Episode Details

This week feels strongest if we emphasize that the phrase is usually well-intentioned, but can quietly place an impossible burden on people.

Last week, we began our Out of Context series by looking at one of those phrases that sounds biblical, even though it is not: “God helps those who help themselves.”

This week, we turn to another saying that usually shows up when life is at its hardest: “God won’t give you more than you can handle.”

It is often spoken with love. It is meant to comfort someone who is hurting, overwhelmed, or afraid. But when life becomes an overwhelming sequence of events and we already feel scared and alone, those words can sound less like good news and more like another responsibility we are somehow failing to carry.

Because what happens when life actually is more than we can handle?

1 Corinthians 10 is often used to support this saying, but the passage is not promising that we will never face more than we can bear. And when we live as though God has given each of us some hidden superpower to endure everything on our own, we take on a responsibility that was never ours to carry.

We end up exhausted. Beaten up. Isolated. And sometimes stuck in the very places from which Christ came to set us free.

So today, I have a replacement. It may be a little less quippy, but I think it is a whole lot more biblical:

God won’t leave you when life is more than you can handle.

Because the promise of our faith is not that life will always be manageable.

The promise is that we will never have to face it alone.

Let’s take this one Out of Context.

 Passage:  1 Corinthians 10:12-17 CEB