Candace Cameron Bure sat down with Tara-Leigh Cobble, the host and creator of “The Bible Recap” podcast, earlier this month, and the two discussed the dangers of misinterpreting Scripture. They particularly focused on the importance of believers knowing Scripture personally in order to avoid common ways Bible verses are taken out of context or used in nice sounding “platitudes.” Cobble stressed that believers must first recognize that all wisdom comes from God. “I don’t have any wisdom of my own. Any wisdom that I speak to you or anybody else is given to me by God,” she said. “Any comfort that I might offer anybody is meaningless if it all just terminates on some platitude I dreamed up,” she added. “It’s gotta come from Him.”

Bure agreed, stressing that believers need to know the Scriptures in order to discern what certain verses of the Bible often mean. Cobble offered up the popular phrase, “God’s never going to give you more than you can handle.” “That is not in the Bible,” Cobble said with a laugh. She stated it was “not accurate” or “biblically true.” The saying is commonly looked at as a paraphrase of 1 Corinthians 10:13, which says, “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.” Cobble pointed out how the phrase makes Christians feel like a failure when they become overburdened by hardship and will not seek help believing they are not being faithful enough. “And that leads to a lot of despair when you feel like, ‘Oh, man, I didn’t have enough faith to pull that off for you,’” Cobble said. 

Joel Osteen faced criticism when he tweeted out the phrase in 2021. “God will not give you more than you can handle. If you have a big challenge today, that means you have a big destiny,” he wrote. Tim Barnett of Stand to Reason and Red Pen Logic highlighted the error of the statement. “God never promises we will escape the difficulties of life. Jesus promises just the opposite—tribulation,” Barnett wrote. In addressing 1 Corinthians 10:13, Barnett noted, “[1 Corinthans 10:13] is about temptations, not trials… Paul’s point in 1 Corinthians 10 is clear. We experience temptation just like the Israelites did. But with every temptation, God faithfully provides a way of escape from the temptation so we’ll able to endure it. In other words, God has given us the ability to beat the temptation with the help of the Spirit.” 

He warned how misrepresenting the Scripture can discourage believers. “If it’s true that God hasn’t given you more than you can handle, and you’re not handling it very well, then it’s on you for not handling it better. Do you see the problem? This well-meaning mantra turns into a cruel catchphrase.” Barnett added that even Paul noted experiencing more than he could handle when he traveled to Asia, as mentioned in 2 Corinthians 1:8. “What Paul experienced was more than he could handle, but it wasn’t more than what God can handle. Even a sentence of death wouldn’t stop God because God can raise the dead. Get it? Like Paul, you and I are going to experience more than we can handle by ourselves. That’s why we must rely on God because God can handle anything we face in this life.”