The Gambler

April 10

The art of being wise is knowing what to overlook. William James

There's an old country song, which says in part, "...You've got to know when to hold 'em, Know when to fold 'em, Know when to walk away, Know when to run. You never count your money when you're sittin' at the table; there'll be time enough for countin' when the dealin's done. Every gambler knows that the secret to survivin' is knowin' what to throw away and knowin' what to keep, cause every hand's a winner and every hand's a loser..." “The Gambler” by Don Schlitz.

There's a lot of wisdom in these few words. In one aspect, life is like a card game that we can resolve to play with skill. The first and foremost step to take is to know the value of our cards so we know what to do with them. If we don't understand that, we can't play skillfully. If we are to truly grasp an appreciation of the ‘Game of Life,’ we must have the “mind of Christ,” I Corinthians 2:16, for as the “Author and Finisher of life,” Hebrews 12:2, He is the only one who fully understands it. The Bible is our users' guide to engaging life successfully.

Every hand we have is potentially a winning one or a losing one—depending on how skillfully we project our 'self' to our opponent. Our adversary is the ancient enemy of our God and his intended purpose is to foil us at every move of the game. If he can, he will rob us of our gifts from God and he will gladly destroy us in the process (John 10:10).

It is imperative that we assess our situation and know what to overlook and what to focus on...we have to evaluate our hand and decide how to play each card. We have to play like winners because we ARE DETERMINED TO WIN! The stakes are too high for us to allow the enemy of our soul to undermine our effort to defeat him!

We must be “wise as a serpent and harmless as a dove,” Matthew 10:16; we must project ourselves as "more than conquerors," Romans 8:37, when we are confronted by the evil one and his minions. We will not gamble away our victory if we play our hand in the POWER OF WHO JESUS' WORD SAYS WE ARE!