Apr 09

More Than You Can Handle

“God will never give you more than you can handle.”

What a crock of….!

Have you ever been in the depths of despair and had a friend feed you this line? As if to make things better, they contend that God would never give you more than you can handle (you strong individual you)! Yet, if He never gave us more than we could handle, what reason would we have to call on Him?

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” -Matthew 11:28 (NIV)

What burden would we need rest from if God would never give us more than we can handle?

Have you ever been in the dire straights of hopelessness? Have you ever felt true, utter despair? Hoplessness felt? When you are at the end of your emotional rope, the last thing you want to hear is that you can get through this (on your own). You want helpful advice, a helping hand, or just plain help period. You do not want regurgitated, baseless chatter.

“And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it.” -1 Corinthians 10:13b

So the line may not be entirely baseless, but the (mis)interpretation of the verse is where the error lies; read it again: ‘he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear.’ If you read further, you read the request to ‘flee from idolatry’. The Bible says that He will not let you be tempted more than you can handle, not that He will not give you more than you can handle. We are not meant to be able to handle everything; God is. We are meant to give our burdens over to Him. We are meant to call on Him. We are meant to resist temptation, but we are never guaranteed to be given only what we can handle.

I am never encouraged by those words; it never makes me feel better to hear that ‘God will never give you more than you can handle’ because it has always felt like a cop-out.

“A righteous man may have many troubles, but the Lord delivers him from them all.” -Psalm 34:19

God will never give you more than He can handle. The caveat to that though is that He can handle anything. He wants us to call on Him; He wants us to lean on Him. “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.”

Jan 27

Friend

If you have to lie to a friend, they cannot be much of a friend to begin with. Or not much of a friend to you. Not someone you would consider true friend. You don’t care much if you can lie to them.

You care even less when you allow the lies to settle. And fester. Grow. Hurt.

You care even less when your pride blinds you. A true friend knows humility. A best never has to be reminded of that fact.
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Jan 25

Pride-fall

Pride can motivate men to do good just as it can trip men into bad. The measure of a good man is one that knows when to be proud or motivated by pride, and when to be humble.

To have pride in one’s work is to feel a sense of accomplishment- to feel achieved. Pride in one’s work moves man to do better. To be proud of anything in a positive manner is to evoke happiness.
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Dec 29

Rabbit Hole

Sometimes when I am arguing with someone, I will get so caught up in my argument or theirs that I miss the ‘big’ picture. I fall down the rabbit hole time and time again without fail. It’s like a reflex; you can’t fight it.

Sometimes I want to be in the rabbit hole [but most times, not really]; but I don’t want people I care about going in with me. The rabbit hole is fine to foes, but friends deserve better. It sucks that to think that way anymore though is misconstrued more often than not.
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Aug 01

If I Died Today, You Should Know

If I died today, I would want you to know:

Pay it forward. What are you going to do with something you do nothing with?! If I have to give, I give; why not? You never know when you are going to be in a position to need someone to repay the kindness. And if you never are in that position, you can at least leave this world having helped [change] someone else’s life. You never know the impact you have on someone so why not at least try to make it a positive one? If we all showed random acts of kindness to one another, perhaps we could reverse the perverted nature that we have developed from the sensationlized media that we are consistently exposed to. Perhaps. If I were to die today, I’d want you to know that it couldn’t hurt to try.