More Than I Can Handle

Perhaps you've heard the saying, "God doesn't give you more than you can handle."  I have learned that this simply is not true.  In the past few, difficult years I have thought that God must think that I am stronger than I do because he's giving me a lot to deal with.   I've even had a few well meaning people remind me that God doesn't give us more than we can handle.

"God does give us more than we can handle.  He wants us to give it back."  

As I feel crushed beneath all of the challenges and heartache I have faced in the past three years I can't handle it all.  As more keeps getting piled on to the already heavy burden I am carrying I feel crushed beneath it.  I have learned that God does give us more than we can handle.  God gives us more than we can handle so that we will give our worries to him.

"We can't do it all."  

As a child I am told that I would often say, "I'll do it mineself!" complete with hands on my hips.  I am still strong-willed, stubborn, and independent.  I still like to do things myself.  But that is not God's way.  He calls us to be dependent on him.  Cast your burden upon the Lord and He will sustain you; He will never allow the righteous to be shaken. Psalm 55:22 NKJV

We need help from God.  The more that I lay my burdens at his feet the more peace I feel. This is no easy task for a fiercely independent person.  I have to remind myself daily to lay my troubles, worries, and anxieties on the Lord.  This is why he gives us more than we can handle.  Until we have more than we can handle we tend to think that we can handle everything by ourselves.  

There is so much that is bigger than we can handle alone: grief, mental illness, domestic violence, career choices, family illness, cancer, and the list could go on.  All of these and more need to be given to God.  They are simply too heavy for us to carry alone.

Last Sunday we heard the Gospel John 4:1-30 which told us the account of Jesus talking with the Samaritan woman at the well.  It was pointed out that the woman left her bucket, which was symbolic of her worries and burdens at the well when she went to tell others about Jesus.  Jesus wants us to leave our buckets at the well.  He will give us living water so that we no longer thirst when we do.

In 2 Corinthians Paul wrote about troubles in Asia.  In fact, we expected to die.  But as a result, we stopped relying on ourselves and learned to rely only on God, who raises the dead.  2 Corinthians 1:9.  They had to stop relying on themselves and rely only on God in order to live.  We must do the same if we want to live, if we want to let our lights shine.  Without giving our problems to God we will be crushed under our troubles.  When we are being crushed our light begins to dim.

Let Your Light SHINE!  Give your worries, troubles, burdens, and anxieties to God.  Do this daily and willingly without taking them back.  Pray and listen and you will receive an answer; perhaps not in your timetable, but in God's.

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.  Proverbs 3:5-6