While it might be standard practice for gamblers, when it comes to matters of faith it isn’t wise to hedge your bets. Discover the joy of being all in with Jesus. Learn how God can truly be first in your life!

<p>While it might be standard practice for gamblers, when it comes to matters of faith it isn’t wise to hedge your bets. Discover the joy of being all in with Jesus. Learn how God can truly be first in your life!</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

It Is Written

John Bradshaw

A Dollar Each Way

I was raised by a man who was mad about horse racing, and by a woman whose parents and whose brother owned and trained racehorses.

My father was a small-time hobby gambler.

I had an uncle who had some decent horses, no real champions but 1 or 2 that did come close.

I had several friends who were as mad about horses as I was, maybe worse.

I think the truth is I never actually learned to gamble.

I was self-taught and I had a bad teacher.

I was like my dad, a small-time bettor, a hobby gambler, But when you're a teenager and you spend a day working at a gas station And then the next weekend you you spend everything you earned at the racetrack and you come home with nothing That's not so great.

Now horses, of course are magnificent animals and then at the racetrack there's the color and the pageantry.

The courses themselves can be beautiful if that's what you like and then there's the tradition of it all.

Now there were various ways to gamble on a horse.

If you gambled on the horse to win and it won, the payout would be a little bigger.

That would give you a 1 in 12 or 1 in 15 chance of winning, depending on how many horses they were racing.

Or you could bet that the horse would finish in the top 3.

That would improve your odds, but you'd win less money.

Betting on the horse to finish in the first 3 really means you're not sure.

That means you might bet on the horse to win and to finish in the top 3 each way.

You think, maybe it'll win, but I'm not so sure, so I'll cover myself.

So if your horse didn't win, you at least had a chance of getting your money back if it finished second or third.

You could wager any amount of money that you cared to wager, but if you had money on a horse each way, you were sort of hedging your bets.

Clearly, You didn't have the courage of your convictions.

You weren't confident it was going to win, so you're hedging.

It seems to me that 1 of the great challenges facing the church today is the preponderance of people that appear to be having a dollar each way when it comes to faith in God.

The divine sentence is that down here in earth's last days, we are a people that feels as though we are rich and increased with goods.

We believe we have need of nothing, not entirely aware of the reality of our truly dire spiritual condition.

When Jesus speaks and says that He's going to have to spew certain ones out of His mouth.

Jesus, the 1 who opened the eyes of the blind, who interrupted funerals to raise the dead, who blessed wedding goers by providing refreshments to gladden their festivities, and graciously fed hungry picnickers, people so engrossed in listening to him so Attracted him that in their thousands.

They'd left their homes and failed to take food with them The Jesus who fed them the Jesus who loved and healed is the 1 warning the church that they will be emitted if they do not repent.

He was serious, yes, he could be solemn, no doubt.

But he was a man of bonhomie, of happiness, of joy.

So if gentle Jesus, meek and mild, says that in the closing moments of this earth's history His people are lacking and self-deceived.

It has to mean that we're not any better than the Church in His day.

Women waiting for a wedding feast without oil in their lamps, falling asleep.

You have no doubt marveled Peter, James, and John, how could they fall asleep and not watch with Jesus?

All he asked them to do was watch and pray, and yet they slumbered.

Everything we see in the world today is very obviously setting the scene for the second coming of Jesus.

I don't know what the news media is like in Canada, but I suspect it's like most places.

It appears that the news media stopped reporting the news some years ago and began instead promoting political agendas on either side of the political spectrum.

What your grandparents thought about morality is as relevant as how they listened to music or communicated with each other.

COVID-19 is a dry run for what's going to happen in Earth's last days.

We used to wonder how in the world you could affect or control or regulate the behavior of people.

And now we know that in a time of crisis, it really is possible to restrict movement, to stop the free flow of people and business.

I remember as a kid believing my parents were coming home soon.

I don't want to give away any secrets here, but I think you might know what I mean.

When we believed mom and dad were soon to appear, We acted like we believed it.

Friends, we are not going to sleepwalk into the kingdom of heaven.

And so 6 words spoken by Jesus in the Sermon on the mount seem stunningly applicable to us today.

In light of what is found in Revelation 3, in light of the letter to the church of Laodicea, a people being judged, in Matthew 6, Jesus talks about giving as it relates to hypocrisy or sincerity.

He gives us the Lord's Prayer, the great model prayer that we should never forget.

He talks about laying up treasure in heaven.

We are the ones to whom Jesus said that we are lukewarm.

He is saying no 1, no person, None can serve 2 masters.

You'll notice Jesus doesn't say no 1 will not or Shall not or should not serve 2 masters He says that you can not serve 2 masters It is impossible In trying to live your faith both ways, sort of in the church, sort of in the world, sort of committed to God, sort of committed to your own self-interest, It's simply an impossibility to simultaneously serve 2 masters.

You know the month January is named for the Roman god Janus, who if you ever see that god depicted, Janus is depicted as having 2 faces.

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A Dollar Each Way

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