What We Can Handle

<p>Maybe you’ve heard the saying: God will never give us more than we can handle. I’d never thought much about that idea until I found myself in Guatemala, begging God not to let both of my grandparents pass away while I was gone.</p><p>.</p><p>My grammy had been sick when I left for my semester abroad, and I’d said a different kind of goodbye to her. But now my pop-pop had cancer too? How could this be happening?</p><p>.</p><p>“This is too much!” I cried out to God. “It’s more than I can handle.”</p><p>In that moment, God’s peace surrounded me like a hug. And I knew that even if it was too much for me to handle, I wouldn’t go through it alone. He was with me. My focus had been on trying to cope with the pain on my own, but instead, I had to surrender my suffering to God.</p><p>.</p><p>The truth is, God never promises not to give us more than we can handle. In fact, before Jesus went to the cross, He told His disciples, “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). And after Jesus rose from the dead, He told them, “I am with you always” (Matthew 28:20). It is the strength of Jesus that allows us to continue forward through a broken world, not our own strength.</p><p>.</p><p>I also think of Paul, who endured an immense amount of suffering to share the gospel (the good news about Jesus). Paul was imprisoned, flogged, beaten, shipwrecked, endangered, and the list goes on. Paul didn’t handle all this by his own strength. Paul depended on God.</p><p>.</p><p>So even when the worst happens—when the mountains fall and the earth gives way, when we’re afraid of losing someone we love, when life just isn’t going the way we expected—we don’t have to worry about our own ability to handle it. God is our strength, and God is with us, always. • Becca Wierwille</p><p>.</p><p>• Can you think of a time you felt like God was giving you more than you could handle? How did that impact your relationship with Him?</p><p>.</p><p>• Read 1 Corinthians 10:13. How is this verse different from