Troubles enrich you to have a better understanding of God that you can’t gain through ease and comfort.
SHAUNA: This is Shauna on Joni Eareckson Tada: Sharing Hope with a very interesting and curious word. That word is, didactic.
JONI: Okay, okay, a little English lesson here. Didactic means to teach, or to instruct, with the purpose of giving a moral lesson. And it is a crying shame how the meaning of that word has digressed with modern usage. People will fault a leader or teacher who sounds too “didactic.” Please, don’t bore me with a moral lesson, it sounds like you’re talking down to me. I mean, that’s what it comes to mean nowadays. But sometimes it is a very good thing to sit under a little didacticism. Sometimes we just need to be told things we should know are true.
Such was my case many years ago when I was still wrestling against the hard trials God was bringing my way. I was paralyzed; I was a quadriplegic. I did not like trials. And I could not, for the life of me, welcome them as friends, nor could I rejoice in them like I was told to do in the book of Romans. Trials were irritations in my otherwise smooth, surface-thin relationship with Jesus Christ. And my thinking was: If he would just leave me be and lighten up on the constant inconveniences of this wheelchair, I would like him more, I might even trust him more. I’d find him more agreeable.
Oh, my goodness, what I needed was the wagging finger of a prophet, I needed to listen to a little bit of didactic. And I found it in a short admonition written by Charles Spurgeon. He writes, “Thank God, then, if you have been led by a rough road, it is this which has given you your experience of God’s greatness and loving kindness. Your troubles have enriched you with a wealth of knowledge to be gained by no other means, your trials have been the cleft of the rock in which Jehovah has set you, as he did his servant Moses, that you might behold his glory as it passes by. Praise God that you have not been left to the darkness and ignorance which a lack of trials might have brought on, but that in your great fight of affliction, you have been capacitated for an outshining of his glory in his wonderful dealings with you.”uppliant triumphed.
Wow! I read that and pictured Charles Spurgeon preaching it from a high pulpit, lecturing a huge congregation. It was a moral teaching, for sure. And I felt as though Spurgeon were talking to me. I was the one who needed to thank God for my rough road. It was my troubles that had enriched me, albeit small at that point, they had enriched me with an understanding of God I couldn’t have gained through ease and comfort. Most of all, I needed to appreciate that my diving accident was God’s way of rescuing me out of darkness and ignorance [I mean, before my accident I was really going astray]. But I learned back then to thank God for Spurgeon’s direct and didactic scolding because I needed to hear it.
God says in Isaiah 48:10, “I have refined you, but not as silver is refined. Rather, I have refined you in the furnace of suffering.” Yep, that’s what God loves to do. And it’s a very good thing. It’s hard and yes, it is often hot in that furnace, but oh, faith that is refined is worth it.
SHAUNA: Friend, I just love learning from Joni, don’t you? She never sounds too didactic. But she does give some hard-hitting answers to tough questions about suffering and disability, and I’m so grateful she does. You can find more of Joni’s timeless wisdom at joniradio.org. And hey, become a fan of Charles Spurgeon if you’re not already. His are moral lessons worth remembering. Thanks for listening today on Joni Eareckson Tada: Sharing Hope.
© Joni and Friends