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Podcast: Paralysis, Heartache, and Hymns of Hope (Joni Eareckson Tada)

August 01, 2022 by: Crossway

This article is part of the The Crossway Podcast series.

Learning to Hope in God in the Midst of Suffering

In today's episode, Joni Eareckson Tada talks about her initial reaction to learning—at the young age of 17—that she would never walk again, how she has wrestled with the truth of God’s sovereignty over her life through the years, and how she hangs on to the hope of heaven each and every day.

Songs of Suffering

Songs of Suffering

Joni Eareckson Tada

This beautifully designed book includes 25 hymns chosen by Joni Eareckson Tada with accompanying devotions and photography designed to spark hope in the midst of hardship.

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Topics Addressed in This Interview:

00:58 - Daily Deliverance from Deadly Peril

Matt Tully
Joni, thank you so much for joining me today on The Crossway Podcast.

Joni Eareckson Tada
Matt, it’s good to be with you and, of course, all of the followers of The Crossway Podcast. It’s my honor.

Matt Tully
It is our honor as well to talk with you. It is truly a privilege, Joni. For a good chunk of my life—and I’m sure the lives of many of my listeners right now—your life has stood as one of the most powerful examples of faithful endurance and joy in the midst of suffering. Today is a special and unique day. Just two days ago, on July 30th, was the fifty-fifth anniversary of something that happened to you when you were just seventeen years old. It was something that would change the rest of your life. I know many of our listeners know this story and they’ve heard this before, but I wonder if you could just share a little bit about what happened that day for those who aren’t as familiar with you.

Joni Eareckson Tada
Matt, I cannot believe I’ve crested fifty-five years in this wheelchair. When I broke my neck and doctors told me I would never walk again or have use of my hands, I was breathless, I was numb, I was bewildered and unbelieving. It was incomprehensible to me as such a young believer that God would allow such a harsh affliction. I didn’t even want to live ten years in my wheelchair, let alone fifty-five. When I think about quadriplegia sometimes it’s hard for people to imagine that, so I guess I want our listeners to picture sitting down, never being able to stand up again, and having your hands limp and useless in your lap. Just picture and imagine that. I know it’s a horrible feeling to those of us who are listening right now and thinking about it, but that’s the kind of horror I used to wake up to, Matt, everyday. I was afraid of waking up every morning knowing that I would face the deadly peril of paralysis. But the good thing about God—and, of course, there are many wonders about him—but he specializes in delivering his people from their fears. Early on, I was so desperate for hope and so needing something solid to cling to, and so I learned early on to lean everyday on God’s promises. I’m especially thinking back on 2 Corinthians 1:10. This is such a good verse! It says, “He has delivered us from such a deadly peril.” To me, my peril was total paralysis. It says, “He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and will deliver us again”—and then he goes on to say, “in him, we set our hope that he will continue to deliver us.” Matt, everyday I experience a deliverance because everyday I still wake up, Oh Jesus, here we go again! I lean on 2 Corinthians 1:10, knowing that he will continue to deliver me. After all, he is my Deliverer. I might not be delivered physically, but he delivers my soul from fear everyday and I experience so much of his grace and comfort, Matt. Wow! Fifty-five years of it!

Matt Tully
So often we want to believe that God is our Deliverer, that he is our Savior, that he cares about the suffering that we’re enduring. And yet, so often that deliverance doesn’t happen the way that we want it to or the way that we expect it to. I’ve heard you say that your disability is “like a sheepdog.” I wonder if you could explain why you say that.

Joni Eareckson Tada
Sheepdogs, as we all know, herd unruly sheep in the direction that usually they don’t want to go. That’s exactly what my affliction is. The Bible talks about God faithfully afflicting us, and certainly my suffering and my paralysis is a sheepdog that snaps at my heels, biting, growling, and herding me—crowding me, as it were—to Calvary. Otherwise, I just know I would not be naturally inclined to go to Calvary. Don’t ask me what I would be doing if I were not in this wheelchair, but I know, Matt, for sure that I would not be talking to you about the goodness and graciousness of a faithful God in the midst of affliction. But my suffering is that which, like a sheepdog, pushes me, drives me in a place where I’m not humanly inclined to go. But thankfully, I am able to look at that sheepdog of suffering as a good friend—a nasty friend—but a friend nevertheless. I’m so grateful that he pushes me into the arms of Jesus everyday.

Matt Tully
For those who don’t know your story, you broke your neck in a diving accident when you were, as we said, just seventeen years old. At that point in your life, you mentioned earlier that you were a Christian then, but had you ever encountered suffering on the scale—even in other people—like what you then began to experience?

Joni Eareckson Tada
Never. I didn’t know anyone in a wheelchair. I certainly did not know quadriplegics. I had heard about paraplegics, those who are paralyzed from the waist down, but the unthinkable—that you could actually live without use of your legs and your hands—I didn’t know anyone like that. I did not have many “role models of inspiration,” as it were. But thankfully, I had good, Christian friends, Matt, who weren’t afraid of my wheelchair. They didn’t treat me like an invalid; they treated me like their friend who needed help. They were the ones who prayed me up out of my affliction and got my nose buried deep into the word of God. I look back and I thank God for those good friends.

Matt Tully
I want to talk a little bit about your, as you call them, “Pain Pals”—people who have stood by you for years and have been encouraging to you and you to them. But before we go there, I wonder if you could tell us a little bit about your husband, Ken, who you just recently celebrated your fortieth anniversary with.

Joni Eareckson Tada
Absolutely! My husband is my best friend and my closest companion. When we are afflicted, Ecclesiastes 4:9 says, “Two are better than one, for if one of them falls, the other one is going to lift them up. But woe to the one who falls when there is not another to lift him up.” That shows right there why God created spiritual community for those who suffer. For me, I find that community in my husband, Ken Tada, for forty years. He is the one who, because of my quadriplegia, God has birthed in him such a heart of compassion. And again, if he were here with me, he would confess that he wouldn’t be the guy that he is today were it not for my disability. I think my wheelchair has been a sheepdog in his life as well.

Matt Tully
I was watching some videos on the Joni and Friends YouTube channel, and I came across one from about twelve years ago. It was you and Ken in your art studio looking at some of your favorite pieces of art, some that I think you had worked on, and others that friends had drawn or painted. One of them was a piece that was painted by a friend of yours and it was of you and your husband and you two were dancing. For me, the video just captured this beautiful little exchange between you and Ken that really conveyed so much of your love for one another and this patient endurance in the midst of this disability for decades now. I wonder if you could just briefly tell us a little bit about that piece and why it’s so meaningful for you two.

Joni Eareckson Tada
That is a wonderful piece of art. It shows the wheelchair behind and my husband dancing with me. Ken often says, Joni, I know that Jesus has the first dance, but I’m going to fill up your dance card every single dance after that one!

Matt Tully
It’s so beautiful and it testifies to this hope that you have—that both you and your husband have—the hope of the resurrection, the hope of final and full redemption. That, again, is a theme that just permeates all of your ministry over these last decades.

Joni Eareckson Tada
Resurrection is what it’s all about. Every day is a chance to experience the power of the resurrection again. We wake up in the morning and we die to self and live to Jesus. We die to self, and we are resurrected; our hopes are resurrected in him. There must be countless times I experience the power of the resurrection every day as I die to my own wants and wishes and grab hold of that resurrection power that is assured me in 1 Corinthians. What can I say? It’s how I live.

Matt Tully
I wonder if you could just share a little bit about what your day-to-day life looks like these days. I’m sure after over five decades of dealing with this quadriplegia you must have some kind of good routines down, or systems down, that help you manage day to day.

Joni Eareckson Tada
I take very good care of my body. I know it’s frail, it’s feeble, and I want to squeeze every ounce of ministry opportunity out of this paralyzed body that I possibly can, so I make certain that I observe all the good physical disciplines that I should—eating right, eating healthy, getting lots of sleep, all those good things. I love working at Joni and Friends because even though I’m a quadriplegic, it is not lost on me that I am the most blessed quadriplegic in the world. In most countries, people like me do not even survive. So I invest every ounce of energy and effort into everything that I can do to make their life better. And, of course, that begins by giving the gospel of Jesus and assisting them with their practical needs in developing nations. It’s just what I love doing. May God keep me healthy so that I can keep doing that for many more years to come!

12:08 - Fighting against Discouragement

Matt Tully
I’m sure that is part of the answer to my next question, but you’ve said that the struggles and challenges that you face on a daily basis are “the perfect storm for discouragement.” I’m sure all of us can imagine what that might be like, and we all have our own struggles and suffering in life that can lead us so quickly into discouragement. What have been some of the practical things that you’ve pursued day in and day out as a Christian that you have found helpful over the years in fighting against that discouragement?

Joni Eareckson Tada
This is the eighteenth year that my husband and I have read through the Bible in a year. I soak myself in Scripture. I have to do that. It’s my meat and drink. I am one of those of whom Christ spoke in John 6: You’ve got to eat my flesh. You’ve got to drink my blood. That’s how close I want you to abide in me. That’s what I do. He is my meat and my drink. My spiritual discipline of reading his word and communing with him in prayer is a lifeline. I cannot survive without it. Plus, Matt, I surround myself with other hope-filled people. I remember J. R. Miller once said something years ago: “We comfort others when we make them stronger to endure, when we put courage into their hearts, when we enable them to pass through their sorrows victoriously.” That’s the way Christ comforts us. He doesn’t merely sit down beside his troubled ones and just feel for them. He enters into their experiences. He does sympathize with us, but it’s so that he might make us stronger to endure. I want to hang around people like that. Even though my work and ministry often has me encounter people who are struggling against despair and hopelessness, I make certain that privately I invite others to invest their lives in me who are filled with hope, and yet remain strong in their afflictions. Psalm 119 says, “I know, Lord, that in faithfulness you have afflicted me.” I want to hang around people who think that way about their sufferings. You mentioned earlier, Matt, my Pain Pals, and that’s why I connect with a lot of them.

14:40 - Pain Pals

Matt Tully
Tell us about your Pain Pals. What exactly is that? What are you doing with these people?

Joni Eareckson Tada
After the Joni book and other books I’ve written, I’ve received so many letters from people who struggle with intractable pain—chronic pain, many of them are bed-ridden. Usually, these are the ones who aren’t expressing discouragement or depression; these are the ones who, because they hold fast to the word of God, are filled with words of hope. I was emailing and writing a lot of these people back and forth and forth and back, and I thought, They all have to meet each other. I formed this private Facebook page—it’s a secret page on Facebook—and it’s 45–60 Pain Pals, and we all encourage each other. Most of us will never meet each other on this side of heaven, but we post essays by Thomas Watson, John Owens, Richard Baxter, Charles Spurgeon, and John Piper. We constantly are encouraging one another and lifting each other up and reminding each other that “every promise of God finds its yes and amen in Jesus Christ” (1 Cor. 1:20). How could we possibly doubt our Savior and his promises when he has given his life for us? We remind ourselves of these things, and it certainly does lift the spirits of all of us. We have a esprit de corps that keeps us hope-filled and excited about what God has to show us each day through our afflictions.

Matt Tully
What a great idea and something that I’m sure many people listening would say, Sign me up for that! I would love to be a part of that! But it’s the kind of thing that any of us could do. We could find others who are suffering alongside of us and intentionally encourage each other and find ways to do that. It’s such a simple thing, but so profound and powerful in our lives.

Joni Eareckson Tada
In fact, Matt, when people even still now write to say, Can I join your Pain Pal club? I say, Go create one yourself! I’ve got forty-five, but you might have fifty-five people in your sphere of influence who need encouragement. So, you’re right. Even for someone who is bed-ridden, it’s a wonderful way to have a powerful ministry, and also to swap some really super essays of saints of old who have shared such sage wisdom about dealing with affliction. Go out there and create your own private Facebook page and encourage somebody!

17:20 - Do Not Fear Your Suffering

Matt Tully
Joni, I think it’s probably fair to say that there are people listening right now who are hearing you talk—and have maybe heard you talk in the past—about what it looks like to pursue faithfulness and trust in the midst of this suffering. If they were being honest, it may feel like for them that this is something you can do because you’re a super Christian. God has gifted you, God has drawn you so close to himself, you’re so mature in your faith, and that is how you’re able to have this perspective that you’ve been articulating today. But they look at themselves and the suffering they are facing, and they say, I can’t do that. I don’t know how I would ever do that. What would you say to the Christian listening who is thinking that way right now?

Joni Eareckson Tada
I would tell them do not fear your suffering. It comes to make you weak—very weak. But the weaker you are, the harder you’re going to have to lean on Jesus. The harder you lean on him, the stronger you’re going to discover him to be. That’s what your fears and your afflictions will do. God will seem suddenly very big to you, because he’s always bigger to people who need him most. Matt, if I were to be labeled a “super Christian,” I would only be super in the sense that I recognize how weak I am. That’s what I excel in. I excel and am excellent in recognizing how needy I am of God, how I cannot do it without him. Matt, anybody can feel that way. Anybody can look at themselves that way. My pain really drives me crazy sometimes, especially in the middle of the night when I wake up and I am in just such discomfort and I dare not wake my husband up a third or fourth time to come in and turn me. So, I turn to Scriptures that I’ve memorized because, obviously, my hands don’t work so I can’t grab a Bible. I’ll choose a promise like 2 Corinthians 4:8: “Though we are hard pressed on all sides, we are not crushed.” That’s a promise. That promise is as good as the character of Jesus Christ. I will say to God, You think I can do this. I don’t think I can. But you think I can do this with your grace, so I’m going to take you at your word, believe your promise, and say to my pain, ’Pain, you will not crush me because God promises me that in 2 Corinthians 4:8.’ Jesus, I know you’re going to show up and give me grace to sustain me through this until morning. Matt, I’m never disappointed. He always shows up. That’s just one little example of how I recognize my weakness and what I do with it. You’ve got to do something with your weakness. You can’t wallow in it. You’ve got to let it drive you to your only source of hope and help. I would just encourage people not to fear their suffering, but allow it to make them weak, and in that weakness find the strength of God.

20:43 - A Song for Every Circumstance

Matt Tully
Joni, many who know you personally know you as someone who is constantly singing, someone who has a song for almost any and every circumstance that you’re facing—any situation that you’re in. How has singing—and in particular, singing the great hymns of our faith—been an encouragement and ballast to you over the years?

Joni Eareckson Tada
Sometimes my pain is so bad that it is so hard to pray. That’s often when I will turn to the stanzas of hymns that I have memorized over the years.

Be still, my soul,
thy God doth undertake to guide the future as he has the past.
Thy hope, thy confidence, let nothing shake.
All now mysterious shall be plain at last.
Be still, my soul,
the waves and winds still know
the One who ruled them when he dwelt below*.

That’s a way of putting into practice Psalm 40:2 where David says, Why are you downcast, O my soul? Come on, get with it. Put your hope in God, your Savior. To do that, I will recite or sing the stanzas of these timeless hymns because they are rich with good, biblical doctrine. When you marry music to words, then it seems to impress itself deeper into your mind, heart, and memory. Of all the treasure trove of hymns I have, these are the stanzas that sustain me in times when my mind is so foggy, when my brain has clouded my thinking so poorly that all I can do is reach back into that treasure chest and pull out a hymn that’s already been well-memorized and recite it to God as praise or thanksgiving or as an appeal. I sing my way through suffering.

Matt Tully
I want to look at a couple of those other hymns that you included in your new book with us that are meaningful to you. But before we do that, you talk about Jesus and about what we read about him (with regard to songs and singing) in the New Testament. You talk about that one horrible moment in which Scripture explicitly records that Jesus actually sang. It’s the one time that we actually see him spoken of as singing, explicitly. What was that moment? Why do you think that reveals something unique about the power of singing when we’re in the midst of suffering?

Joni Eareckson Tada
I do not have the verse reference right in front of me, but I know it was in the book of Matthew during the Upper Room Discourse, when he was enjoying that last Passover with his disciples. Right before he was led away to his death, they completed the Passover meal and Scripture says that “they sang a hymn.” That’s the only place in holy writ where we hear Jesus singing, as he was being led away to his death. I think the Scripture is so wise in giving us just that one moment—that one glimpse—because it is an example, a pattern, for us. This is to teach us something about the way we need to respond when we are led to our “death,” as it were—despairing over some awful medical report, a botched surgery, or back pain that is intolerable. When we are led to our daily dying, we have the example of Christ. We know Jesus sang a lot. We know that because the Psalms of Ascent—Psalm 121 through Psalm 134—were songs that pilgrims sang every year on the three times they went up to Jerusalem for holy festivals. They would walk the dry riverbeds of Galilee and Judea and on their way up the mountain ridge to Jerusalem, coming from distances as far as south Turkey perhaps. As they traveled together in family groups, they would sing the Psalms of Ascent. It was just what good Jewish boys did. We can rightly assume Jesus did the same when his family went up to Jerusalem to celebrate any one of the festivals. So we know Jesus sang; but yet, only when he was led off to his death is it recorded specifically that he sang a hymn. We can do the same, and so we should.

25:48 - “Be Still, My Soul”

Matt Tully
In our modern church culture today we think of singing as this celebration, as an optimistic praising of God. And yet, so many of the psalms (which are songs) and so many of the great hymns of our faith are laments. They’re songs that deal with the suffering and the pain that we are facing head on. Have you found that those kinds of songs have been especially meaningful to you?

Joni Eareckson Tada
Oh, yes! I was mentioning “Be Still, My Soul” earlier. I was raised Reformed Episcopalian, so as a child I had already memorized many psalms because that’s part of The Book of Common Prayer. But also, we sang the timeless hymns of the faith, “Be Still, My Soul” being one of them. I quoted the second stanza earlier, but the first stanza I would repeat that as a prayer, lying in bed in the hospital, bewildered and unbelieving about this medical diagnosis of total paralysis. I would comfort myself in the dark. I wanted to cry, but there was nobody around to wipe my nose at two o’ clock in the morning in the hospital. So I would sing,

Be still, my soul; the Lord is on your side;
bear patiently the cross of grief or pain;
leave to your God to order and provide;
in ev’ry change he faithful will remain.
Be still, my soul; your best, your heav’nly friend
through thorny ways leads to a joyful end.

Oh my goodness! There are so many rich biblical precepts in that stanza alone. No wonder my heart was made tender toward the word of God when I leaned back on those hymns. And real quickly, that brings up a good point. I memorized those hymns as a child. I just happened to go to a Reformed Episcopal church where we sang “Whate’er My God Ordains Is Right” and Jesus, I Am Resting. We sang those hymns, and because they were good, rich, deep hymns filled with great church, as a child memorizing them, it was what I fell back to. It was what I defaulted to when I was a teenager and struggling to put it all together.

28:15 - “Whate’er My God Ordains Is Right”

Matt Tully
That’s a good reminder for the parents listening right now who have young children, that this is the time to instill and to embed those deep truths in their hearts and their minds. That leads to the next hymn that I did want to talk about with you, which is “Whate’er My God Ordains Is Right.” That’s such a powerful song. For those who don’t know it, go pick up a copy of this new book. It’s got the full text there and you have a devotional related to that. The song so powerfully testifies to God’s sovereignty over our lives, especially our suffering. I wonder if you could share what that like for you to come to terms with that biblical truth that, for many of us at different points in our lives, it’s very hard for us to accept and to grasp that truth.

Joni Eareckson Tada
Let me share a little story that will help answer that, Matt. When I was on my feet I used to love putting together puzzles. I remember one time I was doing a puzzle with my sister and she accidentally kicked the table. Puzzle pieces went flying everywhere and I’m scrambling to look under the couch and behind the drapes, trying to gather all of the missing pieces. It was useless. They were gone. The whole puzzle was ruined. I think when we suffer a devastating and life-altering injury it’s so much the same. We’re putting together our life so neat and tidy, as though it were a puzzle. We’ve got the picture on the cover and we know what it’s supposed to look like, so we work toward that end. Everything is neat and orderly and regulated. Then all of a sudden there’s this life-altering event, and people often feel as though God has kicked their table and scattered all the puzzle pieces of their lives. They want everything to once again feel orderly and familiar, and so people frantically try to put their life back together as it once was. But God doesn’t want things as they once were. God is all about changing our circumstances. This describes me right after I broke my neck. I was trying to put things back together as they once were. I wanted my life like it was, Jesus! But it wasn’t to be. My life was now on a different trajectory. I did not realize it was a better trajectory at the time, but that took some faith. Now I like to show people, when they have questions about the puzzle pieces of their lives, I show them this pencil drawing. I know our listeners cannot see this, but it’s a picture of my face, comprised of lots of puzzle pieces, and many of them are missing. A friend sketched it of me after I got out of the hospital. When people observe that the image of my face is missing so many puzzle pieces, I’ll explain to them, You know what? It’s the same for you. It’s no use trying to reconstruct your life as it once was. Trust me. You’ll never get back what you’ve lost. And most of those pieces of your life are going to stay missing until the other side of eternity. When I sing this song, Whate’ver God Ordains Is Right, I think of Ephesians 1:11. I think it puts the puzzle of suffering into context because in Christ we were also chosen and predestined according to the plan. Okay, you’ve got three things going for you there. What is that plan? He works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will. Life, with its missing pieces, is hidden within God’s plan, whether it be a crippling injury, a divorce, or an unexpected death. Our immediate instinct is to remake life as we once knew it, but God doesn’t want your life to be the same. He wants to resketch it so the picture on the cover of your puzzle box looks more like Jesus. That’s what he puts together from the pieces of your life which remain. It’s a better image, a new image—Christ in you, the hope of glory.

32:38 - “When We All Get to Heaven”

Matt Tully
The last hymn I wanted briefly touch on is the final hymn that you include in the book, which is “When We All Get to Heaven.” Why end the book with that song?

Joni Eareckson Tada
One of the stanzas says,

While we walk the pilgrim pathway
Clouds will overspread the sky;
But when trav’ling days are over
Not a shadow, not a sigh.

Only in heaven, Matt, will we ever understand our sufferings on earth. You can’t understand them on earth without an end time perspective. That’s when all the puzzle pieces are going to fit together. Only in heaven will God give us the key that will unlock sense out of what now seems to be such senseless suffering. I cannot wait to get to heaven, to take the hands of Jesus in mine, and as I hold his hands I’m going to feel the nail scars. I will look straight at my Savior and say, Jesus, thank you! I could never have gotten through that paralysis were it not for your grace! He’ll look back into my eyes and he will know that I mean it, because he will recognize me as the one who came to him every single day—every hour—hemorrhaging human strength, saying, I can’t do this! I simply cannot do this! But I can do all thing through you, Jesus, as you strengthen me. He’s going to recognize me as that one. I guess that’s why when I get to heaven—people often ask me, Who’s the first person you want to see beside Jesus in heaven? My answer is the tenth leper. I want to meet the tenth leper, because that’s me. He healed me at such a deep level and in a deep way that I’m going to be the one who’s going to run back to him shouting and proclaiming, Thank you, Jesus! Dropping to his feet, kissing those precious feet, and saying, Bless you for giving me the power and the strength, because I certainly did have it on my own. I just hope that gives him greater glory. Isn’t that the whole goal of it all, to give him greater glory?

35:00 - Pain Is . . .

Matt Tully
As a final question, Joni, in his famous book The Problem of Pain, C. S. Lewis famously wrote, “Pain is God’s megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” That’s something that really resonates so well with what you’ve shared with us today, and your own experience of pain and suffering under the gracious hand of God. As you sit here now, fifty-five years after that terrible accident, what are some of the other ways that you would finish that statement: “Pain is . . . ”?

Joni Eareckson Tada
Pain is an unwelcome guest, but it is a guest nevertheless. Pain is a severe mercy—severe, awful, terrible, horrible—but it is a mercy nonetheless. Pain is a bruising of a blessing, but it is still a blessing. I can only say that because my heart is filled with thanksgiving to God, and it is gratitude that helps you frame every difficult circumstance as a blessing. Gratitude is what’s going to provide the way for you to lean into the pain, to stand face to face with it, and not to despair. I’m not talking about a romanticized, unrealistic detachment from suffering. I’m talking about a thankful spirit that really, really engages with Christ in the middle of your worst afflictions. I think when you cultivate gratitude like that you can look at pain as a guest, albeit unwelcomed. You can look at it as a mercy, albeit severe. You can look at it as a blessing, albeit accompanied with a lot of bruisings. It’s your thankful heart that will give you the resources to face pain without a hint of self-pity. That’s quite a life achievement, isn’t it?

37:01 - A Prayer for Those Who Are Suffering

Matt Tully
To close our conversation today, I wonder if you would pray for the person listening right now who is in the midst of some kind of severe suffering. Maybe it is a broken body, maybe it’s a broken relationship, maybe it’s a broken dream. Whatever it might be, how might you lead that person to the throne of our Father?

Joni Eareckson Tada
Let me do it right now, Matt. Lord Jesus, even now as I speak I know friends are listening who are struggling with that botched surgery, that divorce, that unexpected death, or the untimely medical report, and it is overwhelming. Like me, at one time our friends listening might be saying, I can’t do this. They’re bewildered, they’re unbelieving, they’re numb, they’re emotionally sick at heart. Jesus, would you be ever-present and near to them, for you promised that you are near to the brokenhearted. You save those who are crushed in spirit. And then, Jesus, would you open our spiritual eyes to help us see that you will deliver us from our deadly peril. You will continue to deliver us as we lean on you and your promises. And indeed, every promise is yes and amen and finds its fulfillment in you, Jesus. Be very near to my friend who is hurting. Help them tomorrow morning to wake up and as they open their eyes before they get out of bed, may they think, God, I can’t do this. I cannot do it. But you promise me that I can do all things through you, Jesus, as you strengthen me. Would you give them the wherewithal spiritually to hold fast to you and to hold onto your promises throughout the day, inch by inch, bit by bit, millimeter by millimeter, until hope rises in their hearts. Father, do this to not only benefit our friend listening but to glorify your precious name and your great and glorious Son, Jesus Christ. Help us to be faithful, even through the toughest of afflictions. We ask in your name, amen.

Matt Tully
Amen. Thank you, Joni, for speaking with us today.

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