7 minute read
Meet Our Team
from Fall 2021
The Best Way to Pray
Joni Eareckson Tada Anita Carman
The flu season is upon us once again, and with it, the specter of strange new forms of COVID-19. As a quadriplegic with fragile lungs, I’m always asking friends to pray for me, plus I’m jumping on an early regimen of meds and supplements.
I flourish on prayer, not simply prayer for my physical well-being. I am always asking friends to follow my 20%/80% way of lifting needs before the Lord, 20% for physical needs, and 80% for spiritual needs: increased faith, fresh courage, an embrace of Jesus’ promises, bright spirits, a singing heart, enlarged hope, patience, and greater concern for others in need. I want to be always thinking on things that are pure, noble, right, just, praiseworthy, and true.
It’s the way I live. Sure, I could ask people to lift up my physical needs: prayerfully bolstering my strength, mobilizing amino acids, proteins, white blood cells, keeping my oxygen levels up, and so on. These are good and specific requests about physical health. But God knows far more about quadriplegia than my friends or I do: “your Father knows what you need even before you ask him” (Matt. 6:8). The way I see it, God can do miracles with our 20% prayer focus on physical needs.
It’s that 80% part that’s critical. In the middle of the night when I feel congestion rising, I need peace of heart, patience, and confidence in God’s promises. When I become weary and overwhelmed from lack of sleep, I need perseverance. When my thoughts turn dark and morbid, I need fresh courage, bright hope, and mental focus to remember, “Come on, Joni, God will never leave you nor forsake you. His strength is made perfect in your weakness.” These virtues are just as important for physical health, for I know that “a broken spirit saps a person’s strength” (Prov. 17:22, NLT).
I take Proverbs 17:22 quite literally: “A cheerful heart is good medicine.” I follow the Holy Spirit’s prescription in Phil. 4:8, “Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise.” Whether I listen to audio pages of Christian classics, or watch Bible study videos on YouTube, I keep feeding my spirit and starving the sinful nature that chooses fear and anxiety. There’s one more thing for which I ask my friends to pray. Should I become ill this fall, and should I need to go to the hospital, the pharmacy, or to doctor appointments, I want to remember others. It’s what followers of Jesus are called to do, focus on others. Sickness or disability does not give us time off from the call of Phil. 2:4 to not “look out only for your own interests, but take an interest in others, too.” Ken and I take an ample supply of gospel tracts wherever we go—blessing doctors and nurses in the name of Jesus, stopping to pray for them, and speaking words of Spirit-blessed encouragement.
It’s what we should do when our health goes south. We show the world that Christ is our treasure, no matter how life threatening our condition. Psalm 84:11 (ESV) is a great elixir for any ill, assuring us that “No good thing does he withhold from those who walk uprightly.” There is nothing sweeter than being bolstered with good courage, good endurance, and confidence in our good and great Savior.
Consider using the 20%/80% matrix in your prayer life. It’s a good way—perhaps the best way—to strengthen your heart, your soul, your faith, and your physical well-being this fall.
Joni Eareckson Tada is an esteemed Christian author, artist, and a respected global leader in disability ministry and advocacy. Although a 1967 diving accident left her a quadriplegic, she emerged from rehabilitation with a determination to help others with similar disabilities. Joni serves as CEO of Joni and Friends, a Christian organization which promotes support services for thousands of special-needs families around the world. She and her husband, Ken, live in Calabasas, Calif. joniandfriends.org % response@joniandfriends.org
COVID-19 Didn’t Stop God
In the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, my son was working in Japan. When he inquired about employment back in our city, he received the consistent feedback from headhunters that
COVID-19 had adversely impacted companies who were reducing staff or freezing employment.
When my husband was diagnosed with prostate cancer and undergoing radiation treatment, I felt the panic knowing it wasn’t easy for my son to visit. I recycled all the “What ifs” of life to my detriment, until
God reminded me to live in the “Even ifs” of life. I had to trust that His grace would be there for us when we needed it.
I was reminded of Ps. 16:7 where King David said, “I will praise the LORD, who counsels me, even at night my heart instructs me.” Instead of indulging self-talk filled with doomsday forecasts, the counsel of the
Lord will serve as instruction to our hearts. And His counsel is always given from a place of confidence and authority.
As I reflected on my own journey with God, I was reminded of how He led me when the odds were against me as a child growing up in Hong Kong.
When my parents attempted to emigrate to America, we were told there were ten thousand in line ahead of us and that it would take seven years before even getting an interview. In spite of the odds being against us, we persevered.
When I received my visa to America, I remembered thinking, God must want me in America. I did not know then that God’s plan for me was to one day become the Founder and President of Inspire Women in Houston, Texas. For that to happen, I had to first relocate to America.
When God grants our dream it is more than getting what we asked for. We step into a plan He has already designed for us. He doesn’t bend to our plans, but walks us into His. I pray for my son to experience this in his personal walk as well.
Although my son grew up witnessing God part the waters for the ministry, he had not been in a situation that impacted him so personally. He was asking God to defy the odds and all reasonable probability to make a way for him to return home. I said to my son, “When God comes through for you, please don’t go around saying you were lucky, but remember to give God the credit.” Meanwhile, I rallied prayer partners and felt the power of prayer being lifted up as a chorus to the heavenlies. Then the miraculous happened. My son called to say, “Something unexpected has happened. The president of the company in Houston asked to hire someone for the Houston office. My name was offered as someone already working in the company in Japan, who had expressed a desire to return home to Houston.” Defying the pace at which the company normally processed changes, my son experienced an onslaught of interviews one after the other until he received his employment offer letter. I could hear in his voice a sense of awe combined with peace in knowing God had confirmed his time in Japan was coming to an end. He was coming home! As I count the days to his return, my heart rejoices in the God who has walked with me through many seasons in my life. He instructs us with His voice and reminds me that when there is a mountain in His way, He will move it. He defies our own human reasoning and silences any winds that attempt to usurp His authority to predict our future.
Anita Carman arrived in America at 17, after her mother’s tragic suicide. Today, she is a walking billboard of how God transformed her pain into passion to build Inspire Women, a non-profit that unites thousands of women of all races and invests in their potential to change the world. She has an MBA from SUNY and an MABS from Dallas Theological Seminary. Anita has authored several books and lives in Houston, Tex., with her husband. She has two grown sons. Visit her at inspirewomen.org
