The truth is not that God won’t give you more than YOU can handle, but that He won’t give you more than HE can handle. There’s a difference.

If you never experienced anything beyond your ability to manage and strategize and plan your way through, you’d continue to be self-reliant and self-sufficient. There would be no reason to seek God when you’ve got everything under control. You could be your own god.

But God gives you more than you can handle so that you learn how to be dependent and childlike. You truly know that God’s strength is perfected not in spite of your weakness but in the midst of it. You rejoice that you are poor in spirit because you know God’s kingdom is yours. You can endure any suffering, any trial, any cross, thinking nothing of any shame that goes with it, because of the joy of the Lord that is set before you.

“We don’t want you in the dark, friends, about how hard it was when all this came down on us in Asia province. It was so bad we didn’t think we were going to make it. We felt like we’d been sent to death row, that it was all over for us. As it turned out, it was the best thing that could have happened. Instead of trusting in our own strength or wits to get out of it, we were forced to trust God totally—not a bad idea since he’s the God who raises the dead! And he did it, rescued us from certain doom. And he’ll do it again, rescuing us as many times as we need rescuing” (2 Corinthians 1:8-10, The Message).