Devotion for March 3, 2016

Thursday: So, if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don’t fall! No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind. 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 endure it (1 Corinthians 10:12-13; NIV).

            Yesterday, I said that 1 Corinthians 10:13 has nothing to do with suffering. Indeed, it has to do with placing oneself in positions where temptation to sin is great. As a matter of fact, when Paul talks about his own suffering in 2 Corinthians 1, he says, “We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt we had received the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead” (vv. 8b-9).

            The thing is: the point of our suffering is not to demonstrate how strong we. The point of suffering is to remind us of our weakness and our need to rely on Jesus, His death which earns our forgiveness, and His resurrection which brings us to a hope beyond even death. When we say things like, “God won’t give you more than you can bear,” we’re implicitly telling the sufferer that they should just buck up because God won’t give you more than you can handle and if you feel like you can’t handle any more then you’re just being a wimp. A sufferer doesn’t need that!

            What a sufferer needs is a sympathetic ear, prayer, and direction to Christ and a hope deeper than even death. Faith doesn’t help us overcome our troubles; faith means that we cling to Jesus in spite of our troubles and in the hope that He sees an outcome in a new creation far beyond anything we can imagine.