Grace and peace to you this week. Sunday we opened a brand new series, and the first message met a lot of you somewhere you don't usually admit to being on a Sunday morning. One church, two campuses, one family. That's true whether you watched from your kitchen table or you're reading this from a hospital chair somewhere else in the country.
Mark Your Calendar: In-Person Returns September 20
Mars Hill Anywhere gathers in the room once a month. This Sunday, September 13, we're online only again. Save the trip. But circle September 20. That's the next time the building in McCook opens its doors, online and in person, same service, same time.
If you've been waiting for a Sunday to walk back through those doors, that's the one.
CHECK YOUR SOURCE: What We Actually Said This Week
This series is called CHECK YOUR SOURCE. Five weeks testing the sayings you've built your life on, the ones that sound like Scripture and aren't. Week one went after the biggest one: "God will never give you more than you can handle."
Somebody did math at 2:14 this morning. Phone face down, adding up their strength against the weight for the third week running, coming up short again. If that's been you, keep reading.
That sentence, "God will never give you more than you can handle," isn't in your Bible. It's a paraphrase of 1 Corinthians 10:13, and that verse is about temptation, not suffering. Paul wrote it to a church flirting with idolatry. It caps temptation. It guards an exit. It never once measured your pain.
Three chapters into a different letter, Paul tells you what actually happened to him:
"We were crushed and overwhelmed beyond our ability to endure, and we thought we would never live through it. In fact, we expected to die. But as a result, we stopped relying on ourselves and learned to rely only on God, who raises the dead." (2 Corinthians 1:8-9, NLT)
Past his strength. Not near it. And that wasn't the accident in the story. The end of his self-reliance was the point.
Write this down: God never promised manageable trouble. He promised sufficient grace.
Your practice this week: name the one weight that's currently past your strength, out loud to God, and say plainly that you're not carrying it on your own capacity this week. Car, radio off, two minutes. Then stop asking Him to make it lighter and start asking for the grace that holds while it stays exactly as heavy as it is.
Watch the Replay
Missed Sunday, or need to hear the 1 Corinthians 10:13 part again with your Bible open? Start here.
👉 Watch "MORE THAN YOU CAN HANDLE" on YouTube
Go deeper: The Problem With "God Won't Give You More Than You Can Handle"
Want to sit in this longer than Sunday gave you time for? I broke down where this saying actually comes from and what it quietly does to people who believe it.
👉 Read the study guide
New on Still Standing: "10 Minutes Is How You Get Your Week Back"
Somebody handed you six months of work back in one sentence, and now you've replayed that conversation forty times looking for the moment you could have stopped it. That's not processing. That's just re-injuring yourself on a loop.
New episode of Still Standing is up now. One practical move for getting your week back after a setback that wasn't your fault and isn't going away by rehearsing it.
👉 Listen to "10 Minutes Is How You Get Your Week Back"
This Sunday
September 13, 10:30 AM Central. Online only, we're back in the room together on September 20. CHECK YOUR SOURCE, Week 2: GOD HELPS THOSE WHO HELP THEMSELVES. It's the most quoted non-verse in American Christianity, and it isn't in your Bible either.
Watch at marshillchicago.org.
Thank you for holding this house up
Everything you are watching right now was built by people who give. The stream, the team, the ministry that reaches somebody who cannot walk into a building this morning.
Give at marshillchicago.org/giving. That link is in the chat and in the description.
Give as worship, not as pressure.
👉 Give here
Here's where I'll leave you. You've been keeping score with a measuring stick God never handed you. Put it down. What holds you up was never your grip in the first place.
Pastor Clarence E. Stowers, Jr.
P.S. There's one person in your life who's been getting the fine version of you for months. Send them the replay this week, then tell them the real number.
A word from this week's sponsor
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