Week 47 - Day 5

2 Corinthians 1-5

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2 Corinthians 1-5 YouVersion(NIV)

I’ve often heard people say the phrase, “God won’t give you more than you can handle.”  This is said as an encouragement most of the time, something to help you take a deep breath and keep on going.  It makes you think, “Okay, since He won’t give me more than I can handle, I guess I’ve got this.”  But when you read the Bible you find that this saying is not exactly true.  There are many people in the Bible actually who are very clear in the fact that they got to a point where they wanted to die; everything they were dealing with became more than they could handle.  The point is not for us to be able to handle whatever we’re going through … the point is to rely on God not ourselves.

Paul said in 2 Corinthians 1, “We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life.  Indeed, in our hearts we felt the sentence of death.”  But check out what he says next – “But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead.  He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and He will deliver us.  On Him we have set our hope that He will continue to deliver us.”

When we rely on Him, trusting Him, and giving Him all our burdens, that is when we become unshakable.  Psalm 55:22 says, “Cast all your cares on the Lord and He will sustain you.”  Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4, “We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.”  “Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.”  And here’s the one to always remember – “So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen.  For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”

It is so easy to fix our eyes on what is seen … the stress, the troubles, the hardships … the storms around us.  But God doesn’t want us to drown; He doesn’t even want us to just “weather the storm;” He wants us to lock our eyes on His and rely on Him to take care of us.

So, might we have more in this life than we can handle?  Absolutely.  Does God want us to rely on Him so that He can carry us through it?  Absolutely.