More Than We Can Handle

“God will never give you more than you can handle.” This quote is often repeated whenever we find ourselves in the midst of a trying situation. We’ve all heard it numerous times and it often brings comfort to those who are weary or frustrated. Unfortunately, I don’t necessarily believe that God never gives us more than we can handle. I think that often times He does allow us to be overwhelmed and that He intentionally gives us more than we can handle. I think that He has various reasons for doing so, but I believe that most often God chooses to overwhelm us because it causes us to surrender to Him. And after we’ve surrendered, He takes over and it is then that we are able to see His grace and faithfulness shining through our lives.

These past three weeks, God has overwhelmed most of us on the team and made us to feel as if treating patients in a third-world hospital is too much to handle. He has given us impossible cases to solve, impoverished families to worry over, a ginormous language barrier to fight against and so much more. He has placed numerous patients on our hearts and caused many of us to weep over them as we labor to treat and heal and love them. There have been moments on this trip when, I’m almost ashamed to admit, I’ve thought I’d finally reached my breaking point and I wondered if I could make it to April 14^thhaving “finished the race well”.  

But our God is so faithful and He restores our hope! “I cry out to God Most High, to God, who fulfills His purpose for me…God sends His love and His faithfulness,” Psalm 57:2-3, Amen!! A very wise and godly friend of mine told me a few days ago that missions aren’t always just about the people we’re serving. She told me that sometimes God’s purpose on a mission trip is to refine those who have come to serve. I think that there is much wisdom in that thought. After hearing those insightful words, I began to try to discern what it is that the Lord is trying to refine in me while I’m over here.

Perhaps He is trying to teach me (or all of us) that we should learn to ask for “more than we can handle,” since it’s in those stressful times that God shows Himself victorious. And He reminds us that we were never meant to walk through this life alone. All of this life requires more of Him and less of us. He allows us to feel overwhelmed intentionally and lovingly so that His glory might be displayed through our lives and so that we have no doubt of Who is in control. And I think that as we learn this lesson, He graciously allows us to be filled with much joy and peace – even more joy and peace than we can handle!

I want big things from God. And He wants big things from me.  He wants me to trust Him with my heart and my life. He wants me to lay my weaknesses and fears down at the foot of the cross and to crawl into His arms and rest and draw from His strength. He wants me pour myself out, giving the best that I have to the point of being “poor” for the sake of others. Sometimes it hurts, this loving unconditionally and loving unto the point that I feel ‘poor’ (or spent). But I believe that God does this intentionally and lovingly as well; He saved and sanctified us to exhaust us so that we might come to realize that He is our supply and our strength. “All of my springs are in You,” the Psalmist writes in Psalm 87:7. There is a fountain of grace, purchased by the blood of the beautiful Lamb, and it is available to all of His children, whenever they are in need. And so we learn to pray for “more than we can handle,” expecting that God will meet our poor selves in the midst of the struggle and prove Himself mighty.

Give us more than we can handle today, Lord, so that You might be glorified in us. When we begin to tire or to struggle, please help us to remember that we need only to call upon Your name in order to receive boundless grace for the task at hand. Amen.

 - Britni

Encouragement for the day:

“A saint’s life is in the hands of God like a bow and arrow in the hands of an archer. God is aiming at something the saint cannot see, but our Lord continues to stretch and strain, and every once in a while the saint says, “I can’t take any more.” Yet God pays no attention; He goes on stretching until His purpose is in sight, and then He lets the arrow fly. Entrust yourself to God’s hands. Maintain your intimate relationship with Jesus through the perseverance of faith. Proclaim as Job did, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him” (Job 13:15).  God ventured His all in Jesus to save us, and now He wants us to venture our all with total abandoned confidence in Him.” – Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest

“Now we see things imperfectly as in a poor mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God knows me now,” 1 Corinthians 13:12. Amen!