What you can bear

There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way of escape that ye may be able to bear it. I Corinthians 10:13 is the scripture to study today and the lesson is simply this God knows what you can and cannot handle. All my life I have been hittable. If that is a word. A college professor used to pop out of his office when I would pass by his door and he would hit me in my arm. When I asked him why he did it, he simply said that I was a hittable person. I think he meant that I am the kind of person that tolerates a lot out of people.

I know why. I may not understand why, but I know why. Right now I'm tolerating some things that I know other people wouldn't and I probably shouldn't. It hurts more deeply than I can even explain in words. My heart aches. I turned to God and He gave me this scripture. I Corinthians 10:13. That was it in a nutshell.

When you come to the place where you feel like you can't go further or can't take any more, God wants you to know that He is stretching your faith. We are all provided the measure of faith when we become Christians but to excel at faith we must be willing to be stretched well beyond our comfort zone and to journey to a place that is unfamiliar and hard to take and we have to be able to tolerate staying there for a prolonged period of time. We have to be able to watch loved ones make mistakes and not judge them, but love them and restore them when they are ready. We have to be able to forgive 70 times 7 when someone so close to us hurts us in ways that ache and keep us up at night praying and pleading with God to please take that burden away from us. We have to be able to endure misunderstandings our own frailties and mistakes and miscommunication. We have to take it when we are right but must be quiet and when we are wrong and must be disciplined. All of this is how we grow in maturity in our relationship with Christ.

How do you know when you are being stretched? You are being stretched when you are doing everything that you know that you can do to please God--you are praying, praising, worshiping, you are obeying, keeping His commandments, loving people, striving to live holy and yet, you are struggling, floundering, failing, falling, things are confusing, you are off balance--and still God is expecting you to get up and walk toward Him like a baby with your arms out toward Him taking those baby steps. He wants you to learn, mature and grow. He wants your name to be permanently written in the Book of Life with the righteous. I think about this when I'm going through something that is so painful. There is eternal life and it is eternal life with Him to reign with Him or to be separated away from Him--either way it is life eternal.

He is growing you and making you. Do not fear that. Embrace it. Everyone can't handle it. Everyone can't understand it. Everyone can't go with you. Sometimes you will be in the press--endure the press. God knows what you can handle.