Power of God

1 Corinthians 10:13


No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it

Good morning Zebras,

I finally found it!

A few years ago God showed me that today’s verse is often taken out of context and used to encourage people who are going through trials to prove that God never gives more than they can handle. A sort of “buck up, you can do it” speech.

But this is a temptation verse.

God never allows us to be tempted beyond what we can bear, but it doesn’t say that God limits our troubles and hardships to those that we can endure. It just wouldn’t make sense. If we could handle everything in our life on our own, we would.

Anyone who has gone through serious trials knows that “bucking up” is not always an option. How can you “pull yourself up by your bootstrap” when you don’t even have the energy to reach your feet? You can’t. But what you can do is throw it back to God.

And here is the proof.

2 Corinthians 1:8-10
“We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about the hardships we suffered in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life. Indeed, in our hearts we felt the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead. He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will continue to deliver us.”

If Paul, the super apostle, was given more than he could handle then I think it only follows that we will be too. But what Paul understood was the power that lived inside of him to overcome because three chapters later he writes: We have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.

All of us are clay jars, fragile and weak but God himself lives inside of us and that is the power we have to overcome everything the world throws at us.

Love,
Jill