Hammer on Anvil '

A dear friend took me aside at church Sunday and asked me to blog about this topic. Probably many of my readers have heard someone say, "God will never give you more than you can handle." Perhaps someone said it to you after you lost a loved one. Or maybe when you were in the throes of a nasty divorce. Or when your child had just been diagnosed with autism.

Though I don't doubt that people have good intentions when they use this phrase, the problem is that it is not scriptural. Nowhere in the Bible does it say that God will not give us more than we can handle.

Then where did this awful phrase come from? Probably 1 Corinthians 10:13, which says:

The temptations in your life are no different from what others experience. And God is faithful. He will not allow the temptation to be more than you can stand. When you are tempted, he will show you a way out so that you can endure (New Living Translation).

Paul is talking about temptation here -- not suffering or overwhelming circumstances. Things happen in life over which we have no control. But we do have control over how we respond to temptation. God promises to give us victory in times of temptation; He does NOT promise that nothing will ever happen to us that we "can't handle."

The issue here is that what we think we can handle, and what God KNOWS we can handle, are often very different things. Last year, I (and many others) prayed for months for a man to be healed from Stage 4 cancer. He was only 42 years old when he died, leaving behind his wife and 3 young children. Did his wife think this was more than she could handle? YES. But her faith in God has enabled her to persevere through this dark time in her life. She and her children are learning that God is their source of strength and hope.

Dear friends, only God knows what we can handle. We may believe we could never cope with a given situation, only to find that when actually faced with it, God came in like a flood and we made it through. Sometimes dire situations are the only thing that awaken us to the fact that we need to depend on God for everything. Acts 17:28 says, "In Him we live and move and have our being." Yet we sometimes live our lives without giving God a second thought -- let alone making Him first in our lives.

Recently I was going through a dark, scary time in which I felt hopeless and powerless. In the middle of the night, God spoke Isaiah 41:10 to me: 

"So do not fear, for I am with you. Do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with My righteous right hand." 

I fell back to sleep in peace, knowing He would sustain me and see me through.

If you are going through something right now that is so overwhelming that you feel like you're drowning, know first of all that it's okay to feel desperate! Remember David in Psalm 22? He cried, "My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?" Jesus later quoted that gut-wrenching sense of abandonment as He hung on the Cross.

Even when you can't sense God's presence and it feels like He's a million miles away, be assured that He is right there with you. Suffering is never pointless in His economy. Be still, and know that He is God.

They called the apostles in, beat them, and told them not to speak in the name of Jesus again. Then they let them go free. The apostles left the meeting full of joy because they were given the honor of suffering disgrace for Jesus (Acts 5:40,41, NCV).

I have never been able to wrap my brain around this passage of Scripture. The disciples were merely doing what Jesus commissioned them to do, and they were imprisoned, beaten, and threatened with worse. That part I understand; we are not to be greater than our Master, and since He suffered, we will suffer.

Their response is what baffles and humiliates me -- they rejoiced! When I insert myself into this passage and try to imagine what my own response would be, I confess it would not be nearly so noble. I enjoy my comfort way too much to be imprisoned and beaten. And I would complain loudly that I did nothing to deserve such treatment!

How about you? Does the thought of being "worthy to suffer shame for His name" cause you to rejoice? Or are you of the "all things in moderation" persuasion -- where faith is private and tidily compartmentalized and so shallow that it could never possibly get you into any trouble?

I doubt any of us has had to endure what the disciples did. To some of us, "persecution" might mean a coworker ribbing us about our faith, or one of our children being teased at school for reading their Bible in the cafeteria. Perhaps you experience chronic health problems, and bemoan that you are suffering persecution. But none of our everyday annoyances comes even close to what our brothers and sisters around the world are suffering. We don't have to meet in secret to hold a church service. Our church affiliation does not make us targets to be thrown into prison, tortured or killed.

Sometimes harassment comes from your own "camp" -- well-meaning Christian brothers and sisters who don't understand your zeal and passion for God, and encourage you to "cool it" when you get "out of control." A precious friend of mine is undergoing some of this right now -- God has put her in a place where gay people are drawn to her, and she loves them with the love of Jesus. Does she try to change them? No -- she knows that is not her job. She is a free-flowing conduit through which Jesus can touch others, because her heart is surrendered to Him. And she gets lambasted by the Pharisees who think she should judge the gay people and convince them they are headed for hell.

When my husband was fired from his job as a reporter at a small-town newspaper because he started a local right-to-life group, a well-meaning friend said that was the closest thing to persecution that he had ever witnessed. But John was quick to assure him that losing his job was a far cry from being persecuted for his faith. He merely took a stand for his religious convictions, and was fired.

I guess the question we all need to ask ourselves is one that is difficult to consider: Are we so sold out to Jesus and His purposes that we are willing to die for our faith? Are we willing to go wherever God asks us to go, and spread His Word boldly, even if that means risking bodily harm or even death? Is our relationship with Jesus strong enough to withstand such persecution, or would we lose heart and recant our faith?

Let us endeavor to possess a faith so vital that we, along with the Apostle Paul, can say, "To live is Christ, and to die is gain" (Philippians 1:21).