When I was in high school one of my favorite things to do was getting together at a friend’s house and playing poker. We would play on Saturdays or Sundays, usually paired with a football game or other sporting event on TV. It was a whole ordeal. We would start in the early afternoon and play until midnight, and if my mom was feeling generous sometimes into the early morning.
SKIN IN THE GAME
We mostly played for the fun of it, to get us all together, tell stories, talk crap, and laugh hysterically all night. But we had some skin in the game too. We started out in middle school betting the hottest commodity… pencils. I know, right?!
In high school we moved onto bigger and better bets as we started playing with actual money. Depending on the night the buy-in was $5 to $20, which seemed like my entire bank account at that time and sometimes still does. Because of that it was a big risk to bet on myself. I had faith in my abilities which afforded me the confidence to gamble.
Sometimes I would catch a bad break and lose big right away, buy back in and lose again later on in the night. There were also other times where I would outlast all of my friends and win it all. There was excitement in the reward, but for the most part the excitement was in the risk.
LIFE IS A GAMBLE
Life is like these games of poker. Yes I will gladly sing along to the Kenny Rogers song, The Gambler, but that isn’t exactly what I’m referring to. It’s a classic though!
I’m talking about when you place a bet in life, push your chips all in, take a risk, lose the hand, and fail. What you worked for seems to just disappear as the chips get raked in by somebody else. Adversity has made an appearance and now you have to make a choice. You can start over and buy back in, or hedge your bets and walk away.
WHAT IS A LEAP OF FAITH
The easier thing to do for me was to walk away, but usually the easiest thing to do is the wrong thing to do. Starting over after adversity always feels like a gamble. A huge gamble. It’s hard to look at the failure that just happened and muster up the courage to start over, rebuild the stacks of chips you once had, and continue to place bets. Taking a risk after failure is uncomfortable to say the least.
We have to realize that we aren’t just betting on ourselves, we’re betting on God. If we continue to have faith in the abilities that God has blessed us with then it doesn’t seem like much of a gamble. If we continue to have faith in God’s abilities it isn’t a gamble at all!
ACTS OF FAITH
Whenever we gather the courage to begin betting on ourselves again we can trust that we’ve already won. Faith isn’t built by avoiding the gamble, it’s built by trusting the hand that God has dealt you and going all in.
“I found an ace that I could keep.” – Kenny Rogers
