We are together listening to God's message to us from a book in the Bible.

The Book is Philippians. We are going through it one paragraph at a time.

The title of my series is: Quit Telling Yourself I Can't

Today I want to think with you about one of the most powerful lies that can echo in our hearts: So my title today is: Quit Telling Yourself I Can't Handle This

The doctor tells you bad news: I can't handle this.
Your car air conditioner goes out and you get a flat tire on the same day and the voice in your head says: I can't handle this anymore.

This voice speaks every time your family is in chaos.
It speaks when the ghosts of the past show up uninvited.

It speaks when you feel overwhelmed, discouraged, depressed, sick, broke, confused, angry, hurt, embarrassed, ashamed, tempted, threatened, or lost.

I can't handle this. I can't take this anymore. I've had enough. I'm just done.

A while back, I preached about spiritual warfare.

Part of that was a teaching on strongholds. The topic of strongholds comes into play today.

You could say that a stronghold is a deeply engrained pattern of false thinking. It's built brick by brick out of beliefs you're convinced are true. And it's deadly because those beliefs are mostly lies with enough truth in them to make them convincing.

 

A stronghold holds a person captive to those lies. This captivity is emotional and it's psychological. Sometimes, it's physiological.

 

And here's the big takeaway: The essence of emotional and mental captivity is a breakdown in your personal agency and dominion. You're not yourself.

In theology, it's called "the bondage of the will." It means that instead of living by intentionality and choice you're being dragged around by an external power, an external locus of control.

God made you for dominion, and that's broken... your life is dominated by dysfunction or some other brokenness.

Strongholds are painful. They are damaging. They are confusing.

They come from your childhood, your parents, your friends, your peer groups, and your culture.

You might have been told this all your life: You're too weak to handle this. You're not smart enough...From parents, from abusers, from bosses, from institutions.

They're all liars. God says otherwise. The truth is that God gave you the right to rule your life. Sin broke all that and took it away. Salvation gave it all back to you.

And every time you say I can't, and I can't handle this, you become a warrior in full retreat.

 

But what if I told you that Scripture gives us a master class in demolishing that specific stronghold?

It comes from a person in the last place you would expect to find victory over broken dominion. The Apostle Paul. As he writes the letter to the Philippians, he is in a nightmare scenario.

Paul has been arrested by the Roman Empire. Physically, he is in chains. Emotionally and spiritually, he's being attacked... by his own side. So, Paul is both a prisoner of Rome, and a target of his 'friends.' If ever there was a moment to say, 'I can't handle this,' this was it. The walls of that stronghold were closing in on him.

And yet, from that dark place, Paul says something that defies all logic. He says, 'In this, I rejoice.'

How does that happen?

If ever there were a moment to say, 'I can't handle this,' this was it. So how can he say, In this I rejoice? That's the question for us today. How did he find joy?

The answer is that he took a wrecking ball to that stronghold.

Let's identify these same divine weapons God still offers to us today.

"But I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the things which happened to me have actually turned out for the furtherance of the gospel." (Philippians 1:12)

He looks at his chains, his confinement, his nightmare—and he doesn't call it a tragedy. He calls it the furtherance of the Gospel.

Wrecking Ball 1: God transforms your problems into a catalyst for grace.
God didn't cause Paul's suffering, evil did. This fallen world is a morally broken Pain Machine, and so the bad stuff is not God's fault. But when the bad stuff happens, God steps in. No, he doesn't turn the bad stuff off—we all wish he would. But that has to wait for heaven... that's the ground rules.

Instead, when the bad stuff happens, God, in his redemptive genius hijacks the evil for good. He invades the enemy's territory. He turns the bad stuff to produce His own loving purposes.

"The things that happened to me have turned out for good."
"The things that happened to me have turned out for the furtherance of the Gospel..." which was the one thing Paul cared about most.

This makes the devil spitting mad.

After his brothers were violent to him—Joseph said, "You meant evil against me; but God meant it for good..." (Genesis 50:20).

Same event. Double purposes. God wins. Devil gets mad.

And do you see how this one move immediately attacks the 'I Can't Handle This' stronghold?

That stronghold thrives on the lie that your suffering is pointless. It tells you that you are just a victim.

But the moment you see your problem as a catalyst for the love of God, your agency is restored. You're not the victim you thought you were.

Ask him, and God will bring good out of it. Believe him. Rest in him.

When you choose that, you no longer identify as a prisoner of your circumstances; Now you identify as a participant in God's beautiful purposes.