Our theme for Lent is “Return to me with all your heart” (Joel 2:12). So far we have explored returning to God through our wilderness experiences and imitating Christ while sharing our vulnerable selves with God. Today we explore the scriptural foundation for a familiar but often misinterpreted saying: “God does not give you more than you can handle.”
Paul is writing to the church in Corinth a couple decades after Jesus’ death and resurrection. Corinth was a crossroads, a cosmopolitan city with people from all over, with varied backgrounds. Not the typical Jewish Christian community.
The Corinthians worshiped many different gods and goddesses, we might call them pagans. Paul was teaching them to follow Christ which meant giving up their former religious practices like idolatry, drunkenness and temple prostitutes. But in Corinth they were surrounded by all of these practices and they were tested.
Paul is giving them a history lesson; one translation starts with, “Remember our history, friends, and be warned” (1 Cor. 10:1, The Message). He is reminding them the Hebrews were baptized into Moses in the Red Sea, and all were fed manna and water; their spiritual food. The rock bearing life-giving water rabbinical tradition is said to have been carried with them on their journey. That rock is Christ. Paul goes on to share the ways people turned away from God, and the consequences.
“God is faithful and will not let you be tested beyond your strength.” That sounds similar to “God won’t give you more than you can handle.” So let’s explore this verse a little bit more.
Do you believe that God thinks up tests, trials, for you? I start there, because the premise of that saying is that God is the one orchestrating everything, good and bad, that happens in your life. Is God causing your trials. I don’t believe that, and I do not believe Paul does either. Paul is not saying that God is authoring all sorts of hardship in your life. That God is making bad things happen to you. Rather that we are surrounded by temptations and we have a choice how we respond. Hence all the ways things went bad, thousands killed in a single day, others were destroyed by serpents. The core of this passage is addressing idol worship and placing other gods before our Almighty God. You know your idols,
the behaviors,
the substances,
the temptations that pull you away from God.
The Lord says, Return to me with all your heart!
Yet this saying is embedding in our culture. Have you ever faced something that felt like it was more than you could handle? Raise your hand.
Did you want to cling to God?
Did you want people to pray for you?
Did you hope you would have enough strength to endure it? Of course. But I am not sure it was helpful hearing, “God will never give you more than you can handle.”
Adam Hamilton, a Christian author wrote,
“I remember a conversation on this subject with a woman who told me, “For years this statement helped me when I was facing difficult things. I kept telling myself that God wouldn’t give me more than I could handle. It reassured me that somehow I was going to make it through. Then one day I was at my therapist’s office and mentioned it to him. He laughed and said, ‘Are you kidding me? Surely you don’t really believe that. I can tell you plenty of stories about people who had more than they could handle. In fact, my profession consists of helping just such people.’” The counselor reminded the woman that in her own case, she had come to him because the emotional pain and difficulty she was facing had been more than she could handle. In addition, the woman’s mother had committed suicide because life had become more difficult than she could handle. At first, the woman was angry that her therapist had called her belief into question. But the more she reflected on their conversation, the more she concluded that he was right.
We will face adversity in our lives. We will experience hardships. We, or someone we love, may face terminal illness. We may struggle with debilitating depression or suicidal thoughts or grief so heavy that we feel we’ll suffocate. We may walk through financial circumstances where it seems there is no way out. If we are like most human beings, at some point we absolutely will face things that are more than we can handle. The promise of Scripture is not that we won’t go through hard times. . . . What Scripture does promise is that at all times, good or bad, God wants to be our help and our strength.
It’s not that God won’t give you more than you can handle, but that God will help you handle all that you’ve been given” (Half Truths: God Helps Those Who Help Themselves and Other Things the Bible Doesn’t Say).
God will help you handle all that you’ve been given! Without exception, and without fail because God is faithful. Verse thirteen, “No testing has overtaken you that is not common to everyone. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing God will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it.”
Three things to note from this one verse: First whatever trial you face you are not alone, others have walked that path before you. The twelve-step program of recovery is built on this idea; we find strength with people who have faced what we are facing. It helps us to face our idols and temptations. But a truth within the program is that you are not terminally unique. Others have suffered what you suffer. That also means others have made it through. There is both comfort and strength in that.
Secondly, God will help you handle whatever you are given. Life is filled with challenges, trials, temptations. Our faith tells us that God will always be with us in those difficult times. God did not create them, but God will journey with us through them. Now in our difficult time, we may pray for a certain outcome. But we are not promised that solution. Rather a way out of a hard time, a re-frame of a hardship, a new opportunity, or simply the ability to endure. When we partner with God there will always be another day. God will always be our companion!
Finally, the heart of this verse are these three words, “God is faithful.”
From baptism through the Red Sea to our baptism in Christ, God is faithful.
From the wandering in the wilderness, to our wilderness challenges, God is faithful.
From turning to idols, to creating our own idols today, God is faithful.
You can take that truth to the bank! God is faithful. But we can feel bankrupt when we forget we have a partner in God, when we forget that God is faithful, when we try to go it alone. That is when life becomes more than we can handle. If you are in one of those dark times, you are not alone. Ask for help, call me and I will come and visit. Call your friend who has known you forever. Pray to God to connect with our all powerful and faithful Creator. The way out that our faithful God provides might be the support of a friend, or the faith of a family member, or help from a place you least expect.
It is not so much that God will never give you more than you can handle.
Rather, God will absolutely help you handle whatever you have been given! Amen.
