For Beauty Of Holiness

Something I wrote for my other blog earlier this week. I need to get it on here so I don't lose it, but it's not what I want it to be and I'm too tired to rewrite at the moment. As always, I need to simplify and somehow condense, but, as you know, I'm not good at simple or condensed...much less both at the same time. :-/


Does God ever ask more than we are capable of bearing? People throw around the saying "God only gives what we can handle" as if it's scripture, but is it accurate?

I was listening in on a recent discussion on this point, amongst my Mom and a group of other women. They all have heard that saying as meaning "God will only throw things at you if He knows you're strong enough to cope with it," whereas I've always heard it as "God will never ask anything of you if He does not also offer the grace and strength you need to grow through it."

There's a BIG difference. In it's literal sense (the one my mind always avoided) it is way off. God doesn't promise to protect us from anything that might possibly push us beyond our own limits, but He promises to test and try us, meaning He will take us beyond ourselves so that we have to fall on His grace and let Him stretch us.

Will He break us? Maybe...but that depends on our response, not on the level of the trial. He has promised to provide every need, and if we find ourselves desperate and "ready to snap," then I PROMISE you, He has grace and strength waiting for us to accept in order to prevent the shattering. To keep trying to make it on our own is a pretty sure-fired way to get ourselves broken.

But don't think that being broken means you're destroyed. There will be times when we fail to walk in God's grace and will find ourselves in pieces in the dirt, but God will pick up the pieces and reuse and reshape until we're more beautiful then ever before. There will be times when He has to completely remake us by taking us back to dust, mixing and molding and heating all over again, but no matter how many times He has to stretch us or remake us, He will provide the strength we need to endure.

So don't look at your trials as something to cope through, look at them as an opportunity to access more grace and find Christ's love deeper and fuller then you ever have before. Be flexible and let Him stretch you, and hopefully you'll avoid the breaks that come from being brittle and unteachable.