The Lie: God Won’t Give You More Than You Can Handle

We’ve all heard the lie that God won’t give us more than we can handle. But Scripture tells a different story—one of surrender and divine strength.

When I was about thirty weeks pregnant with my daughter, Olivia, I was hospitalized because of a “small baby and crappy placenta,” per the astutely medically accurate description by my doctor. It was my first pregnancy, and really, I had never thought of myself as the mothering type. Some little girls dream of being a mommy—I aspired to be on American Idol or training dolphins at SeaWorld. 

Have you ever been at an appointment where you just know you’re about to hear bad news? It starts with a look or a too-­pregnant pause, and someone who “isn’t allowed” to tell you more tells you all you need to know with avoidant eye contact and a “Let me get the doctor.”

The doctor looked at me with such empathy—as if he was a seasoned pro at telling women they or their baby may not make it to tomorrow. “Erica, you’re sicker than you feel. You’re at extremely high risk right now of a stroke, a seizure, or both. And at this point, we’re more concerned about your health than the baby’s. If we wait, the baby might be okay . . . but you might not be.”

At 2:34 p.m. on October 17, 2018, Olivia Grace was born via emergency C-­section. She weighed 3 pounds, 0.1 ounce, and she looked like a little alien as they whisked her off to the NICU. I couldn’t see her, I couldn’t hold her, I couldn’t feed her.

This was more than I could handle. Really, I wasn’t “handling” anything—I was barely surviving.

There Will Be Suffering in a Fallen World

God is not in the business of keeping us comfortable.

While “God won’t give you more than you can handle” is often said as a means of encouragement and affirmation, the phrase can feel so discouraging when we feel disconnected from it—­when we find ourselves in uncharted waters without a map or a lifeboat. 

Alternatively, this saying is used at the wrong time, implying the wrong thing—­as if God “gave” a child leukemia or killed somebody’s grandma.

Let’s be very clear: Horrible things happen. But horrible things happen not because there’s a vindictive, merciless supreme being in the sky handing out hardships like hard candies from the office bowl.

Horrible things happen because we are broken people with free will in a fallen world. Full stop.

Tragedies aside, we’re likely also familiar with feeling like we’ve been unexpectedly thrown in the deep end on a Tuesday—­like life is going grand until it isn’t, and what once felt swimmable suddenly threatens to pull you under.

“God won’t ever give you more than you can handle.”

It’s safe, it’s comforting, it’s self-­affirming.

It’s also a lie.

The Lie Beneath the Lie

Whoop, there it is! Did you, like me, grow up thinking this just must be in the Bible because enough people said it was? 

On the contrary, we’re promised the opposite—we’re told straight up that in this life we’ll suffer (John 16:33). But our suffering can be sanctifying—a beautiful invitation to bring the light of Christ into our darkest places so that in communion with him.

And sometimes God gives us more—way more—than we can realistically, humanly handle because he needs us to lift our hands to him and say, “Father, help me.” Had someone told me Olivia’s birth story in advance, I wouldn’t have believed I could handle any of it—the stress, the pain, the grief. The anxiety of not having answers, the physical toll of being on the brink of seizure and stroke while also experiencing childbirth, the grief of losing a romanticized delivery and needing a rewrite in real time with the ending TBD.

That was more than I could handle. In this life, you will be given things you actually can’t handle.

You will feel overwhelmed, discouraged—­maybe even completely desperate and desolate. But you will never have to handle them alone.

Reflection: 

Have you ever believed the lie that God won’t give you more than you can handle? How can you turn that thought into the new thought that God won’t give you more than He can handle?

If you liked this post, check out the book That’s Just Not True by Erica Ligenza Gwynn. We love how she shows us the key to living free: recognizing and rejecting worldly lies and replacing them with God’s truth.

Erica Ligenza Gwynn is an author, podcaster, coach, speaker, and content creator. She’s the founder of Coming Up Roses, an online community rooted in the belief that while not everything in life is pretty, and every rose has its thorn, we can still honor our seasons and live in full bloom. Erica is building a wild and wonderful life in the Philadelphia area with her husband, Jamie, their two awesome kids, their cats Purrcy and Milo, and Lucy the Labradoodle.