Up until that illness I inhaled and exhaled with hardly a thought. Breathe in, breathe out. Who even thinks about it? But in the hospital I discovered that, whether we realize it or not, we truly live our lives moment by moment, breath by breath.
We breathe in so naturally; it’s a given. But I have learned that it’s more than a given. It’s a gift! Oxygen is the life and breath of our body.
I have to admit, this take-something-precious-for-granted sort-of thing is often the way I relate to Jesus, our true life and breath. Because we live, move, and have our being in Him, as it says in Acts 17:28, it’s all too easy to take His life-sustaining grace for granted. Every day we breathe in His love, breathe in His grace, breathe in His help.
And what do we exhale? A dull forgetfulness of His constant love toward us. The presence of God almost seems monotonous in a way; we become dead to the reality that apart from Him, we can’t do a thing (John 15:5).
People who get into this bored, distracted, shallow frame of mind cease to give God the glory He deserves. The book of Malachi contains the sad, poignant story of a time in Israel’s history when the Lord’s own priests—the very ones charged with protecting and promoting His glory—had so fallen out of love with God that they ceased to honor Him at all. Bored and cynical, they offered sick and diseased animals on His altar—the dregs of their livestock that had no worth or value to anyone. And after offering such things, they would say, “This is contemptible,” or “What a burden this is.” You can picture them yawning or looking at their watches as they took their turns in God’s holy temple. If it had been today, they would have been texting their friends or playing games on their iPhones.
God had to actually remind them that He is “a great king” and that His name is “feared among the nations” (1:14). But these supposed representatives of the Holy One of Israel had become so indifferent and casual about their relationship with Him that He had to seek His glory elsewhere.
We can’t afford to be complacent about God’s glory. The fact is that putting your Christian life on autopilot is the same thing as “walking in the flesh.” When we become unaware, when we take something so precious for granted, our prayers become tedious, witnessing becomes dry, jobs become lackluster, and relationships sag under the weight of selfishness. What’s worse, our communion with our Savior and best friend turns into a chore. The Lord Himself seems to lose vitality in our estimation; He becomes little more than a wooden icon in our hearts, a mere measuring rod for our behavior—someone who purchased our salvation once upon a time, someone in whom we believe in a general, distracted sort of way.
In short, we no longer give Him glory.
How does that happen? It happens when we neglect to inhale His life and breath through our waking hours. It happens when we take our Savior for granted. Oh, how could we take so great a salvation for granted?
Nothing is more mechanical than when we attempt to live a supernatural life apart from God. This is why the apostle tells us in Romans 6:11 to “count yourselves … alive to God in Christ Jesus.” To “count” means to take a daily inventory, to consciously consider yourself alive. I’m alive—we’re alive—to God in Christ Jesus.
Jesus is the breath of life we reach for every moment of every day. Inhale His love—no matter what your current situation or circumstances—and you can’t help but exhale gratitude and gratefulness. This is something I can do even when I am bound to my bed or trying to navigate my way through the narrow corridors of oppressive pain.
I may not be able to do a lot of things when I am suffering intense pain, but I can still breathe in His presence and exhale my thanks. I can still breathe in His grace and forgiveness and exhale my gratitude and love. I can still inhale His kindness and moment-by-moment help; I can still exhale acknowledgment that He is with me.
As I do, though sometimes no one but the angels may see, I am adding weight to His reputation and brightness to His splendor. And that makes my life infinitely worthwhile.
2. Don’t despise the discipline of the Lord.
It’s something I’ve brooded over a lot: Could this pain I’m going through be God’s way of disciplining me? It’s a tough question, and yes, I’m convinced that much of the suffering we go through is God’s way of disciplining us. Notice I didn’t say “punish.” The punishment for all my wrongdoing was taken care of by Jesus on His cross. He endured the wrath of God for my sins so that I wouldn’t have to.
Nevertheless, God loves me too much to let me wallow in my wrongdoing without some sort of consequence. That means I’ll occasionally feel the rod—ouch!—of God’s discipline. We might not like the idea, and we might even despise it. It hurts when we feel the hand of God’s reproof and correction. But Hebrews 12:7–9 has some wise counsel:
Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as sons. For what son is not disciplined by his father? If you are not disciplined (and everyone undergoes discipline), then you are illegitimate children and not true sons. Moreover, we have all had human fathers who disciplined us and we respected them for it. How much more should we submit to the Father of our spirits and live!
I often think of that passage of Scripture when I’m at my art easel. The paintings I love the most are always the ones I put through the toughest discipline. I bruise and batter the preliminary drawings with lots of erasures and corrections. I push my brushes to perform impossible strokes on the canvas. I demand a great deal from the oil paints I mix together, expecting colors that are so subtle you can’t even find them on the color wheel. Every painting I love, I put through the wringer. But these are the paintings people most admire once they’re framed and displayed on the wall in the lobby of Joni and Friends.
Not all suffering is God’s discipline, and if you’re like me, you tend to cringe at the idea of God correcting or reproving you. But I’ve got some great advice; or, I should say, God has. It’s “that word of encouragement that addresses you as sons: ‘My son, do not make light of the Lord’s discipline, and do not lose heart when he rebukes you, because the Lord disciplines those he loves’” (Heb. 12:5–6).
First, don’t do the extreme of making light of your hardship, thinking that it’s just a small matter that you can handle by yourself and that you don’t need any help, especially God’s. Don’t be a stoic. Or a martyr. It will only make matters worse. Rather, ask God to show you how you can work together with His Spirit to fulfill His purpose in your life.
On the other extreme, don’t lose heart—don’t emotionally crumble or cave in, thinking that God’s out to get you or that He has a short fuse and will stay angry forever. God is not out to get you. He’s not a killjoy, holding out on your healing until you shape up and start living right. He’s not a big ogre, twisting your arm with more suffering until you cry “uncle!” Ask God to remove any tinge of unhealthy fear you may harbor toward Him and His discipline.
So back to my original question: Is my pain God’s way of disciplining me? All I can say is the love of God is only after what is pure and praiseworthy in my life. And when it comes to His discipline, He only has my best interest at heart: that the image of Jesus would beautifully and radiantly shine in my character—in yours, too. So if the pain and discomfort of your difficult circumstances persist, don’t take it lightly. But more importantly, don’t lose heart. God’s up to something pretty special in your life!
3. Stay supercharged.
Not long ago my fellow passengers and I were forced to change planes. Since there was no accessible bus transport to take us to the other side of the terminal, I had to wheel all the way around to the other side of the airport. By the time I got to the gate, my wheelchair batteries were nearly dead. (And it didn’t help that I had forgotten to charge them the night before.)
Believe me, that taught me a lesson: Always keep those batteries powered up!
It’s a lesson that goes much deeper than power wheelchairs. Just as my
DieHard batteries have to have full power to take me through the day, I have to live the same way as a Christian. I simply can’t approach the day with a ho-hum attitude thinking I need only so much of God’s power to make it through. The Lord wants me—wants you—to remain fully charged.
“Don’t burn out; keep yourselves fueled and aflame. Be alert servants of the Master, cheerfully expectant. Don’t quit in hard times; pray all the harder” (Rom. 12:11–12 MSG).
Another translation reads: “Let us not allow slackness to spoil our work and let us keep the fires of the spirit burning, as we do our work for the LORD.”2
In other words, don’t let your fuel burn down. Don’t let your light be shaded or covered over. Don’t allow your batteries to be drained.
We see an example of this attitude in Acts 6. The church needed some deacons who would serve tables and distribute food. So they chose seven men, and Stephen was one of them. Now Stephen, in that chapter, is described as a man “full of faith and the Holy Spirit.” A couple verses further on, he is described as a man “full of God’s grace and power.”
In other words, Stephen’s spiritual fuel tank was on “full.” The batteries of his soul were charged to the max. But why? You wouldn’t think a young man who only served tables and distributed food would really need to be supercharged with God’s power. The last time I checked, waiting on tables and handing out food parcels to the widows isn’t rocket science. These are everyday, ordinary sorts of tasks, right?
But Stephen—bless his heart and thank God for his example—didn’t dare go into the day without keeping in step with the Spirit, without feeding on the Word and filling up in prayer. The result? This man was no average deacon. Because God’s power overflowed in his life, his behind-the-scenes service resulted in the chance to revolutionize the church. His witness was so irresistibly powerful that the Jewish leaders could find no way to oppose him. They had to talk others into lying about him, which led to his arrest—which led to one of the boldest, most powerful messages in the entire Bible.
Don’t allow the enemy of your soul to convince you that your tasks today are ho-hum and ordinary, nothing special, nothing extraordinary. Keep your batteries charged and you can’t help but have a powerful influence on others. Fully charged, like Stephen, you will be anything but average.
And you will bring God glory.
4. Keep a humble heart.
Don’t you love the way God finds ways to keep us humble and dependent upon Him?
I can’t say that I always appreciate the process, but I do value the results! You know what I’m talking about here: You’re going along fine, looking good, coming across okay, got your act together, and then—bam!—circumstances knock the props out from under you, and you fall flat on your face. It happened to me (yet again) not long ago.
I was getting ready for a speaking engagement at a prestigious conference. It was one of those exclusive kinds of things, and I knew there would be a lot of corporate executives there—trustees from various foundations and colleges, and presidents of universities. I had worked extra hard on my message, trying to get things “just right.” I not only went out and bought myself a new outfit to wear, but I asked my girlfriend to clean and polish my wheelchair. I wanted this presentation to be perfect.
Three days before I was to leave for the conference, however, something occurred that has never happened before. I was wheeling outside and began to feel a thump-thump-thump-thump. I looked down over my shoulder, and much to my horror, the tire of my wheelchair had split apart. All the foam that was inside was beginning to bulge and spill out like a big, ugly growth on the side of my tire. It looked awful—and I knew if I didn’t do something fast, I’d soon be riding on the rims of my wheels.
When I showed the problem to Ken, he immediately went after his beloved roll of silver duct tape. I looked at him in disbelief. “Duct tape? You’re going to fix my tire with duct tape?” He explained that until we could get a new tire, it was our only option. So he proceeded to tightly wrap my tire in layer after layer of duct tape (seemingly enjoying himself)—round and round my wheel it went until the bulge was contained.
“Okay,” Ken said. “Try wheeling on it.”
I slowly powered my wheelchair forward. It was still going thump-thump-thump-thump, but at least this time the rim was safe. But it looked absolutely tacky. When my girlfriend saw it, she said, “Hmmm. Well, Joni, think of it as, um … tire jewelry.”
I have to confess that my first thought was, Oh, no. I can’t believe I’ve got to go to the conference looking like this—like I’ve got a gross tumor on my tire!
But no sooner did that unworthy thought cross my mind than I realized that this was simply God’s way of keeping me humble. Maybe for other people He allows a coffee stain on their shirt, spinach between their front teeth, or dandruff all over their black sweater. For me, it was a lumpy, uncool, immediately visible duct-tape bandage on my wheelchair tire.
It’s amazing how a silly thing like that can reveal how self-focused you have been. But the Lord was gracious to me in spite of my vanity. Ken was able to make a couple of quick calls, and I got a new tire before heading off to the conference. Was I relieved! But once there, I was ever mindful of Deuteronomy 8:16: “He … [humbled and tested] you so that in the end it might go well with you.”
The simple fact is that I can’t be about glorifying myself—adding weight and luster to my own name and reputation—and the Lord at the same time. In Isaiah 42:8 He tells us, “I am the LORD; that is my name! I will not give my glory to another.”
So if He allows humbling circumstances in my life, I know He does so for good reason. With Peter, I will humble myself under God’s mighty hand, that He may lift me up in due time.3
5. Maintain a childlike wonder about life.
I recently spent the afternoon with a friend who has an eighteen-month-old little boy. Benjamin is a blue-eyed, towheaded, precocious, all-boy kind of child. He loves balls and blocks. But most of all, he loves life.
He knows several words, but the phrase that most often tumbles out is, “Oh, wow!”
Show him a new squeaky toy, and it’s, “Oh, wow!” Or take him for a short stroll down the sidewalk only to discover a caterpillar and, again, it’s another, “Oh, wow!” Everything is, “Oh, wow!” For Benjamin, all of life is new, exciting, and awe-inspiring—like a birthday present just out of its wrappings. Wonders wait around every corner. Objects and animals, grass and sky, other children, and even visitors in wheelchairs amaze and delight him. He seems to gulp down life with extreme gusto!
As I watched Ben’s unfettered enthusiasm over seeing ducks, balls, and bugs on the sidewalk, I thought how great it would be if we could maintain the same, “Oh, wow!” attitude about who God is and what He’s done.
David, perhaps still a young man out in the Judean wilderness with his father’s sheep, gazed up into the Milky Way at night and wrote these words:
When I look up into the night skies and see the work of your fingers—the moon and the stars you have made—I cannot understand how you can bother with mere puny man, to pay any attention to him! (Ps. 8:3–4 TLB)
And again:
The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
Day after day they pour forth speech;
night after night they display knowledge.
There is no speech or language
where their voice is not heard. (Ps. 19:1–3)
I’m not sure what the ancient Hebrew equivalent of, “Oh, wow!” might be, but I have to believe David breathed those words, lost in the wonder of his God’s majestic handiwork.
Surely the apostle Paul had such a moment when he wrote in his letter to the Romans: “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” Then he answers his own question by saying, “Thanks be to God…. T
here is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”4
In other words, “Oh, wow!”
A little bit later in Romans, he writes: “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”5
That’s another one that has me gaping like Benjamin, thinking, This is too much to wrap my mind around! Wow, this is great!
Cultivating that kind of huge appreciation for life—the kind that seems to come so naturally to little Benjamin—and possessing that sense of wonder is really a gift. You can’t work it up, drum it up, and you certainly can’t fake it. To enjoy—really enjoy—the works of God and His character to the point where “Oh, wow!” comes only one way: The less we make of ourselves, the greater God seems. And the more we make of God, the more we get into His Word and think whatsoever thoughts are pure, honest, and praiseworthy, the more we’ll find ourselves saying, “Oh, wow!”
Cynicism will neutralize that sense of wonder in a trice; a crabby, ungrateful spirit will deny it admittance to our heart. But if we truly set ourselves to glorify our God like David, or like little Benjamin, the sheer joy of living will grow again like a shy, fragile wildflower—even in the most hostile of terrains.
6. Serve wholeheartedly.
This morning when I greeted my girlfriend who came to get me dressed and in my wheelchair, the first thing I said to her was, “Oh, boy! We get to serve Jesus today!”
Dana laughed.
But, hey, it’s the way I have to wake up, pain or no pain. I can’t be glum or sour or peevish, even if I am a little tired of paralysis, and even if I am weary of chronic pain. God’s got me alive—I’m still here!—and that means there’s a purpose for my life, a race to run, and a plan for my life. God has ordained this day for me to bring Him glory as best I can and to serve Him with joy.
A Place of Healing Page 11