God’s Assessment


Fourthly, not only should tried believers rejoice in God’s power, but they should also rejoice in God’s judgement or assessment of his people, for Paul says, ‘God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able.’

God knows just how much you can bear, so leave yourself in his hands

Who beside God knows how much we are able to bear? Our consolation arises from the fact that God knows exactly how much we can bear. I have many a time heard a person say, ‘If such-and-such a thing were to happen, I should break my heart, and die.’

Well, that very thing has happened, but the person concerned did not break his heart, and he did not die. On the contrary, he behaved himself as a Christian in trial should, because God helped him wonderfully, and he played the man, and became more than conqueror, and was the brighter and the braver ever afterwards, for all the affliction through which he had passed.
 
Brother, your own strength, in some respects, is greater than you think, and, in other respects, it is less than you think; but God knows just how much you can bear, so leave yourself in his hands.
I have often admired the lovingkindness of the Lord to many of my own flock here, and have noted the great joy that our young Christians have had for a number of years, and observed how remarkably God has preserved them from temptation without and from trials within.

The Lord does not send his young children out to battle. He does not intend such little boats as these to go far out to sea. He will not overdrive these lambs. Yet the advanced Christians are just as happy as the young people are, and they are stronger and more fit for stern service, and more able to sympathise with others, who are in trouble, because of what they have themselves passed through. As they have grown stronger, God has given them more fighting to do for him, while the raw recruits have been kept at home to be drilled and disciplined.
 
You know that when there is a desperate fight being waged, and the issue of the battle seems in doubt, the commander orders ‘the old guard’ to the front. That is part of the privilege of being an old guardsman – to go into the hottest place on the field of battle; and it is one of the privileges of the advanced children of God to be tempted more than others, and to suffer more than others.
If I could have any trial or temptation, which, otherwise, would fall upon a young brother, who has only known the Lord a week or two, I would gladly say, ‘Let me have it.’ It might stagger him, and I should be sorry for him to be staggered by it, so I will willingly endure it.

You tried believers must not imagine that God does not love you as much as he did in the days of your spiritual youth when he did not test you as he does now. He loves you quite as much as he did then, and he trusts you even more than he did then. Because he has made you stronger than you used to be, he gives you the honour and privilege of marching with the vanguard of his army, or leading the forlorn hope, or standing foot to foot with old Apollyon.
 
God knows exactly how much temptation or trial you can bear, and he will not suffer the trial to go beyond that point. But, mark you, it will go right up to that point, for there is no such thing in the world as faith that runs to waste. For every grain of faith that God gives, he usually gives the equivalent trial of some sort or other; for, if faith could ever be in excess, it would degenerate into fanaticism, or some other unholy thing. If the Lord supplies us, at our back door as it were, with his good treasure, we are to dispose of it in our front shop in our holy trading for him.