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Joni Eareckson Tada Explains Suffering
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Joni Eareckson Tada Profoundly Explains Why God Allows Suffering

by Kriza Jo Tanduyan
written by Kriza Jo Tanduyan

Joni Eareckson Tada gave a profound explanation of why God allows suffering.

Joni Eareckson Tada

The founder and Chief Executive Officer of the Joni and Friends organization, Joni Eareckson Tada, gave a beautiful reminder, especially to those who are suffering. When she was still new in the Lord, she was excited to learn more about Him. She would memorize Scripture and apply it to her life. Not long after that, she founded Joni and Friends to share the hope she received from Jesus. She chose to serve every person with a disability and offer them the hope that she had.

Then, she wrote a book listing thirty-five good reasons why God allows suffering. In it, she described the spiritual benefits people could gain. She said that suffering would refine their faith and eventually lead them to depend on Him. At the same time, God uses suffering to make people realize that He is more concerned with their character than their comfort.

Suffering

“Suffering teaches us self-control. It gives us empathy for other people who hurt. It binds Christians together in a common cause, and it teaches us to follow God’s word,” she explained.

Years later, she began to struggle with chronic pain and had to battle cancer twice. Those difficult moments overwhelmed her. “It felt unbearable. All of it seemed to outweigh any good benefit that might come from hardship,” she described.

Furthermore, she realized that she needed to go deeper into her relationship with God. She mentioned a story about a boy who was riding a bike down a hill and crashed through the asphalt. While the boy was crying, his father came running to him. What most fathers would do is not explain the details about why he was hurt. Instead, they would just pick him up, embrace him, tap him on the back, and say, “There, there, sweetheart. Daddy’s here. Daddy’s here. Everything’s going to be okay.”

Joni Eareckson Tada Explains Suffering

Joni and Friends [@joniandfriends]. Suffering Instagram, 4 June 2024, https://www.instagram.com/reel/C7w3j4GP044/

Loving Father

Moreover, she believed that this is what people want when they suffer. “We want God to be a kind and compassionate Daddy. We want Him to be in the middle of our pain,” she highlighted. And the good news is that Father God is just like that. He doesn’t give His people reasons. Instead, He shows His children how good and loving He is through the grace of Jesus Christ and the presence of His Spirit.

Then, she shared Hebrews 2:10: “In bringing many sons to glory, it was fitting that God should make the Author of their salvation perfect through suffering.” She stressed that if Jesus was made perfect through many afflictions, it would be fitting for His followers to experience the same thing.

Watch the full video here.

Reference | Joni and Friends

Header Image: Joni and Friends [@joniandfriends]. Suffering Instagram, 4 June 2024, https://www.instagram.com/reel/C7w3j4GP044/

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ArticlesFeaturedNewsVideo

Joni Eareckson Tada Testifies How God Turned Her Story Around After Being Paralyzed

by Le-Jovale Vallejo
written by Le-Jovale Vallejo

A quadriplegic painter, musician, writer, disability activist, and writer, Joni Eareckson Tada, testified how God has turned the impossible into possible.

Joni Eareckson Tada

Joni opened up in this video to share her life testimony, from childhood to her diving accident to her faith in Jesus and His purposes.

She grew up in a very athletic family, and she also grew up listening to the stories of the heroes of faith.

“My earliest memory of hearing about the God of the Bible, though, was around the campfire on the beach of the Delaware shore with my sisters, mom, and dad. Hearing stories of Noah, David, Moses, and Daniel. But God really… He really wasn’t very personal,” she said.

But all that changed when she turned 14 years old.

“We went away on a kind of a church weekend retreat. I was challenged by the speaker. He said, “Kids, I want to measure your lives up against the Ten Commandments,”” she recalled.

Joni Eareckson Tada Talks About Faith

After that camp, she reassessed herself. “Well, I had never committed adultery, or I don’t think I stole anything in a big way. But you know what? It didn’t matter because I measured my life up against those commandments one by one. I got this overwhelming sense that I’m missing the mark. I’m not going to make it.”

But after all the questions in her heart, God helped her understand what the Gospel really meant.

READ: SINGER BEN FULLER REVEALED WHY HE ALMOST ENDED HIS LIFE AT THE AGE OF 16

“It troubled me at first that God gave us a bunch of commandments that He knew very well we couldn’t keep. But then, it hit me. At that weekend retreat, it hit me. That’s why Jesus came. He was the One who kept the commandments. He was the One who obeyed the law even though I didn’t know I could,” she said.

Accepting Jesus

Furthermore, she acknowledged her need for Jesus: “I was only 14 but I was able to reach out right then and embrace Jesus and say, “I need You. I want to make it out of earth alive. And You’re my only passport, so please.”

But a major accident made her question God again. Weeks before going to college, her sister invited her to go to the beach.

And something terrible happened.

“I swam out to this raft; the athlete that I was, I didn’t even touch bottom. Hoisted myself onto it, then took this really stupid dive into what ended up being extremely shallow water. I snapped my head back when I hit rock bottom. And it crunched my fourth cervical vertebra, severed my spinal cord. There I was lying first down in the water, desperately hoping that my sister Kathy would please notice that I had not resurfaced from my dive,” she recalled painfully.

The doctors told her she had to sit down for the rest of her life.

But God had better plans. Watch the full story below:

Joni Eareckson Tada Shares Her Story

Header image: Joni Eareckson Tada [Joni and Friends]. YouTube, 29 January 2023, https://youtu.be/VVXJ8GyLgt0

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