Embrace training for perseverance, endurance, patience, godliness, and the rest under God. These are lessons he intends you to learn.
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Joni Eareckson Tada is celebrating her milestone 75th birthday on October 15, and you can help honor Joni in a special way.
Thank you for celebrating with Joni!
SHAUNA: This is Shauna on Joni Eareckson Tada Sharing Hope with a prayer from Joni’s heart.
(Joni sings:)
Speak, O Lord, as we come to You
To receive the food of Your holy Word
Take Your truth, plant it deep in us
Shape and fashion us in Your likeness
That the light of Christ might be seen today
In our acts of love and our deeds of faith
Speak, O Lord, and fulfill in us
All Your purposes for Your glory
JONI: What a wise prayer to offer up to God. It’s a wonderful prayer to say at the beginning of your day, or when you’re reading the Bible. Or you may want to offer this prayer when you need God's guidance, especially if you’re journeying down a dark and difficult path. It is often the path I find myself on when my disability encroaches, or when I can’t get my breath sitting up in my wheelchair, or even singing this hymn, or when pain feels like a tyrannosaurus rex sinking its jaws into my hip. I pray, “Oh, Jesus speak words of encouragement; speak comfort and help and hope.”
I'm sure you can identify, and you don’t have to live in a wheelchair. Sometimes the afflictions we encounter, after a while—they just start to wear you down. A coworker gives you the brush-off; the chemotherapy didn’t get all the cancer; your presentation in the staff meeting fell flat; you just found a plastic packet of white powder in your teenager’s drawer of socks, and it looks like cocaine; the surgery on your ankle went south and you can’t manage the pain. Look, I could go on and on. Suffering is the lowest common denominator that binds us together as humans. And it is hard. If you resonate with this, then I have a little advice for you from Andrew Murray, a Dutch reformed pastor who lived in the 19th century. His writings are as fresh today as they were over a hundred years ago.
So, if you’re struggling, listen to this guidance from Andrew Murray: “In any time of trouble say: First—God brought me here. It is by his will I am in this strait place. In that I will rest. Next, he will keep me in his love and give me grace in this trial to behave as his child. [I love that. Always, no matter how much is demanded of us, we are to walk in a manner that is worthy of the Gospel, right? We are to behave with grace and responsibility in trials]. Then as we rest in Christ and his guidance to sustain], God will make the trial a blessing, teaching you the lessons he intends you to learn, and working in you the grace he means to bestow. Lastly,in his good time he will bring you out of the trial—how and when [only] he knows. But you are here, by God's appointment, in his keeping, and under his training, for his time.”
I love that. I mean, we are here by God's appointment, in his keeping, under his training [that’s the key], and we continue in that training—training for perseverance, endurance, patience, godliness, and the rest. We continue in it for his time. Oh, what wise words from Andrew Murray, and I join you in embracing them in your hardship—my hardship—today.
© Joni and Friends