{"id":1365,"date":"2018-08-16T03:46:59","date_gmt":"2018-08-16T03:46:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/joy-in-the-journey.com\/?p=1365"},"modified":"2025-03-15T14:52:40","modified_gmt":"2025-03-15T18:52:40","slug":"no-lose-situation-even-with","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/joy-in-the-journey.com\/?p=1365","title":{"rendered":"No Lose Situation  (Even with &#8230;.) (Republished In the Moments)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><strong><sup>\u00a0<\/sup><\/strong>For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. <strong>Philippians 1:21<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>Wikipedia states that \u201cin game theory, a \u2018no win\u2019 situation is when no player benefits from any outcome.\u201d The game has reached a point in which nothing good can happen for anyone involved. \u00a0How about the game called life? Most of us have experienced a time when we feel completely cornered and trapped. A step in any direction seems detrimental, producing feelings of hopelessness.<\/p>\n<p>Consider my friend Chris. A successful business man with a loving wife and two God honoring sons, he found out in February of 2015 he has brain cancer. This news devastated us all. You hear about folks dealing with cancer, but when it happens to your family it hits home. I say \u201cfamily\u201d because Chris is my brother in Christ. We&#8217;re both adopted sons of the Lord Most High, bought and paid for by the precious blood of Jesus. We\u2019re brothers on the same commission:\u00a0 to live and speak the love and grace of Christ to everyone God brings our way.<\/p>\n<p>Long before the cancer, loving like Jesus\u00a0 was Chris\u2019 heart. Having made multiple trips to India, he was gripped with love for the people of this crowded country. So much so,\u00a0 he and his wife Sharon moved their whole family to an apartment complex, where many of his Indian business associates lived. Chris did it to be near them. He taught them to swim and loved them in ways the Holy Spirit directed him.<\/p>\n<p>Though the news of his cancer was certainly devastating, Chris and Sharon have clung close to each other and trusted God in the midst. Amazingly, Chris sees this whole situation as giving him a unique platform to continue his commission. Chris is a walking example of someone who sees God as his Good, no matter what circumstance he faces. Chris is a vessel of the Lord\u2019s joy and his life speaks of God\u2019s nearness, infusing courage to others on a daily basis.<\/p>\n<p>He shared with me that the dire spiritual conditions of some of his family is far tougher for him than dealing with cancer. Chris knows where he\u2019s going and his faith in the truths of his future centers him and gives him eternal hope. He&#8217;s ready to see Jesus, but he knows some of his family members are not.<\/p>\n<p>With conviction, he recently told me\u00a0 we Christians are in a &#8216;no lose situation&#8217;. As adopted children of the King, given the Holy Spirit as a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance<a href=\"#_ftn1\" name=\"_ftnref1\">[1]<\/a>, our lives on this earth are our journeys\u00a0 home. We know how our story ends. We literally can not lose. This brings joy inexpressible and full of glory.<\/p>\n<p>Chris\u2019 life reminds me of the following verse, <em>Therefore we do not lose heart, but though our outer man is decaying, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day. For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison, while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal. II <strong>Corinthians 4:16-18<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>Challenge: \u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>What &#8216;no win situation&#8217; do you feel like you\u2019re in right now? Do you feel trapped, like no move could can get you out? If Chris had focused on his cancer, he might have felt this way. And maybe he did for a while. But Chris has ongoing conversations with his Savior. He and Sharon have drawn close to the Lord and Christ is his life.<\/p>\n<p>What&#8217;s your situation? Bring it to the Lord.\u00a0 See it as\u00a0 an opportunity to trust the Lord with more of you.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Prayer: <\/strong>Lord, I must confess I\u2019m not where Chris is when it comes to such a frightening word as cancer. But I want to consider my life as loss compared to gaining more of You.\u00a0 I give all of me to you, Lord Jesus.\u00a0 You are my life.<a href=\"#_ftn2\" name=\"_ftnref2\">[2]<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref1\" name=\"_ftn1\">[1]<\/a> Ephesians 1:13<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref2\" name=\"_ftn2\">[2]<\/a> Colossians 3:4<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #008000;\"><em>Joy in the Journey is about the gladness of God\u2019s nearness in the midst of life\u2019s adventures.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #008000;\"><em>Subscribe below to get email notifications of new posts. We post a few times a month. Thank you for reading.\u00a0<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #008000;\"><em>\u00a0<\/em><strong>Novels by the Author<\/strong>:<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #008000;\">What happens when a professor figures out how to send messages to his younger self to try and avoid the suicide of his best friend? Did he change more than he bargained for?\u00a0\u00a0<a style=\"color: #008000;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Beyond-Time-could-change-event\/dp\/179035899X\">Beyond Time<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #008000;\">By finding two undelivered letters in a old shack deep in the woods, Cassie and Daniel unknowing set off a series of events which uncover a plot to wipe out a whole family\u00a0<a style=\"color: #008000;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Hope-Remains-Sequel-Beyond-Time\/dp\/197345940X\/ref=sr_1_8?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1547672424&amp;sr=1-8&amp;keywords=Hope+Remains\">Hope Remains<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u00a0For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. Philippians 1:21 Wikipedia states that \u201cin game theory, a \u2018no win\u2019 situation is when no player benefits from any outcome.\u201d The game has reached a point in which nothing good can happen for anyone involved. \u00a0How about the game called life? Most of &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/joy-in-the-journey.com\/?p=1365\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">No Lose Situation  (Even with &#8230;.) (Republished In the Moments)<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1369,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[657],"tags":[665,70,660,14,668,666,552,562,18,96,663,20,510,7,669,662,664,659,658,670,661,667],"class_list":["post-1365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-joy-in-the-midst","tag-2-corinthains-416-18","tag-being-with-jesus","tag-brain-cancer","tag-cancer","tag-christ-our-life","tag-colossians-34","tag-ephesians-13-13","tag-eternal-prespective","tag-holy-spirit","tag-hope","tag-india","tag-jesus","tag-jesus-christ","tag-joy","tag-lord-jesus","tag-lords-joy","tag-loving-like-jesus","tag-no-lose","tag-no-win","tag-realtional-pain","tag-vessel","tag-you-are-our-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/joy-in-the-journey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/joy-in-the-journey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/joy-in-the-journey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joy-in-the-journey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joy-in-the-journey.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1365"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/joy-in-the-journey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1365\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6802,"href":"https:\/\/joy-in-the-journey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1365\/revisions\/6802"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joy-in-the-journey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1369"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/joy-in-the-journey.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joy-in-the-journey.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joy-in-the-journey.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}