I think just about everyone at some point in their lives has been told “God won’t give you more than you can handle.” It’s spoken as fact. Some will even go as far as to sight the verse they believe they’re referencing. There’s a lot of competition for most misquoted verse of all time, but I would bet money on this one. It’s a strong contender.
You will most certainly be given things you can’t handle. Let’s just get that out of the way now. You will be given things you can’t handle. Maybe you already have been. Maybe that’s you right now. Maybe you’re reading this and you want to say “Well, maybe you can’t, Avalon, but I can!”. Nope. Full stop. Something in life is coming your way if it hasn’t already that will break you.
The wisest thing we can ever do when we’re crushed beneath all that we can’t handle is stop trying to handle it. Stop trying to handle it and proclaim what you already know. That you can’t do it but God can.
This right here is why Paul was so excited about his own weakness in 2 Corinthians 12:9 “Each time he said, “My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness.” So now I am glad to boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ can work through me.” He understood what so many of us miss because we are too busy trying to believe that somehow we will be able to handle everything life throws at us. Paul instead grasped the beautiful, soul altering concept that the moment of our complete inability to get ourselves out of a mess is just about the loudest megaphone we can use to tell of God’s rescuing goodness.
Yes, it’s more than you can handle Christian. Yes, it is breaking you. But you serve the only one who will not be broken by it and the only one who can handle it. You will be given things you can’t handle but you follow a God who is ready to handle them for you.
What would happen if you switched all your effort from trying to be strong enough to bear it alone to loudly proclaiming that though it’s killing you God will see you through? Who would be reached by your surrender? Who would be seen by your suffering? What could God do with whatever has been handed to you in life?
And by the way, all this doesn’t even necessarily mean that God’s the one doing the handing out. In fact, it’s much more likely that he’s not. God is good and loving. He wants equally good things for us. He doesn’t enjoy our suffering and it certainly wasn’t what he wanted for us.
But he has always had a plan. Before God ever pronounced any of his creation as good he knew evil wasn’t far behind and he already had a plan. He became a God of rescue and healing before the first wound was ever delivered.
God is so good at making whole things from the brokenness of the world and is so willing to get right in the thick of things to save us that we sometimes misunderstand entirely what he is doing. We, in our pain, sometimes paint our rescuer as the one holding the smoking gun instead of the one who wrestled it away from our attacker.
So yes, there will be things in your life that you can’t handle. You will fail. You will fall totally and completely short. But not hopelessly. Long before your first stumble God was already working on it for good. Let’s get out of his way and let him do what He does best.
Let’s find some joy,
Avalon Robinson Author 