There is something deeply nostalgic about the games of childhood. Board games spread across a kitchen table, towers of wooden blocks stacked with nervous hands, cards flipped face-down in search of a matching pair. These games shaped how we learned to think, to compete, to connect with the people we loved. But what if the games we played as children were actually teaching us something far more profound than we realized? What if the way we play those games as adults reveals something uncomfortable about the condition of our souls?

Most of us have sat down at some point with that iconic board game, spinning a dial and navigating a miniature version of adulthood. You collect a career, a spouse, children piled into a tiny plastic car, and eventually a mountain of wealth and possessions. The winner is whoever has accumulated the most by the end.

It is a clever game. It is also a revealing one.

Look closely at that board and you will notice something conspicuously absent. There is no decision point where you choose to follow Christ. There is no space where you surrender your ambitions to something greater than yourself. There is no moment where the game pauses and asks what you have done with the love you were given.

The game was designed to mirror real life, and perhaps that is exactly the problem. So much of what we chase, the promotions, the possessions, the social standing, crowds out the one pursuit that actually matters. Jesus made this plain in Matthew 16:24-27, where He taught that gaining the entire world while losing your soul is the worst trade a person can make. The Son of Man is coming, and He will not be counting your net worth.

Think about what happens in a game of Jenga. You begin with a solid, stable tower. Then, one by one, you pull blocks from the base and stack them on top. The tower grows taller, but its foundation grows increasingly fragile. The whole structure becomes more impressive to look at and more dangerous to trust.

We do this with our spiritual lives constantly. We pull the foundational things, prayer, community, worship, service, out from underneath and replace them with more comfortable priorities. The game starts with small moves. Skipping church for a football game. Opting out of a Bible study because the week was exhausting. Letting someone else visit the sick or the grieving because surely someone more qualified will step in. Each decision feels minor in isolation. Collectively, they hollow out the very thing holding you upright.

First Corinthians 3:11 reminds us that no foundation can be laid other than the one already established, which is Christ Jesus. And Matthew 7:24-27 draws the contrast sharply between the person who builds on rock and the one who builds on sand. When the storms arrive, and they always arrive, only one structure is left standing.

The question worth sitting with is this: what have you quietly pulled from the bottom of your tower lately?

There is a version of the memory card game that adults play every single day, except instead of matching cartoon animals, we match attitudes. Someone is rude to us, so we are rude in return. Someone raises their voice, so we raise ours louder. Someone wrongs us, and we make sure the score is settled before we walk away.

Consider a simple, painfully relatable scenario. A waitress with a cold demeanor, slow service, a forgotten drink refill. The natural response is frustration, and perhaps a pointed one-dollar tip left behind as a statement of power. What felt like winning was actually something far smaller and far more damaging. Because what we did not know was what that woman was carrying. The grief. The financial terror. The exhaustion of raising children alone while the world kept moving around her without noticing.

Romans 12:14-17 calls us to bless those who persecute us, to live in harmony, and to repay no one evil for evil. First Peter 3:9 echoes this, urging us not to return reviling for reviling but to bless instead. And in Luke 6:27-28, Jesus delivers what may be His most demanding instruction: love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, and pray for those who mistreat you.

An argument does not end because someone shouted back with equal force. But it can end because someone chose love over the need to win.

Children playing pretend is one of the purest joys in the world. There is no pretense in their pretending. They are fully committed to the imagination in front of them.

Adults playing pretend is something else entirely. We smile at people we quietly resent. We nod along to conversations we stopped listening to long ago. We take on titles and roles in our communities and churches, and then we stand silently when someone asks for a volunteer to pray. We show up to the right places and say the right things and wear the right expressions, and we call it faithfulness.

But the most dangerous pretending of all is pretending to know Jesus Christ.

John 17:3 describes eternal life as knowing the one true God and Jesus Christ whom He sent. Not knowing about Him. Knowing Him. Philippians 3:10 captures the apostle Paul's burning desire to know Christ in the power of His resurrection and in the fellowship of His suffering. This is not a casual acquaintance. This is the surrender of an entire life.

Second Peter 3:9 offers the extraordinary reassurance that God is patient, not wanting anyone to perish, but wanting everyone to come to repentance. He is still waiting. The game is still in play.

But it will not always be.

Here is what sets this apart from every board game ever made. This is not a competition where one person claims the prize and everyone else goes home empty. Every single person has the opportunity to win. The invitation is open. The door has not closed.

The only move that matters is the one where you stop pretending and start surrendering. Where you lay down the accumulation and the performance and the mirrored anger, and you accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior in a way that is real, personal, and life-altering.

Do not let the game end without making that move.