A Great Escape

I have always been terrible with directions.  I rarely pay attention to my surroundings, and when I travel, I never really know which direction I am going or where I am, at any given time.  The same holds true for when I walk around large facilities.

I'll never forget a certain band trip I took when I was a freshman in High School.  The directors decided to stop at a mall and let us walk around at our own discretion.  The most important rule was to be back at the bus at a certain time.  If any single person failed to follow this rule, then the entire band would suffer and we would be behind schedule.  Needless to say, about ten minutes before we were supposed to be at the bus, I got separated from my friends and could not find the way out.  It was a terribly embarrassing situation, and when I finally found the correct exit, the main director was standing there waiting to give me an ear full.

In a letter to the troubled church at Corinth, Paul wrote about the importance of finding the correct exit:

"No temptation has overtaken you but such as is common to man; and God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will provide the way of escape also, so that you will be able to endure it."

Most of us know this verse as the "God will never put me through anything too hard for me to handle" verse.  While this mentality captures an element of Paul's message, it fails to capture its heart.  It's not only that God "won't put you through anything too hard for you to handle;" it's that when He does put you through "something too hard to handle," He is faithful to provide an escape.  This is precisely why a trial can't be too hard for you to handle--it rests on God's faithfulness to you, not your faithfulness to Him.

Thankfully, every temptation that we can ever experience is "common to man."  That is, it is nothing new.  The Bible is filled with stories of men who experienced great tests and overcame them not because they were solely capable of doing so, but because of God's faithfulness to see them through it.  This is in fact the context of this verse as Paul recollects the trials and temptations of Israel.

God does put us in situations that are difficult  to handle, but He has been working with these situations for thousands of years, and we can trust that He will always, always, always be faithful to us and provide a way of great escape.