Story Time

I recently sat down with one of my best friends, David Brandon, at one of our local coffee shops to catch up and talk before we both leave for college. We started talking about church and what God had shown us this year through all of our crazy experiences.
Our conversation almost immediately became centered on our failures…

Doesn't really make sense huh?

A conversation about healing and growth and gaining knowledge and it is being centered on failure?

Then later as I sat down to do my devotional I was lead to 2 Corinthians 12:9

"But he said to me, 'My grace is sufficient to you, for my power is made perfect in your weakness.' Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weakness, so that Christ's power may rest on me."

Now if you have hung around church, cracked open a devotional or have been to your local christian bookstore, you have probably heard this verse before.

But are you using this verse in its entirety?

First of all, let's just get this out of the way.

Whoever said "God won't give you more than you can handle", could not be further from the truth.

This saying is the biggest LIE.

God gives us more than we can handle so that we can fully recognize his power, his healing, and his goodness through adversity.
 Hearing this myth literally makes me sick.

If we could handle it all, Christ had no business dying on the cross and it was all for loss.

So look at it this way:

Whatever you are going through, whatever you have gone through and whatever you WILL go through, is all a chance for you to learn, hold onto Christ and let him reveal himself to you.

When we keep going back to our same sin its like God is there saying "I'm better than this sin! Only I can give you real joy and satisfaction! Come to me! I WANT YOU."

And when you finally realize that God is greater than any of your desires, and that he fills the hole in you that you have been trying to fit other things into; THEN you can look back on your struggle and say:

"This is my story"

It's when you finally realize God's perfection in your weakness and how he has revealed himself to you in the midst of your sin and has come, met you where you were, and called you his own that you realize the importance of your story.

This verse isn't just for you to treat the symptoms of your sin and make you feel better; It's to change our whole perspective on how we view the sovereign work of Christ in our lives.

     "and they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony..." Revelation 12:11

Realizing God's redemption of us through our testimony gives us power.


Are you just being contempt with Christ's death for our sin on the cross or are you boasting in it?

What struggles have you been brought through? 

How can you use them to help another believer stumbling in that same sin?

Don't waste your struggle. Run to God. Let him show you that he is better and more powerful. Learn.

What's YOUR story?