Hi, I’m Joni Eareckson Tada with a word about reading through the Bible.
Ken and I are just finishing up reading through the Bible in a year, and just a few weeks ago, we found ourselves in Romans. When I look back on my diving accident, no other book meant more to me than Romans. Back then, when I broke my neck and learned I was a quadriplegic and that my paralysis was total and complete, I panicked. Oh my goodness, how would I do this? How would I survive? It didn’t help that my friends were going off to college and getting jobs, while I was stuck in a hospital bed. Life in a wheelchair to me looked bleak and frightening, and a dense fog of depression began to settle over me. I cried out to God. I wanted assurance that my world wasn’t ripping apart at the seams. I longed for someone to promise that everything is going to be okay.
That is the heartfelt plea of anyone who suffers. Suffering people just want assurance that somehow, some way things are going to work out in the end, that our world is orderly and stable and not spinning off into nightmarish chaos. We want to know that God is at the center of our suffering, not only holding our lives together, but holding us. Just like a father who holds his crying child, patting him on his back, and says, “There, there, honey everything will be okay. Daddy’s here, its okay.” That’s what we want to hear. We want God to be Daddy like that.
Well, in Romans chapter 8, we have the massive promise of that assurance where it says in the 8th chapter, “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.” Here God tells us that he is so supremely in charge of the world that all the things that happen to Christians are ordered in such a way that they serve our good. And this is true whether we face tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril and sword, or broken necks. The robust hope of the believer is not that we will escape a long list of bad things, but that God will make every one of our agonies an instrument of His mercy to do us good—in the here and now, and in the hereafter. Oh friend, here is all the Fatherly assurance we could ever want in our sufferings. And the assurance goes beyond the promise that “everything will be okay.” Verse 29 reveals a far more splendid purpose in that through our sufferings, we become conformed to the image of Jesus Christ.
So, friend, you need not panic over your problems. The lady in the wheel chair is telling you this. Paul says that your sufferings are small and short when compared to the weight of glory they are accruing for you in heaven. So bear with the headache and hardship a bit longer – these things are stretching your soul’s capacity for more joy, worship, and service in heaven than you can possibly imagine. “Wait for it with patience” it says elsewhere in Romans chapter 8. Wait and trust in the Lord. Your present hope and expectation will not disappoint you. I tell you something else that will never disappoint you: spending concentrated time in the Word of God. Because when you get into the pages of the Bible, the Holy Spirit will encourage, teach, comfort and guide you, so plan to join Ken and me and a lot of other radio friends in reading all the way through the Bible in 2014. And if you need a little encouragement, go to my radio page today at joniandfriends.org and ask for your free copy of our Bible Overview along with next year’s reading schedule. Share the idea with your Facebook friends, how about it? Get on board for the New Year with Joni and Friends where we’ve been sharing Christ with the disability community for 35 years!
© Joni and Friends, 2014
Compliments of Joni and Friends
PO Box 3333 Agoura Hills, CA 91376