God Never Said... "i'll Never Give You More Than You Can Handle" Series

Good morning! I invite you to turn with me to the book of 2 Corinthians.

When Trish and I lived in Kingsport, Tennessee, we always flew in and out of Tri-Cities Regional Airport. And if you’ve ever flown out of a regional airport, you know there are no big jets. No jumbo planes. You get six-seaters. Twelve-seaters. Prop planes. Planes that look like they should say Lawn-Boy on the side instead of Delta.

And I noticed something about myself whenever I had to fly on one of those little puddle jumpers: the smaller the plane, the more I started paying attention to the people getting on board.

Now, I want to be very clear—I wasn’t judging anyone. Not at all.

I was just… doing the math.

You start quietly wondering things like: What’s the weight limit on this plane? Does luggage factor into this? Is there a margin of error? What if a sumo wrestling team is on this flight with me?

I wasn’t being unkind. I was being… scientific.

Maybe you’ve been there. Maybe you’ve been on a flight where the flight attendants asked passengers to change seats before takeoff. Something about the center of gravity.

And the issue isn’t that you distrust the pilot. The pilot seems calm. Confident. Knows exactly where he’s going.

You trust the pilot.

You’re just not entirely convinced the plane can handle everything we’re asking it to carry.

Today we’re beginning a new sermon series called God Never Said That—

We’re going to look at things people sincerely believe are in the Bible. They quote them confidently. They usually mean well when they say it.

But the truth is, they are all things God never actually said.

The first one may be the most famous of all:

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

In other words, God will never load more weight onto your life than you were designed to safely carry.

But is this true? As followers of Jesus, we have to weigh everything we hear against the truth of Scripture. We have to be like Bereans— those guys Acts 17 describes as “examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so.” And so let’s examine the Scriptures. Let’s use the Apostle Paul as a test case to see if it’s true that “God Will Never Give Us More than We Can Handle.” We are going to read 2 Corinthians 1:8-10 together. Please stand to honor the reading of God’s Word.

2 Corinthians 1:8–10 ESV

8 For we do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of the affliction we experienced in Asia. For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. 9 Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead. 10 He delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will deliver us again.

This is God’s Word. Thanks Be to God. Pray with me.

[pray]

1. God doesn’t adjust our burdens to match our ability to bear them.

If we’re going to be honest with Scripture, we have to start here.

The Bible is filled with stories of God’s people finding themselves in situations they cannot handle on their own. We just read what Paul says to the Corinthians:

“For we do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of the affliction we experienced in Asia. For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself.”

Notice he doesn’t say, “It was hard, but we hunkered down.”

He doesn’t say “we put our shoulder to the wheel and found that extra gear”

No. Paul says he was so utterly burdened beyond his strength that he thought he was going to die.

And if you’re wondering, “what in the world happened to Paul in Asia,” he spells it out a few chapters later. Flip over to 2 Corinthians 11:23-28

2 Corinthians 11:23–28 ESV

23 Are they servants of Christ? I am a better one—I am talking like a madman—with far greater labors, far more imprisonments, with countless beatings, and often near death. 24 Five times I received at the hands of the Jews the forty lashes less one. 25 Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked; a night and a day I was adrift at sea; 26 on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers; 27 in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure. 28 And, apart from other things, there is the daily pressure on me of my anxiety for all the churches.