In the stock market there is an important reality, there is enormous risk at all times.
Managing risk is the number one strategy of a successful portfolio. Managing risk can be done in different ways from setting stops in the short term to investing in truly stable or highly reliable companies in the long term.
And yet we make mistakes when emotions take over, despite having the understanding that selling just under a purchase price will limit losses.
Particularly with short term trading, limiting losses is a very good thing in a market that has enormous risk at all times.
We can get caught up in euphoria when we believe we can make a lot of money quick.
And yet that euphoria is better delayed until you have the cash in hand. Euphoria when you have even higher risk on the table is a very bad influencer.
Suspenseful movies and Insurance Policies
If you don’t trade stocks, maybe you have yelled at the movie screen when you see the bad guy fall and the gun is still near his hands. He looked like he died, but you know that’s not the end of the story. We can be the clueless doofus who is celebrating prematurely when the bad guy has got one more scene to play out his wicked plan.
Is this true with life also? You don’t have to watch bad movies or trade the stock market like an bad amateur to understand the reality that death comes to us all and since over 150,000 people die per day, both young and old, the eternal risk caused by our hubris can have tragic results.
What is managing risk other than preparing for a likely outcome? Like insurance policies, some we are forced to hold, but some are optional. Extra coverage is also an option.
Some insurance is money well spent and others end up being an endless pit to dump money into, ostensively, for peace of mind that you re covered, like for an unexpected trip to the Emergency Room, or an extended stay in the hospital.
You may never go to the Emergency Room, but it gives most people a sense of security that IF THEY DID, they would have no or a modest deductible to pay out of q gigantic bill.
There’s one outcome that people don’t judge as risky, in fact they know that some day it is going to come, though people have a wide variety of ways to prepare for it.
On this side of life, it may be called estate planning or life insurance.
Most of us spend a lot of our time planning for near and long term, keeping food on the table, getting to work, keeping a job, projects, education, how to get wiser, smarter, in better shape. Some of us are pleased to do not much of anything, like being the proverbial couch potato.
The greatest risk lays beyond death
Whether you are on one side of the spectrum or the other of the usefulness scale, there is one thing everyone is guaranteed to face, and that is death. We know death occurs, we all know the eventuality, yet most people leave this invisible and eternal realm in the hands of either chance or a sense of reality that conforms to our desired understanding, not an objective truth or reality that is not of your creation.
The people that believe that our ultimate end is a matter of becoming worm food have one thing right: It doesn’t matter if you were the couch potato or the genius who saved future generations from a dreaded disease, we will all face death and bodily decomposition in this dimension. But the Bible offers ample clarity on what happens afterwards.
The risks of ignoring the truth revealed by God, according to Holy Scripture and by the testament of Jesus Christ, are of off-the-scales, extreme consequence. The risks involve your immortal soul and your bodily resurrection and where and how you spend eternity.
There is no man who has power to restrain the wind with the wind, and there is none who has power over the day of death; and there is no discharge in the time of war, and wickedness will not provide escape to its masters. – Ecclesiastes 8:8
12 Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned— Romans 5:12
The worst part of death is not the one where you exit this life, it is the eternity without the grace of God. This is known in Revelation as the second death:
“But for the cowardly and unbelieving and abominable and murderers and sexually immoral persons and sorcerers and idolaters and all liars, their part will be in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.” -Revelation 21:8. If you didn’t notice, we all fall into those damnable categories. We all deserve eternal judgment and separations from God and yet God offers to be redeemed from our sin and to thrive.
23 For the wages of sin is death, but the gracious gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. – Romans 6:23.
But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. – Romans 5:8
Freedom from eternal risk comes by Grace
There is a way which seems right to a man,
But its end is the way of death. – Proverbs 14:12
Grace is not natural for man to accept. It does not seem right to man.
This greatest gift of all time which consequently is the most difficult gift for prideful and self-righteous man to accept. The ultimate of all risk eliminating provisions is offered by God for all humankind – it only requires a contrite heart, a sorrow for the sins committed against God, which is an acknowledgement of sin that leads to repentance and a trusting in the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ who bore our sins when he suffered and died crucified on the cross.
Only the true God through His Son Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit offers salvation by grace alone.
He will swallow up death for all time, And Lord Yahweh will wipe tears away from all faces, And He will remove the reproach of His people from all the earth; For Yahweh has spoken. – Isaiah 25:8
Are you secured in Christ?
Are you saved from eternal condemnation for your sins by a just an holy God?
The Apostle Paul prophecies these exciting truths about the rising of the dead to put on immortal bodies suited for the destinations we are judged to be delivered to. Like a seed that dies in the soil and transforms to new life, so will our earthly bodies die, but will transform suited for eternity at the heavenly call:
For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we will be changed. 53 For this corruptible must put on the incorruptible, and this mortal must put on immortality. 54 But when this corruptible puts on the incorruptible, and this mortal puts on immortality, then will come about the word that is written, “Death is swallowed up in victory. 55 O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?”56 Now the sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law; 57 but thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ! – 1 Corinthians 15:52-57
For a one minute explanation of the Gospel from the late Pastor John MacArthur, watch this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCP9UcC7BzE
For a review of the Ten Commandments: https://www.challenyee.com/the-ten-commandments/
All quoted excerpts have footnotes removed, usually from Legacy Standard Bible (LSB), sometimes from New International Version (NIV), on rare occasion the Amplified Bible (AMP).
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