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Ankerberg: Joni, tell me some other verses that come to your mind in terms of this thing
of suffering, and also of how God helps in the suffering.
Tada: Well, the list of verses that you friends were mentioning, I identify so strongly with
2 Corinthians 1, where the apostle Paul was writing to his brothers in Asia, and he inasmuch
says, “I don’t want you friends to be uninformed about what we endured. We were
facing conflicts far beyond our ability; far beyond it, to the point where we even despaired
of life.” Hello! I get that, because I’m there often. Oh, God, I’d rather be dead
than face this. I mean, even the apostle Paul struggled with that.
But then he says in the next verse; this is so powerful, “But these things happened
that we might not rely on ourselves, but on God, who raises the dead.” I think of that
verse virtually every morning. I mean, you know, you know that time when you’re awake,
but you haven’t yet opened your eyes. For me I can hear my girlfriend in the kitchen
running water for coffee. I know she’s going to come into my bedroom, give me a bed bath,
do my toileting routines, get me dressed, sit me up in a wheelchair, push me to the
bathroom, brush my hair, brush my teeth, blow my nose. And my eyes are still closed, and
I’m thinking, I can’t do this. I cannot face this. I cannot face this one more day.
I have no strength for quadriplegia. But, Lord God, I can do all things through You,
even quadriplegia, if You strengthen me. So give me Your smile. Jesus, I need You urgently.
Please show up big time. And I’m telling you, by the time she walks
into my bedroom with that cup of coffee, I’ve got a smile that has been sent straight from
heaven. Hard fought for, hard won, and profound, deep and powerful; that peace that Michael
was just talking about, that passes all understanding. I don’t get it, but I have it. And I think
that’s what Paul is talking about in that verse. These things happen that we might not
rely on ourselves, but on God, who raises the dead.
And, real quickly, I think the really handicapped people, when they wake up in the morning,
jump out of bed, take a quick shower, scarf down breakfast, maybe give God a tip of the
hat of a quiet time for five minutes, and then they’re out the door on automatic cruise
control. And we are told in His word, in James 4, if
that’s you, even if you’re a Christian, God’s against you. He opposes the proud.
He resists the proud. But—and I love these “buts” in Scriptures—God gives grace,
grace upon grace, to the humble. And the humble are simply people who, because of their suffering,
are driven to the arms of the Savior by the overwhelming conviction that they just ain’t
got nowhere else to go. They just have nowhere else to go. Suffering becomes that sheepdog
snapping at their heels, driving them down the road to Calvary where otherwise they would
not be humanly inclined to go. And it’s at the cross, at Calvary, that we find that
peace that Michael mentioned, that we find that joy that I mentioned, that is unearthly,
unbelievable, but it’s real.