These are sentimental days.  In just five short weeks we’ll drive north to take Griffin to college and I suddenly find myself reliving these last eighteen minutes we call years.  I know.  I know.  We’ll still have a life after he leaves home.  Some tell me that I won’t believe how much life I’ll actually have!  For now, my life with him keeps passing before my eyes in slow motion kind of like a never-ending home movie.  This past week, the reel came around to that moment when he was about four (and I was only thirty-five!) and we were walking across a grocery store parking lot on the way to the car. 

The handles of this particularly heavy plastic grocery bag were interlaced between my fingers.  They stretched the length of Griffin’s little body, like bungee cords, almost all the way to the ground.  Griffin kept begging me to let him carry it.  Remember, he was four, not fourteen; this was back in those good old days when carrying groceries was still cool, not work, which is why he still thought of it as a privilege and not a burden.  Anyway, I kept trying to tell him that it was too heavy for him.  But, you know four-year-old boys, right?  Nothing’s too hard or heavy if you want to look like dad! 

He kept begging me until I finally realized that I could give him information all day long but nothing was going to prove my point except one thing.  So, I slowed down just long enough to pass the load off to him.  Within seconds it had proved my point.  I didn’t say a word.  Griffin only took a few steps, with the weight of the sack dragging him to the ground, until he looked up at me and said, “Here dad, you take it.  It’s too heavy for me.” 

It was one of those priceless teachable moments and this was that day’s lesson.  Griffin’s father, who loved him more than his own life, was actually willing to give him something he couldn’t handle just so he would never forget just how much he needed me.

Last Sunday we began a brief, four sermon series entitled, “Promises God Never Made.”  These four sermons will address popular sentiments that are often quoted as though they were the word of God.  Yet, when you go to the word of God, you find no such promise anywhere in scripture.  We are particularly prone to cling to these promises when we are in crisis or offer them to others in crisis because we erroneously believe that what others need most is our wisdom.  We’ll even go so far as to offer them promises God never made.  Last Sunday, we talked about one promise God never made, “God helps those who help themselves.” 

Last week I made the comment that I had no idea who first sent that promise around.  One person’s email suggested that it might have originated with Benjamin Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanac.  Maybe so.  But, with all due respect to Mr. Franklin, that promise didn’t originate with God.  As we celebrated last week, when we go to the scripture we find the gospel promise that God helps those who . . . cannot help themselves.  This week, we go to scripture again and see what it says about yet another oft-quoted promise, “God will never give us more than we can handle.” 

Have you ever made that promise?  Almost always, I hear it from Christians.  Frankly, I think the sentiment is well intended.  It’s meant to reassure people who are under a seemingly unbearable load that, whatever happens, no matter how close they come to actually breaking, God will intervene or already has intervened, because, God will never give us more than we can handle. 

We tend to believe that God is good and wants to help us.  We also want to believe that God provides for our every need.  We want to comfort ourselves by making sense of our world and comfort others who are near despair.  Yet, we ought to be careful about assigning to God what we want to believe instead of believing what the Bible actually says.  God will never give us more than we can handle.  Really?

There is one scripture that may well be the misinterpreted source of this promise God never made, 1 Corinthians 10:13.  “No testing has overtaken you that is not common to everyone.  God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it.”

No question, that is a marvelous promise of God’s word.  It’s easy to see how someone might take it to mean that God will never give us more than we can handle.  But, let’s take a closer look. 

This particular promise of God’s word has to do with temptation.  A temptation, in particular, to turn away from faith and to sin.  In that light, 1 Corinthians 10:13 makes a very remarkable promise.  We will encounter temptations to turn away from God and to deny our faith.  God will not spare us that test.  As long as we live in this world, the privilege of enjoying all of God’s good gifts comes with the every day possibilities of misusing his gifts.  All of life is a gift.  All of life is also an opportunity to abuse God’s gift of life.  Yet, scripture also promises us that we will never, not once, encounter the possibility of misusing the gift of God without, at the same time, God giving us an alternative to sin, as the word of God says, a “way out.”

That is not the same as saying, “God will never give us more than we can handle.”  There are many things in life we can’t handle but God has at least allowed them to come into our lives.  Not because he doesn’t love us but because he will not rob of us the joy that comes with being responsible for the choices we make as to whom we will trust.

One way or the other, at some point in time, we will encounter something that is beyond our strength, beyond our capacity, beyond our intellect, beyond our wisdom to bear.  We will come to the end of our resources, one way or the other.  It is only then that we discover that resource of faith.

We lived in Lafayette, Louisiana when I was just starting school.  The Pierces lived across the street from us.  One day, Mrs. Pierce got in her car to run a short errand.  She only made it about one mile when her car died.  She glanced at the gage and noticed that, sure enough, she was out of gas.  After someone stopped to help, a gas station attendant brought some gas.  But, when he put the nozzle in the tank to refill it, gasoline started pouring all over the ground.  That’s when he looked under the car.  When he stood back up, he said, “Ma’am, I don’t know how to tell you this but you don’t have a gas tank.”  It turned out that her husband had been doing some work on the car at home and had removed the gas tank.  When he stepped away from the car for just a moment, Shirley jumped in and drove off before he could stop her.  I can’t blame her.  How many times have I taken off down just assuming that I had what it took to make the journey without anyone else’s help?  Maybe there are some assumptions we shouldn’t make in life.  Like, without some resource beyond ourselves, we’ll always be able to handle anything that comes our way.  When do we discover that except when we are given something we can’t handle?

If nothing else, eventually, death will come our way.  I’ve never met one person who had it within themselves, all alone, to handle death.  Without exception, every single time, it always kills them.  Yet, this is the promise of God’s word, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me” (Psalm 23:4, KJV).  We are not promised that we will never face a death that will kill us.  We are promised that we will not face it alone. 

That is the promise God did make.  Though we will be given or allowed to experience things we cannot handle we will not face them without the presence of the living God.  Which would you rather have?  The ability to handle everything that ever comes your way or the joy of a relationship you experience only after you discover you can’t handle everything on your own?  God will let us experience things we cannot handle because it is only when we do that we will know what it means to have faith in God.  How else would the Psalmist have been able to write these incredible words?  “It is he who remembered us in our low estate, for his steadfast love endures forever; and rescued us from our foes, for his steadfast love endures forever; who gives food to all flesh, for his steadfast love endures forever.  O give thanks to the God of heaven, for his steadfast love endures forever”  (Psalm 136:23-26).

“His love endures forever.”  In the twenty-six verses of Psalm 136, the Psalmist repeats those words twenty-six times.  Like a giant quilt, he weaves the patches of Israel’s history together with the multiple evidences of God’s enduring-forever love.  Forever, he said!  How long is that?  How big is that?  Forever love!

Did you hear about the meteor that slammed through the atmosphere this past week?  Someone in Rowlett reported it first locally though astronomers are certain it didn’t land in Texas.  People all over the south central United States saw the giant red-green fireball that looked like something out of a science fiction movie.  From somewhere in outer space, probably traveling for millions of years at tens of thousands of miles an hour, this giant rock met its fate in the thick air that blankets the earth.  I’m just curious about where it came from, how long it’s been traveling.  What do you think?  However many miles, however long, it was just a hop, skip and a jump compared to forever.  If we could trace it back to the day God’s finger flicked that meteor off on its million miles journey, we wouldn’t even be at the beginning of forever.  How far, how long, how deep and how wide is forever?  However much it is, that is how long, deep, wide God’s love is. 

And, just like the Psalmist celebrates the history of God’s people in ancient scripture, we, too, someday, will look back and find the stories of our lives woven together with the steel-like bonds of God’s forever love.  This is what the scripture does promise.  You will get through some tough moments thinking you were able to handle it.  It will only be when you look back on it from the perspective that years can give that you will discover that what got you through was not your prowess, wisdom, courage or power but nothing less than the faithfulness of God. 

I’ve been grateful for the efforts of this campaign to promote sexual purity among our youth, True Love Waits.  It’s a program that asks students to sign a commitment that they will wait until marriage to have sex.  I think anything that encourages us to remember the proper place of sex in a relationship is a good thing.  It’s just that research indicates that the number of students who sign the True Love Waits commitment are still having pre-marital sex just as frequently as those who do not sign.  Apparently, just making the promise isn’t enough.  Not to mention the fact that researchers now believe that women cheat on their husbands at nearly the rate men have been cheating on their wives for years.  Some believe the rate to be as high as fifty percent.  One suburban Dallasite is even pondering the possibility of starting a website for married women who want to date men who aren’t their husbands (“The Secret Lives of Wives,” Newsweek, July 12, 2004).

I’ve never met a person at the altar, not one, that left me with the impression that they intended to cheat on their spouse.  Is there any chance that, as important as our promises to ourselves and to others may be, they aren’t enough?  Are we walking away from the altar like my friend drove off without a gas tank, assuming that just because we promised, we’ll be able to handle the temptation to abuse God’s good gifts of sex and marriage on our own?  Or, is it possible that, when we look back on our lives, and even the sacred promises we made, we will discover that what got us through was not our prowess, wisdom, courage or power but nothing less than the faithfulness of God?  Frankly, I’m often tempted to believe that, when people say God will never give us anything we can’t handle, they’ve never been married.  God gave us marriage.  I’ve yet to meet the first person who could handle it alone.

It is not true that God will never give us more than we can handle.  It is true that God will never abandon us no matter what we have to handle. 

The story is told of an old preacher whose wife of many decades died.  No one expected him to show up for church that next Sunday, much less to preach.  Their love for each other had been deep and long.  They were inseparable.  Surely the grief would be too much to bear.  But, when Sunday rolled around, there he was.  When time came for him to preach he climbed into the pulpit and this was his sermon.  “I am here today to tell you that I have hit bottom.  And, it is rock solid.”

It is not that we will not fall far and hard.  But, when we are at our lowest, when we have fallen further than we ever thought was possible, when we get to the bottom, we will find the rock solid forever love of God waiting on us.  That is the promise of God.

When the Federal building was bombed in Oklahoma City nine years ago, someone wrote these beautiful words.  They became a canticle that our own choir has sung more than once.  These are the words of faith, when we are given more than we can handle.  This is what faith says in response to unspeakable pain, loss and suffering.

“Lord, You are God.  You wipe away each tear.  You hear our every prayer.  You give us comfort. You touch our hearts and calm our fears.  You are eternal. Alpha, Omega.  We place our hope in You alone.  Lord, You are God, perfect in holiness.  Lord, You are God.  In our darkness You are everlasting light.  A sure defender, You are our refuge.  You are the Giver.  You are Jehovah.  You are the God who restores.  Great is Thy Faithfulness!  You are the God who restores.  Your love restores.”

God never promised us he wouldn’t give us anything we couldn’t handle.  Some people make that promise for him.  But, he never made it.  God did promise that he will never, ever abandon us.   

Which promise would you like to believe?