Disability. Illness. Loneliness. Heartache. It’s a broken world and suffering comes at us in many shapes and sizes. Joni Eareckson Tada who has lived through more than 5 decades of quadriplegia, two rounds of breast cancer, and daily chronic pain, is well-acquainted with hardship. But she also knows about perseverance! Joni shares where she finds the strength to continue on and what she has learned about the power of example.
Disability. Illness. Loneliness. Heartache. It’s a broken world and suffering comes at us in many shapes and sizes. Joni Eareckson Tada who has lived through more than 5 decades of quadriplegia, two rounds of breast cancer, and daily chronic pain, is well-acquainted with hardship. But she also knows about perseverance! Listen as Joni explains where she finds strength to continue on in the midst of new challenges and what she has learned about the power of example. Courage breeds courage, so be encouraged that your brokenness can be used to bless others.
After becoming a quadriplegic at seventeen, Joni thought a lot about the topic of suffering. If God is loving, why is there suffering? When bad things happen, who’s behind them—God or the devil? Joni considers these questions and more on our blog, joniandfriends.org/blog. Additionally, her book, Songs of Suffering, includes some of Joni’s favorite Scripture passages and hymns for hard times.
KEY QUESTIONS:
KEY SCRIPTURE:
“We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body.” 2 Corinthians 4:8–10
RESOURCES
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Joni and Friends envisions a world where every person with a disability finds hope, dignity, and their place in the body of Christ. Founded by Joni Eareckson Tada, we provide Christ-centered care through Joni's House, Wheels for the World, and Retreats and Getaways, and offer disability ministry training.
Crystal Keating:
I'm Crystal Keating and thank you for joining me this week on the Joni and Friends Ministry Podcast. I love bringing you real conversations about finding hope beyond suffering and talking through some of the practical ways that you can embrace and include people with special needs in your church and community. Along with our conversations each week, I love pointing you to additional resources such as videos, books, or blog posts that will expand on a topic or encourage you. All of the resources recently mentioned on the podcast are available at joniandfriends.org/podcast.
Well, today on the podcast, I'm looking forward to sharing a special message from Joni Eareckson Tada. And after more than five decades of quadriplegia without the use of her hands, two rounds of breast cancer and other challenges such as chronic pain, Joni knows about suffering, but she also knows about courage, pressing on, and even when it's so hard, she recognizes the power of example. Listen now as Joni shares where she finds her strength and her advice for persevering through hardship.
Joni Eareckson Tada:
Don't we all have disabilities? Don't we all have weaknesses and limitations? Handicapping conditions come at us in all shapes and sizes, and it's a broken world. What can we say? Sin dealt this planet a mortal blow, and until it chokes out its final breath, brokenness is going to be with us. It's hard. The pain and the questions can often be overwhelming. I should know. So many years ago, my occupational therapist gave me a pencil between my teeth, and she said, “Draw something, express yourself.” And in this drawing, I just wanted to say, “Oh God, this is now my life. I got to do this. I got to do life without use of my hands or my legs. I'm athletic. I'm on the go. I played tennis. I love to hike. What are you doing?” But isn't that the portrait of so many of us? Perhaps all of us at one time or another on our life?
We wonder, God, if I'm not going to die, you're just going to have to show me how to live because I just don't know how to do this. I don't know how to handle this suffering. But I tell you what, it is the people, especially people with disabilities that I've met. They're the ones who have provided to me the greatest example to follow, people who inspire me, who are my role models of inspiration. They're my heroes. I think so much so that even Jesus made a point of saying in his word, go out, find the disabled, the lame, and the blind. Bring them in and you will be blessed. And boy, I have been blessed to be around some of these people with disabilities.
One person with a disability who especially inspires me. Let me tell you a little bit about her. Her name is Karla Larson and I first met Karla at one of our Family Retreats. Our ministry of Joni and Friends holds retreats: five days of hands down, slam dunk, off-the-charts fun and fellowship, and spiritual encouragement for worn out, weary special needs families. I was leaving for the registration. I was just trying to get a feel of who was at this particular Family Retreat, and I came across this one card, Karla Larson. I read more about her in the registration. It seems that juvenile diabetes was at the root of many of her problems. She had had four heart attacks. She had lost one kidney, had lost both her legs, had lost her eyesight. Basically, she could see a little bit and had lost three fingers.
So, I thought to myself, I just got to see this lady. I got to find her. I have to meet her. When I did, I was so blessed, so inspired. I hung around her all that week at Family Retreat and I noticed how other families rather much gravitated toward her. Karla was quite the inspiration to all the disabled children and adults and the family members at that particular Family Retreat. She enjoyed it so much that when she got home, she sent me a little note of thanks. Except the note was twist-tied to a toe on one of her prosthetic feet. She had sent one of her used prosthetic legs in the mail to me. And I looked at this note that was twist-tied to the toe and it read, "Dear Joni, since all of me cannot be with all of you all of the time, part of me will have to do." The lady had lost a lot but she had not lost her sense of humor, I tell you.
Titus 2:7 says: In everything, set them an example by doing good. Karla understood that. She understood the power of example. She inspired courage in people just by getting up in the morning, facing the day, and arriving. How many of you here saw the movie Braveheart, right? Okay, remember that scene right before the Battle of Stirling when the Scots were despairing because the size of the English army? And it looks as though fear and intimidation are going to win before anybody even strikes a blow. But then all of a sudden Wallace with his face painted blue comes up on a horseback riding from the rear. And just the fact that he shows up on the battlefield inspires the Scots and they take the field, and they win the day.
It only takes one person. One person to help many others win the day. Only one to influence a great many for the good. And I tell you, when I feel low, when I feel discouraged and overwhelmed with my quadriplegia. It's just hard. And Karla's example inspires me. She helps me want to get up in the morning, face the day, and arrive. Courage always breeds courage in other people. You want to live a life of fear and intimidation, then you hang around cowardly Christians, people who are afraid. No, but if you want to be brave, hang around people like Karla Larson who are courageous.
But, often suffering and affliction can become a never-ending grind and it can wear down the most stalwart of saints, even a saint like Karla. Because there came another Family Retreat just two years later, and Karla, by that time, had lost several more fingers on her hands. She had lost more of her eyesight, and this time she wasn't so courageous. We found a quiet corner at that Family Retreat, and she confessed to me, “I'm so tired. I'm just so tired of it all. It's so difficult and I feel like such a burden.” As she talked, I could tell that for her, living was harder than dying.
And with what few fingers she had left, she took the Bible from the side of her leg tucked in by her handle of her wheelchair, and she flipped open to Philippians chapter 1, and she wanted to read me something to explain how she felt. And she started with the 21st verse. This is the Apostle Paul writing, but she resonated with his words. And this is what she read to me: Now, if I am to go on living, sure, it may mean fruitful labor for me, but what can I choose? I don't know. I am torn between the two because I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far.
And she said to me, “See Joni, even an apostle got tired. Even an apostle felt worn out, and even an apostle was torn between wanting to slug it out on earth or depart and be with Jesus. Even the apostle says it is better by far to be with Christ.” And she said to me, “Joni, all I need to do is just refuse the next surgery or let an infection go untreated. My disability is so hard. Nobody would blame me if I did that. I'm just so tired.”
Anybody here feel tired of the hardship? Like Paul, the apostle, like Karla, like anyone who suffers a lot, perhaps chronically, perhaps maybe not with a broken neck or a broken body but with a broken heart. Loneliness, a broken home. As I said, suffering comes at us in all shapes and sizes. I can identify with Karla. I also feel torn after more than five decades of quadriplegia, who would blame me?
I feel torn and I desire to depart and be with Christ. My heart, half of it has already gone home to heaven, and I just want my body to catch up with it. I told Karla this and I confessed it to her flat out. I confessed how often I have wanted to throw in the towel. But, but this earthly life is intended by God to be a fierce struggle. Life is hard and God wired it that way. That makes life a choice. Oh, friends, you've got to fight to stay satisfied in God, but nothing honors him more than to part the heavens, look down, and see somebody living to him a sacrifice of praise. Living a life that cost you something. But you know what? It is a good fight.
The Bible calls it so, and that god is best described in the rest of Philippians chapter 1. I quoted it right back to Karla, starting this time with the 24th verse, "But it is more necessary for you that I remain in the body. Convinced of this, I will remain, and I will continue for your progress and for your joy in the faith.”
You see, rather than escape earthly heartache and rather take an early exit to heaven, God wants his children to taste suffering. Nobody goes to Christ's heaven unless first, they've tasted of Christ's afflictions. You know, God's joy is somewhat conditional. He shares his joy only on his terms and his terms called for us to, in some measure, suffer as his own son suffered while he walked on earth. Yep. It means slugging it out in the trenches. It means shouldering through the hardships. It means keeping the faith, running the race, fighting the good fight.
Why? I said to Karla, this is what I said. It's back to that 24th verse. “If you persevere, God is going to use that to encourage others, inspire others, comfort others, convict others, stir the souls of others. If you persevere, it helps others this side of eternity much more than you will ever know, Karla.” Like in Exodus 3:3, you know that story of the burning bush. That strange sight where this bush continues to burn, yet it is not consumed. It is not burned up. In Exodus 3:3 in fact, when Moses saw this strange sight, listen to what it says. "Moses turned aside to see this odd sight, why the bush was not burned up."
I said to Karla, “You are a burning bush, unconsumed and that's a strange sight to skeptics and cynics who don't believe in God. They look at you in your trials and they see how you're not being consumed by your trials but instead, you've got this infectious smile. That perks their interest, that irks them, that needles them. It's a burr under their saddle and they've got to investigate who is this God that this girl trusts and why should he be so great to inspire such loyalty? What is this strange sight?”
Plus, I told her, “When you show up, when you get up, when you face the day, when you arrive,” I told her, “It not only pricks the conscience of those who do not know Jesus Christ causing them to question this goodness of his and to investigate more about him because you are the strange burning bush unconsumed. No, not only pricks the conscience of those who do not know Christ, it helps fellow Christians win the day. You show up and you show other people how to own their weakness, how to own it and embrace Christ who can be found in it.”
God delights in using our brokenness always to bless others, just like he broke bread on that hillside to then feed the 5,000. Like the story of Joseph. Okay, you know his story: sold into slavery, left to rot in prison. But Joseph ends up saying to his wicked brothers, “you may have intended to harm me, and you may have intended it for evil, but God intended it for good.” Now get this quote, “for the saving of many lives.”
There was no guarantee in scripture that our bodies will not experience harm. In fact, if we were to follow Jesus, it's down the long, bloodstained path to the cross. We live in a broken world. That means there will be disease and disability. Yes, people will get the cold. We'll get the flu. They'll break their bones, and they'll have mental challenges. Yes. But in spite of all of that, God never intends to harm the soul. Your sufferings are not meant to defeat you. God allows those sufferings so that your soul might be more courageous. He permits what he hates, that is suffering, to accomplish something that he loves. Souls made great by the power of the Lord Jesus, made great with his perseverance, his endurance, his peace, his joy.
God intends good in our suffering, but not just that we might be more courageous. No, ultimately it is as Genesis 50:20 verse says, "For the saving of many lives." The good in Joseph's life, the good in the Apostle Paul's life, the good in Karla's life, or in the life of anyone who suffers, the good in my life, is it somehow, some way through my confession of how hard it is yet how sweet it is, the communion with Jesus in the midst of such affliction, it is that other Christians might be comforted. And that cynics and skeptics might be rescued from the dominion of darkness. We are broken that others might be saved.
I said to Karla, “Think of the nurses in your clinic. Just think of them.” I said to Karla, “These are the ones who respect you and love you. These people, these nurses, the doctors and lab technicians, the custodians in the clinic, the lab, the workers, and the nurses’ aides, the janitors. None of them know Jesus Christ. They love you though and they respect you. Think of how your response to your suffering is influencing them.”
I said, “Karla, you're famous at that clinic. People know you; they admire you. You have an amazing story that God wants to use to make those people thirsty for God, to have them look at you and see you as that burning bush and turn aside and see this strange sight. Why is Karla Larson not burned up? Why is she not consumed by these trials?”
God has designed that his children should suffer. No, he never intended that suffering should come to earth, in that it is by our sin that brokenness and suffering came into the world. But now that it's in the world, God's going to use it. He's going to use it for his good, for our good, and for his glory. God intends affliction so that others might see our confidence in the Lord Jesus Christ and be astounded. Why are you the bush unconsumed?
I said to Karla, I said, “You are going to be doing more good for the spiritual well-being of those nurses and the custodians and your surgeon and the doctors and the lab technicians. You'll be doing more good for their spiritual well-being than you could possibly imagine. If you live for the salvation and the comfort of others, it all gets credited. It all gets credited to your eternal account.” 2 Corinthians 1:6 says, "If we are distressed, it is for your comfort and for your salvation." And as the apostle Paul said, "So that my being with you, you will gain joy in Christ, and it will overflow 'on account of me.'" On account of me. If good things happen to others because of your perseverance in Christ, I told Karla, and I will tell you. “If good things happen to others because they witness your perseverance in your trial, God chalks it up to your eternal account.” Is that amazing? Is that generous or what?
So, persevere, press on, do not give up. Arrive, win the day, endure, for you are increasing and enriching your eternal estate. Oh, friend, every time we trust God with drastic obedience, even if it is tiny and almost imperceptible to others, nevertheless, it’s being used by God to not only prick the conscience of unbelievers, not only to comfort those who know Christ, but it is increasing your eternal estate. Oh friend, don't risk, don't jeopardize, don't diminish your eternal estate by complaining.
Philippians 2:4 says, "Be done with grumbling." Is that possible? Well, the Bible says it is. “Do everything without complaining.” Can we do it? If we do, we are enlarging and enriching our eternal estate. As Jonathan Edwards said, everything we do down here on earth, every little bit of drastic obedience. Every time we trust God and obey him in the midst of our trials, hard as though they may be, we are increasing our eternal capacity to worship and serve God with joy forever and ever.
Affliction is hard. It is in fact impossible, but with God, all things are possible. "So tomorrow morning," I told Karla, “Get up if you can, get dressed, and just arrive. Win the day. Find somebody else suffering worse than you are, even if you have to do it from your hospital bed, and help them win their day. Help them arrive." You know what? Karla went home from that Family Retreat doing just that. She did just that. She took her example from Jesus Christ who when he was on his death bed, when he was impaled on his cross, what was he doing? Was he complaining? Was he self-focused? No, he was thinking of skeptics and cynics. He was thinking of his own followers. So, what does he do? He rescues the thief next to him on another cross. Okay, and then he starts counseling his mother and his best friend down there at the base of the cross. Like, he's on his deathbed.
He's impaled to this crucifix and what's he doing? He's serving, he's helping those who don't believe, and he's encouraging those who do. That's who she took her example from, Jesus himself. She realized, if her Lord from his death bed could comfort Christians and could care about somebody still entrapped in the dominion of darkness, she could do the same. She could find people who were hurting far worse than she was, especially those hurting spiritually like all her unsaved friends at that clinic. Karla went home from that Family Retreat a changed woman. She found her courage.
You know, the natural response to suffering is to put God on trial. Okay, God, you know how much I'm suffering already so you know what? I deserve five good hours of bitterness this week.
You might be a good God, and sure I believe of you, but you know what? I deserve it. I deserve some time off from obeying you. I'm just going to think of myself. And you know what else? I want to make certain everybody around me understands that I'm going to sow some seeds of discord here and I'm just going to think of myself.
We do that subconsciously, don't we? A natural response is to use our suffering as an excuse to sin against God, to be bitter against him, to be angry. That certainly is the devil's agenda, right? He wants to shipwreck your faith by your trials. But a supernatural response is to embrace the Lord who suffers in the midst of your suffering, to bless others, both believers and non-believers.
I remember when I was going through chemo, we were driving down the 101 freeway from Los Robles Hospital home and I was so sick. I was so nauseous. I was so tired. I was so weary. And so, Ken, who's driving, he and I are having this conversation through the rear-view mirror. You know, I am tied down in my wheelchair in the back of the van. And so, on the freeway, we start talking about how suffering is like little splash-overs of hell. You know, little tastes of hell come early to get us appreciating the actual hell from which Christ rescued us. Right? Ken pulls up in the driveway at our house, turns off the ignition, and as the engine is cooling, we just sit there in the quiet. So, then we start talking about, well then, what are splash-overs of heaven? Is it those breezy, bright, beautiful days when all the bills are paid, and the birds are singing in the backyard and life is easy? And we decided, no, those aren't splash-overs of heaven.
A splash-over of heaven is finding Jesus in the middle of your splash-over of hell. There's nothing sweeter and more tender and more wonderful than finding Jesus in the middle of your hell. Because friends, we are not all the paragons of virtue that we would like to think we are. Suffering is the textbook that will teach you who you really are. And when bitterness is exposed, we confess every resentment. We embrace our brokenness and we become Jesus like him in his death by taking up our cross and dying to the sins, that is complaining and anxiety and worry of the future, we die to the sins that he died for on his cross. That's what it means to become like him in his death. That is the rigorous, robust gospel of the New Testament.
Others may embrace a timid gospel that has no answers for suffering, but people like Karla, people like those we are reaching even in our Ministry and our Family Retreats or with our wheelchairs that we take around the world. People for whom suffering is chronic. They'll always see through the veneer of a timid gospel. How can the good news sound good if you don't tackle the problem of suffering head-on, right?
It was G.K. Chesterton who said, Christianity has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and untried. Only the vigorous gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, who was hung on a cross like meat on a hook. When you do that, I tell you what, Jesus wrote the book on suffering. Only a full-body gospel that says, sin kills, hell is real, but God is merciful. His kingdom can change you and Jesus is the way.
Only that Gospel is able to infuse courage into the hearts of people who feel the crunch and the bite of affliction. God has removed from us the only kind of suffering that can ever harm us, and that is separation from him. This means that whatever suffering comes our way, all of it, all of it is intended to make our souls great and courageous, and brave. I'll admit, it's so difficult even getting up in the morning.
Don't be thinking I'm a professional at this disability stuff. I wake up in the morning and I'm thinking, oh my goodness, I got to go through a bed bath. Somebody has got to give me my toileting routines. Somebody's got to shave my armpits. Somebody's got to wipe my nose. Somebody's got to get me dressed. Somebody's got to sit me in the wheelchair. I'm so tired of this. So tired. I can't do quadriplegic one more day, but I can do all things through you, Jesus, as you strengthen me. So, would you live my life today through me? You know, I'll be crucified with you. It's no longer I who live in the flesh. It's you. The Son of God who lives through me. So, the life I now live in the flesh, I'm going to live by you. The Szon of God who loved me and gave himself for me. What a way to live. What a victorious way to live.
Because I need courage to face the day to get up, show up, and arrive and win the day. That's why I keep this special photo by my desk. This is the man we gave a wheelchair to in Ghana, West Africa. He had fallen out of a tree, broken his back, was laying by the side of the dirt road. No medics came to rescue him. No ambulance. No hospital nearby. Somebody told his family, and they came and put him on a blanket and dragged him home. When we wanted to take his picture, he said, “Wait one moment.” His t-shirt had fallen off his shoulder, so he laboriously pulls it up, straight and sentences, “Now I'm ready.”
We may suffer and suffer hard, but we all want to be treated with respect. We all want to be treated with human dignity, right? From that man, I learned that if you've got big needs, you're going to believe in a big God. That man represents more than one billion people with disabilities, 80% of whom live like he does. That breaks my heart, and when I think that they might die in their affliction without Christ, when I think that their suffering on earth might be only an omen or a horrible foreshadowing of even worst suffering that they'll encounter in an eternity without Christ, oh my goodness.
I'm going to squeeze every ounce of effort of this paralyzed body that I possibly can to face my affliction every morning and help give Jesus reigns in my life and win the day. Arrive and show up on his behalf. That African man said, “Welcome to our country where God is so much bigger and he's bigger because we need him more.” Isn't it wonderful to need Jesus more? There’s so many people with disabilities who are ignored and neglected and forgotten and passed by. So, you better believe I'm going to ride up from the rear. Every day, I'm going to show up on that cosmic battlefield where the mightiest forces of the universe converge in warfare. I'm going to show up. I'm not going to go AWOL. No, no, no. I want to be on the front lines where the war is at. I'm going to arrive. I'm going to help others win the day.
We want every church to help people who suffer, especially disability, to experience the reality of 2 Corinthians 6:10, That they too can always be sorrowful, yet always rejoicing, having nothing, but yet possessing everything. Being poor yet making many rich. A few years ago, my friend Karla hit the limit on losing body parts. Now, she had no more to give, and so Jesus called her home. But you should know that 1,500 people showed up for her memorial service, including a great number of people from her clinic. Her church family keenly understood what a precious, valuable asset she was to their congregation. What an open door, she gave to reaching other souls with the good news of Jesus Christ.
And I'm convinced that God is using people like Karla to change the landscape of the global church. Because people with disabilities shouldn't be just relegated off to some separated, segregated, little section of some little department. No. People with disabilities should be upfront. God wants to see people with white canes and wheelchairs and walkers offering him every single morning a sacrifice of praise. It's a sacrifice to praise God when life is hard. As I said, you got to fight to stay satisfied in the Lord, but that honors him. He doesn't want an easy believe-ism or a ho-hum, half-hearted approach to worship. No. He wants you to sit behind somebody in a wheelchair.
When you start to sing the Sunday morning worship hymn and you're a little flat-hearted, take a look at the guy in the wheelchair in front of you who's lifting his hands. That'll help you remember Philippians 2:4 and not complain. Right? So, if you've got some questions, I wrote a book called, When God Weeps, about how God permits what he hates to accomplish that what he loves. It's a phrase that my spiritual mentor, young seventeen-year-old kid named Steve Estes, who went on to graduate from Westminster Theological Seminary with a couple of master's degrees and whatnot. He's got a church back East and sixteen great-grandchildren. And anyway, when he was seventeen, he told me that phrase, “God permits what he hates to accomplish what he loves.” Boy, it was a phrase that just turned the light bulb on in my thinking.
If you want the light bulb turned on in your thinking regarding the goodness of God in the midst of hardship and affliction, then I would recommend that book. And if there is any takeaway from tonight, it would be this: don't you dare leave this worship center without knowing Christ as your Savior and Lord, because you never know when you're going to get hit hard with suffering. And you want to make certain that you are armed with the resource of the spirit of living God, living inside of you. So, you can wake up tomorrow morning when you have been hit hard with suffering and say, I can't do this, but Jesus, you can, so I'm going to do all things through you today. And you're going to live through me today. Don't leave without opening up your heart, confessing your sin. End the complaining, end the bitterness, whatever. Leave it at the foot of the cross.
Take the hand of the Lord Jesus and embrace him as your savior. Would you? And please remember the next time you're getting hit hard with hardship, remember that God does permit what he hates. He even did that at the cross, right? He permitted the cross. God the Father didn't like the cross. Murder, injustice, torture, treason. Yikes. None of that stuff. Why in the world would the father possibly send his own son to such a gruesome carnage of a death, impaled on a cross? So bloody that Isaiah 52 says he was marred beyond even human likeness. What can he possibly prize? Why would he do that? How about salvation for a world of sinners? Just like Joseph, there may be many things that look evil, but God intends them for good, for the saving of many lives. So, he permits what he hates, the cross, to accomplish that which he loves, our salvation.
And the devil slit his own throat when he inspired the events that led up to the crucifixion because the world's worst murder becomes the world's only salvation. I can say the same with my own life. I don't even know if Satan had anything to do with this, this broken neck. Maybe he did. But if he did, you know what? God aborts devilish schemes always to serve his own ends and accomplish his own purposes. So, God permits what he hates, this wheelchair, to accomplish that what he loves: Christ in me, the hope of glory. So, believe it because Jesus Christ is ecstasy beyond compare and it is worth anything, anything to be his friend.