Do What You Can And Let God Handle The Rest

Do What You Can, and Let God Handle the Rest

Pastor Talbert W. Swan, II

Text: 2 Samuel 21:10-14

SCRIPTURE

10 Rizpah daughter of Aiah took sackcloth and spread it out for herself on a rock. From the beginning of the harvest till the rain poured down from the heavens on the bodies, she did not let the birds touch them by day or the wild animals by night.

11 When David was told what Aiah’s daughter Rizpah, Saul’s concubine, had done,

12 he went and took the bones of Saul and his son Jonathan from the citizens of Jabesh Gilead. (They had stolen their bodies from the public square at Beth Shan, where the Philistines had hung them after they struck Saul down on Gilboa.)

13 David brought the bones of Saul and his son Jonathan from there, and the bones of those who had been killed and exposed were gathered up.

14 They buried the bones of Saul and his son Jonathan in the tomb of Saul’s father Kish, at Zela in Benjamin, and did everything the king commanded. After that, God answered prayer in behalf of the land.

SUBJECT: DO WHAT YOU CAN AND LET GOD HANDLE THE REST

INTRODUCTION

What do you do when life has beaten you down so much so that you are at your breaking point? I don't care how long you have been going to church, how big your Bible is, or how much you love Jesus, every now and then, life will push you so close to the edge that you feel you are about to lose your mind. Every now and then, life will break you down and leave you feeling completely shattered.

There is the pressure of going to work and catching hell on the job. There is the pressure of having mounting bills and little income. There is the pressure of dealing with family drama. There is the pressure of dealing with racism and/or sexism. There is the pressure that comes from just waking up in the morning and having to deal with the problems that come from living in this thing we call life. And every now and then, life will break you down to the point where you will say, "you know what? I have had it up to here, I can't take it any more." You may have gone through so much hell that you have reached your breaking point.

Whenever you reach your breaking point, understand that God is so amazingly good that in His grace, He will give you just what you need every single day. As a matter of fact, the writer wrote, "morning by morning, new mercies I see." Every day you wake up, God greets you with fresh mercies, knowing that yesterday's mercy is not going to be enough to handle today's challenges. When you think about it, as you look back over your life, if it had not been for the mercy of God, you should have been dead a long time ago. But guess what? If you had known back then what you are about to go through, you would have said, "forget this, I can't handle that." But now, as you are going through it, every morning God gives you just enough peace, just enough strength, just enough grace, and just enough mercy to make it through each day.

MY GRACE IS SUFFICIENT

Here is what God said to Paul when He allowed Paul to reach his breaking point because of the thorn in his flesh: "I am not going to answer your prayers the way you want Me to. Here's what I'm going to do: I'm going to give you just enough grace, and My grace is going to be so sufficient that My strength is going to be made perfect in your weakness." God says, "when you've reached your breaking point, when you feel as though you can't go on any more, that is when My strength steps in." God gives you strength to go through your situation, and before you know it, somebody is asking, how did you go through that and not lose your mind? God gave you just what you needed to get through what you were going through. God is saying, "when you reach your breaking point, don't break down, break out."

If you’ve ever been grocery shopping and happened to buy some dough biscuits, you will discover that they come in a container and the only way to get the biscuits out is you have to hit the container, and when you hit it, the biscuits pop out. But guess what the dough saying to us? The dough is saying, "you see, I was in my container which was my comfort zone, but my creator did not make me to stay in my comfort zone. My creator recognized the only way to set me free from where I was comfortable was to hit me, and once I got hit, I had to break out of what I was locked into." Realize that when God hits you, God allows you to break out, and not break down.