Reframing Interviews: Pastor Chuck Swindoll and Joni Eareckson Tada

insight for living special needs ministry has an incredible surprise for you this month as we air our July interview for any of you who may be suffering or challenged with something you did not expect the person to hear from is Johnny Erickson tada Stonebriar Community Church was very excited to have Johnny Erickson tada as our speaker for women's retreat and then she's stayed to do an interview with my dad Sunday morning this month we chose to air that interview because it is incredibly encouraging to all of you whether you are suffering on the end of suffering disabled or abled whatever it is God has a plan to use you and this interview will be an encouragement to you what a warm welcome and I can't think of any place that I would rather be than oh my goodness you guys sing such great Kim's I love it they're all my favorites this morning they're in the book yeah oh it's Johnny you've been with our ladies for hours and now you're here it was a great time and over at Fort Worth oh my goodness hands down slam dunk off the charts over the top fun we had such fun and the girls at the women's retreat treated me so royally me and all my girlfriends who were with me it was great and that great you know you have no idea what admiration all of us feel for you and have for you and have had for years but we also know being realists that all of this beauty out of brokenness didn't happen in a few days or a few years help us without all the details help us see the picture of how you move from the brokenness and the confusion and had to be the anger and the despair to who we see today how did you get here oh well there are there were many change points along the way but I'm thinking this morning of one particular incident which occurred when I was in the hospital doctors had just told me I would never use my hands or walk comb my hair brush my teeth pour a glass of orange juice I was devastated you were 17 and I at night would wrench my head back and forth on the pillow hoping to break it up at some higher level and so to end my misery that way I knew all the Bible verses you know James chapter one welcomed this trial it's a friend Romans chapter five rejoice and suffering and all Philippians chapter one that's been given to you to not only believe in Jesus but just suffer for his sake all of that oh that worked well when I didn't have a date on Friday night or I had to sweat out 25 laps on a hockey field but this was different yeah and one night I was so despairing I was in a five bed ward my or six six bed wards my five roommates were asleep nurses were on break it was late at night it was dark and I turned my head on the pillow and I see in the doorframe this figure it scared me I almost screamed out for the nurse and then this figure silhouetted gets down on its hands and knees and starts quietly crawling in to the ward and start started coming over toward my corner of the room toward my bed I nearly panicked but when this person got right eye level with me peering at me between the guardrail of my hospital bed I saw that it was my high school girlfriend Jackie this was the girlfriend with whom I shared milkshakes boyfriends hockey sticks and I said Jackie if they catch you here they're gonna kick you out of here I join Shh and she very quietly with a clonk clonk lowered the guard rail to my hospital bed and back then as high school girls will do in pajama sleepovers she snuggled into that hospital bed gotten right up against me put her head close to my on the pillow and she began singing softly into my ear so as to not awake my roommates what a savior and I wish to this day I could describe what happened but something changed she made Jesus so real and maybe there were others who tried to give me biblical truth by oh I don't know as it were slapping a pint of blood on a counter and saying here try this in just this small of us memorize this Bible verse come to this Bible study you'll feel better but I don't think when people are hurting that's what God calls other Christians to do he he calls them to show the kind of compassion that Jackie did you you know what the word compassion means you're the pastor come with pass passion suffering right do I got it absolutely with suffering and joy I think I'm gonna correct Johnnie Erickson tada whatever and Jackie was with me in my suffering oh she didn't give me a lot of words she just gave me the word no Jesus and that that was a real change point in my life there were many but that was truly memorable as you began to go through this realizing I'm gonna be here I'm not getting up and the realization of all of that what was it that broke broke you free from bitterness I'm gonna say the word bitterness you sometimes see cynicism and bitterness and and when you see the movies about those who are disabled and and you often see that mainly as the theme that you you had to have moments with that but that seems to have faded away how did it well when I was in high school and on my feet I had come to Christ through young life yes and that's when they gave you those old JB Phillips translations of the Bible yes and one of the things that I had memorized in campaigners club was from Romans chapter scuse me Hebrews chapter 12 where it speaks of bitterness as a poisonous root yeah I hated that word and when I was in the hospital that word would often ring in my ear and I just didn't want a root that was poisonous gripping my heart and poisoning the lives of everybody else around me and it was that recognition that God's Word is true oh my goodness Johnny believe it step into it push aside the Kleenex and grit your teeth and take a step of faith and embrace what God has for you you you really had some rooted events in your life prior to the dive into the end of the bait oh I did and and many of those events were centered around singing hymns and I'm not kidding we saw all my favorites this morning oh yes all the way my Saviour needs me Cheers each winding path I tread gives me grace for every trial feeds me on the Living bread when my weary steps may falter and my soul athirst may be gushing from the rock before me Lois spring of joy I see I used to sing those songs with my high school friends my buddies from high school choir I was still going through depression I was out of the hospital but still many my friends were getting married some we're going off to college I felt my life was stuck well a few of those friends Jackie one of them came over the house one Friday night late at night and they threw me into the front seat of their Camaro and this was in the days before seatbelts and shoulder harnesses oh my goodness hello my parents really took a risk letting me go out with them but we zoom down I state interstate 72 downtown more to the old Pennsylvania railway station on North Avenue beautiful big building with high marble vaulted ceilings and huge marble columns and 11 o'clock at night it was the perfect place to sing and there was nobody around but maybe a few sailors waiting for a train and a janitor pushing a mop and and and and and we kind of clustered together and we started singing man I've saw a rose and I chipped in with harmony and we had some Altos and some tenors and all of a sudden this officious looking guy comes up to us and says you kids get out of here it's too late at night see that sign it says no loitering and if you looked at me in my wheelchair and said and you honey you put that wheelchair back where you found it right now I said sir I can't it's mine don't you give me any lip you put that thing right back where you found it right now and get out of here but sir it's my wheelchair well by that time he recognized that it was indeed my wheelchair he was so embarrassed but my friends thought this was so hilarious all the way back home they laughed and giggled and that night as two of my friends Jackie one of them was putting me into bed they both stood over me one holding my hand and said Johnny I just want you to know how proud we were of you tonight that was the first time I ever heard you call it my wheelchair thank you for owning your weakness thank you for owning it that speaks volumes to me Wow I from then on out realized that my weakness was not something to mitigate or sweep under the carpet or hide from others or be embarrassed about or failed to admit my weakness was something to own and indeed the Bible says to boast in because when we are weak then he is strong and that's been the theme of my life since speaking of wheelchairs your ministry Johnny friends has a marvelous ministry that some may not know about related to your chair and others that's right Johnny and Friends oh my goodness we deliver wheelchairs all around the world we've just delivered over 100,000 and we hope to deliver another hundred thousand by the year 2020 I'll never forget delivering wheelchairs once in Africa with our wheels for the world team run by Johnny and Friends and there was this paralyzed man who came crawling into the wheelchair distribution he was wearing his flip-flops on his hands and he was kind of like dragging his body behind him his legs were dangling they were paralyzed and when he saw me he recognized me and leaned back on his haunches and spread his arms wide and said Oh Johnny welcome to our country where God is so much bigger and he's bigger because we need him more and that's what Johnny and Friends is all about it's helping special needs families recognize how big God is and not to be ashamed of their weaknesses but to delight in them and so with the support of Stonebriar Community Church we run one of the best family retreats out at Camp Allen every summer in fact I want to thank Megan wall who does a remarkable job as well as our Area Director for Johnny and Friends Eric Jones are you guys here Megan and Aaron I stand up Eric stand up Eric there you are where are you I'm Megan there Megan yeah and if any of our friends here this morning want to come and serve as what we call short-term missionaries volunteering pushing the wheelchair wiping the drool playing activities getting into a swimming pool with a kid with cerebral palsy this is the place for you this summer and our family retreat it'll be great fun mm-hmm you go all over you travel you fly you drive you're involved in so many lives and yet you're in this chair you get tired and when you do what do you do I get tired all the time there's not a morning wake-up Christian honor in fact my girlfriends who got me up here this morning where are you girls right there they will attest to it we had to pray over me this morning didn't we they look tired right now they put on a good lipstick thank you all that my husband does not oh it's so funny when he puts on my lipstick he extends his arm like that with this triple lipstick and then I have to come up to the tuba lipstick like I'm American flight 479 carded GSW then I kind of lock with the gate and go that's good what did I tell that stuff cuz you're half crazy you know but yes I get weary and I tell you what helps a sense of humor oh don't ever lose that absolutely and also singing hymns yeah see there they would the reason is Johnny obviously the reason is we don't expect people in a wheelchair to sing or to have a great sense of humor or to have that focus so fixed hmm and that's you that's why we love you and you become for us a an incredible model not a perfection you won't let us think that but of authenticity that is one of your major gifts stay authentic you pick that up somehow well it happens every moment doesn't it I mean just this morning when we were singing tears welled in my eyes as I was sitting over there singing that wonderful line when my spirit clothed the immortal wings its flight to realms of day this my song through endless ages Jesus led me all the way this my song through endless ages Jesus led me all the way and that line right there when my spirit fled the mortal oh my goodness that's gonna happen I mean it really is gonna happen right around the corner just over the horizon not but a few years from now I don't want to waste my suffering hmm yes I get tired indeed I get bored I get very weary and chronic pain makes quadriplegia look like a cinch dealing with chronic pain every day is so difficult yeah but I don't want to smear the good name of my God with a complaining spirit Philippians chapter 2 verse 14 says do everything without grumbling I mean that amazing my teenagers cut that out of my Bible they didn't want anybody to see that bird well I have to think about it everyday of course everything it was a great word in that song Jesus led me all the way yeah all of it all of it and the whole package exactly and I don't want to waste my sufferings I I want to do the kinds of things down here on earth and live in the kind of way that expands my eternal estate not diminishes it or shrinks it or shrivels it because of a complaining spirit know when I enter heaven when I pull vault over the pearly gates I want to have such a huge capacity for joy and service and worship in heaven and and my sufferings are accruing that for me and not awesome I mean you're fabulous you know more about that than I do you're the pastor no no I don't know more about that did you do know now you've gotten married without even talking to us in the--in me about it you just you just jump right out there and got married absolutely no there's got to be a story in that oh yeah which interests everybody here we all love a romantic story I only have eyes for you dear I know a lot of other songs beside him can stand up here's the man married to Johnny areas my club spent such a wonderful guy that a halo I see over his head close close thirty-three years we've been married you're familiar with that head oh yeah well let me tell you why I'm familiar with it the way I met Ken was really rather strange some of you perhaps know this story but it was a long time ago I was in my early 30s ken was in his late 30s I was sitting in church a big church like this one Sunday morning our pastor was away and so we had a guest speaker the sermon was boring and so I'm sitting there they're they're familiar with it okay just go right on with the story and it was the Lord's Day it was Sunday I did not want to sit there and dream about what I was gonna have for lunch or think about the work on my desk for Monday morning oh it was the Sabbath and so I felt led to pray for the back of this man's head who was sitting maybe four or five pews in front of me now I didn't see his face couldn't tell if it was handsome didn't see a wedding ring but I started praying for him oh my goodness for the balance of that sermon I prayed all kinds of things for this guy and at the benediction I almost wheeled up to him to kind of you know guess what I did for you but I thought that would look very pushy and so I let it drop it was one of those secret closet things between me and God but then we were introduced through mutual friends about a month or late month or so later and the first thing I said to this man ken taught him was I met him when I met him was turn around let me see the back I couldn't believe I said I know you I prayed for you and that sparked a great conversation I fell in love with the way he could easily deal with my disability and I loved the fact that he loved Jesus oh my goodness my husband he is the scripture memorizer Wow the whole Sermon on the Mount Matthew five six and seven he keep challenging me to to join him and - oh can I tell you a funny story lighten up on her Ken she's got a lot on her mind okay so every time we're in the van right Ken's gotta memorize his verses and so he's always reciting them oh I love it I know so we get into the van no matter where we're going and we're going down the freeway and he'll start off saying and when he was up on the mountainside the crown's came to him and he sat down and it just cycles came to him and it began teaching them saying blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven bla bla bla I almost know the whole chapter because I've listened to him so much you're referring to Jesus words as bla bla bla right you can do that I don't get away with that but you can do it yikes so one day I was in the living room with Ken there was a knock at the door it was some Jehovah's Witnesses and I kind of pulled back my wheelchair I'm thinking oh Ken don't get talking to him but he gets engaged in conversation oh yeah and so they're debating back and forth finally they give him a question that really stumps him and I see him out there and he says well you may think that way but did you know that when you saw the crowds he went up on the mountainside and sat down the disciples came to me begun teaching their birds upon their picnic then a jet blast of Scripture pushed these guys down our sidewalk and down the street never to be seen anymore there you go there's ten screw up now you guys have must have had some fun moments I know all life hasn't been that serious because I know you that well you must have had some great time oh you threw your arm back get with it here well it when I think of a particularly fun moment it was when we were visiting my mother down in Ocean City Maryland at her condominium yep we were walking the boardwalk one evening and there are little hotels along the boardwalk and there was one hotel and we could hear piano music beautiful piano music coming out of the lobby and oh my goodness we went in to listen and there were couples many couples dancing on this little wooden dance floor and they were playing our favorite song are the stars out tonight I don't know if it's cloudy or bright but I only have eyes for you dear and I said Ken let's dance and so we got out on them on the dance floor and we are wheeling this way in that and we scared we scared everybody off the dance floor I think they were afraid their toes might get run over but what was so cute is that we kept dancing I don't know how Ken kept up with me we kept dancing and as we danced we're the only ones on the dance floor and all the other couples are lining the floor with their arms folded tissues out crying their eyes out they they ruin they think this is such a sweet scene but were having such fun and I did not roll over his toes you have managed to walk this journey 47 years am i right my math you have shared the story you have lived the life and yet Christianity in fact Jesus himself is so real and he's not gotten to be a cliche I've not heard one cliche ever from you you you're not cynical but as a professional and I mean that in the right sense you present Christ in the most winsome way how do you keep from it turning you especially with so many around you preaching that you ought to be healed and if you really walk with God you'd be up on your feet and I'm sure you hear that I've read your books I know what people say to you how do you guard against becoming a Christian professional who spouts out words without really meaning them oh my goodness I think that's why God has given me such a severe disability it is a blessing but it's a bruising of a blessing it's a friend but it's such a dark strange friend and when others are doing your toileting routines and you have to instruct new women every other month on how to come into your bedroom and give you a bed bath and put up your support hose and strap on your corset and slip on your slacks and put you in a wheelchair and irrigate your catheter and clean up your backside and all these things are so humiliating but often out of humiliation comes humility if you allow humiliation to do its work humiliation usually happens when some Idol in our lives gets knocked off its shelf and shatters to the floor and in my case it probably is pride every time I might feel a little prideful or I start running mental movies of my successes God with a flick of the finger cast off the idol crashes to the floor and I have an accident in my pants and it's humiliating but I know almost with a with a wry smile I know what God is doing Jesus you are so incredibly wise thank you for the humiliation because I want to be humbled before you and make the most of the moment not for my glory but for yours it's just another reason why we all can boast an air affliction because our weakness is humiliating us at times we end up looking foolish but then first Corinthians chapter 1 tells us that it is the foolish things of this world that God has chosen to shame the wise and so make the best of it and boast in the Lord in it and that humiliation will keep you pretty humble how's that for an answer this is I got many others but I'm gonna stop at this one we have folks sitting among us who don't have the joy you have and they longed to have it they've not broken through that membrane of cynicism confusion and there are some who ministered to those who were disabled that are running out of want to that makes sense doesn't it talk to them if I could I wish it were just you and I in the room and I would sidle my wheelchair up real close to you and lock my brakes and lean over against your shoulder and I would whisper in your ear Man of Sorrows what a name for the Son of God who came for you for me and for you we all suffer in this world it is a broken diseased and damaged world and we are all broken and diseased and damaged but why wallow in regrets why wallow in self-pity why sitting in the corner and feel sorry for yourself or why ask God with a clenched fist why not start asking him why with a searching heart and let him speak to your heart this man of God this son of God this Jesus who understands suffering he wrote the book on it oh my goodness when they hang you on a cross like meat on a hook you you understand suffering you get it you resonate with it you know all about it and you know best how to heal it and move the soul beyond the bitterness to joy God shares his joy on his terms and I don't know why but for some reason those terms call for us to some measures suffer as his own son suffered when he walked here on earth but when you grab hold of Jesus and embrace him and lay all your weakness and pride and sin at the foot of the cross oh my he gives you joy that is so profound so deep so rock-solid he gives you peace that is unshakable he gives you for Besant delight that blends the walls of heaven comes rushing into your heart and streaming out to others and rivers of encouragement and then rising back up to God and the static fountains of praise that's the way to live but you can only live that way when you walk through the suffering and embrace Jesus who knows all about it and I can't wait for that day Chuck oh my goodness I can't wait for that day when he's gonna lift the curtain on suffering and sin and Satan and he is going to give us brand-new glorified bodies and a CS Lewis says at first we shall burn with a brilliant newness of being glorified but all that in the next moment all the pains of Earth will feel like a half forgotten dream and I do hope that I can take my wheelchair to heaven with me I know that's not theologically correct but if I could I would put it right there and I'd be standing in my new glorified body right here and I'd be holding the hand of Jesus and I would feel those nail prints in his palm and I will say thank you and I know he'll know I mean it because he will have recognized me as the woman who came to him every single morning hemorrhaging human strength I need you Jesus desperately and I will say to him Jesus you were so right when you said that in this world we would have trouble that thing was a lot of trouble but the weaker I was on that thing the harder I leaned on you and and the harder I leaned on you that's stronger I discovered you to be and I'm just so grateful that you gave me the privilege of knowing you it's not only my Man of Sorrows but the Lord of joy Rock of Gibraltar real joy thank you Jesus and now if you want you can send that thing to hell get it out of here no more night no more pain no more tears oh boy I'm no David Phelps but don't you love that song never crying again it's beautiful I'd rather hear you sing well I know a song we could sing remember this tell the story oh we were at NRB and and johnny was there sitting at the end of the platform table and I was there and of all things it asked me to speak and they had Johnny there and light turned down to her and they were greeting her and instead of saying much she just chose to sing one of my favorite moments told Cynthia about it many times and she broke into my like whatever my my men let's hear you sing ladies you always minister to others today we want to minister to you we brought our best voices to do that and they're going to sing to you if you can keep from dancing we'd like you to listen to this wonderful message we'll put the words on the screen so you won't miss them and we mean these with our whole heart a little of each other thank you I'm sorry but you're gonna have to wipe my nose it's another one of those humiliation moments nothing worse than getting snot all over your husband's fingers that's a great closing line for today oh my goodness Chuck I cannot begin to thank you for everything just your faithfulness and preaching the gospel gift ministry here at Stonebriar the support this church shows Johnny and Friends our partnership and the gospel together this is this is greatness absolutely that's great absolutely there and thank you for all you mean to millions and millions of people since we're all disabled yes we are god bless you friends and thank you for welcoming us so long and now to him who is able to guard us from stumbling and to present us faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding great joy to the only wise God Our Saviour be glory and Majesty Dominion and power this day and forevermore and evermore and evermore and evermore and all of his people said amen you

Channel: Pastor Chuck Swindoll | Insight for Living

Views: 67,561

Rating: 4.8893127 out of 5

Keywords: Joni Eareckson Tada, joniandfriends, reframing ministries, pastorchuckswindoll, ifl, insight, for, living, chuck, swindoll, colleen, joni, eareckson, tada, reframing, ministries, church, interviews, special, needs

Id: 8CGdWg7hWT4

Length: 44min 7sec (2647 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 17 2015