DEVOTION//More than we can bear

"God will never give you more than you can manage."

I listened to a dear Christian woman trying to comfort a Christian sister with those words. She added, "1 Corinthians 10:13 says, 'God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear.'"

"I know," her despondent friend said. "But I am beyond my limit. I can't bear any more. It's too much. God isn't keeping his promise."

Does God ever give us more than we can manage?

Yes, he does. Listen to Paul's 2nd letter to the Corinthians (1:8,9). "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.

"…Under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired of life itself…."

And why would God allow Paul to be in a situation where he "despaired of life"?

Paul’s answer: "This happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead."

But wait. In 2 Corinthians, Paul says he felt under such great pressure, that it was far beyond his ability to endure it. Yet in 1 Corinthians 10, he said that God "will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear." Isn’t that a contradiction? No. There’s no contradiction. Read on. "When you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it."

Did you see it? "He (God) will provide a way out…." And because God will provide a way out, we can bear up under our difficulties. We "can endure" whatever we are going through, no matter how much we are going through.

The encouragement is the same in both places. The encouragement is not to find our hope and strength in what we can do, in what we can manage. The encouragement is to find our hope and strength in God's grace and power. The grace and power he demonstrated in Jesus.

So it’s true: God will never give us more than he can manage.

I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is the same as the mighty strength he exerted when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms (Ephesians 1:18-20).