The Lie of “Handling It All”…
Somewhere along the way, someone started saying, “God won’t give you more than you can handle.” It’s printed on mugs, shared in church hallways, and offered to hurting people as though it’s Scripture. It sounds comforting, but it isn’t fully true.
God absolutely allows more than we can handle.
I know because He has in my own life.
As a little girl, I endured abuse that no child should ever experience. Those wounds followed me into adulthood, where I spent years addicted to heroin, convinced I was too broken to become the woman God had created me to be. God rescued me from that life, but He didn’t remove hardship from my story.
Instead, He gave me a new one.
Today I stay home raising and homeschooling our four children. It’s work I cherish, but it is also deeply demanding. We don’t have grandparents stepping in every week. There isn’t a built-in village carrying the load with us. Most days, it’s just my husband and me trying to faithfully steward what God has entrusted to us. There have been countless moments when I’ve looked around at the endless needs of four little people and thought, I cannot do this.
And that’s exactly the point.
Christianity was never meant to produce self-sufficient people. It was meant to produce God-dependent people. We spend so much of our lives trying to prove we’re capable, convincing ourselves that strength means needing less from God. But throughout Scripture, God repeatedly brings His people to the end of themselves so they finally discover the sufficiency of Him.
Paul begged God to remove his thorn in the flesh. God’s answer wasn’t, “You’re strong enough.” It was, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”
If God only gave us what we could handle, we’d have little reason to trust Him. Little reason to pray. Little reason to discover that His strength is not a metaphor but a reality.
Looking back, I would never choose childhood abuse. I would never choose addiction. I would never choose many of the trials our family has walked through. But I can say with confidence that God has met me in every one of them. Every place my own strength failed became another place His faithfulness was put on display.
So if you’re overwhelmed today, don’t assume you’ve failed. You may simply be standing exactly where God wants you: at the end of yourself, where His strength begins.
The Christian life isn’t about proving how much you can handle. It’s about learning, over and over again, that Christ is carrying far more than you ever could.
B🤍
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