Why You’ll Never Be Ready for All of Life’s Troubles

We Can't Handle All of Life's Trouble . . .

We will never be ready for all of the troubles that we face in life and I have to say that I disagree with the common slogan that you sometimes see on posters that goes something like this: "I know God’s not going to give me anything more than I can handle." Actually, my experience is that a lot of times God gives me way more than I can handle—and I think that’s normal.

. . . but God Can.

One of the reasons that he gives us more than we can handle is because his grace proves sufficient in our weakness. So in one sense, we can never prepare for all of the troubles that we are going to face. But what does prepare us is healthy, normal, ordinary, daily Christian living: Spending time in God’s word everyday, being with the people of God for worship at least every week, turning to God in prayer daily in every circumstance that we face, and just being honest about the troubles that we’re having—honest with ourselves, honest with God, honest with other Christians about those troubles. We will grow in our capacity to face the struggles of life as we live healthy, ordinary, daily Christian life.

Philip Graham Ryken (DPhil, University of Oxford) is the eighth president of Wheaton College. He preached at Philadelphia’s Tenth Presbyterian Church from 1995 until his appointment at Wheaton in 2010. Ryken has published more than fifty books, including When Trouble Comes and expository commentaries on Exodus, Ecclesiastes, and Jeremiah. He serves as a board member for the Gospel Coalition and the Lausanne Movement.