Joni Eareckson Tada: Sharing Hope - These Three Words

0:00Welcome to Johnny Eric's Entada Sharing Hope. You know, happiness in Jesus can be summed up in just three words. Trust and obey. So let's sing this beautiful song with Johnny that I'm sure you'll know. He abides with us still and with all who will trust and obey. Trust and obey. For there's no other way to be happy in Jesus but to trust and obey. You know, I have to confess, when I woke up this morning, I had to force myself to sing this song, trust and obey.

1:01Why sing this song first thing before there's hardly a thought in my head? Well, as I've shared before, I have learned over the years to sing my way through suffering. As what happened this morning, it was around 6 a.m. and I had an hour and a half to lie in bed before my girlfriends were due to come and helped me get up in my wheelchair. The reason I woke up so early was the pain in my hip was driving me crazy. I so wanted to trust the Lord that I could with His grace make it to 7.30 a.m. without having to wake my husband can to turn me. But man, this pain was just killing me. I wish I could explain how it is that me, a quadriplegic, struggles with pain in my hip, but you'll just have to trust me. It hurts. God just had to come to my aid. So I took a deep breath, shut my eyes, and I asked the Lord to help me get back to sleep as I started singing, trust and obey, for there's no other way.

2:03And right before I started singing quietly, so as to not wake, can I pray Lord Jesus? You've brought me through the night, and now to this painful place at 6 a.m. my discomfort is great, but your grace, it's greater still. I'm going to believe that you will help me bear up under this pain for the next half hour or so until my friends arrive. And just to reinforce this petition, I'm going to sing, trust and obey, and so quietly I did. And you know what? It was the last thing I remembered until I heard a gentle knock at my bedroom door. I glanced at the clock and breathed a sigh of relief. It was 7.30 in the morning, and my friend had arrived to get me dressed and up and ready for the day. You know, someone once wrote that a cute pain is a night in jail, but chronic pain is a long-term prison sentence without parole. Oh, please, to me that is so defeatous, so pessimistic.

3:03The quote only makes pain worse, because nothing could be further from the truth. So when it comes to quotations about pain, I'll choose this poem by Margaret Clarkson, a woman who has been written for years with chronic pain. She writes, Lord Jesus, king of pain thy subject eye, Thy right it is to reign, oh hear my cry, and bid in me all longings cease, save for thy holy wills increase. Thy right it is to reign, or all mine own, then if thy love send pain, find there thy throne, and help me bear it unto thee, who did spare death and hell for me. Lord Jesus, king of pain, my heart's adored. Teach me eternal gain is love's reward, and thee I hide me, hold me still, till pain work all by perfect will. Now that is a better way to approach chronic pain.