When playing poker, it is best to maintain your opponents guessing until it is time to sell your cards. Poker players often enjoy misdirecting the other players regarding strength with their hand with all the intent of manipulating their decisions. Poker is unquestionably a well known game because nobody really knows who holds the best cards before very end when everyone's hand is revealed. When you are looking for betting on how better to please God and ourselves, life's choices can seem to be simular to playing poker.
Traditional Christians are betting that believing in Jesus for their Lord and Savior is a lot like holding the supreme wild card that trumps all of the others. For Muslims, believing within the five pillars of Islam might be analogous to holding the 5 best cards within the deck. The Hindus' belief in reincarnation can be seen as owning an unlimited level of poker hands and funds to learn 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 all.
It is easy to view in using this poker analogy that not everyone is playing by the same rules and may even believe anyone not following their rules isn't messing around with a complete deck. But then this good question arises, 'Are we playing poker and competing with the other person or, shall we be held playing poker with/against God'? That may seem like a bizarre and also inappropriate question nevertheless the answer is worth exploring.
Most religions agree that God is all-powerful and all-knowing. Playing poker with God clearly takes away any bluffing strategies. Realizing God can stack those times in different order He likes it doesn't matter how the cards are shuffled and cut means the result is already assured could the overall game begins. It really all is dependant on what we believe God's goal was in creating us inside first place.
Many Christians feel God's fascination with us is conditional and our salvation is merely achieved by deciding on the winning wildcard (salvation through Jesus) even a moment before we die. Others still believe we earn our salvation through our choices and deeds done on God's behalf. The Bible lets us know that God is unwilling for just about any repentant soul to perish, so a spot their faith in God's desire to stack those times of life in our favor to ensure all His children are eventually saved despite having provided us free will. So, much like with poker, there are many of bets up for grabs of life but no person knows a better solution until all the cards are revealed so we cash in our chips. But think on this'
If God truly is love, is all-knowing and all-powerful, and is also the most wonderful parent we could ever imagine, will we really think you'll find any cards He is holding that He won't present to us? Do we think He would create even one soul will not eventually be saved at the time of these choosing as opposed to irreversibly condemned? Do we presume God cannot or unwilling in order to save all His children but deciding we ought to have free will? If so, we have formulated the wrong God within our own less-than-perfect image as opposed to doing all we can to compare well and 'Be ye therefore perfect' as Jesus taught and showed us.
The only sure bet we have in your life is that God has stacked the deck in our favor. We usually stay losers so long as we'd like, for everyone has free will, but our separation from Him isn't will in our loving Father. The approach to actually win is to try out by His rules of unconditional love following the Golden Rule as bola well as the perfect role model consideration to us from the life of Jesus. Once perform, then life's not only a game of ups-and-downs, but alternatively a continuous experience of love and joy in God's abundant universe.
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