Will you handle adversity, or defeat it?

​One of my least favorite phrases in the Christianese language is "God won't give you anything more than you can handle." As if that's God's desire for anything he might throw our way, that we would learn to 'handle' it.

What on earth could be the purpose - the value - of simply building a capacity to handle something hard?

I mean God himself invited into his life one of the most cruel things anyone could be asked to handle, death on a cross.

Why? To prove that He could handle it?

I don't think so.

There's a Christian idea that victory is found on the cross. The idea that Jesus didn't handle the cross, he defeated it.

The idea that our hardships or challenges come our way to test what we can handle robs us of all that might come from defeating our challenges. A victory that comes from not just emerging from the other side of the challenge alive, but better.

Stronger.

Victorious.

I often hear debates about the value of competition. Is it good for one to be so competitive. Well I think it is.

I think that because life is competitive. We are always being faced with an adversary. Some form of adversity big and small. The question is, will I have a spirit that wants to defeat that adversity - win - or will I simply do everything I can to handle it?

Because it's true, isn't it, God won't give us more than we can handle......

For far too long, probably, I embraced the idea that God wouldn't give me too much. And for that far too long, in the middle of challenges, I looked like someone simply waiting for it all to go away. Or numbing it away.

Because if God doesn't give me more than I can handle, eventually he'll stop piling on. Right?

I don't know. I just know these days I see every challenge as an adversary. An adversary come into my life ready to pick a fight. Not a fight I must handle, but one I must win. Win, that is, if I want to meet the new me born anew in that victory.

Maybe it's true that God won't give you more than you can handle. But maybe it's more true, and a healthier way to look at it, that God won't give you a fight you can't win.

We will all face adversity today. That is likely. Will you handle it or defeat it? The answer, I think, is a clue to who you will be once the adversity is gone.