Read & Study the Bible Online - Bible Portal
Joni Eareckson Tada

Joni Eareckson Tada


Joni Eareckson Tada, the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Joni and Friends, is an international advocate for people with disabilities.

A diving accident in 1967 left Joni Eareckson, then 17, a quadriplegic in a wheelchair, unable to use her hands. After two years of rehabilitation, she emerged with new skills and a fresh determination to help others in similar situations.

During her rehabilitation, Joni spent long months learning how to paint with a brush between her teeth. Her high-detail fine art paintings and prints are sought-after and collected.

Her best-selling autobiography "Joni" and the feature film of the same name have been translated into many languages, introducing her to people around the world. She also has visited more than 45 countries.

She has served on the National Council on Disability and the Disability Advisory Committee to the U.S. State Department.

She is Senior Associate for Disability Concerns for the Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization and serves in an advisory capacity to the American Leprosy Mission, the National Institute on Learning Disabilities, Love and Action and Christian Blind Mission International, as well as on the Board of Reference for the Christian Writers Guild, New Europe Communications and the Christian Medical and Dental Society.

After being the first woman honored by the National Association of Evangelicals as its "Layperson of the Year" in 1986, Joni was named "Churchwoman of the Year" in 1993 by the Religious Heritage Foundation.
... Show more
all evaluations eventually boil down to this: Am I moving toward God or away from Him? Am I turning toward God with awe and gratitude, or away from Him toward false gods of my own making?
1 likes
This is God’s universal purpose for all Christian suffering: more contentment in God and less satisfaction in the world. JOHN PIPER
1 likes
God uses chronic pain and weakness, along with other afflictions, as his chisel for sculpting our lives. Felt weakness deepens dependency on Christ for strength each day. The weaker we feel, the harder we lean. And the harder we lean, the stronger we grow spiritually, even while our bodies waste away.
1 likes
God’s hands stay on the wheel of your life from start to finish so that everything follows his intention for your life. This means your trials have more meaning—much more—than you realize.
1 likes
Poetry reaches to the realm beyond the world of sight and sound to reveal what our senses long to see and hear. It is the language not so much of the sublime, but of the truly real.
1 likes
When pain lumbers through the front door, squats down in the middle of your life, and makes itself at home day after day, year after year, it can make you choke. It can make you angry at God.
1 likes
I was learning that vulnerability and grief were love’s inevitable companions. I
1 likes
Could there be a more comforting thought than knowing you are being prayed for when your own prayers have been stretched to their breaking point?
1 likes
In the gathering and in the praying and in the breaking of bread (or crust, as it were), the common elements were transubstantiated into a holy experience, as holy as any ancient cathedral or Communion because they were offered, not in the absence of suffering, but right in the midst of it.
1 likes
We have learned that when everything else is gone, hope remains. Perhaps
1 likes
To be alive is to be broken. And to be broken is to stand in need of grace. Honesty keeps us in touch with our neediness and the truth that we are saved sinners. There is a beautiful transparency to honest disciples who never wear a false face and do not pretend to be anything but who they are. Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel
1 likes
Cancer is a gift. There, I said it. I can say that cancer and suffering give the beautiful gift of perspective. It is the gift you never wanted, the gift wrapped in confusion and brokenness and heartbreak. It’s the gift that strips all your other ideas of living from you completely. The beautiful, ugly raising to the surface of the importance of each and every moment.
1 likes
Waiting is not a waste. The second truth has become a personal favorite of mine over the last ten years because waiting for anything feels like a complete waste of time. Waiting for God to move or answer seems even worse. Lamentations 3:25–27 shows us the value of living in the space between suffering and restoration. Lament serves us well as we mourn and wait.
0 likes
Emotion links our internal and external worlds. To be aware of what we feel can open us to questions we would rather ignore. For many of us, that is precisely why it is easier not to feel. But a failure to feel leaves us barren and distant from God and others.
topics: emotions  
0 likes
What we do for the Lord is entirely dependent upon what we are in the Lord. Further, what we are in the Lord wholly depends upon what we receive from the Lord. And what we receive from the Lord is directly proportional to the time we spend alone with the Lord in prayer.
0 likes
The psalms are given to us as a divine pedagogy for our affections—God’s way of reshaping our desires and perceptions so that they learn to lament in the right things and take joy in the right things.
0 likes
It is in the dark struggles with God that we are surprised by His response to our anger and fear. What we receive from Him during our difficult battle is not what we expect. We assume He wants order, conformity—obedient children. Instead, we find that He wants our passionate involvement and utter awe in the mystery of His glorious character.
0 likes
Rather than trying to leverage the church’s political capital to win the culture wars, we ought to take a close look in the mirror. Spiritual leaders should walk alongside their people and model self-examination and repentance. Exile provides an opportunity for God’s people to lament spiritual drift, not only of a culture but also of the church.
0 likes
Instead, the Psalms invite us to question God. But they do this in the context of worship—they were the hymnal used in public worship. God invites us to bring before Him our rage, doubt, and terror—but He intends for us to do so as part of worship. This is the kind of emotional struggle we must engage in if we are to fathom the nature of God’s heart for us.
0 likes
Surely there is no higher plane for prayer than intercession. What could be more important than participating in the redemption of another being through prayer? True, our prayer does not save the sinner, but somehow it serves to prepare his heart for the moment word reaches him of Christ’s love. Search for a person who claims to have found Christ apart from someone else’s prayer, and your search may go on forever.
0 likes

Group of Brands