Through Jesus, you’re ready to wake up and take the impossible.
SHAUNA: This is Shauna on Joni Eareckson Tada: Sharing Hope. You might know that Joni loves saying, ‘onward and upward.’ But there was a time when you would’ve never caught her saying onward and upward! Listen now as Joni explains.
JONI: When I was first paralyzed. All I could think about was the past. What it was like to walk and run. What it felt like to swim and climb, and bend and stretch and sit and rise, and skip and jump, and so much more. I kept thinking about the good old days when I drove my car, hugged my boyfriend, rode my horse.
In fact, back in the late 60s and early 70s when I had not yet quite adjusted to my wheelchair, there was a Beatles song that I listened to over and over and over again. It went, “Yesterday, love was such an easy game to play, now I need a place to hide away, oh, I believe in yesterday.” Remember that? Well then you know why I liked that song so much because I could not face tomorrow. It was impossible to think that tomorrow held anything better than yesterday. However, once I seriously took the Lordship of Christ, I put away yesterday. The future still looked impossible, but somehow, some way, God would give me something better than walking. Oh, my goodness, what plan of God could possibly be better than walking? Back then, I didn’t have a clue. I was tired of depression and self-pity and singing that stupid Beatles song. And I was ready to trust God for the future. From then on, it was forward; it was onward, it was upward!
A little like Exodus 14, where God led Moses right to the edge of the Red Sea, with nowhere else to turn. They couldn’t turn left, right, center because Pharaoh was quickly closing in. And Moses certainly could not lead a million people out into the ocean. So, what was he going to do? Ask people to march up right to the waves and step in? That seemed impossible. Little wonder that God’s people started longing for yesterday! ‘Let’s go back to Egypt.’ And so, this is what happened in Exodus 14 starting with verse 13. It says, “So Moses said unto the people, Fear ye not, stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord, which he will show to you today: for the Egyptians whom ye have seen today, ye shall see them again no more forever. The Lord shall fight for you, and ye shall hold your peace. But the Lord said to Moses, wherefore criest thou unto Me? Speak unto the children of Israel, that they go forward.”
Oh, my goodness, in other words, God was telling Moses and his people to face the impossible and move forward. And so, you know what happened when Moses took a step of faith and raised his staff, and everyone moved forward? When they did, when they stepped into the waves, the Red Sea miraculously parted. And right there explains my whole thing with “onward and upward.” Because there was a time when looking at a future of quadriplegia was as impossible as stepping into the ocean and hoping the waves would part. I had nowhere else to turn; I had to look back at yesterday. But once I began to trust God, once I began to move forward into this new, strange life of total paralysis, the waves parted and the impossible became filled with possibilities. So now, when I head out the front door, knowing that I am facing a day of pain, I take a deep breath. I wheel forward into the day and say, “onward and upward.”
SHAUNA: Now friend, be grateful for whatever good God gave you in the past, and then wake up tomorrow, face the impossible and say, “Jesus, in you it’s onward and upward.” And if you need some extra encouragement, just go to joniradio.org where you’ll find all kinds of resources and inspiration. Remember, that’s joniradio.org.
© Joni and Friends