fall short of our own expectations.  God is not all about making sure we are comfortable, or making sure we have exactly what we want, or think we need.  God is all about God’s great design, His plan for our lives.  We mess things up when we try to plan ahead and be ready for anything the world can throw at us.  We simply refuse to trust, because the world is not very trusting, or very dependable.  Because of this, we can’t bring ourselves to trusting and believing something we have never seen. 

God’s promises are clearly printed in black and white between the covers of the Bible.  We just need to make sure we are “packing” for these promises, and not some other destination that we simply don’t have the things we need to pack.

 “in the world, not of the world”