Declare, Decree, or Fold? Prosperity Gospel at the Poker Table

Declare It, Decree It, Plant a Seed—and Shuffle Up and Deal

I have spent enough time around charismatic Christianity to hear a fair amount about declaring and decreeing.

Declare your healing.

Decree your prosperity.

Speak victory over your circumstances.

Don’t make a negative confession.

Stand on the Word.

And, of course, plant a seed.

Preferably with the ministry of the television evangelist who just explained to you why God wants you to prosper.

I wish I were a TV evangelist.

Apparently that’s where the good money is.

I could sit in front of a camera and tell you that your breakthrough may be only a $100 seed away.

If the breakthrough doesn’t come, apparently we have several possibilities.

Maybe you didn’t have enough faith.

Maybe you made a negative confession.

Maybe you failed to decree your blessing.

Or perhaps—and I hesitate to suggest this—you should have kept the hundred bucks.

I believe in giving.

I believe in generosity.

I believe in supporting ministry.

What troubles me is when giving begins to sound like an investment contract with God:

I give God this, and God owes me that.

That’s not generosity.

That’s a business deal.

And I’m not sure God signed the contract.

Then There Were the Poker Players

Which brings me to some professional poker players I knew.

These weren’t people I wanted to see fail.

Quite the opposite.

I had compassion for them.

They were trying to make a living not only playing poker but also playing what are called “advantage” slot machines—looking for situations where the conditions of a machine might temporarily favor the knowledgeable player.

They didn’t need me praying for the Hounds of Hell to chase them.

The Hounds of Hell were already after them.

Life was complicated enough.

Then another pastor prayed for them to prosper.

I didn’t.

My prayer was different.

I prayed that God’s will would be done in their lives and that the Hound of Heaven would pursue them until they learned to follow Jesus in every part of their lives.

Every part.

Apparently that’s a dangerous prayer.

Because not long afterward, things started going south.

Poker.

Finances.

Personal lives.

It seemed as though things began unraveling at practically every level.

Now, I am not claiming that my prayer caused any of that.

Please don’t give me that much spiritual authority.

If my prayers could reliably determine who wins and loses in Las Vegas, I wouldn’t be writing this article.

I’d either be extraordinarily wealthy or permanently banned from Nevada.

But the contrast stuck with me.

One pastor prayed for prosperity.

I prayed for God’s will.

And then they started losing.

Which raises an uncomfortable question:

What if God’s will and my definition of prosperity aren’t always the same thing?

Maybe Losing Isn’t Always Losing

That’s where this stops being a poker story.

Because I’ve had things fall apart too.

Churches.

Plans.

Dreams.

Relationships.

My health.

My carefully constructed image of myself as somebody who knew what he was doing.

I’ve experienced enough reverse church growth to know that Charlie Wear isn’t exactly the fellow you want teaching the seminar on guaranteed success.

And maybe that’s why I’m increasingly suspicious of a theology that says blessing always looks like winning.

Sometimes the blessing may arrive disguised as the collapse of something that was keeping us from God.

Sometimes the job disappears.

Sometimes the ministry doesn’t grow.

Sometimes the poker player loses.

Sometimes the pastor discovers that God hasn’t read his five-year plan.

And sometimes the sick person remains sick.

None of those things, by themselves, prove that God has abandoned us.

And none prove that we didn’t have enough faith.

Maybe that’s the problem with all our declaring, decreeing, seed-planting and prosperity formulas.

We keep trying to tell God what the blessing is supposed to look like.

God may have something considerably deeper in mind.

So if you’re a professional poker player and you ask me to pray for you, I’ll gladly do it.

I’ll pray that God loves you, pursues you, protects you and teaches you to follow Jesus in every part of your life.

I will not pray about your bankroll.

I’ve learned my lesson.

And if a television evangelist tells you to plant a $1,000 seed before midnight?

Pray about it.

God may tell you to give it.

God may tell you to keep it.

Or God may tell you:

“Charlie could use lunch.”