A patently absurd notion

There’s a notion floating around in Christian circles that I don’t agree with.  The concept is as follows: if you are going through a trial, it must be something that you can adequately handle on your own, because God, as the teaching goes, will never give a Christian more than they can bear.  Once again, I disagree with this assertion.  I think such a statement is patently absurd.

The verse that many people quote as proof of this concept is 1 Corinthians 10:13.  This verse reads, “No temptation has overtaken you except as is common to man; but God is faithful.  He will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape, that you may be able to bear it” (NKJV).  But this verse is speaking about temptation, not trials.  Let me elaborate.

We are being told that God won’t allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able.  In times of temptation, the promise of the Word of God is, God will make a way of escape (whether we choose to avail ourselves of that escape is another matter, but that’s a blog topic for another day).  My point here is that 1 Corinthians 10:13, and its context, is speaking of resisting temptation, not on the severity of the trials of life.  Make no mistake: God will absolutely allow you to experience trials that are much more than you can bear.

Why should we think otherwise?  Tell Job that God won’t allow you to experience trials that are too much to endure.  Tell the families of the victims who were brutally slain in Oregon earlier this month - in another tragic school shooting - that God won’t allow you to experience a trial that is too much to bear.  Tell this to the couple who will never meet their child because he or she was a stillborn.  Tell this to the widow who enjoyed marriage with the love of her life for forty years, but now has to live life feeling as if an integral part of her as been torn away (yes, I am talking about my mom losing my dad).

I will say it again: God will allow us to go through crushing, intense, unbearable trials; trials that are much more than we can bear on our own.  Why?  To drive us to Him!  C.S. Lewis once said, “Pain insists upon being attended to.  God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” 

Kevin