When God Weeps Kit: Why Our Sufferings Matter to the Almighty

by Joni Eareckson Tada

If God Is Loving, Why Is There Suffering?If God Is Loving, Why Is There Suffering?

When suffering touches our lives, the questions it raises suddenly demand answers. It's one thing to break a leg and wait for it to heal. It's another to experience the kind of wrenching pain that can disable our hearts, our minds, our attitudes, and our faith. If God is there and he's good, how can such suffering exist--and what purpose can it possibly serve?

After almost forty years in a wheelchair, Joni Eareckson Tada's intimate experience with suffering gives her a special understanding of God's intentions for people in their pain. In this ZondervanGroupware(TM), she and lifelong friend Steven Estes guide you and your group beyond glib answers. Through six powerful group sessions that include video clips and penetrating discussions, they share glimpses into Joni's personal journey as well as the struggles--and triumphs--of others: children with disabilities, a woman who lost two sons and her marriage, a friend with a debilitating disease. When God Weeps will help your group discover a God who is big enough to understand suffering, wise enough to allow it, and powerful enough to use it for a greater good than any of us can ever imagine.

When God WeepsWhen God Weeps sessions:
1. A Good God in a Suffering World
2. What Can Suffering Accomplish in Our Lives?
3. How We Respond to Suffering Matters
4. Jesus Gives Us Hope
5. Finding Contentment
6.A Look Toward Heaven

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Published August 1st 2002 by Zondervan (first published September 21st 1997)

tags: theology, spirituality, faith, christianity, christian non fiction, religion, psychology, counselling, nonfiction, christian living, christian

Book Quotes

“Contentment ... has an internal quietness of heart that gladly submits to God in all circumstances.”

― Joni Eareckson Tada

“The face that Moses had begged to see – was forbidden to see – was slapped bloody (Exodus 33:19-20) The thorns that God had sent to curse the earth’s rebellion now twisted around his brow… “On your back with you!” One raises a mallet to sink the spike. But the soldier’s heart must continue pumping as he readies the prisoner’s wrist. Someone must sustain the soldier’s life minute by minute, for no man has this power on his own. Who supplies breath to his lungs? Who gives energy to his cells? Who holds his molecules together? Only by the Son do “all things hold together” (Colossians 1:17). The victim wills that the soldier live on – he grants the warrior’s continued existence. The man swings. As the man swings, the Son recalls how he and the Father first designed the medial nerve of the human forearm – the sensations it would be capable of. The design proves flawless – the nerves perform exquisitely. “Up you go!” They lift the cross. God is on display in his underwear and can scarcely breathe. But these pains are a mere warm-up to his other and growing dread. He begins to feel a foreign sensation. Somewhere during this day an unearthly foul odor began to waft, not around his nose, but his heart. He feels dirty. Human wickedness starts to crawl upon his spotless being – the living excrement from our souls. The apple of his Father’s eye turns brown with rot. His Father! He must face his Father like this! From heaven the Father now rouses himself like a lion disturbed, shakes His mane, and roars against the shriveling remnant of a man hanging on a cross.Never has the Son seen the Father look at him so, never felt even the least of his hot breath. But the roar shakes the unseen world and darkens the visible sky. The Son does not recognize these eyes. “Son of Man! Why have you behaved so? You have cheated, lusted, stolen, gossiped – murdered, envied, hated, lied. You have cursed, robbed, over-spent, overeaten – fornicated, disobeyed, embezzled, and blasphemed. Oh the duties you have shirked, the children you have abandoned! Who has ever so ignored the poor, so played the coward, so belittled my name? Have you ever held a razor tongue? What a self-righteous, pitiful drunk – you, who moles young boys, peddle killer drugs, travel in cliques, and mock your parents. Who gave you the boldness to rig elections, foment revolutions, torture animals, and worship demons? Does the list never end! Splitting families, raping virgins, acting smugly, playing the pimp – buying politicians, practicing exhortation, filming pornography, accepting bribes. You have burned down buildings, perfected terrorist tactics, founded false religions, traded in slaves – relishing each morsel and bragging about it all. I hate, loathe these things in you! Disgust for everything about you consumes me! Can you not feel my wrath? Of course the Son is innocent He is blamelessness itself. The Father knows this. But the divine pair have an agreement, and the unthinkable must now take place. Jesus will be treated as if personally responsible for every sin ever committed. The Father watches as his heart’s treasure, the mirror image of himself, sinks drowning into raw, liquid sin. Jehovah’s stored rage against humankind from every century explodes in a single direction. “Father! Father! Why have you forsaken me?!” But heaven stops its ears. The Son stares up at the One who cannot, who will not, reach down or reply. The Trinity had planned it. The Son had endured it. The Spirit enabled Him. The Father rejected the Son whom He loved. Jesus, the God-man from Nazareth, perished. The Father accepted His sacrifice for sin and was satisfied. The Rescue was accomplished.”

― Joni Eareckson Tada

“Subdue your heart to match your circumstances.”

― Joni Eareckson Tada

“You westerners are the ones we can’t understand. God has given you so much, you have been so blessed…why are so many people in your country so unhappy?”

― Joni Eareckson Tada

“Most of all, God will not be weeping. Yes, our sufferings matter to the Almighty and he has wept in empathy, crying at the graveside of Lazarus; he often wept when he prayed, pouring out tears in the garden of Gethsemane. But heaven will reveal something different. An eternal plan that was never threatened, never in jeopardy of collapsing, never on the edge of defeat. There will be no need for tears. “Then one of the elders said to me, ‘Do not weep! See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah…has triumphed.’” But it is not a lion that commands center stage: “Then I saw a Lamb, looking as if it had been slain, standing in the center of the throne…Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth…singing: ‘To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be praise and honor and glory and power, for ever and ever!’” (Revelation 5:5-6, 13).”

― Joni Eareckson Tada

“Gut-wrenching questions honor God. Despair directed at God is a way of encountering him, opening ourselves up to the One and only Someone who can actually do something about our plight. And whether we, like Greg, collide with the Almighty or simply bump up against him, we cannot be the same. We never are when we experience God.”

― Joni Eareckson Tada

“God, like a father, doesn’t just give advice. He gives himself. He becomes the husband to the grieving widow (Isaiah 54:5). He becomes the comforter to the barren woman (Isaiah 54:1). He becomes the father of the orphaned (Psalm 10:14). He becomes the bridegroom to the single person (Isaiah 62:5). He is the healer to the sick (Exodus 15:26). He is the wonderful counselor to the confused and depressed (Isaiah 9:6). This is what you do when someone you love is in anguish; you respond to the plea of their heart by giving them your heart. If”

― Joni Eareckson Tada

“Oh, the pain of earth, you half sigh. Then you smile, rising to your feet to live the life God had been preparing for you all along. Weeping may have endured for a night, but it is morning.”

― 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.
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When God Weeps Kit: Why Our Sufferings Matter to the Almighty

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Book Quotes

Joni Eareckson Tada

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