Joni Eareckson Tada: Sharing Hope

Guest (Female): I’m Shauna with Joni Eareckson Tada sharing hope. Thank you for joining us. Joni, are there some verses that you just prefer in the King James Version?

Joni Eareckson Tada: Oh, there sure are. Like Hebrews 11:1. It says in the King James, “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” It’s only been in the last year or so that I’ve experienced my faith as though it were substance, like it has solid concrete reality, as though I can literally touch the things I hope for, like I’ve got evidence in my hands of things far in the future that I cannot see.

It has made Jesus Christ and his heaven so much nearer and sweeter and happier. I’ve got my wheelchair to thank for it. Let me explain. My wheelchair—that is my paralysis and pain—is often so severe, so grueling, that I find myself desperately reaching out to anchor myself to the hope of heaven and the future.

That day I'll see Jesus when all pain will disappear, when I’ll be free of the burden and the demands of this difficult disability. I grasp that amazing hope, that promise of a better day that’s coming. It is the hope of Christ’s joy-filled kingdom, and all that helps me survive. I pull it all to me out of the future into the present, and it gets me through my suffering.

For me, that promise of future things becomes so real I can almost taste it, even when my pain is harsh. As my friend John Piper puts it, he says, “This present experience of tasting the rewards of the Messiah is faith. It is the present substance of the things that you hope for in the future, and its power is enormous.”

I agree 100 percent. Suffering, especially when it’s really tough and ongoing, releases my grip on the things of this world and it drives me to reach for things in that new world to come. When I do that, when I fix my eyes on Jesus and his kingdom in the future, when we repeat and rehearse the things that’ll happen in heaven—no more sin, the devil destroyed, Christ crowned, no more pain—oh, the joy.

This hoped-for joy becomes a powerful present reality, not just for the future, but it is substantial in the here and now. Faith makes it real right now. Heaven’s joy becomes concrete even when I’m wincing in pain. I reach out, I set my heart and mind on things above, and I can see. I can almost taste the joy.

I can see Jesus glorified. Oh, his promises, each one fulfilled, and it is powerful. How powerful? Well, the answer to that is in Romans 5, verses 3 and 4, “We rejoice in our sufferings.” Now, that’s power on display. Are you smiling in your suffering, boasting in your afflictions, delighting in your infirmities? That has to be the power of God, right?

So, you rejoice in suffering, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope. Look at that. If faith is the substance of things hoped for, then your endurance through suffering produces even more hope, more tangible substance of what you long for in the future.

This wheelchair has become my greatest ally in increasing my faith, as well as my joy in the glorious realities of heaven yet to come. What is faith again? Faith is the substance of what you hope for. It becomes solid evidence in your hand of things that you cannot see.

Guest (Female): Now, dear listener, if you have a friend who doesn’t see the connection between faith and suffering, if they’re feeling overwhelmed by their hardships, go to joniradio.org today where we’ve posted this program for you to print out for your friend.