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How much can you handle?
What we handle is usually based on our past. What have we handled and to what depth and degree determines what we limit ourselves to handle today. Past behavior is a good indicator of future behavior. This is where the term “Always been done that way” comes from. There is a certain sense of reliability that becomes trust in the way we behave, a process we follow, or a sense of understanding we have over time. This reliable method can also become aged and unreliable, and since it is comfortable, we don’t ever reevaluate it to see if it remains reliable over time.
This leads to complacency and folly because we might continue to use it or behave in a way despite facts revealed that it isn’t working anymore and hasn’t for some time. It becomes disappointing and ineffective, even depressing.
Live a Godly Life
A life spent with God is never unreliable, untruthful, complacent, or ineffective. When we truly come to Him in prayer, counsel, need, and hope, He will provide. He always has, and He always will. He will never give us more than we can handle because He loves us truly, deeply, and consistently. As 1 Corinthians 10:13 says,
No temptation has overtaken you except that which is common to man; and God is faithful, He will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will provide the way of escape also, so that you will be able to endure it.
God sees it long before we do. God understands the difficulties within whatever it is, and God also sees the outcome. We don’t and must experience it to be purified, taught, and delivered to it, through it, or from it. Dr. Tony Evans spoke of the limits we have on God in an analogy of what amount of need we bring to Him.
If we stand at the shore of an ocean with a thimble to be filled, we will receive only a thimble full. If we bring a glass to be filled, we will only receive a glass full. If we bring a bucket to be filled, we will only receive a bucket full. If we bring a barrel to be filled, we will only receive a barrel full. If we bring a truckload to be filled, we will only receive a truck full. If we bring a tanker to be filled, we will only receive a tanker full.
What are you bringing to Him?
You see, God will resolve whatever we can’t handle and fill us with Him so we can handle it and anything else. What we bring to Him and what we submit to Him is from our perspective of what we can handle. Thinking in our terms limits what God can do on His terms. Our way, a way we behave, a process we follow, or a sense of understanding is extremely limited and doesn’t last the arduous test of time. God’s does. So why wouldn’t we want to follow and abide in Him. He is the truth, the way, and the life, and we are most certainly not.
What we handle shouldn’t be based on what we think we can handle. It should be based on what God’s expectations of what we can handle are. So when you come to Him with limits, you won’t receive anything but limited blessing, deliverance, and joy. When you bring everything to Him all the time, He will fill you up and strengthen you in ways you could have never thought possible.
The Lord will rescue me from every evil deed and will bring me safely to His heavenly kingdom; to Him be the glory forever and ever. Amen.
2 Timothy 4:18
