Many times I have heard pastors, friends, even family members respond to someone who was going through a hard time of disappointment, loss, grief or failure by saying, “You know, the Bible says God will not give you more than you can bear.” This is without doubt a paraphrase of what the apostle Paul told the believers in Corinth, which reads: “God is faithful; He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear.”¹

But there are some serious questions about using this scripture as a way of saying that when we go through difficult times, God won’t allow it to go beyond our ability to handle it by giving us relief and a way to get out from under the burden that is weighing us down. To think this way will lead to our becoming more or less dependent on God’s good grace to make sure we never cross the line in our Christian walk so that it may cause us some serious trouble, even a devastating loss or embarrassment.

What was Paul talking about? We join the context for this particular verse back in Chapter 9:24. Paul is talking about running the believer’s race in order to gain the crown that comes with finishing it faithfully. He warns about getting off track and going our own way (9:26). He then begins Chapter 10 by pointing back to the children of Israel, who although they were all part of God’s miraculous deliverance from Egypt, many were left as skeletons in the wilderness because they did not keep their eyes on the One who delivered them, but instead set up a golden calf to worship.

So in 10:6 Paul says: “Now these things occurred as examples to keep us from setting our hearts on evil things as they did.” In other words, let us learn by example. Don’t take God’s deliverance from evil and mishandle it so that it leads back into evil because you become discouraged or upset at the way things are going. Look at what the children of Israel did: “The people sat down to eat and drink and got up to indulge in revelry” (10:7).

Then Paul warns: “These things happened to them as examples and were written down as warnings for us, on whom the fullness of time has come” (10:11). To put this another way, Paul is saying that what happened to the Israelites as a result of their turning back to idolatry while in the wilderness was recorded so that we who now follow Christ through the wilderness, which is this world, do not commit the same error.

Now comes the real intent of Paul’s teaching on this subject. He cautions everyone not to become too overconfident in their own ability to remain faithful to God’s calling and deliverance (10:12). Why? Because there will be the same forces at work in our lives as there were among the Israelites that drew them away from trusting in the One True God. So Paul caps this off by saying, we are all susceptible to temptation and the danger of falling. But here’s the good news, when such temptations come, God will be faithful to His promise and will not allow such temptations to be greater than what we are able to resist or overcome with His help (10:13).

So Paul is talking about temptations, not the hardships of everyday life. Yet, here is some good news! It is exactly those hardships, difficulties, problems and forces over which we have no control that often lead to the temptation to give up, to quit, to turn away from God and go our own way. It’s at the moment of temptation, when God will step in and show us what we need to do in order to conquer that temptation. So often we get our eyes on the temptation that is spawned by our difficulties that we allow it to become such a threat, we start looking for a hole to crawl into and pity ourselves, instead of looking for the door God will open to help us get out to victory. – Dr. Robert R. Seyda