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Friday, October 25, 2013

God does not give us more than we can handle...or does He

I have recently been convicted that I have believed a lie. This has been brought up over and over again in the last week through unrelated people and it is time I pay attention. Here it is. “God does not give us more than we can handle.” I myself have said it to people so.many.times. Now, to be fair, I have always said that God will bring us to the point of suffering so that we might cling to Him. So how did it never dawn on me that the simple truth of suffering contradicts the saying most Christians use to make others feel better, that I too have been guilty of saying. It isn't scriptural. I know you are trying to think of the verse right now that the saying comes from. We tend to remember it incorrectly and out of context. 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.” 
 Did you catch that?
 The verse is that we will not be TEMPTED beyond what we can bear.  It has nothing to do with us bearing the burden of suffering. For a little more context lets look at the entire passage. In Corinthians Paul is writing a letter to the church in Corinth. Corinth was the site of the first church, started by Aquila and Priscilla. Corinth also was a large city located in between two important seaports. It was wealthy Roman city that was well known for providing travelers pleasure.
Verse 6 starts by telling the church that there were previous examples to “keep us from setting our hearts on evil things”. The paragraph then goes on to warn against idol worship, sexual immorality, testing God and complaining. Paul then leads into the part we're discussing with verse 12, “if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don't fall! No temptation...” I hope you can clearly see that this passage is specifically talking about sin and temptation. God will not allow us to be tempted beyond what we can bear. He always provides a way out. No where in the passage does it say anything about suffering or hardship.

That leaves us with the problem of suffering and how that contradicts the saying that we have come accustomed to using to make people feel better about their suffering “God does not give us more than we can handle.”

Let's start out by looking at a few examples. In John 11 we see the story of Lazarus from Bethany. His sisters, Mary and Martha, sent for Jesus because they knew their brother was very sick. When Jesus heard that Lazarus was sick he stayed where he was two more days instead of hurrying back to heal Lazarus. After Lazarus was dead, Jesus told his disciples that Lazarus had died. Only then did Jesus decide to return to Bethany. By the time Jesus arrived in Bethany, Lazarus had been in the tomb for four days. Four days people...Mary and Martha suffered the grief of losing their brother. Mary and Martha both told Jesus they knew he could have healed Lazarus, but Jesus chose to bring them to the point of suffering that Mary fell at Christ's feet and wept.
In Lamentations 3 the author is taken to the point of suffering that “He (God) has broken my bones...besieged me with bitterness and hardship...mangled me and left me without help...trampled me in the dust. I have been deprived of peace.” That's more than he could handle people. That's more than any person can handle...and the author recognized that it is God that took him to that place.
David suffered so much hardship. From running for his life from Saul, to his infant son dying because of David's own sin, to his own son trying to kill him and take his throne. David said in Psalms that “My soul is in anguish...I am worn out from groaning... My bones wasted away...my strength was sapped.” David was taken past the point of what he could handle. He was worn out and had lost all strength. We won't even go into the story of Job. He suffered WAY more than he could handle.

So what does God promise us about hard times? Will he give us more than we can bear? We can see from these examples that, yes, he absolutely does. Why and what do we do about it? This is where it gets beautiful. This world is just hard. We're not meant to bear it alone. We're not meant handle it. God takes us to the place where we can't possible handle the suffering so that, like Mary, we might fall at the feet of Christ and weep. I love how this is explained by the forward of the book The Problem of Suffering, by Gregory P Schulz. “God's love, you see, is revealed most vividly in the bitter suffering and horrific death of His incarnate Son, Jesus Christ. Christians need not camouflage grief or paint smiley faces on human suffering; we take our reality straight. In the light of Christ's cross we can discover God at work in the very midst of suffering.” Friends, Jesus suffered torture, bore the grief and pain of every sin ever committed or to be committed, death and, the worst of all, separation from God, his Father. That was more than anybody could possibly bear. Only our perfect God could bear such a burden. We don't have to bear it. God wants us to get that ONLY HE can handle it.
God takes us to our breaking point so that, like Mary, we can fall at HIS feet and weep. So that, like the author of Lamentations, we can discover that “ (God's) compassions never fail. The LORD is my portion therefore I will wait for Him.” David really got it. In Psalms there is so much comfort and instruction for how we survive times in which we have gone past the point that we can bear. Ps 33:7- “You are my hiding place; you will protect me from trouble and surround me with songs of deliverance”. Ps 3:3 “you are a shield around me, O Lord...I will lie down and sleep; I wake again, because the LORD sustains me.” Ps 71:1-3 “In you, O Lord, I have taken refuge...Rescue me and deliver me in your righteousness; turn your ear to me and save me. Be my rock of refuge, to which I can always go; give the command to save me, for you are my rock and my fortress.”

God lays it out himself in Isaiah 41 “I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.” We're not holding ourselves up. We're not bearing the situation ourselves, God is holding us up. That is God's promise. Not that He won't give us more than we can bear. We are heirs in Christ's sufferings, but the beautiful thing is that God holds us up when we can't possible bear any more and through that, we also share in Christ's glory.
-amory

Wednesday, October 2, 2013

One Year

  It is now October which means that it will be one year that we have been waiting for our second adoption. Wow. One year. I can't believe that I am already writing that.  It has FLOWN by.  So fast, in fact, that I haven't had time to update our blog!  Umm...did that excuse work?  I didn't think so, but it was worth a shot!
  So...here's a year's worth of update:  In January A turned TWO!  The terrific trying twos I call it.  Can I just say that I LOVE two!  Sure, it is an extraordinarily emotional age with LOTS of meltdowns, melodrama and mayhem, but so much fun.  A has learned her letters, phonetic sounds, and numbers.  She is bursting with personality and loves to make jokes and just be on the go all the time.  She is strong-willed and tests everything.everything.everything.  It has been a joy to watch her personality develop and see the little person that she is.  She is also tender-hearted and will ask if you're ok if you look sad and bring you a band-aid.  I just love me two year old!
  Why haven't there been any pictures?  I'm glad you asked.  We had a lovely summer vacation this year to the beach again.  Everything was wonderful EXCEPT my camera completely died.  Kapootz. I do, however, have some fuzzy ill-timed pictures I was able to snap on our cell phones (no people...not smart phones...make calls and texts only stupid phones).  So I am now saving every spare allowance penny I can scrap (did I mention we're saving for a second adoption) to try and buy a new camera.  Until then we're stuck with fuzzy ill-timed phone pics.  We did get our family pics taken again at the beach. They are lovely so I'll post one of those.  Speaking of family pics...imagine an already high strung child who gets more hyper the more tired she gets, past bedtime, no nap, no dinner yet.  Oh yeah, we know how to time our photo sessions just right.  Insert sarcastic laughter here.
  Now, back to the adoption.  One year on the waitlist.  What exactly does that mean?  If you notice, there haven't been updated waitlist #s in a few months.  That's not because I have forgotten to post them, it is because there are none.  Things have slowed down so much that our agency stopped issuing waitlist numbers.  It is pretty depressing to see it only move one spot every couple months, even when you go into this knowing it will be years, so I understand.  We still get updates when there are referrals with enough information to have an idea of how much we've moved on the list, just no hard numbers to report anymore.  
  What does that mean for our timeframe?  We were expecting to have to wait two to three years on a waitlist and it is now looking like it will be more like four years.  Yep, four years.  We were not quite prepared for that when we started this. We had not expected A to have to be an only child for that long.  This would be UNBEARABLE if this was our first adoption.  It's hard now, but our expectations are different this time around. This time, we have seen God's faithfulness in putting our family together.  We have confidence in knowing that His timing is perfect.  Our babies are not ready for us yet.  Our hearts have more preparing to do.  That is a scary thought, but I know it is true.  God is preparing us for our future children as we wait for them to need us.  At this moment, we trust in that.  God's plans will not be late by a single day.
-amory