Deal or no Deal?

Has anyone ever seen the gameshow on NBC called "Deal or no Deal" ? I watched a few episodes when on my last trip. The contestant chooses a briefcase at random out of 26 briefcases. The briefcases contain a value inside that if the contestant leaves with the briefcase, they win the ammount of money listed inside. The studio does not know which ammounts are in which case because a third party handles that part. The money ranges between $0.01 and $1,000,000.00 The entire point of the gameshow is to then open up the remaining briefcases and find out which ammount has been won. At certain points during the show, the contestant is offered a specific ammount of money from the studio "banker" who's job is to minimize the prize winnings. (Since no one knows what is inside the briefcase, it can be as low as one penny or as high as a million). The interest in the show comes from watching people deciding on how much they will risk that they initially picked a good briefcase as opposed to a bad one.

For instance, a contestant might be offered $30,000.00 if they decide to "Deal" with the banker and give up the briefcase they hold. Contestant chooses "No deal." Then several more of the briefcases are opened. Suppose the 1 million, 1/2 million, and 1/4 million are opened. The potential value of the contestant's briefcase drops significantly. The next offer might be $10,000. The opposite is also true. If the $0.01, $1.00, and $10.00 are opened, the potential value increases.

In theory the game can come down to only one briefcase being left to deal with. The only two values not ruled out are $0.01 and $1,000,000.00 (which in real life, the best option would be to take the $500,000.00 or so that the banker would offer). If one could be sure they chose the million dollar briefcase, they could afford to say no deal. But if they were wrong they would leave with only a penny.

OK. The point of this post was not to tell you about the gameshow, but to apply it to life. How many times do we take the things that God, creator of the universe, has given us, and play "Deal or No Deal" with them?

God does everything for His glory, yet we take that and try to make it our glory. We want our dealmaking to win out. We take the initial desire of wanting to give God praise and honor, but then trade it for something that can give us pleasure.

This is the equivalent of having the person who placed the values in the briefcases tell us exactly which one to pick - which we do - and then trading it away because... we think we can do a better deal than God.