Joni Eareckson Tada: Sharing Hope

Joni Eareckson Tada: This is Joni Eareckson Tada sharing hope. Here's our dear friend Joni with an old hymn, I think you'll remember, and if you do, sing along.

[SONG] Abide with me. Fast falls the even tide. When darkness deepens, Lord, with me abide. When other helpers fail and comforts flee. Help of the helpless, oh, abide with me.

Now, maybe you heard a little cracking in my voice, maybe some effort to get breath, maybe I wasn't pitched perfect. But I'm singing from a wheelchair and I'm singing the best I can because I have learned to sing my way through suffering, knowing that, regardless the trial, God is always abiding with me. And I love that.

[SONG] Shall I take from God's hand his blessing, yet not welcome any pain? Shall I thank him for days of sunshine, yet grumble in days of rain? Shall I love him in times of plenty, but then leave him in days of drought? Shall I trust when I reap a harvest, but when winter blows, then doubt? Oh, let your will be done in me, Jesus. In your love, I will abide. Oh, I long for nothing else as long as you are glorified.

It's a beautiful poem, and it is the anthem of my life. It is a subject I talk about often in our times together. Yes, following Jesus means a hard road. It has its disappointments and pain, but it is a journey that has so much pleasure and joy in the Lord.

Finding the joy of the Lord in suffering, that's a big theme for me. Like Psalm 119 verse 67, it says, "Before I was afflicted, I went astray, but now I keep your word." And then just a few verses later, "It was for my good that I was afflicted so that I could learn your statutes."

Friend, if there's one thing you and I can learn from those two Bible verses, it's this. God sends affliction to help us glorify his name. How so? Well, I can say it from a wheelchair that affliction takes away the shallowness of life, and it makes us more serious about life. We learn to abide in him. We can more easily resonate and better understand why God's word is so serious.

Just like John Piper says, he says, "There is not a single glib page in the book of God." Don't you love that? "There is nothing shallow, nothing superficial about the Bible, and affliction teaches us that. It knocks the worldly props out from under us and forces us to rely on God and abide in him."

You see, the Bible spends an extraordinary amount of time driving home the point that we are to put our hope in God, and we are to put our trust in him. But if we never suffered, we would have no reason to do so. No reason to put our hope and our trust in God. Hope and trust presume that you have something forcing you, you've got something causing you, pushing you, to place your hope and trust in someone who can save you. And that something is the God who can be found in your hardships.

When I broke my neck, my affliction made me search the scriptures, and I learned to abide in the Lord Jesus. Abide in him. When other helpers fail and comforts flee, oh my goodness, help of the helpless, Lord Jesus, please, would you abide with me? And I pray you'll do the same.