Pressing On: How to Lean on Christ through Suffering
Subscribe to the Joni and Friends Ministry Podcast
After more than fifty-five years living with quadriplegia and chronic pain, Joni Eareckson Tada knows what it means to “press on” through suffering.
After breaking her neck in a diving accident at age seventeen, Joni faced suffering that felt unbearable and obstacles that looked insurmountable.
With God’s grace she learned to press on, even when she felt like giving up.
Now Joni exhorts every Christian to join her in living out Philippians 3:14:
“I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”
When Joni leaned on God in the midst of her despair and suffering, she began to experience the powerful truth that nothing is impossible with God. Relying on God’s limitless power and love, Joni learned to press on—and to smile—through quadriplegia, chronic pain, cancer, and more.
Joni also knows that Christ goes before and with her in suffering.
She says, “Here’s a Savior who understands what it means to be paralyzed, nailed on that cross. Jesus, the most God-forsaken man who ever lived, leaned on God through his own suffering. And he did it so that we might never ever be forsaken by the Father in our suffering.”
“To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps.”
1 Peter 2:21
How do you fight for joy?
When suffering strikes—sleepless nights, loneliness, physical or emotional pain—Joni urges Christians to fight for joy. How? Rather than worrying or complaining, quote the Lord’s Prayer or Psalm 23.
Say aloud, “The Lord is my shepherd; he makes me to lie down in green pastures.”
Joni shares some of her favorite Scripture passages and hymns for hard times in her book Songs of Suffering. The book also includes devotions from Joni rooted in her experiences of God’s closeness in the midst of difficulty. If you or a loved one needs encouragement this season, Songs of Suffering will help you find faith, peace, and comfort in the fight.
“You don’t give the devil a foothold,” Joni says. Satan wants the evils, pain, abuse, affliction, and disappointment you face to turn you away from God. But what the Enemy means for evil, God intends for good.
The darkest hour of suffering in your life may be the perfect opportunity for you to pray for others.
When you turn hopelessness or despair over to God, he will turn toward you with his love and power. Joni has seen God work through her pain-filled, sleepless nights.
She says: “The adversary hates that I pray for people whose disabilities are far, far worse than mine. I pray for people who must drag themselves through the dirt for lack of a wheelchair. How could I possibly complain when there are so many who suffer so much more than I do? I pray for children who suffer. For those suffering under the weight of hopelessness.
And so, in the middle of the night, when I am in bed awake and in pain, Satan’s end becomes God’s means. Because those prayers? They have authority. They are sacrificial… it costs something to offer up those prayers.”
When you press on through hardships, you can say with the Apostle Paul,
“We are handicapped on all sides, but we are never frustrated; we are puzzled, but never in despair. We are persecuted, but we never have to stand it alone: we may be knocked down but we are never knocked out! Every day we experience something of the death of the Lord Jesus, so that we may also know the power of the life of Jesus in these bodies of ours.”
2 Corinthians 4:8 (Phillips)
Did you get that? Believers experience something of Jesus’s death for the ultimate purpose of experiencing his life.
Charles Spurgeon said, “If the waves roll against you, it only speeds your ship toward the port. You gain by loss, you become strong the weakness, you grow spiritually in sickness, you live by dying, and you are made rich in losses.”
Do you allow troubles to build your faith?
All things in themselves are not good; there is no inherent good in terrible affliction, whether broken necks, broken hearts, or broken homes. But again, what Satan intends for evil, God intends for good. Joni has learned to lean into God and treat every tribulation as an opportunity to trust him more deeply.
Joni’s faith has grown through trials.
She says, “It is a great grace to be able to welcome a trial and say, with Spurgeon, ‘The Lord must be teaching me some deeper truth that I have not yet learned; he’s about to give me some closer acquaintance with himself, that I have not yet experienced; he is about to work some new grace in my heart which has never been there before.’ That’s faith that can stand the test.”
God wired this world to be difficult. It’s a battle—to trust, to stay content, to press on. When the fight gets hard and weariness sets in, Joni reminds believers that the stakes are high.
And God has given his people work to do: praise and prayers to offer up… hurting individuals to comfort… the church to strengthen… sin to confront… hope to give doubting people… missionaries to support… neighbors to reach for Christ…
So until the day when Joni can jump out of her wheelchair, she is “heaven-bent” on striving toward the goal God set before her: to lead more people to Christ.
She invites you to press on with her—living with courage and carrying out the call of Jesus to bring the lost, disabled, and needy into God’s house… until his house is full!
Support Joni and Friends
As Joni celebrates another miracle birthday, she’s using this milestone to share the Good News of Jesus with more families struggling with disabilities. Will you give in Joni’s honor and help others press on in their suffering?
