Deal or No Deal.

Last night, I had the rare opportunity to actually watch a little television. Flipping through the channels, I barely took notice of the "big brother" shows or the cop drama. I kept right on flipping until I got the the game show Deal or No Deal. And there, much to my husband's dismay, I sat the remote aside and concentrated all of my attention on whether some amateur baseball player was going to walk away from the table $1,000,000 richer.

The premise of the show is easy enough. The contestant is given a case in which it holds a certain amount of money. A large number of scantily clad women appear on the stage with identical cases that contain various amounts of money anywhere from .01 to 1,000,000. The contestant must choose cases one at a time, and the amount that is in each case is no longer available to the contestant. Throughout the game, the "banker" will make offers to the contestant to entice the player to step away from the game with a "settlement" amount. If the player decides to decline the offer, than that contestant gets to pick more cases before being offered a settlement again. The whole idea of the game is to keep that 1,000,000 case from being opened, in which case, the contestant becomes 1 million dollars richer.

So, last night, I sat with baited breath waiting to see if this guy was going to win it all. Starting off, the man was confident that he was going to take home the million. Time went on, cases were opened and still, the 1,000,000 case was still available. The banker made counter offers trying to get him to stop playing. He opened more cases. His chances were looking better and better. The banker made another offer. More cases were opened...his chances were better still. It was risky, but he was still in the game, the prize was still within his reach. The banker made yet another offer...a good offer. More cases, no million. Still in the running, but the man's demeanor started to waiver...how in the world was he actually going to get the million? The banker gave him an offer, and then...the man that was SO convinced that his case had the million...just upped and quit. He settled. Sure it was for 100K dollars! A good deal of money to walk away with. But not the prize that his sights had been set on at first. Far from it. He had settled big time.

After the players walk away from the game, they always continue through and ask the contestant what cases they would have opened next. He kept choosing and each time, there wasn't 1,000,000 in the women's cases. As it turns out, he was holding the million dollar case the entire time. The prize that he wanted and was sure that he would be blessed with was always within his reach.

I felt bad for the guy! But more importantly, I started thinking about how this is just like how we treat God's promises. So many times we want the big blessing, we start off believing that He wants to give us the big blessing. But then, as time goes on and trials come and other offers surface, we start to doubt that we either A) deserve the blessing or that B) God has the blessing for us in the first place.

Can you imagine what like would be like if we just said "No deal"...."I'm not settling anymore for less than the absolute BEST that God has for me!" It's risky, no doubt. But everything in life is about taking chances. I figure my chances with God have GOT to be better than the deals I am willing to settle for in life.