I Can’t Handle It


Jeremiah 29:11 “For I know the plans I have for you,” says the LORD. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.”

“I can’t handle it! I can’t handle it!” My Nieces son screamed from the back seat.  He had fallen and hurt his mouth and knee while running to see some wild mountain goats. He was somewhat calm until he saw the blood, and then he was anything but calm. His dad loaded him in the car and for the rest of our drive up the mountain he was in the back seat screaming, “I can’t handle it!” For the next couple of days I kept replaying his words in my head and thinking how life sometimes hands us so much pain that we find ourselves screaming those words, “I can’t handle it!”

Maybe it is a divorce, heartbreak. Maybe you have lost your job or you just don’t have enough money to pay your bills. The bank is calling and you are about to loose your home. The doctor has just delivered you terrible news. All of us at different times in our lives find ourselves crying out, many times with anger and screaming at God, and asking, Why? Yelling, “I am at the end and I really cannot take anymore pain. Leave me alone!

Charles Swindoll in his book, Moses, Compares these times in our lives to Moses forty years in the desert. He says this of Jesus, “Jesus went through the worst desert of all for you. He was alone as no man has ever been alone. He was rejected. He lived in obscurity. He suffered the worst earth and hell could hurl at Him. On the cross He said, “I thirst.” And when that desert was the darkest, He screamed, “My God, My God, Why have You forsaken Me?” Jesus walked through the desert first. He felt its heat. He tasted its loneliness. He accepted its obscurity. He faced down Satan himself while the desert winds howled around Him. And He will never, ever forget or forsake the one who follows Him across the sand.”

Isaiah 54:7.8 “For a mere moment I have forsaken you, But with great mercies I will gather you. With a little wrath I hid My face from you for a moment; But with everlasting kindness I will have mercy on you,” Says the Lord, your Redeemer.” Jeremiah 29:11 “For I know the plans I have for you,” says the LORD. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.”

I have screamed those words too many times, yet looking back I now see how God has brought me through time and again. He has shown me there is water on the other side.  Jesus answered and said to her, “Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life.” John 4:13