14. The Game of Life: What's Your Next Move?

Have you ever viewed life as a game? This episode explores how our favorite childhood board games like Battleship, Candy Land, and Monopoly reflect our life's journey. 

In life, as in a game, we sometimes make a fortunate move and other times, ose a lot of ground. The conversation also parallels how we can view our faith as a game. We learn why keeping your eye on the 'end game' is crucial, and we stress the importance of trusting God's plan. 

We discover how to enrich our lives through faith-based principles. Whether we're navigating the start or the end of our careers, the choices are provided by God, empowering us to make decisions. 

Sometimes, life seems like a continuous waiting game, but this episode encourages you to deepen your relationship with God so you can involve Him as you contemplate your next move. 

00:00 Introduction: Life as a Game
00:55 The Game of Life and Faith
01:15 Life's Games: Candy Land, Careers, and Monopoly
04:55 The Waiting Game and God's Plan
05:58 Faith Perspective: Trusting God's Plan
07:40 Personal Journey: From Worldly Success to Faith
09:43 The True End Game: Spiritual Abundance
13:21 Conclusion: Your Next Move in Faith

Scriptures referenced: 
The Fruit of the Spirit - Galatians 5:22-23
The Great Commission - Matthew 28:19-20

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Transcript

0:00

Have you ever thought about life in terms of a game? Recently, I gave a talk at Toastmasters and I gave the analogy of how life is like a game. And I used lots of different examples of games that we maybe have played as children or as adults. And it was kind of funny because I purposefully tried to tone down my faith aspect. When I speak in Toastmasters, I almost always bring faith into the message. And I was trying to just make it more, open to anybody, regardless of which position they might be coming from. And it was kind of ironic because I got to the end of the speech and my evaluator, enjoyed my speech. And they challenged me to go back and give the speech in terms of faith and whether or not I could do that same analogy as faith being a game. And that's what I'm going to do with you here today. I am going to turn my life as a game. Into faith as a game. Be sure to stick around to the end for why I think it's really important that we keep focused on the end game. Both in life and in faith. I look forward to seeing you there. If you think of life in terms of a game. A lot of different games come to mind for me. Uh, today literally is November 5th, 2024, and it's election day. And as we have been gearing up for this day. Anybody that's listening to this knows that it's felt like a battlefield. Life in general sometimes feels a little bit like battleship. Remember the game where we would put our ships. We each had our little game board and we would put our ships where we could maybe avoid getting hit straight on. But then when we get into the play. We're trying to strike the other person ships. And so. Um, life in general, a lot of times feels like battleship. But in this election season, Let's face it. It's, it's more like Game of Thrones. Everybody is in fighting to, to the end for their empire to win and it gets kind of bloody sometimes. I'm pretty sure everybody I know is looking for the end of this season. But the reality is I almost waited to record after we knew the outcome It really doesn't matter because half of the people are going to be devastated that their person didn't win. And I'm going to talk about that at the end and why I think it maybe matters less than we think it does, but let's jump into this game of life idea first. When you think about it. And we're when we're kids, we all learned to play candy land. And we don't really think about strategy so much. It's you pull a card, you move two red spots or you move one red spot or you hit the candy cane. And sometimes you move forward a lot of squares and other times you may have to go backwards a lot of squares. But it's just fun and it's lively and we're focused on who gets the most candy. As we grow, we start playing other games. We play career. Remember when you're in high school in college, and if you're listening to this, you've probably played the game of career because you're, you would have been around in that era. And we're so focused on what we're going to do with our lives and how we're going to use our gifts and talents. And how are we going to make the most money? Right. That's that's just part of life. And we jump into, you know, sometimes we are very direct and very driven and we go ahead and can create this fascinating career. And other times, life kind of carries us along and we really never do step into that career that we had our heart set on. Or maybe it's like the game of monopoly which sections do we land on? Do we make enough money to buy the, the homes, the businesses, sometimes we get thrown into jail. Hopefully not very often. Sometimes we pass, go and collect our, our wages. Other times we lose our job and we don't, but there's always something, things are always moving and there's always somebody that's doing better than we are. And there's always somebody that's doing worse than we are, unless we're the one that's losing badly. Right. And at all times, when you think about it, the game of life is really aptly named because you know, a lot of times it's just the game of chance, you know, when we roll the dice, how many places do we get to move? Even as adults. So many times our lives is a lot like candy land. Sometimes we, as I mentioned before, we move forward a lot, sometimes it's just one painful step at a time. And sometimes we hit that card and we go all the way back to the beginning of the game. And it feels like we really lost. But again, it can turn so quickly and we can move right back to the front of the game in no time at all. What I have found is One of the games that we're almost always playing is the waiting game. We're always waiting for that next big thing to happen in our lives. As kids it's waiting to get to go play outside or it's waiting for school to get over so that I can go home and have a snack, or you're waiting to graduate from high school and then you're waiting to graduate from college and then you're waiting to get married and you're waiting to have a family and get that best job and all of the things, we're constantly waiting. When things don't come together, it really feels like a waiting game. So that's kind of where as I gave this talk and I talked about the waiting game. I just encouraged the people to really think about what God placed on our hearts. And to be patient and to continue to take those next steps, keep continue to put ourselves out there to go after our, our, our life's dreams and that we can have peace and fulfillment. If we take so much emphasis off of the things that we think really matter and focus on the things that really do matter. So that's kind of where I ended the talk at Toastmasters, but then when I got to thinking about this challenge of making it based on faith I really got to thinking. And so many of the things I've talked about are still true. I mean, we're trying to juggle all of those things that are happening. But when we're looking at it from a faith perspective, a lot of those things and I couldn't find a game that was called this, but a lot of those things are really a game of opposites. Everything that the world tells us we should be doing to win. When we really look at it from God's perspective to win is the opposite of what the world tells us is to win. It occurred to me that when we're playing this game of faith, if you will. We really need to be thinking about how much do we trust God. Are we willing to put those things in his hands and let go of the outcome? When things don't go the way that we think that they should do we go and try and fix it ourselves. Do we get the self-help books? Do we try and make ourselves smarter? Do we get more educated on things trying to make something happened or do we turn to God and ask him what he wants for us? Sometimes that means that we buy the books and take the course and do all the things to get more educated to follow where he leads. But other times it means just taking a step back and being content with what we have and, and really just finding fulfillment in our relationship with him. It's hard. It's really hard to do that sometimes. But when we do that, our lives can be so much richer. I was telling some friends the other day. I thought it was kind of interesting when I first got my coaching certificate and I'll be honest. This was when I was really striving. I had retired. I had gotten my health coach certification. Then I went on to get a life coach certification and my masters certification and coaching and all these things. And I was trying so hard. To be financially successful that I lost sight of what it would be to be successful in God's eyes. What he really wanted was for me to trust him. And he took me down some bumpy roads to help me get to the point where I realized that I was playing the wrong game. I was playing the game of life from the worldview perspective and not his, but it was kind of ironic because I had hired a faith based coach because I realized that it wasn't really health coaching. It was more that life thing. And I remember talking to her and I had come up with, I called myself a life enrichment coach. What did that mean? Well, it meant that I could help people live a richer life. But again, I was focused on trying all the different things and nothing really worked. So I left that, that title, if you will, and moved on and I've had a hundred different iterations, I swear, who do I serve? What do I do? What does it look like? What's my brand, all of the things. And I was thinking about it the other day. And now that I, I am really focused on retirement coaching and helping people finish well, finish their careers well, so they can be proud of the legacy that they leave when they leave their career. But then even be proud of who they've become after retirement and living in this best season. And I realized that I truly am a life enrichment coach. I'm helping people follow God's will for them in their lives so that their lives can be so much richer, not the abundance that so many people will tell you that we will get, if we follow God, if we just do what he says, we're going to be rich beyond all measure. And that's not what the Bible says. Money's not evil. But it's not the end game. the end game while we're here on earth is to have the abundance that God gives us. And that's the fruit of the spirit. Those are, love. Joy, peace patience kindness. Goodness. Faithfulness. Gentleness. And self-control, I'm going to run through those one more time. Love. Joy peace. Kindness. Faithfulness goodness gentleness. Self-control. patience All of those things are really what helps us have an abundant life. And that's what God wants for us. You see winning the game. Isn't who has the most toys or the biggest bank account or the, the highest level position in their organization. Winning the game is spending eternity in heaven with God. Now. We have a commission. God gave us a commission and he called us to go out and bring as many people with us. To that end game. Not. So we get to heaven. Because we already have that promise. We already have received that gift of salvation because Jesus died for our sins and we believe that we've repented of our sins. We believe that. We don't do it so that we can get more points along the way that we can get more cards in our pile or whatever game you want to equate this to. We do it because we want those that we care about to have salvation too and honestly, part of that game is not just bringing along the people that we really care about and we really love, and that are easy to love. We want everyone to know about. The gift that we have this gift of faith, and we want to share it with even those who may be on the opposite side of the election today. And every day, every year, whenever it is. We want those people to know that God loves them. We all believe that we are on the right, that we've got it figured out, and in the rest of those people don't get it, but we don't really always know. We know that God loves the life. And he wants us to love our neighbor. And he wants us to always continue to grow and do better. But we're going to stumble. We're going to hit that card and go all the way to the bottom of the pile, but we don't get depressed when that happens. We get up, we brush ourselves off. And we draw the next card and we keep moving on. And that truly is how we win this game of faith. We never give up. We always trust God and we keep loving. I keep sharing. And we keep. Just getting to know him better and better every day. So. When we think about life and the people in our life, I just hope that we can keep it light. Sometimes we can. We can strip off all the conversation about faith. And still share the message. But there are times when it's appropriate to bring faith into it. And we need to have those honest, open conversations. We need to have conversations about truth and love. So I hope this helps you think about your faith. Your faith journey. I have a whole book about the journey of faith, A Different View, that's really what it's about. And one of these days I'll talk about that journey and how we're in different places and how, as we move through that, our, our perspective changes and our focus changes. I look forward to sharing that with you sometime. But today, what I really want you to do is just think about what's your next move. What can you do to help you get to know God better to, to appreciate him more. Um, just reading the Bible isn't enough. That's important. It's essential that we're in the word so that we know the rules of the game of his game. But what he really wants is to have a personal relationship with you. And that's when we walk with him, we pray to him. Constantly we give thanks for all the things he's given us in our lives. And we just wait and listen for what he has to say. He'll tell us what the next move is. So I just want to leave you today with that question. What's your next move? I would love to know what that is. Send me an email or drop me a comment in the comment sections, whether you're watching this as a video or listening to the podcast. I just want to thank you so much for stopping by today. I don't want you to take this, that it's light, um, this game of life, this game of faith, because. We can have fun and God wants us to have fun, but this is really serious stuff. If we don't get this. We miss out on a life of eternity with him. And if our loved ones don't get this, they do too. So. I hope that this has you thinking about eternity and, and where you will spend yours. I look forward to seeing you back here in a couple of weeks. And in the meantime, I hope that you will engage your faith. I hope you will live your more and that you will enjoy the benefits of Courageous Retirement.