Faithbase

Good afternoon everybody, I wanted to take some time today to talk about a phrase I hear a lot coming out of the mouths of believers, the phrase, God will never give you more than you can handle. And first and foremost, there's two things I want to address in that particular statement. One, if God never gave us more than we can handle, then why would we need him? Two, it's not biblical. Okay? Scripture does say that he'll never tempt us without giving us a way out, but he never says he'll give us more than we can handle. In fact, it says the opposite. If you look at 2 Corinthians 1, 8 through 9, Paul talks about just how much suffering and struggles he and Stephen were going through in Asia, and what he said is, we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about the troubles we experienced in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt we had received the sentence of death, but this happened that we might not rely on ourselves, but on God who raises the dead. I'm going to repeat that, but this happened that we might not rely on ourselves, but on God who raises the dead. We go through struggles for a reason. When you look through Scripture, Paul also tells us that struggle produces endurance, endurance produces character, and from character we provide hope. Right? The Scripture tells us that sufferings and tribulations and seasons of struggles, they refine our faith in Christ like a fire, and so I want to challenge you to do something this week. Challenge yourself to do a season of tribulations and struggle. Switch your prayer from God save me from this, to God help me through this. Open my eyes to what I'm supposed to see through this struggle. Open my heart, open my mind, open my spirit. Help me to see what it is that you're wanting me to learn from this, and help me to stay focused on you. Do not misinterpret me. I'm not sitting here saying that there aren't struggles in life that are going to knock us to our knees and make us feel like the whole world is falling on top of us. Cancer, disease, you know, natural disasters, there are things that we're going to go through in life that are going to make us feel like the world is falling on top of us, but what I encourage you to do as hard as it's going to be, one, look to Scripture, look in the Word for your encouragement, but stop trying to make yourself feel better about the struggle because the pressure from the struggle is for a reason, to refine your faith, to grow it, to shift your focus back to Christ. So again, I challenge you this week, ask yourself, God, what are you teaching me through this struggle? God, what are you trying to show me? What about me needs to be removed? How can I deny myself so that I can follow you more through this struggle? Because the Bible tells us that with God, we can accomplish anything, but outside of Him, we can do nothing. Pray through your struggles, stay focused on Christ, stop trying to make yourself feel better about them because the pressure is there for a reason, to grow you, to mold you, to bring you closer to God, let Him. Never forget Jesus loves you, stay frosty, mis amigos, until next time.