It is a common sentence Believers use—either when walking through a challenging time or speaking to a fellow Believer who is:
“God won’t put any more on you than you are able to bear.”
Truthfully now, have you ever heard or spoken it?
It’s a sentence meant to encourage, to let either us or the one we are speaking to know that we can make it through, that we can overcome the heaviness that is being walked through at the time.
The “good” part about this encouragement is that it is found in Scripture; the “bad” part about this encouragement is that it only speaks of the first half of that passage.
Here is the recited half:
“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…”
And here is the second half:
“but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it” (1 Corinthians 10:13 KJV).
In our desire to encourage we can unintentionally discourage by not speaking the entire passage.
How? Without offering the solution of looking for the way of escape, the focus is on the temptation and not the solution.
Without looking for the way of escape its very easy for me to continue floundering in the temptation while justifying my wallowing by saying, “I can handle it—because God won’t put more on me than I am able to bear.”
But the truth is I can’t handle it on my own. If I could, there would be no reason for the Lord to provide an exit. Without the way of escape, my task would be to simply endure it and the temptation would leave on its own accord.
But temptations won’t leave that way.
The darkness of temptation can only be dispelled by the Light. The Light is the way of escape God gives us in overcoming temptation.
Thus, the next time temptation comes our way; rather than continually focusing on the temptation with the promise that it can be borne, remember how it is released by looking to and letting Jesus be our way of escape.
It is only then that we can bear the many things that come our way.
