“God won't give you more than you can handle.”
Scripture never promises your troubles will fit your strength. It promises that God is faithful, that temptation will not exceed what He permits, and that He always makes a way of escape. The strength is His, not yours.
There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it. — 1 Corinthians 10:13
This is probably the most repeated sentence in Christian conversation that is not actually in the Bible. Paul is writing to a church flirting with idolatry, and his point is that no temptation has taken them that is not common to man, and that God will provide a way to escape it. The subject is sin and the escape from it, not grief, illness, or financial ruin. When the saying gets applied to suffering, it turns a promise about God's faithfulness into a compliment about your toughness, and it leaves crushed people wondering why they are failing a test God supposedly measured for them. Paul himself wrote elsewhere that he was pressed out of measure, above strength, so much that he despaired even of life, and that this happened so he would trust in God who raises the dead. The honest comfort is better than the slogan: you may well get more than you can handle, and that is exactly where God meets you.
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