However, he has given each one of us a special gift through the generosity of Christ. Ephesians 4:7

 

Are you in a painful place right now? There are two things we don’t know about suffering but one that we do.

 

When we’re in pain, we’re tempted to race ahead in our minds, landing in despair. We don’t know what the future holds, nor do we know how God will equip us to handle what the future brings. But of God’s nature scripture declares: “He is faithful in all He does,” (Psalm 33:4 NIV). When it comes to our suffering and the temptation to despair in it, the Bible says, “…God is faithful. He will not allow the temptation to be more than you can stand” (1 Corinthians 10:13).

 

The 14th century archbishop, Francois Fenelon, wrote: “We see our trials rolling in toward us like great, overpowering ocean waves. Our hearts fail us with fear at the prospect of drowning. We do not see that we stand within the point at which God, with a steady finger, has drawn the boundary line. Beyond that line the waves cannot pass. God often allows us to be tested as one is tested by a stormy sea. God stirs up the sea, and makes its great billows seem to threaten destruction. But He is always at hand to say, ‘Thus far shalt thou go and no further.'”[1]

 

Jesus-follower, our faithful God identifies Himself as the One “…who made a way through the sea, a path through the mighty waters” (Isaiah 43:16). He will make a way for you and promises His grace in proportion to your trial. He has already said, “This far and no more.”

 

[1] Fenelon, Francois. “Letter 37: God Gives Grace in Proportion to Our Trials.” Let Go, Whittaker House, New Kensington, PA, 1973, pp. 80–81.