I can’t claim this as my own idea. It was provided by someone I counsel. It is such a remarkable concept that I thought some of you would appreciate it.
God won’t give us more than we can handle but life certainly will. The second part of that sentence is definitely our life experience. So often we’re sent things that seem destined to break us, we feel overwhelmed, anxiety is difficult to shake, and we wrangle with depression when grief besets our soul. In this we face an existential death. But death breeds life in the Jesus-economy of things. Life will give us more than we can handle, yet there’s a godly purpose in being pushed beyond our control.
§ We learn we have limits and as our pride takes a hit, humility has a chance to grow.
§ We gain an appreciation for the suffering of others and our empathy grows.
§ We begin to understand that in frustration is futility, and our patience grows.
§ Experiencing how much we need people to be gentle with us, and how much we need to be gentle with ourselves, our gentleness grows.
§ In trusting God even though we want things back the way they were, or better than they are, our faithfulness grows.
I think you get the point. All this essentially out of loss. See how grief is often not the nemesis we think it is and that it can be the gateway to life eternal.
So, having acknowledged that God has a purpose in suffering and a plan beyond it, to give us a future we hope for and not to harm us, we move onto the concept I want to focus on; the concept I was given by my client.
If you had battled through many months of an intense steps program, and faced so very much of your past, and had God bless your faithful adherence to the program, you may find God blessing you in incredible ways. Perhaps, for anyone looking on, these blessings would be extremely small mercies, but because they are the exact desires of your heart you are over the moon because they’ve happened. Maybe you’ve bargained with God and said, “I want this and that,” and frustratingly you’ve heard God say, “No, that’s too much for you to handle all at once.” You say back to God, “No, Lord, I’m able to handle this.” But God knows better.
God doesn’t give us more than we can handle in terms of what is brought into our life one day at a time as we recover. Our Lord is so patient to take the pressure down, when we would have it all happen overnight.
God gives us a small amount of what we want, and often the size of it is enough to blow us away. This is to show us we often don’t know what we’re wishing for.
Life has given us more than we can handle, which tipped us into this place of loss. God has responded by not giving us more than we can handle, by giving us little bits so we can be assured we can handle it. What God gives is always good.
God knows we overestimate our abilities and capacities, and therefore it’s our Lord’s kindness to expect less of us than we would expect of ourselves.
Acknowledgement to LW. This is no comment on 1 Corinthians 10:13.
Photo by Long Truong on Unsplash
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