I’m in way over my head when it comes to cards, but, even I know that 4 aces helps to make a winning hand. When combined with a King, it is the 3rd best hand in Poker.

Craig Yenni, one of our Your Life Matters–Welcome to the Big Leagues team members came up with a great way to live with a winning hand-have 4 aces in your life!

1. Ace of hearts. Do you have a spiritual mentor? Is there another man in your life who speaks grace into your life and tells you, “Your life matters.”  If you never had that person, pray that you find him, or he finds you soon. Manhood and confidence that comes from knowing Your Life Matters is conferred from a significant man to another. John Eldredge writes that in his books. Other books to check out are The Blessing or Letters from Dad. The Bible is the best source: Moses had his father-in-law, Caleb and Joshua had Moses, Elisha had Elijah, Paul had Barnabas, Timothy had Paul, Jesus had 12 disciples but focused on Peter, James and John.  So, who do you have?
2. Ace of spades. Do you have a professional mentor? This is the guy in your life that knows your job or how to work in your field better than you do. You respect him because he has paid his dues and gotten through life with respectable results. Seek him. Listen to him. Spend time learning from him.
3. Ace of clubs. Who do you mentor? Whose life do you intentionally speak into. You have a platform. Someone looks to you and will respond when you tell him, “Your Life Matters.” Sons need to hear this from their dads. Young men need to hear it from old men. Rookies need to hear it from the experienced and amateur need to hear it from the pros.  Apprenticeships are much less the norm than they used to be. Our culture is scattered across the country and relationships are shallow.  Every man’s life will grow in strength and reach when he knows his life matters and believes he can help another man/boy discover that his life matters.
4. Ace of diamonds. We are in a world of hurt. Racial and cultural tensions might be worse than ever and the political process is not going to fix the problems. Find someone who is different than you and tell him, “Your Life Matters.” It might be just once, but it might be the beginning of a constructive relationship that reaches to another race, culture, religion, life-style. Only being with people who are just like you prevents you from influencing others and being the solution to our screwed up world.

Craig and I have been meeting together for about a year. We meet at Crowfoot, my favorite coffee shop, on Friday’s for about an hour and talk about a lot of different subjects that affect our lives. Most weeks we find a Scripture that applies to our topic. Sometimes we start with a scripture that guides our discussion.

“If Psalm 1 says ‘do not walk in the council of the ungodly, stand in the path of sinners or sit in the seat of the scornful’, don’t you think it could also mean, ‘walk in the council of the godly, stand in the path of the Godly and sit in the seat of the wise’?”

Good point Craig!

“So, what if we set up a simple strategy to make it happen? We will use our book, Welcome to the Big Leagues–Every Man’s Journey to Significance” and be intentional about having 4 aces in our life. We will have constructive relationships in our lives. They will lead to success in life because Psalm 1 also says, “We will be like a tree planted by the streams that will always bear fruit in season.”

Craig, you are on a roll. Lets commit to be “Aces.”

Here is some trivia from Wikepedia.  “The word “ace” comes from the Old French word as (from Latin ‘as’) meaning ‘a unit’, from the name of a small Roman coin. It originally meant the side of a die with only one mark, before it was a term for a playing card. Since this was the lowest roll of the die, it traditionally meant ‘bad luck’ in Middle English, but as the ace is often the highest playing card, its meaning has since changed to mean ‘high-quality, excellence’. This connotation has seen the word applied to an unreachable tennis serve, a successful fighter pilot and more generally as a person proficient in his or her field, especially a sporting field.”

An “Ace”–the best, high quality, excellent, unreachable, successful, skilled!

“And if God is the King of our Heart, we can’t loose.”

Exactly!