oh my Lord...! Here is another testimony that I found in my inbox: this is one that speaks SO wonderfully into everything we have been talking about from Fear to Trust to Hope... I hope it finds someone who, like me, constantly needs to be reminded...to remember!! Enjoy!
When God Gives You More Than You Can Handle
by Lysa TerKeurst
“I waited patiently for the LORD; he inclined to me and heard my cry.” Psalm 40:1 (ESV)
“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.” 2 Corinthians 1:9 (NIV)
I felt sure there had to be some sort of awful mistake. I had no family history of breast cancer. I am young(ish) and healthy. And I was already walking through an incredibly hard season in my marriage that was making life feel impossibly heavy.
Yet there I was, sitting in a pink chair wondering what you’re supposed to do after you get a cancer diagnosis.
I kept thinking about that statement everyone loves to throw out in times like these: “God won’t give you more than you can handle.” But that’s not actually in the Bible.
God does say He won’t allow us to be tempted beyond what we can bear and that He always provides a way out. (1 Corinthians 10:13) But that’s not the same as God not giving us more than we can handle.
God didn’t cause this. But He was allowing it. And He sometimes will allow more and more.
As I type these words, I know I’m not the only one who feels they’ve been given more than they can handle.
The world is filled with people who are dealt more than they can handle. And, surprisingly, so is the Bible.
The Apostle Paul wrote: “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. 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” (2 Corinthians 1:8-9, NIV).
No, God doesn’t expect us to handle this. He wants us to hand this over to Him.
He doesn’t want us to rally more of our own strength. He wants us to rely solely on His strength.
If we keep walking around, thinking God won’t give us more than we can handle, we set ourselves up to be suspicious of God. We know we’re facing things that are too much for us.
After my diagnosis, I had some really difficult days. I needed God to show me His perspective so I could set my perspective. But it didn’t come right away. And that frustrated me. I was filled with fear and questions like, Why this? Why now? Why me?
The story I started telling myself was that life would never get any better.
But thinking about everything I didn’t know wasn’t getting me anywhere. So, I started listing things I did know. And the main thing I know? I know God is good. I didn’t know the details of God’s good plan, but I could make His goodness the starting place to renew my perspective.
So now let me tell the story of the recent events in my life using God’s goodness as the central theme. Had things not blown up in my marriage a few months beforehand, I never would have hit the pause button on life to go get a mammogram. But because I had a mammogram at that exact time, the doctors caught a cancer that needed to be caught. And because they caught a cancer that needed to be caught, I had every fighting chance to beat this cancer.
You see, we’re all living out a story, but then there’s the story we tell ourselves. We just need to make sure we’re telling ourselves the right story. Yes, God will give us more than we can handle. But He always has eventual good in mind.
We don’t have to like it, but maybe knowing this can help us live through it.
Dear Lord, I’m choosing to hand over to You today all the things I don’t understand and that feel too overwhelming. I declare Your goodness over my situation today and believe You are working all things for my good and Your glory. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.
TRUTH FOR TODAY:
2 Corinthians 12:9, “But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.” (NIV)
2 Corinthians 12:9, “But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.” (NIV)
I enjoyed the testimony but disagree with the idea that if we think God won't give us more than we can handle than we are naturally suspicious. I've always found comfort in that idea. It gives me strength because he trusts me to be able to handle whatever situation I am placed in because by trusting in him I can trust in myself. It gets back to the idea that God turns everything for the good; we just might not know what that good is at the present moment.
ReplyDeleteIt's that incredibly empowering concept that WITH God, "we" can do anything. Amen to that, Mandy!
DeleteYeah I really don't understand how that makes us suspicious of God....don't really get that whole paragraph.
ReplyDeleteok--so the two of you are making me think think think again. So i made a POST. Hope it helps!
DeleteThat sentence hit me also when I first read it. She broke our very first rule of personal testimony.;) She told us how we are to feel and/or think. She forgot to keep it to "I" statements and "personal" testimony. I also think the sentence would bring us back to some of the things we talked about the last several weeks. Who is the God I trust? If I look at His attributes and read the bible to truly know Him - suspicion would not be high on my list to describe my relationship with God. And yet I have heard it from people who refuse to believe in God when there is so much pain in the world. They are suspicious of God I guess?
ReplyDeleteGreat catch on that paragraph. Really made me think. Mandy, I liked "by trusting in him I can trust in myself". It immediately brought two words to my mind- hope and action. And relationship would help me to know if I am waiting on the Lord or I need to get moving. Thank you!
Amen to that Lorraine. I think that for me, it always comes down to God asking me "Who do YOU say that I AM?" and me asking myself: "in whom or in what am I placing my trust right now?" If I truly know the TRUE God, then, when I come up against something that doesn't jive with what I know that I know that I know of Him, then I seek to find out the Truth--and clarify yet another layer of His nature..of who and what HE can be for me through this that He couldn't be for me until this. It's harder to make God suspect when I actively search for the Truth in everything.
DeleteI truly believe that for me, the concept of God not giving me more than I can handle boils down to the idea that he knows my strength, my courage, my tempera
ReplyDeletement, etc. He knows all about me. That being said, he knows what I can handle, and that when and if I falter , i will look to him....."My rock in whom I trust......."