The Hearkening

God never gives you more than you can handle?

God never gives us more than we can handle. 
It's a time-tested platitude we've all heard at some point in our lives. Most of us had it fired at us like a missile during a trying time in our life. In retaliation, we've probably fired it back at someone during their tough times. Often, the reassuring phrase could be substituted with: 

1. "That sucks. Let's change the subject."
2. "Your problem, not mine."
3. "I'm not getting involved." 

All, to the same affect. 

Still, the truth of this truism makes perfect sense, doesn't it? God never gives you more than you can handle. It just screams, "Wisdom!"

No. No, it really doesn't. God never giving you more than you can handle is not what the Bible teaches us or our daily lives demonstrate.

I'll ask you to recall your motivation the last time you offered, "God never gives you more than you can handle"?

A) Was it a pastoral, supportive act of Love. 

-or- 

B) You dodging the burden of help another.

If you selected A, then you have met the moral criteria to honestly answer my next question. 
If you selected B, then you are Forgiven and have met the moral criteria to honestly answer my next question.

How did it feel the last time you heard "God never gives you more than you can handle"  from someone you were reaching out to in a time of need?

A) You were bathed in a warm, fuzzy feeling that God was measuring out your burden in proportion to your capacity. 

-or- 

B) You felt abandoned by both the speaker and your Maker. 

I'll let you search your own soul for the answer, and while you do let's take a moment and reflect on what the Bible really teaches...

Jesus carrying the Cross to Golgotha couldn't do it Himself. A man named Simon of Cyrene had to carry that Cross for Jesus to the Place of the Skull. God had given Christ, His only Begotten Son, more than He could handle.

Didn't He?

He needed help. Not help later, not a BS platitude that appears nowhere in the Scripture. Nowhere. He needed Simon to pick up His cross and carry it in that moment. Fully God and Fully man, but in this moment, I believe he surrendered his Deity to be human. Jesus in this crucial exchange bore the pain, the sin, the humiliation as a frail, broken, helpless man. Just like all of us do. He needed someone to help, and our Savior's savior was a another frail, broken, helpless man named, Simon.

Simon balked at helping, he hesitated, I'm sure of this. He might have thought, "Why me? God wouldn't give this Jesus more than he could handle." In that instant when Simon looked at the Cross as his newest burden he knew it as an incarnation of death, of torture, of humiliation, of Roman authority, and human mortality. Merely touching the cross would make Simon's skin crawl.

The Centurion who ordered Simon to help. The officer who held Jesus in custody and legally charged with overseeing His Crucifixion, this soldier of Rome, knew what many Christians still fail to understand, God will give us more than we can handle.

Yes, God will give us more than we can handle.

Remember this the next time you hear someone crying out from the depths of their broken Spirit into the depths of your broken Spirit.

While you mull over the validity of my words, consider that the name Simon in Hebrew means "Hearkening" or "Listening".

Are you Simon?



God bless you through the coming new year as you begin Hankering, listening to those who are crying out from Spirit to Spirit.