Joni Eareckson Tada"s A Place of Healing: Ch 3, Pt 1 Healer and Lord

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Joni Eareckson Tada’s A Place of Healing: Ch 3, Pt 1 Healer and Lord

There are times when I have watched the healing service on TV as I’m being exercised, dressed, and lifted into my wheelchair.

It’s a little bit of a surreal experience.

There I am, lying in bed, disabled and unable to care for myself, listening to the fiery message and watching people hobble on stage with crutches… and then walk off without them.

“Jesus doesn’t want you sick and disabled,” the speaker will often thunder. “He wants to do for you what He’s done for those you’ve seen today. You, too, can experience His healing power. Rest your faith on His promises!”

As I watch, I often think about others sick and disabled people all over the country who are viewing the same broadcast. What are they thinking? Are they asking themselves the same questions I asked years ago? Questions like, “Does God still heal people miraculously today? If so, does He want to heal all or just some?” Am I to think if my prayers for healing go unanswered, unlike the prayers of those I see on TV?

As I mentioned in the previous chapter, one of the milestones for me and answering questions like that was running across a book by a man named Henry Frost, a Canadian missionary statesman of an earlier generation. His book Miraculous Healing isn’t a new book by any means. Nor does it read like this morning’s newspaper. In fact, the language sounds rather stilted and out of date to our modern ears. But I doubt whether you’ll ever find a more sensible and balanced treatment on the subject of divine healing. What first drew me to the book was the obvious fact that Henry Frost didn’t seem to have any theological ax to grind. Rather than approaching the subject as a combatant for any particular point of view and armed with well selected prooftexts, Frost maintained a gentle spirit and an open, inquiring heart.

Joni Eareckson Tada’s A Place of Healing: Ch 3, Pt 1 Healer and Lord

 

Joni Eareckson Tada"s A Place of Healing: Ch 3, Pt 1 Healer and Lord

Joni Eareckson Tada – A Place Of Healing Chapter 2

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Joni Eareckson Tada – A Place Of Healing Chapter 2 – God and Healing: What’s The Real Question?

In the 1st and 2nd decades of my paralysis, there were seasons during which my yearning for complete healing and a return to life as it was gripped my heart. It’s not that those desires have gone away in this, my 5th decade in a wheelchair; it has more to do with the change in my perspective.

In the first place, any concept of “normal” is now something so long ago and far away that it seems more like a distant dream. A pleasant dream, yes, but one that has gradually, gently faded through the years, like a well loved snapshot in an old photo album. After 40+ years of quadriplegia, it’s hard to say what a normal life for me would be.

For another thing, as I have mentioned, I find myself in a whole new phase of the battle. It’s not so much the wistful disappointments were occasional frustrations I’m dealing with now, is the seemingly ceaseless attacks – wave after wave after wave of throbbing in my lower back and hip. Now when I think of “healing,” is more in the form of asking my Father for relief from the intensity of the suffering rather than the ability to pick a flower, write a horse, or dance across a field of clover.

Relief from chronic pain – even though I remain paralyzed – would be blissfully, peacefully, joyously “normal” for me these days… and all I could ask for. I don’t remember where I saw the following Mary Jane Iron quote, but it comes pretty close to my take on “normal”:

Normal day, let me be aware of the treasure You are…. Let me not pass you by  in quest of some rare and perfect tomorrow. One day I shall dig my nails into the earth, or bury my face in my pillow, or stretch myself taut, or raise my hands to the sky and want, more than all the world, Your return.

Joni Eareckson Tada – A Place Of Healing Chapter 2 – God and Healing: What’s The Real Question?

Joni Eareckson Tada – A Place Of Healing Chapter 2

Joni Eareckson Tada"s A Place of Healing Ch 1

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Joni Eareckson Tada’s A Place of Healing Ch 1 –Report From The Front Lines

If God sends us on strong paths, we are provided strong shoes. – Corrie ten Boom

This is no time to write a book.

But I have to try.

It won’t be easy. It may not be wise. Nevertheless, if you are reading these words, it has been accomplished, and the book has been published. God be thanked!

So mark it here. I am taking on a task that in–the–no book writers wouldn’t attempt, and setting myself to complete an assignment that military historians would never dream of undertaking. I am writing in the midst of my experience, in the violence of a firefight, in the crush of circumstances, and in the vice grip of unrelenting pain. I am recording my combat- zone observations before the smoke is cleared, before the shells have stopped falling, before the guns have gone silent, before the long grass and wildflowers have grown over the scars of war.

And I am writing with greater urgency. My life is changing, and I want to speak to these issues of suffering in the believer’s life – and yes, to God’s undeniable healing power – while I still can. Incessant pain, as those who lived in its grip can attest, makes it very difficult to think, work, relate, plan, write, and – as I recently discovered – take on a public–speaking opportunity.

Not long ago I was invited to speak to a class at Biola University here in Los Angeles, California. I’d been asked to address Dr. Kathy McReynold’s class on “A Theology of Suffering and Disability,” a course designed by Biola and our Christian Institute on Disability here at the Joni and Friends international Disability Center. Dr. McReynolds had asked me to come and lecture her 65 students on how God redeems suffering. And some of those students, she had told me, had deeper questions than that.

The class met in one of those classrooms in the older part of campus that has no windows – and precious little ventilation. The professor had placed a fan near one of the doors, which I appreciated. Still, without windows and on a warm day in Southern California, the room immediately seemed hot and close

Joni Eareckson Tada’s A Place of Healing Ch 1 –Report From The Front Lines

 

 

Joni Eareckson Tada"s A Place of Healing Ch 1