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“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.” (1 Corinthians 10:13)The Amplified Bible explains that "no temptation or trial has come to you that is beyond human resistance and that is not adjusted and adapted and belonging to human experience, and such as man can bear."
In Beth Moore's introductory session for her study of Esther she shares a fear she held for a long time regarding experiencing "the dark night of the soul." She shares that she told God she could never live through that kind of trial. So, what did God do? Silenced himself so she would experience that which she so greatly feared. Why did he do that? So she would see that she could live through the perceived absence of God in her life and it would not destroy her.
The message I get from this verse above and Beth's testamony is a relatively simple one. If I do not hold tight to the truth of God's word regarding temptation and trials, and I allow myself to be afraid of experiencing them, God just might decide to get me over that fear the hard way, by proving me wrong.
Fearing something bad happening is telling God that His word, His grace, His mercy, His love, His protection, do not apply to me. How arrogant of me! It is so self-centered and prideful. "Oh, I know someone who has dealt with X (adultery, death of a child, cancer, etc) and survived, but I couldn't. I know I couldn't." - This initally sounds like humility or "low self esteem" or even lack of faith on my part. But if I really unpackage what I am saying, it is a form of boasting. "I'm a bigger mess than you are, so God would't be able to help me."
How funny in a sick sorta way. But it is true. We often hear about humility in the context of power struggles, appropriate placement of priorities and servitude. Humbling ourselves before the Lord means being willing to apply ALL the verses of Scripture to our lives. Sometimes, this is going to mean more than laying down our lives for another, or going where the Lord will lead. At times, at least in my own life, humility is going to look an awful lot like warrior-strength, fearlessness and confidence.
God is bigger than my biggest fears. I better humbly admit that, or He just might prove it. And if my biggest fears come about even after I have embraced the truth of this verse, the rest of the verse becomes all the more important - God will not give me more than I can bear.
1 comment:
You make a good point. I sometimes think that not going through difficult things can be WORSE than going through them, because then your dread of them and the sense that they would kill you are more powerful. If/as you walked through them, you would see that it WAS doable to walk through them and still remain intact.
This hit me powerfully when a Rollinsford neighbor of mine told me about the process of losing her firstborn son at 12 weeks. They knew after 1 one that he wouldn't live, and they had to just wait and love and grieve till he finally died. I thought, "That must be the worst thing ever. I couldn't do that." And it had this kind of power over me, because I imagined it bigger than God. Yet this woman (not a Christian, by the way) did transcend it and today is an emotionally healthy woman. "You just get through it," she said.
In the west we are so protected from so much natural, normal sadness that the insulation and fear of hardship itself can become enslaving in its own way...
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