For years I mistakenly thought that being a Christian meant that life would get easier, that someday things would all just work out and it wouldn’t feel so hard. But the gospel clearly tells us that “the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few” (ESV, Matthew 7:14). Even though I grew up in the church, I didn’t really get that following Jesus would be hard. I kept waiting to go around the bend in the road when life would get easier. Man, have I been disappointed when that never seemed to happen. I spent years trying to do what was right, trying to make the right choices so that life would get easier. But it just never seemed to work. There was never some magic action or moment when life got easier. Talk about feeling frustrated.

Life has had a lot of hard, and I have heard a phrase off and on over the years that I am sure you have heard too… ‘God won’t give you more than you can handle’… I have never found where the reference is to support this commonly quoted phrase. In reality, what I have discovered is that God does give us more than we can handle on our own. He says that the way will be hard (Matthew 7:14), that there will be persecution (John 15:20 and Acts 9:4-5) and calls His followers to take up their cross and follow Him (Matthew 16:24).

The statement also doesn’t work, because if I think that God won’t give me more than I can handle, then I won’t turn to God to ask for help. Where does God fit in the picture if He only gives us what we can handle? If I think I can handle something, I am not going to ask for help; I am going to stay internally focused and only look for help from within myself. But this means that if I succeed, it is because I have succeeded. And if I fail, it is because I just wasn’t enough. Either way, the focus remains on myself and whether or not I am enough. There isn’t room for God in the statement that God won’t give me more than I can handle.

It is really important to remember that Jesus didn’t just tell his followers that life would be hard and full of persecution and then leave them on their own. He left a Helper specifically for us to help us through the hard, through the persecution, and to help us carry our cross. He left his Spirit, and He gives us grace. In all the hard, in all the pain, in all the persecution, there is still hope and we are not doing this life alone. This echoes the love of the Father that is found in the Old Testament… “For I, the Lord your God, hold your right hand; it is I who say to you, ‘Fear not, I am the one who helps you’” (Isaiah 41:13).

God will never ever leave us alone. Rather, He will be there holding our hands and giving us the words that we need and the grace that we need when we need it. John 14:26 says, “but the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you” (ESV), and Luke 12:12 says, “for the Holy Spirit will teach you in that very hour what you ought to say” (ESV). We are never alone walking along this path.

Jesus came in fullness of grace, and He gives that grace to his followers. John starts off his gospel telling us that, “For from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ” (ESV, John 1:16-17). And in Acts it says that, “with great power the apostles were giving their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all” (ESV, Acts 4:33). Grace upon grace.

Grace according to Merriam-Webster is “unmerited divine assistance given to humans for their regeneration or sanctification, a virtue coming from God, a state of sanctification enjoyed through divine assistance” (2023). Divine assistance. If you do a term search for grace in the New Testament, there are many examples of it and things to ponder. The reality is that grace, in the basic definition, involves God, the divine, giving assistance to His followers on the narrow hard path He has called us to walk. He helps, guides, and sanctifies us along this hard narrow path. Never alone.

Life is hard, but I am never asked to do it by myself. I am asked to lean into the Helper, the Holy Spirit, and ask for grace, divine assistance, so that I can keep stepping out, going the right direction on the narrow hard path. So I turn to my God with vulnerability and transparency and ask Him to help me.  

Written by Allison Whiting