Listen to the weekly teachings of Shepherd's Community United Methodist Church in Lakeland, Florida. Led by Reverend Michael LeBlanc, Shepherd's Community is a church designed for you and your family to connect, grow & serve! To learn more, visit https://www.shepherdsumc.com/
This series is all about the sayings we treat like Scripture—even when they are not. Some are meant to comfort. Others just look good on a coffee mug.
This week, we are firmly in coffee mug territory: “Love the sinner, hate the sin.”
In Matthew 7, Jesus warns us about focusing on what is wrong with someone else while ignoring what needs attention in ourselves.
So maybe we need a simpler alternative: Love the person. Put the love into action.
Not from a distance. Not with an asterisk. Put the love into action.
Today, let’s take this one Out of Context.
Passage: Matthew 7:1-5 NRSVUE
14 Oct 2026
Out of Context: God Won't Give You More Than You Can Handle
This week feels strongest if we emphasize that the phrase is usually well-intentioned, but can quietly place an impossible burden on people.
Last week, we began our Out of Context series by looking at one of those phrases that sounds biblical, even though it is not: “God helps those who help themselves.”
This week, we turn to another saying that usually shows up when life is at its hardest: “God won’t give you more than you can handle.”
It is often spoken with love. It is meant to comfort someone who is hurting, overwhelmed, or afraid. But when life becomes an overwhelming sequence of events and we already feel scared and alone, those words can sound less like good news and more like another responsibility we are somehow failing to carry.
Because what happens when life actually is more than we can handle?
1 Corinthians 10 is often used to support this saying, but the passage is not promising that we will never face more than we can bear. And when we live as though God has given each of us some hidden superpower to endure everything on our own, we take on a responsibility that was never ours to carry.
We end up exhausted. Beaten up. Isolated. And sometimes stuck in the very places from which Christ came to set us free.
So today, I have a replacement. It may be a little less quippy, but I think it is a whole lot more biblical:
God won’t leave you when life is more than you can handle.
Because the promise of our faith is not that life will always be manageable.
The promise is that we will never have to face it alone.
Let’s take this one Out of Context.
Passage: 1 Corinthians 10:12-17 CEB
7 Oct 2026
Out of Context: God Only Helps Those Who Helps Themselves
The Bible gets blamed for a lot of things it never actually says.
Some sayings are meant to comfort us. Some are supposed to sound wise. And some are just Christian-sounding enough that we assume they must be somewhere in Proverbs.
Over the next several weeks, in our new series Out of Context, we are going to take some of these familiar phrases off the Hobby Lobby wall, dust them off, and ask: Is this actually Scripture? And more importantly, is this actually good news?
We begin with a classic: “God helps those who help themselves.”
It sounds responsible. It sounds motivational. It even sounds vaguely biblical.
There is just one problem. It is not in the Bible.
And Galatians 6 gives us almost the opposite picture. The Christian life is not about proving that we can carry our own weight. We are told to carry one another’s burdens. To show up. To help. To be honest enough to need one another. Because sometimes the help of God looks a whole lot like the people of God.
Passage: Galatians 6:1-10 CEB
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