ALL IN
Aligning the Lev with God
A leader can be anointed—set apart by God for a purpose—and still be misaligned at the center. Saul is the clearest picture of this. He stepped into kingship with God’s blessing and Samuel’s authority, yet his lev was not fully yielded to the One he was called to FOLLOW. His story shows the cost of carrying the assignment without the alignment that sustains it.
Saul’s Two Buts
We step into Saul’s story at the moment everything begins to unravel—when Samuel delivers a single word that closes a kingdom:
But now your kingdom shall not continue. The Lord has sought a man after His own heart.
1 Samuel 13:14
This is the second but spoken over Saul. To understand its weight, we have to return to the first.
After Saul is anointed, Samuel gives him a clear, simple command:
Go down ahead of me to Gilgal. I will surely come down to you to sacrifice burnt offerings and fellowship offerings, but you must wait seven days until I come to you and tell you what you are to do.
1 Samuel 10:8
Gilgal was not a place you casually lingered for a week. Saul remembered the instruction. He went to Gilgal. He waited seven days. It was a place of pressure—troops scattering, enemies gathering, morale collapsing. He moved forward with the burnt offering without waiting for God’s direction through Samuel.
From the outside, what Saul did next might look like leadership. He stepped in. He did what many leaders revere and even expect. He acted decisively under pressure, moving forward with incomplete information, making the tough call.
But he did it in defiance of God’s explicit direction. WAIT.
Saul was not all in.
Some mistakes can be corrected, this one could not.
The 2003 WSOP Main Event
In 2003, I was in Southern California building a company called High Achievers, and in my spare time I was learning a game called Texas Hold’em. That same year, at the World Series of Poker, an amateur named Chris Moneymaker—yes, that was actually his last name—found himself heads‑up against a seasoned pro, Sammy Farha, a massive favorite for the title.
The match turned on one pivotal hand.
Moneymaker shoved all his chips into the middle on a pure bluff. Two words: all in. Farha studied him, unlit cigarette hanging from his lips, and even called the hand out loud in his Lebanese accent: “So, you missed your flush, eh?” He was exactly right—Moneymaker had nothing. But after a long pause, Farha folded.
That single decision shifted the entire match. Moneymaker went on to win the 2003 Main Event and a cool $2.5 million in cash.
Two little words—all in—ignited what became the modern era of poker.
The absence of those two words in Saul’s life folded a kingdom.
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