Phil 1:12–18
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Just shy of her 18th birthday, Joni Eareckson Tada dove into the Chesapeake Bay. The water was shallower than she realized and she hit her head, fracturing her spine. She has been paralyzed from the shoulders down ever since. This young woman with a bright future was now faced with a lifetime of apparent limitation and suffering. What would you expect her life to be like? How would you expect her to view her circumstances?
Fifty years later, in 2017, Joni wrote: “...affliction isn’t a killjoy; I don’t think you could find a happier follower of Jesus than me. The more my paralysis helps me get disentangled from sin, the more joy bubbles up from within. I can’t tell you how many nights I have lain in bed, unable to move, stiff with pain, and have whispered near tears, ‘Oh, Jesus, I’m so happy. So very happy in you!’ God shares his joy on his terms only, and those terms call for us to suffer, in some measure, like his Son. I’ll gladly take it.” (Reflections on the 50th Anniversary of My Diving Accident). This joy in Jesus has overflowed in Joni’s life and circumstances. Over the last fifty years, she wrote over 40 books on suffering and God’s sovereign goodness as well as established an organization, Joni and Friends, that has helped countless others wrestle through these same things and find joy in the midst of deep pain. How did this happen? How can Joni possibly say, “Jesus, I’m so happy!”, when her life is so painfully hard?
In God’s Hand in our Hardship, Joni writes, “The weaker I am, the harder I must lean on God's grace; the harder I lean on him, the stronger I discover him to be, and the bolder my testimony to his grace.” This is just another way of saying what Paul says in Philippians 1:12–18: “I want you to know, brothers, that what has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel.…and in that I rejoice.” For Paul, prison and suffering at the hands of the Romans had actually served to advance the gospel. For Joni, pain and suffering brought on by disability had actually served to advance the gospel (in her own life and in the lives of others).
Paul and Joni and countless other Christians throughout the centuries have been able to say in the midst of deep pain and hurt, “and in that I rejoice,” not because they love pain, but because they love Jesus. Because the advance of the gospel is the measure of their rejoicing, they’ve experienced unassailable joy in the midst of deep heartache. And that’s what we’ll be talking about this Sunday. Join us at 10am as we look at Philippians 1:12–18 and see how Paul’s gospel-centered thinking leads to joy and how the same kind of thinking can lead to joy for you and I.