The Bible Doesn’t Say That: God Will Not Give You More Than You Can Handle
That’s Not in the Bible – God Will Never Give You More Than You Can Handle
We have often heard it said that God will not give you more than you can handle. But our experience, reason, tradition of the Church and the Scripture say otherwise. God will absolutely give you more than you can handle, but HIS grace is sufficient. Ultimately, in whatever hardships, difficulties and seemingly overwhelming odds that you face in life, you are saved by grace through faith.
In our own experience in life, we have found ourselves way over our head in trouble, either the result of poor decisions we made or by just pure bad luck. We have all found ourselves down and out, perhaps financially, emotionally, or relationally. And the only way we got out of it was by grace, grace demonstrated through the help of a friend, a family member, or a mentor. Someone who may have looked on from the outside and even perhaps thought what you were enduring you were merely reaping what you had sown, but they showed grace nonetheless.
Reason would suggest that God gives us more than we can handle. Otherwise, we would never grow. We would remain childlike. We would not develop skills, wisdom and strength that we develop when we find ourselves in a hard place and have to summon the strength, fortitude, innovativeness and boldness to overcome it. You might equate this to weightlifting. When you are in the gym lifting weights you are not building muscle, you are actually breaking muscle down, ripping muscle fibers with each rep. The growth happens in the next 72 hours during the recovery as the muscles rebuild and come back stronger. Similarly, if we don’t break down some muscle fibers in life, we will remain weak. God gives us much so that we might grow spiritually and in wisdom and stature through our struggles.
Church tradition shows us that God gives his people more than they can handle. The history of the Church is full of stories of persecution and martyrdom, when the only thing that kept the church alive was the grace of God. The result of the suffering was a more vibrant and stronger church. “The blood of martyrs is the seed of the Church,” wrote the second-century Church Father, Tertullian. It is indeed true that in some places the Church has grown significantly against all the odds. Fifty years ago it would have been unimaginable to think that there would be more than 60 million Christians in China today. Similarly, while we take it for granted today that around a third of South Koreans are Christians, only a few generations ago the church there was paying a heavy price. Since the 1979 Revolution, Christians in Iran have also found themselves pressured, coerced, imprisoned, threatened with death, or executed, and yet, Iran has the largest number of believers to have embraced the Christian faith from across the Islamic world.
Finally a quick survey of some familiar Scriptures shows us that God allow us to experience more than we can handle, but provides sufficient grace for us to overcome and to grow stronger from the circumstance or life event.
1 Corinthians 10:12-13 12 So, if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don’t fall! 13 No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it.
John 16:33 33 “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”
2 Corinthians 1:8-9 8 We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about the troubles we experienced in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired of life itself. 9 Indeed, we felt we had received the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead.
There is a common theme in all of these Scriptures about human suffering. Though God allows suffering to occur in our lives, he always provides sufficient grace to overcome. The grace of the very God who raises the dead, the Christ who overcomes the world , is made available in our greatest moment of need.
Psalm 46:1-3 1 God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble.2 Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, 3 though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging.
Isaiah 40:29 29 He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak.
Ephesians 2:8-10 8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9 not by works, so that no one can boast. 10 For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
But in order to appropriate this gift grace that is made available by God through faith, something is required of us, and, in our moments of suffering, when we feel like we have given more than we can handle. We must respond. Grace is available to those who respond to the one who gives it. To receive a gift, you must reach out and accept it. Otherwise, the gift’s potential is never known.
We hear this invitation to respond in Jesus’ simple invitation in Matthew 11:28-30: 28 “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
We come to him and received rest. We take his yoke upon us, and we learn from him and find rest. The yoke is easy and light.
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