Thursday 6th February 2020 Devotion
Scripture:- 2 Corinthians 1:1-9
Topic:- When God Gives You More Than You Can Handle [2]
Text:- 1 Corinthians 10:13
If we keep walking around, thinking that God won’t give us more than we can handle, we set ourselves up to be suspicious of God.
We know we are facing things that are too much for us. We are bombarded with burdens. We are weighed down with wondering.
And we are all trying to make sense of things that don’t make sense. Before we can move forward in a healthy way, we must first acknowledge the truth about our insufficiency.
Cancer is more than I can handle… on my own. I closed my eyes and silently asked God to come and sit in the empty pink chair near me, Art, and the Doctor.
I needed God to show me His perspective so I could set my perspective. But it didn’t come right away. And that frustrated me. I was filled with fear and questions like, Why this? Why now? Why me?
I could feel my emotions starting to unravel and my resolve to trust God slipping. It was too much. I didn’t want to keep trying so hard to trust God.
I was tired of trying to make sense of this life that isn’t supposed to be this way.
I went to bed that night seriously contemplating running away to Montana to hide from my life. I could be a waitress in a breakfast diner. I had been a waitress when I was in my early twenties and loved it. Life was simpler then. Serving up plates of bacon and eggs and toast sounded so appealing. But cancer would follow me. The hurt would follow me. And even my wrestling with whether or not I could trust God would certainly follow me whether I moved to Montana or just crawled in a hole somewhere.
The story I started telling myself was that life would never get any better. My mind became fixated on all that pointed to this season of suffering being my new normal.
I woke up with panicked feelings. I walked around with panicked feelings. I went to bed with panicked feelings.
I knew my thinking had to change.
I couldn’t escape my realities. I had to face them. I had to walk through them. But maybe if I changed my thinking I could trust God in the midst of them.
Thinking about everything I didn’t know wasn’t getting me anywhere. So, I started listing things I did know.
And the main thing I know? I know God is good. I didn’t know the details of God’s good plan, but I could make His goodness the starting place to renew my perspective.
So now let me tell the story of all these recent events using God’s goodness as the central theme. Had things not blown up between Art and me last summer, I never would have hit the pause button on life to go get a mammogram. I would have waited. But because I had a mammogram at that exact time, the doctors caught a cancer that needed to be caught. And because they caught a cancer that needed to be caught, I had every fighting chance to beat this cancer.
You see, we’re all living out a story, but then there’s the story we tell ourselves. We just need to make sure what we’re telling ourselves is the right story. And the right story is, yes, God will give us more than we can handle. But He always has eventual good in mind.
We see more and more unnecessary heartbreak. But God sees the exact pieces and parts that must be added right now to protect us, provide for us, and prepare us with more and more of His strength working through us. We don’t have to like it, but maybe knowing this can help us live through it.
I learned about these very necessary “pieces and parts” one day when a couple of girls introduced themselves while standing in line to get some take-out food at a restaurant near my house. Pauline and Jessica had both read my book Uninvited. We chatted for a minute about what God had been teaching them, and then the topic of what I’d be writing next came up. I told them about this book and the revelation God had given me about dust. Jessica’s eyes lit up. Her mom is a professional potter.
Prayer Point:- Oh Lord God, help me to rely on You alone wholeheartedly henceforth by fire, in the name of Jesus Christ.
Have A Glorious Thursday!
