It started with a game of “To Tell the Truth” in the garden, when God first questioned man about sin. A new relational dynamic emerged as man and Maker compared apples to apples.
We’ve been playing games with God ever since.
Even the giants of our faith rolled the dice. In their intimate encounters with the Living God, characters from the Old and New Testaments alike faced their Father head-on in battles of wits, fits, and hits.
Jacob wrestled with a stranger in the dark of night, battling for what he must have believed was his own life. Knowing nothing of his opponent, he took him down until the man cried “Uncle” and dawn arose with a new heavyweight champion – Israel.
Few, if any, of us would be so brazen. Perhaps even Jacob would have backed down had he known the man’s true identity. But most of our games with God don’t play out in a physical confrontation in the backwoods.
They come in the light and the fire of life in our desperate attempts to find an upper hand somewhere.
Take Lot’s wife. The Lord’s messenger came to rescue her family, to send them out ahead of destruction. She seized the moment, running into the hills with her husband and children. But she bet her life on the chance God was bluffing.
He wasn’t.
Israel dared God to deliver them. He double-dared them to just trust. When they couldn’t rise to the occasion, they were forced to take a physical challenge – forty years wandering in the wilderness.
God sent Jonah to raise the values in Nineveh. Jonah thought the price was right for the town’s destruction and refused to go. God, in turn, sent Jonah on a whale of a ride.
It was the only time in history that the ride, not the rider, threw up.
And the first amusement where no one was amused.
The Pharisees took on Christ Himself in a game of twenty questions. More like twenty thousand questions.
Even at the foot of the cross, as the Lord hung by His hands and feet, the Roman guards cast lots for His clothing. I shudder to think of the poor guy who rolled a Yahtzee and took home a new pair of used underwear.
This was outright mockery, sitting at His feet and divvying up His possessions by mere chance. A gamble. A game.
But are we really any better?
There is a haughtiness in our game play. It is an insolent pride that boldly questions the very nature of God and errantly assumes we possess the strength, power, wisdom, or skill to share the court with the Almighty.
We, like Lot’s wife, wonder if God is bluffing. Is He Who He says He is? Even His greatest gifts, we take with a grain of salt. We waver back and forth between simply accepting His graciousness and entertaining the notion, in the backs of our minds, that just possibly, this could be a test. He dares step down from Heaven to answer our hearts, to respond to our earnest prayers, and we cannot accept even that. Because He might not be Who He says He is. Or Who We pray He is. Or Who we believe He is. Or God at all; He could be Satan in disguise.
So we sit down at the table and play a few hands, trying to get Him to slip up and show His cards. Just so we know what He’s playing with here.
The problem is that as much as we want to trust Him, to know that He is Who He is, the world says that’s not how we play.
The world says we are powerless if our life is not in our hands.
The world says we need to know what comes next. We need to plan for what’s coming down the road.
The world says we are foolish as we talk, pray into the silence wondering if anyone hears us.
The world laughs at our inadequacy in not knowing what to ask for, pray for, which door to knock on, which path to seek. The world says we can’t live without our fear, pain, doubt, anger, selfishness, spite, pride, or any of the other million godless compasses that lead our self-guided journey.
These are the tokens we play with – not a top hat or a Scottie dog, an iron or a shoe, but the godless vegetables of the anti-Spirit. These are the pieces we move around the board. Rather, that move us.
Then we wonder why there’s little joy in that $200 for passing Go.
That $200 used to make us happy. It used to provide security, an upper hand, a place and a prominence we thought unmatchable. It was our ticket to keep playing. But as the game wears on, the odds fall out of our favor. Assets slip through our fingertips as other players fill the board. All the good treasures are taken and somewhere down the line, we’ll owe a luxury tax for living the high life too long.
Our desolation comes quickly; our defeat swift and certain. With a deep sigh, we pass the dice to God again for no other reason than respect for the game. The rules say we take turns; our turn is up, and it is God’s now.
He rolls…just the right number to land on our one lonely square, to bide us time and continue the game.
Snake eyes.
He rolls again. Once more, He dances around the final blow, hopping and skipping His way through the board like an expert.
Our turn. Snake eyes. We’re dangling by a thread here, running low on everything that used to sustain us, watching our tokens of godlessness dance around the board.
We pray God takes the final roll and ends it now. We pray not for the miracle that might save us; we’ve too long ago given up on miracles. No, we just want the game to end.
It’s not fair! we cry. Everything was going so well. Why am I losing?
Now it’s really not fair as God rolls just the right number to spare us, to give us another turn.
He’s playing games with us!
The difference is that God is a benevolent player, the quintessential chess master in the park who embraces the teachable moments while He’s beating the pants off us.
Those teachable moments come more often, and more unexpectedly, than we anticipate. One thing is certain: where we play for blood, God plays for mercy.
The Israelites found their footing after forty years in the desert. Then, God taught them to build a temple. The world kept knocking over their blocks, demolishing their handiwork, scattering the stone and the people themselves. Each time, God brought them back and gathered new blocks, returning the tools they needed to rebuild and guarding their efforts, but leaving the labor to His people.
They learned the value of the cornerstone.
Job became God’s pawn in a cosmic game of chicken. I’m sure that’s how he must have felt about it, even though he didn’t know the power play that Satan was trying to make through Job’s trials. Through a life of faith and the imparting of God’s wisdom, Job was perfectly primed for this challenge. He may not have known exactly what was going on, but he knew the commission God had given him: never back down.
He learned the reward of blind faith.
With the timer set on Belshazzar’s reign, a cosmic hand scribbled on the wall. The party guests looked around, stunned, wondering who brought Pictionary. They hadn’t even finished the meal! Completed, the picture revealed just four words: “Mene. Mene. Tekel. Parsin.”
I imagine God on His throne, throwing His hands in the air, exclaiming, “Geez! Do I have to draw you a picture?”
Sometimes, He does.
The Lord ordained the first ever game of kick Baal.
And God, the original team captain, always filled His roster with those we’d expect to be last-picked, if ever picked at all.
He started His line with an old woman, far too old to have children, or so we thought. He commanded perhaps the only man crazy enough to listen to build an ark and gather animals.
Yes, Noah. Even the snakes and every type of bug. Two of every bug.
A little shepherd boy not big enough for war, the last son of Jesse who almost went overlooked even by the prophet sent to anoint him, the little scrawny boy stuck out in the fields with the sheep, in the dirt and the heat and the loneliness, slew a giant became Israel’s greatest king, a man after God’s own heart, and one of the foremost fathers of our faith.
A stutterer to speak for the Lord. A prostitute to shield His armies. A meek prophet to control the rain. A virgin to carry His only Son. And a Nazarite – a Nazarite for Heaven’s sake – to redeem the world. A persecutor and a Roman to spread His message. An exile to pen His prophecy.
These are not the people anyone would expect to make the team, especially not first-string, first-picked. That alone tells us how God plays the game. He does not judge a worthy contender by any of our standards – by strength or size or experience or intelligence.
He judges by wisdom, courage, obedience, and discipline. These make worthy contenders; these make men and women welcome to occupy His table. These, the chess master Himself takes under His wing to transform, teach, and mold.
They listen in the teachable moments. They soak in the understanding of the Master. They grow and blossom and learn, and they always return to the table. Not as we are – not bloodthirsty, out for domination, in it only to win it.
They return for the lessons. For the sake of the game.
This is what gives them the right to guide generation upon generation of God’s people through their stories preserved and passed down. This is what gives them the opportunity to ask questions, to challenge God, to prod and poke and pray to understand His ways. This is what gives them the gall to approach Him boldly, asking, seeking, and knocking with no pretense.
This is what makes them champions.
How do we get from the childish, selfish, godless games of Lot’s wife and the Pharisees to the Master’s table? What are the games we too often play, and how do we find it in ourselves to pass the dice and accept these teachable moments, even when it means losing?
We have to stop thinking about losing and instead be willing to forfeit. To turn the dice over to the One we are all hoping – deep within us – will win anyway. Despite our posturing, our bragging, our obstinacy and defiance and ego, our childish temper tantrums, and yes, even our cheating, we want Him to win.
That’s what makes the game worth playing. That’s what makes us venture onto the playground day after day after day. Not that we might one day win, but that we will one day learn and find the answer we were looking for all along:
God is. He absolutely, truly, one-hundred-percent, eternally, and completely is everything we’ve hoped and prayed and begged Him to be. We can play by His rules and still win. A little more faith, a little less self, a little understanding, sacrifice and forfeit, and we find our victory.
Sacrifice is tough. Faith is tough. Selflessness is hard and counter to our culture. But without that sacrifice, we know the games we’ll play.
We’ll keep stacking the deck and dealing the cards.
We’ll keep rolling the dice.
We’ll keep picking the tokens of deity, fear, pain, anger, selfishness, and the other godless idols that run our lives.
We’ll play to win without realizing we lose.
