When you are in the midst of difficult suffering, keep looking to Jesus. He is the one who gives you endurance and encouragement to persevere.
Hi, I’m Joni Eareckson Tada and I am asking for your prayers.
You know, I’m often asked, “Joni, how can I pray for you?” I mean, people see my wheelchair, they know I’ve lived as a quadriplegic for a long, long time, and sometimes they can see that I am in pain. And so I’m grateful for the fact that they want to pray for me; I love it when people ask how they can pray. And my answer – I’ll say, “Please, okay, if you pray for me, ask God to give me his endurance. Pray for my perseverance. I’ve got a long way to go to the finish line, and I so want to stay the course. I so want to finish the race well.”
That’s the key: endurance. Isn’t it? When you suffer, and suffer long and hard, you really need the power to endure, to persevere. You need to hang on and hang tight with patience. You need to stoke your hope, keeping it alive. You need to live on God’s promises and never stop praying. But when you are suffering, especially in a hardship that’s not going to lighten up, it’s an especially tough challenge. So, how do we do it? Well, the answer is plain in Hebrews 12, the first verse. It says, “Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith.” Friend, the discipline of just daily “looking to Jesus” – that’s the means by which we run our race with endurance. And when we look to Jesus, there are three things that affect the way we run.
First, he’s the founder and perfecter of our faith. Because of Jesus, we’ve got the assurance that we’re going to make it to the finish line if we keep looking to him. Next, we look to Jesus because of the way he endured his own cross; he is our example in the way he ran his race with courage, and so, as we look to him, we can do the same. And finally, we look to Jesus because he shows us how to run. He ran “for the joy that was set before him.” Oh, friend, that is the carrot dangling in front of you: overwhelming, heart-stopping, heavenly joy, unspeakable and incomprehensible; pleasure and joy that you can barely imagine; “eye hath not seen nor has it entered the heart of man” the joy that is set before us. Sure, yours is a hard race, but joy is on your horizon. You are going to cross the finish line and Jesus will smile and say to you, “Well done. Oh, friend, enter the joy of your Master.” That is why we run with endurance and with perseverance. The joy of the Lord is our strength when life is hard. Romans 15 says, “Everything that was written in the past was written for our instruction, so that through endurance and the encouragement of the Scriptures, we might have hope.” And the very next verse says that God is the one who gives that endurance and encouragement. So keep looking to him. Look to Jesus when you’re suffering and in need of stamina.
Look to him in order to strengthen your faith; look to him in the way he ran his own race with resilience, and look to him for the joy, the indescribable gladness of which we only now have a foretaste. When we suffer, we look to our Savior, our beautiful, glorious, and magnificent Lord. He is so delightful; he’s so worth it all; he is such comfort and such an advocate; he is so filled with grace for the long haul that he makes any race, any suffering – no matter how prolonged it may be; he makes it worthwhile. Friend, if you were in need of an encouraging word today in the midst of your hardship, I do hope you have found these words helpful. And so, share them with a friend, would you? You can always share this program at joniradio.org.
© Joni and Friends