God Won't Give You More Than You Can Handle - Half-Truths

Transcript of the sermon preached by Pastor Shawn Coons on May 21, 2023

We're going to dive right into our second scripture lesson this morning, and it's from Luke chapter 11, beginning with verse nine. And these are Jesus' words to the gathered crowd. And he said to them, "Suppose one of you has a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say to him, 'Friend, lend me three loaves of bread. For a friend of mine has arrived, I have nothing to set before him.' And he answers from within, 'Do not bother me. The door's already been locked. My children are with me in bed. I cannot get up and give you anything.'"

"I tell you, even though he will not get up and give him anything because he's his friend, at least because of his persistence, he will get up and give him whatever he needs. So I say to you, ask, and it will be given you, search and you will find, knock and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks, receives, and everyone who searches, finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. Is there any among you if your child asks for a fish will give a snake instead of a fish? Or if the child asks for an egg will give a scorpion? If you then who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?" Says the word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God.

So on week three of our series of half-truths, looking at sayings that Christians, we as Christians, often say. Many we think we can find in the Bible, but when we look a little bit closer, we find they're maybe not quite as true or don't mean exactly what we're trying to convey. The series is based on a book by Reverend Adam Hamilton called Half Truths. So far, we've talked about everything happens for a reason. We've talked about God helps those who help themselves. And this week, we are tackling God won't give you more than you can handle.

With each of these sayings, we acknowledge that many of us have said these things before. And when we've said them, we mean well. Often we might say "God won't give you more than you can handle" to someone who's dealing with a lot of adversity, with too much problem in their life, one hardship piled on top of another. And so when we say this, "God won't give you more than you can handle," what we're really trying to say is, "You are strong. You got this. You're tough. I know you feel overwhelmed, but you're going to make it. You'll get through this." All wonderful things to say.

There's nothing wrong with wanting to be encouraging. There's nothing wrong with wanting to give someone hope when they're going through tough times. It's very natural to say, "This isn't going to defeat you. This won't overwhelm you. God is still with you, and God loves you and won't allow you to be defeated by this." And we can even find support for this kind of outlook in scripture. If we look at 1 Corinthians 10, verse 13, "No testing has overtaken you that is not common to everyone. God is faithful and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength. With the testing he will also provide the way out so you may be able to endure it."

So Paul writes, "God is faithful and will not let you be tested beyond your strength." And that sounds very similar to "God won't give you more than you can handle." But there are some differences. There's some nuances that I think are important. So let's explore this verse first little bit written by the Apostle Paul to the Christian Church in Corinth in the first century, just a couple decades after Jesus' death and resurrection. Corinth was a crossroads. Corinth was kind of on an isthmus, and there was even kind of a little dry canal there that they would sometimes pull ships from one sea to the other. So it was a very cosmopolitan place. It was a place with lots of different people from lots of different places, lot of activity.

The folks there for the most part would've been labeled pagans by our New Testament church, simply meaning they weren't Jews and they weren't Christians, and they would've worshiped, as many did in that region, a variety of gods and goddesses, especially of the Greek and Roman pantheon. And they would've worshiped them in a number of different ways. There would've been idols. Sometimes there would've been raucous celebrations with drunkenness. There were temple prostitutes. There were feasts. But it's these pagans that make up that church in Corinth. And in following Jesus, they were giving up their former religious practices that they might have done in these various temples.

The problem for them is that they were tempted. Just by being in Corinth, just by walking around their town, they saw the temples, they saw what was going on, saw where all of these practices were still happening. And so these particular group of Christians in Corinth struggled with these temptations to revert back to their ways in those temples, to the immorality, to the gluttony, to the drunkenness. And so this is what Paul is writing to. He's writing to this group of Christians who are surrounded by temptation where they walk. Reverend Hamilton in his book, Half Truth, writes about this passage. The context in this verse is self-discipline in the face of temptation with the hope of avoiding sin, particularly the sins of sexual immorality and idolatry. Paul is telling the Corinthian Christians their experiences not unique. Just as the Israelites were tempted, so too the Corinthians will be tempted. In fact, we'll all be tempted. Jesus himself experienced temptation.

This passage is not about God deciding to give you more burdens in your life than you can handle. It is about God helping you when you are tempted. And temptation is indeed a test of your resolve, your character and your faith. And that's what Paul was talking about here, not about adversity and the difficult circumstances that come into life at some point. So we do need to make this distinction between temptation and the adversity that happens in our life. There are things that tempt us to do things against God's will, to do things that hurt ourselves, hurt God, hurt others. Then there's adversity in life. There's tragedy in life. There's things that overwhelm us that may have nothing to do with temptation.

What Paul is saying here, at least two things he's saying, he's not addressing these tragic circumstances, the hardship we face, the loss, the pain, the suffering. He's addressing temptation to former practices that led us into bad places. And Paul is not saying that God is the author of all hardship and all tragedy and all temptation, that God makes bad things happen to you, that God puts things in your path to test you. To go back to one of our earlier things, Paul is not saying that everything happens for a reason and that reason is God.

When I was in middle school, in high school, I was very active in my church youth group in my Presbyterian church, and it formed me in some very important ways and some very positive ways. But in this particular tradition that my youth group kind of embraced of Christianity, I received some messages about Christian faith that weren't so helpful. And one of these messages is that that God uses, God causes, trials and tribulations in our life to strengthen us, to refine us, to make us tough. The image is like a blacksmith who purifies metal by heating it up, putting it in the fire and taking the big old blacksmith hammer and hammering it until it's strong and in the shape it needs to be. And I was told that the hardships we sometimes face may be God just strengthening us, testing us, toughening us up.

I think there's several problems with that as I reflect on it now, but let's just say that metal doesn't suffer. Metal doesn't feel pain, and God doesn't treat us like objects with no feelings. Paul is saying that temptation is real. We are tempted to do things that are not good for us or for others, often for both. But those aren't tests from God. Those aren't from God, and often they're usually kind of from ourselves, of our own doing.

Really simple example, which is almost trivial, when I go grocery shopping, I don't like to go grocery shopping, so I like to reward myself. I don't know if anyone else does that as well. A candy bar, a cookie, a bag of chips, and there's nothing wrong with that. Often though I'm tempted to do maybe more than just a candy bar. Oh look, there's a eight-pack of brown sugar cinnamon Pop-Tarts, something for my childhood that I really love. Cheese Pringles. Let me get a whole can of cheese Pringles. And I will tell you, I am the target consumer. You know how Oreo puts out these new flavors, like five a week? I am a target for every single one of those. I look at it go, "Oh, that would be really good." And of course you can't buy just an Oreo to try it. You have to buy the whole pack. So I go there and I see Swedish Fish flavored Oreos, and I'm like, "Yes, please." They were good. I'll tell you that.

But I'm also telling you, God didn't put Swedish Fish Oreos into my life to test me. God wasn't sitting around saying, "Well, there's war, there's poverty, there's racism, there's greed. What should I do now? Shawn's going shopping. Let's get the new Oreos out." I was the author of my temptation there, or maybe Nabisco was the author of my temptation. And God had actually already given me what I needed to deal with it. As I said, that's a very small trivial temptation. But unfortunately at one time another, we are all prone to giving into those bigger temptations, those bigger temptations that lead to hurt for ourselves, for others. Maybe we're tempted into drug or alcohol use, unhealthy practices at home, cheating at school, self-harm, infidelity, dishonesty at work, silence or apathy in the face of injustice.

When we are tempted to these destructive choices, we hear in scripture that God provides us assistance in those moments of temptation. Paul is saying we're not on our own in those moments. Even it doesn't feel like, we have a choice and we have the strength to get through it. There are times when we do seem powerless to choose what's healthy for us, and that the destructive choice is just too strong. But even in those moments, God gives us an alternative. If we feel no, we can't deal with this on our own, sometimes the only choice we have is to ask for help, is to admit our powerlessness and say, "Yes, I need your help. I need someone to help me," to admit that we cannot help ourselves and that we need God and we need others in our lives.

This asking for help is often portrayed as a weakness. We want to be seen as self-sufficient, pulling ourselves up by our own bootstraps. But there are times in our life when asking for help is the bravest thing that we can do. If you go to any Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, Narcotics Anonymous, Gamblers Anonymous, every person there begins their road to recovery by admitting their need for help, that they cannot do it on their own. In our scripture lesson from Luke, Jesus says, "Ask and it will be given to you. Everyone who asks shall receive."

And we heard the story right before that about a man who needs something late at night and he goes to his neighbor's house, he bangs on his door, and the neighbor doesn't want to help him at that late hour. The scripture says he's not going to help him because they're friends. He's going to help him because the guy keeps banging on the door. He's persistent. The guy helps him not out of altruistic motives but out of selfish motives. But he still gets what he's asking for. And Jesus says, "Even if this guy can help grudgingly, what about God who loves you?" What about God who loves you is the ultimate good. Surely God's going to take care of you more than this neighbor. We all need help at various times in our life, and God wants us to ask for help. God wants us to cry out in prayer. God wants us to turn towards each other. We are here as God's answers to prayer. We are here to help one another.

I received a phone call here at the church once from a woman who was in some pretty hard straits and as I listened to her, I could tell that she probably needed more help than I could give. I said, "I'm happy to listen, but I think you might benefit from talking to a therapist, a mental health professional." She replied, she didn't need that because she had God. And so I asked her, if God's help was all she needed, why was she calling me? She realized she needed help, but it was just harder to take even one more step. But we've been put here for one another from the very beginning.

In that second creation story in Genesis 2, God makes Adam out of dust, breathes life into him, and then says, "It's not good, Adam, for you to be alone." It is not good for any of us to be alone. We are created to help each other. God doesn't give us more than we can handle, but that doesn't mean... Well, we say God doesn't give us more than we can handle, but sometimes we get more than we can handle even though it doesn't come from God.

Adam Hamilton writes in his book, Half Truths, about a conversation on this subject, the woman, and she said, "For years this statement helped me when I was facing difficult things. I kept telling myself that God wouldn't give me more than I could handle, and it reassured me that somehow I was going to make it through. Then one day I was at my therapist's office and I mentioned it to him and he laughed. And he said, 'Are you kidding me? Surely you don't really believe that. I can tell you plenty of stories about people who had more than they could handle. In fact, my profession consists of helping just such people.'"

The counselor reminded the woman that in her own case, she had come to him because the emotional pain and difficulty she was facing had been more than she could handle. In addition, the woman's mother had committed suicide because life had become more difficult than she could handle. Now, first, the one was angry that her therapist had called her belief into question, but the more she reflected, the more she concluded he was right. We will face adversity in our lives and we will experience hardships. We or someone we love may face terminal illness. We may struggle with debilitating depression, suicidal thoughts, grief so heavy we'll feel we'll suffocate. We may walk through financial circumstances where it seems there's no way out. We are like every human being. At some point, we will absolutely face things that are more than we can handle.

And the promise of scripture is not that we won't go through hard times. What scripture does promise is that all times good or bad, God wants to be our help and our strength. It's not that God won't give you more than you can handle, but that God will help you handle all that you've been given. That's the message. That's the important message. It's not that God won't give you more than you can handle, but that God will help you handle all that you've been given.

One last word I'd like to give you. It's possible someone is sitting here today and they absolutely feel like they have more than they can handle. If that's you, if you are facing a challenge that has overwhelmed you, addiction, financial difficulties, relationship challenges, depression, mental health issues, grief, pain, whatever it is, please ask for help. You can start this moment by asking God for help, but don't stop there. Talk to someone. Talk to a friend here, talk to me. Talk to a teacher, a family member, a therapist. God has already put people in your life that can help you. It's not that you have been given more than you can handle... No, sorry, it's not that God won't give you more than you can handle, but that God will help you handle all that you've been given.