When playing poker, it's best to maintain your opponents guessing until you're ready to start your cards. Poker players often enjoy misdirecting the other players for the strength of their hand with all the intent of manipulating their decisions. Poker is such a favorite game because no person really knows who holds the best cards prior to the very end when everyone's hand is revealed. When you are looking at betting how best to please God and ourselves, life's choices can seem to be very much like playing poker.
Traditional Christians are betting that believing in Jesus as their Lord and Savior is like holding the best wild card that trumps every one of the others. For Muslims, believing inside five pillars of Islam could be analogous to holding 5 best cards inside the deck. The Hindus' belief in reincarnation might be seen as having an unlimited quantity of poker hands and cash to experience until we succeed. Buddhists might begin to see the highest goal as every player at the table holding cards that end up with a balanced draw for everyone.
It is not hard to determine in utilizing this poker analogy that does not many people are playing from the same rules and may also believe anyone not following their rules isn't messing around with the full deck. But then this good question arises, 'Are we playing poker and competing with each other or, shall we be held playing poker with/against God'? That may seem like a bizarre and in many cases inappropriate question though the fact is worth exploring.
Most religions agree that God is all-powerful and all-knowing. Playing poker with God clearly eliminates any bluffing strategies. Realizing God can stack those times in different order He likes regardless of how the cards are shuffled and cut means the results is assured could the action begins. It really all depends upon what we should believe God's goal what food was in creating us in the first place.
Many Christians feel God's love for us is conditional and our salvation is achieved by picking out the winning wildcard (salvation through Jesus) a good moment before we die. Others still believe that we earn our salvation through our choices and deeds done on God's behalf. The Bible tells us that God is unwilling for virtually any repentant soul to perish, so an area their faith in God's need to stack the deck of life in your favor in order that all His children are eventually saved despite having given us free will. So, the same as with poker, there are tons of bets up for grabs of life but no-one knows the solution until all of the cards are revealed and now we cash within our chips. But think on this'
If God truly is love, is all-knowing and all-powerful, which is the most wonderful parent we might ever imagine, can we really think you can find any cards He is holding that He won't share with us? Do we feel He would create even one soul that won't eventually be saved at the time of their choosing in lieu of irreversibly condemned? Do we believe God is unable or unwilling to save lots of all His children and yet deciding we have more info to have free will? If so, then we are coming up with an incorrect God in our own less-than-perfect image as an alternative to doing all we can to measure up and 'Be ye therefore perfect' as Jesus taught and showed us.
The only sure bet we've got in daily life is the fact that God has stacked when inside our favor. We usually stay losers for as long as you want, for you have free will, but our separation from Him isn't the will of our own loving Father. The way to actually win is to try out by His rules of unconditional love following the Golden Rule as well as the perfect role model consideration to us through the life of Jesus. Once we all do, then life's not a game of ups-and-downs, but instead a continuous example of love and joy in God's abundant universe.
As always, I welcome your queries and comments at [email protected].