We have come to the final week of our message series, “Half-Truths.”  Next week the deacons with start us on a new message series for the summer.  It’s called “Liars, Cheaters, Cowards, and Other Bible Heroes.” It will look at 12 well-known characters from the Bible, whom God used to accomplish great things, but they also their own faults, failures, and foibles.  It should be a fun series, so I hope you plan to join us all summer so you can learn about them.

    As we finish this series on “Half-Truths,” we are going to change gears a bit.  All the half-truths that we have looked at so far have been more doctrinal; more on the basics of our faith.  Today we are going to look at a half-truth that we often hear in “churchworld,” namely, “God won’t give you more than you can handle.”  It is true that God does bring everything together so that it happens for His purpose and for our good. God is in control of everything, and He is provident.  Often when people say that God will not give you more than you can handle, they mean that God will never abandon you, and that is absolutely, 100% true.

    However, the whole truth is that God will not give you any more than you can handle without His help.  But God gives people more than they can handle on their own all the time. All you have to do is read the Bible and you will hear stories of people who were overwhelmed by their situation and what God was calling them to do.  People like Jonah, King David, Esther just to name a few. Even Jesus was overwhelmed by what His heavenly Father was asking Him to do as He faced the reality of the Cross. As St. Luke tells us in his Gospel, in the garden Jesus was so overwhelmed that He cried blood, and an angel had to come and strengthen Him.

    Personally, I have felt overwhelmed by God’s will often in my life.  When I was only 6 months a priest, and had just turned 40, I was overwhelmed when the doctor told me I had cancer.  God had given me more than I could handle.

    It is important for us to acknowledge the whole truth because life will absolutely bring you more than you can handle.  If you believe God won’t give you more than you can handle, it can lead you to one of two dangerous conclusions. One, you might assume that there must be something wrong with you.  Of course there are times when we need to evaluate our decisions or our schedules when we are feeling overwhelmed, but we can be overwhelmed not because we are OUT of God’s will, but because we are IN it.

    The second danger of thinking that God won’t give you more than you can handle is that you might be tempted to believe that there is something wrong with God.  The trials you face could make you begin to doubt your Christian faith. God never promised to shield us from problems and troubles. In fact, Jesus says that if we want to be His disciples we MUST take up our cross and follow Him.  God promises over and over again in the Scriptures that it will be worth it to follow Him, however, He never promised that we would never be overwhelmed by life.

    We have all been there.  The particular circumstances that cause us to feel overwhelmed might differ considerably, but everyone feels overwhelmed by life from time to time.  Why does God give us more than we can handle? I think there are three main reasons.

    First, God allows us to get overwhelmed so that we will turn to Him.  God wants us to depend on His presence. When life is going well, and we think we have everything under control, we tend to pray less.  It is easier to sleep in and skip Mass. However, when something goes wrong or we have a problem we cannot solve on our own, then it is a little easier to remember God.  As some general once said, “There are no atheists in foxholes when the enemy is shelling you.”

    Another reason God gives us more that we can handle is so that we will rely more on His power.  As long as we think we can handle everything, as long as we say, “I got this,” we will limit our experience of God’s power in our life.  As so many recovering addicts and alcoholics will attest, often we need to come to the end of ourselves and our abilities -- what they call hitting rock bottom -- before we can experience God’s power.  God can accomplish far more than we can accomplish on our own.

    The last reason that God gives us more than we can handle can be found in today’s second reading from St. Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians.  St. Paul is worn out and feeling very frustrated by his human frailty. He writes, “Therefore, we are not discouraged; rather, although our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day.  For this momentary light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison” (2 Corinthians 4:16-17).  Despite feeling physically overwhelmed, St. Paul knows that God is doing something to his spirit. He says that he and his companions are courageous because they know they are on a journey back to God and that this earth is not their home.  St. Paul gives us an important principle that is key to understanding why God gives us more than we can handle, when he writes, “For we walk by faith and not by sight.” Faith is a journey, so we need to keep moving, even when we cannot see what is up ahead.  We need to keep believing in God and His power and presence even when all seems hopeless.

    God gives us more than we can handle ultimately so we can grow in our faith and trust in Him.  Faith is a muscle that only grows when it is pushed, when it is tested.

    All of us are either approaching a difficult season, in a difficult season, or coming out a difficult season.  Troubles are a fact of life. The choice that each of us faces is whether we use those problems to lean on God and rely on His power, or not.  Do we grow in our faith and strengthen our inner selves when life gets overwhelming, or do we allow the problems to drive a wedge between us and God?  Will we allow whatever burden we are carrying to drive us to our knees and beg for God’s power and presence, or will we come to think that God is letting us down?

    In the movie, “Romero,” about the late Archbishop Blessed Oscar Romero of El Salvador, there is a scene where the Archbishop has just found out that his close friend, a priest, had been murdered.  The months of trying to maintain the balance of peace between speaking out against the oppressive government, and against those who wanted to support an armed, Marxist revolution was exhausting him.  Overwhelmed, he falls to his knees in the middle of a rural, dirt road and utters one of the most beautiful prayers I have heard. He said, “I can’t. You must. I’m Yours.”

    We walk by faith and not by sight.