Read my new book, Dealt In: The Truths of Jesus at the Poker Table, free.
I’ll start with a confession that may surprise some of you: I think Jesus would have liked poker.
Not the gambling. Not the back room or the rent money on the line. I mean the table itself, and the people around it. Every player there is dealt a hand he didn’t choose and has to decide what to do with it. It’s a game of patience and courage. You read people’s hearts, and you know when to hold on and when to let go. The cards don’t care whether you’re rich or poor. And the last can become first on a single turn of the river.
Jesus spoke about those things constantly. He taught with fishing nets, coins, vineyards and lost sheep, the everyday things of people’s lives. I like to think he would have found a lesson in a deck of cards.
And here is something most people never notice. There is exactly one game of chance in the Gospels. It happens at the foot of the cross, where Roman soldiers cast lots for Jesus’s robe while he died above them. The greatest treasure in history was within arm’s reach, and they were playing for a piece of cloth.
Dealt In is about playing for the right prize.
What’s inside
Each chapter sets a move at the poker table beside the words of Jesus:
- The Ante: the widow’s two coins, and why God counts the cost, not the size, of what you give
- Dealt In by Grace: the workers in the vineyard, and the seat at the table you never had to buy
- Reading the Table: how Jesus read the woman at the well and the man in the sycamore tree
- The Bluff: whited sepulchres, the Pharisee and the publican, and the truth that makes you free
- Scared Money: the buried talent, and Peter stepping out of the boat
- The Bad Beat and the River Card: the cross, the empty tomb and the road to Emmaus
- The Full House: “that my house may be filled,” and a Father’s house with many mansions
- Cashing Out: treasures in heaven, and what it profits a man to gain the whole world
A personal note
I’m a preacher’s kid. I grew up in the pews, and those stories followed me into every room of my life: real estate offices, thirty years of courtrooms, trading screens and a kitchen table where Tammy and I raised three children. This book is woven with those stories. One is the pawn-shop ring I gave her in 1979 with every dollar of commission I’d saved. Another is the first house my father helped me buy at 18, which taught me what grace is. And there is the full house we still fill when the whole family comes home.
If you have ever felt your hand was too small, too late or too broken, this book is for you. There’s a seat at the table with your name on it.
Download your free copy
Read it, share it with a friend and pass it along to anyone who needs to hear that the seat is saved.
— Timothy McCandless
Scripture quotations are from the King James Version. This book does not encourage gambling. If gambling is a problem for you or someone you love, call the National Problem Gambling Helpline at 1-800-522-4700.
