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God Won’t Give You More Than You Can Handle
weekend in review
This week Mike Breaux tackled a big one we have all heard: You know what they say, “God won’t give you more than you can handle.”
Read I Corinthians 10:12-13. The promise is that when temptation comes on strong, God will be there with an escape plan. NOT “God won’t give you more than you can handle.” It’s not that God won’t give you more than you can handle, but that God will help you handle all that you’ve been given.
WARM UP
Begin with some conversation, checking in on how people are doing. You can talk about whatever you’d like, but here are potential questions to get the conversation going.
Do you think of yourself as an optimist or a pessimist? Have you always been that way?
Does this sermon challenge your previous theology?
DISCUSS
Select 5-6 questions from the list below to guide your discussion time.
Share a time when having more than you could handle deepened your dependence on God.
As followers of Jesus, we want to become more like him. We read in Romans 8:29 (MSG): “God knew what he was doing from the very beginning. He decided from the outset to shape the lives of those who love him along the same lines as the life of his Son. The Son stands first in the line of humanity he restored. We see the original and intended shape of our lives there in him.”
Mike observed that the prayers written in the New Testament scriptures are almost always about spiritual health, maturity, endurance, humility, and gratitude. They are much more often about internal character development, spiritual growth and understanding than about someone’s health or situation. Both are important. Do the prayers you pray tend to be more about God shaping and strengthening you and those you are praying for, or are they more often about relieving or improving the circumstances we face?
Have any “wannabe gods” that you’ve leaned on in the past been exposed or revealed when you were in the midst of a challenging situation? What false walls of security do we tend to put our hopes in?
Read 2 Corinthians 1:3 and 4. How has experiencing personal pain expanded your ability to empathize with other people? Have you had the opportunity to use that to comfort someone else? Have you been comforted and encouraged by someone doing that for you?
Read Ecclesiastes 3:11 and 2 Corinthians 4:16-18. What do these verses remind us of?
When has there been a time in the recent past where you were tempted to lose heart? How did you turn to God to sustain you?
Share a time you found yourself homesick for heaven.
application
Start building a gratitude list, thanking God for each item during your daily prayer time.
Read Psalm 119 this week, breaking it into 25 verses a day.
WRAP UP & PRAYER
Share prayer requests and spend time praying for each other.
Take a few moments to share prayer requests and pray for one another.
Ask God to teach us more and more to see our lives and ourselves the way he sees us, with love and encouragement. Ask for continued spiritual deepening in our awareness of and dependence upon him over other things. Let us recognize how he is shaping us as we fill our minds with his Word and lean into his strength as we also comfort and encourage each other. Pray that we grow in patience, love, and endurance as we look forward to our real home with him.