Conquer Suffering with Your Divine Nature
VideoTranscript
This is the video’s transcript, lightly formatted. Tap a time to jump to that moment.
The water was murky that hot July afternoon in 1967. 17-year-old Joanie Ericson couldn't see the bottom of the Chesapeake Bay as she hoisted herself onto the floating raft. The sun beat down on her athletic frame. This was a girl who'd been voted best athlete in her senior class just weeks before. Swimming medals lined her bedroom walls. A wicked backhand had made her a terror on the tennis court. College lay ahead with dreams of athletic scholarships and endless possibilities.
She dove a perfect inward pike, the kind she'd done hundreds of times before. But this time, something went terribly wrong. Her head struck the bottom with a sickening crack. She felt her neck snap. Then a strange electric shock rippled through her body. Underwater and dazed, she found herself floating, unable to surface for air, her limbs refusing to respond to her brain's desperate commands. Her sister Kathy noticed immediately and pulled her from the water.
As Joanie saw her own arm draped limply over Cathy's shoulder, an arm she couldn't feel. She knew something awful had happened. Hours later in the hospital, the doctor's words felt like hammer blows. Severed spinal cord, fourth vertebrae, quadriplegic for life, no use of her arms or legs ever. Can you imagine? One moment you're an athlete ready to conquer the world, and the next you're facing a lifetime in a wheelchair, unable to feed yourself, dress yourself, or even turn the pages of a book without help. The girl who defined herself by her physical abilities now lay motionless.
Her body a prison. She couldn't escape. In those early days, Joanie hissed at heaven. God, I can't live like this. I won't live like this. She couldn't take her life physically. So, she was tempted to end it emotionally, mentally, and spiritually.
The dark thought suffocated her worse than the paralysis itself. Can you relate to that feeling? Maybe not from paralysis, but from your own crushing disappointment. A diagnosis that changed everything. A loss that left you gasping. A dream that shattered into pieces too small to ever put back together.
But here's where Joany's story takes a turn that can transform how we view our own suffering. Because somewhere in that darkness, when self-pity had become literally suffocating, she whimpered what she calls the most feeble, faint-hearted prayer she'd ever offered. God, if I cannot die, then please show me how to live. That's all it took. A mustard seed of faith, a crack in the door, just wide enough for life to start seeping in. You see, what Jody didn't understand yet, what many of us don't understand when we're flat on our backs staring at the ruins of our plans, is that we're not just damaged goods trying to survive until heaven. We're not merely sinners saved by grace limping along until Jesus finally takes us home.
No, there's something far more profound at work in our suffering. Something that can only be understood when we grasp who we really are in Christ. Listen to what Peter wrote. And I mean really listen here. His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises so that through them you may participate in the divine nature. Second Peter 1 3 and4.
Did you catch that? participate in the divine nature. Not just imitate it from a distance, not just try really hard to be good, but actually participate, share in, partner with God's own nature. You're not a broken human trying to reach up to a distant God. In Christ, you're a bearer of divine nature, learning to live from that reality, even in the midst of suffering. Think about it this way. You're like a mirror designed to reflect God's light.
Sin cracked that mirror. Suffering can cloud it with dust and grime. But here's the crucial truth. You're still a mirror. Your essential nature hasn't changed. And when you begin to understand this, everything about how you handle trials shifts dramatically.
Joanie discovered this slowly, painfully, beautifully. As Christian friends opened the Bible with her, she found something she never expected. God had not abandoned me. She later wrote, "The Lord had a purpose. The paralysis would not last forever." But more than that, she discovered that contentment wasn't found in getting her body back. It was found in Jesus.
The only answer that seemed to satisfy all my longings. Now, fast forward 50 years. Joanie has touched millions of lives through her ministry, Joanie and Friends, which provides wheelchairs and support to disabled people worldwide. She's written over 45 books, learned to paint breathtaking artwork holding a brush in her teeth, and speaks around the world. When someone asked her if she thinks all this good would have happened without her accident, she smiled and said, "It's why I thank God every day for my wheelchair." Wait, what? Thank God for the very thing that destroyed her dreams.
Here's what Joanie discovered that we need to grasp. When suffering pushes us deeper into Christ, when it drives us to discover who we really are in him, it becomes, dare I say it, a gift. Not because suffering is good. It isn't. But because in our weakness, Christ's strength shines brightest. In our brokenness, his wholeness becomes more evident. When we can't rely on ourselves anymore, we finally learned to live from his divine nature within us.
Paul understood this. He had some kind of chronic suffering he called a thorn in the flesh. Three times he begged God to take it away. But God said, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." And Paul's response, therefore, I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses so that Christ's power may rest on me. Second Corinthians 12:9. This isn't massochism.
This isn't pretending pain doesn't exist. This is recognizing that when we're weak, we're actually in the perfect position to experience God's strength flowing through us. When our own resources are exhausted, his unlimited resources become our supply. I wanted to take a second to tell you about my book which expands on what I'm talking about today. The broken mirror of rediscovering our true nature in Christ will transform how you see yourself forever. Stop living as a struggling sinner trying to be good enough and discover you're already a beloved child of God with his divine nature flowing through you. This book will free you from shame, give you unshakable identity, and show you how to access God's peace, wisdom, and strength from within.
The book shows how this story unfolds from Genesis to Revelation, and teaches you to live from rest, see others as fellow imagebearers, and step into your true calling as a radiant reflector of divine light. Your daily struggles will become opportunities for God's nature to shine through you. Get ready to live the abundant life Jesus promised. The link to the book is in the video description. Hard copy, Kindle, and audiobook versions are all available. May God bless your journey along his path for you. One woman struggling with chronic illness described how her faith changed through suffering.
She'd grown up hearing testimonies of people God had spared from death or healed from the from disease, always with the implication that God loved them especially much. But what about those who weren't healed? Were they unloved? As she wrestled with her own ongoing illness, she came to a profound realization. I see God in the love of other people. I see co- flourishing as the greatest commandment God has given us. She discovered that God's presence wasn't found in the removal of suffering but in his presence within it.
She wrote, "Love is a verb. It is hard, messy, and it can be a struggle. It is an action word and in that action I see God." You see, when we understand that Christ literally lives in us, not metaphorically, not symbolically, but actually lives his life through us, then suffering becomes something different. It's not God punishing us. It's not evidence that he's abandoned us. Instead, suffering becomes what Joanie calls a sheep dog that keeps snapping at my heels to drive me down the road to Calvary, where otherwise I would not be naturally inclined to go.
Think about your own life for a moment. What suffering are you carrying right now? What disappointment, what chronic pain, what shattered dream, what relationship that's broken beyond repair? Now, what if, and just stay with me here, what if that very suffering is actually an invitation? Not an invitation to just endure until heaven, but an invitation to discover the profound reality that you carry divine nature within you. Jesus says something remarkable. In this world, you will have trouble, but take heart.
I have overcome the world. John 16:33. He didn't say you might have trouble. He guaranteed it. But he also guaranteed his victory. And here's the key. His victory lives in you.
You're not trying to overcome from the outside. The overcomer lives within. Another person dealing with chronic illness put it this way. Recovery isn't an option for most disabled people and those with chronic illnesses. I had to come to that realization myself. I had to face my own abbleist beliefs and I had to let them all go. She stopped looking at God as some sort of wish granter in the sky and her illness is evil.
Instead, she began to see that pain is the price we pay for being alive. But here's where divine nature changes everything. When you realize you're not just a suffering human, but a temple of the Holy Spirit, a carrier of Christ's own life, suffering can't define you anymore. It becomes part of your story, sure, but not your identity. Your identity is that you're a child of God, a partaker of divine nature, a living reflection of his glory, even when, especially when you're in a wheelchair or a hospital bed or dealing with depression or facing loss. Joanie tells a story about two people she met at one of her retreats, Ron and Beverly. Ron was a successful contractor until a drunk driver hit him, leaving him paralyzed.
He lost his business, faced multiple surgeries, and battled severe depression. He wanted to die. Beverly, his wife, was overwhelmed with fear and bitterness, asking why every day. But at the retreat, something shifted. They encountered others facing similar challenges, who were somehow radiating joy. As Ron put it, I saw people here who have suffered longer than me, and they can still smile. If they can smile, maybe I can, too.
They began to realize that while they couldn't control what happened to them, they could control their response. More importantly, they discovered they didn't have to respond in their own strength. The last Joanie heard, Ron and Beverly were active in ministry, sharing their testimony far and wide, demonstrating that it's possible to get busy with living even when life looks nothing like you'd planned. This is what happens when suffering meets divine nature. We stop asking why me and start asking what now. We stop seeing ourselves as victims and start seeing ourselves as vessels. Vessels carrying precious treasure as Paul put it.
We have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all surpassing power is from God and not from us. 2 Corinthians 4:7. A researcher studying faith healing experiences found common themes and how people experience God's presence and suffering. Many reported sensations of warmth, feelings of being held, moments of unexpected peace in the midst of pain. But more than physical sensations, they describe spiritual transformations, empowering faith, letting God be in control, accepting leading to renewal, and connectedness with God. These aren't just coping mechanisms. They're evidence of divine nature at work within human vessels.
When you know Christ lives in you, when you understand you're designed to reflect his light, suffering can't snuff out that light. It might cloud the mirror temporarily, but the light source remains unchanged, unddeinished, ready to shine through the moment we turn back toward him. Joanie discovered something profound through her decades of paralysis. She realized that whenever she fidgets in her confinement, she can almost hear the enemy taunting God like he did with Job. Look at her. See, she doesn't really trust you. Test her with more pain and you'll see her true colors.
When the devil insists God's people only serve him when life is easy, Joanie says she has the high honor of proving him wrong. Think about that. Your suffering when met with faith when approached from your identity as a carrier of divine nature becomes a cosmic declaration. It says to all of heaven and earth, "My God is worthy of trust even in this. His nature in me is stronger than my circumstance around me. This doesn't mean suffering becomes easy. Joanie is honest about the days when constant pain overwhelms her, when being paralyzed for over 50 years feels like too much to bear.
She says it's actually getting harder as her body ages under the weight of decades in a wheelchair. But she's learned something crucial. God cares most not about making my life happy, healthy, and free of trouble, but about teaching me to hate my transgressions and to keep growing in the grace and knowledge of Jesus.
In other words, God's using the suffering to polish the mirror to clear away everything that hinders the reflection of his glory through her life. And the same is true for you. So, how do we live this out practically? How do we let suffering drive us deeper into our divine identity rather than away from it? Well, first we have to stop seeing ourselves primarily as strugglers and start seeing ourselves as temples. When pain hits, instead of immediately thinking, "I can't handle this," try declaring, "Christ in me can handle this." You're not positive thinking your way through.
You're aligning with reality. The same power that raised Jesus from the dead lives in you according to Romans 8:11. Second, we recognize that our weakness is the perfect showcase for God's strength. When people see you navigating trials with a peace that doesn't make sense, a hope that shouldn't exist given your circumstances, they're not seeing you. They're seeing Christ in you. Your suffering becomes a display case for divine nature.
Third, we stop comparing our suffering to others. Joanie makes this point beautifully. Suffering comes at us in all shapes and sizes. It touches our lives in varying degrees. At one time or another, we all wrestle with disappointment and hardship. Your chronic illness might be different from someone's job loss, which differs from another's weward child or broken marriage. But all suffering can drive us to the same place.
Deeper into the arms of Jesus, deeper into the reality of who we are in him. Fourth, we get honest about the struggle while holding on to hope. Faith doesn't mean pretending everything's fine. Even Jesus in the garden sweated blood and asked if there was another way. But he also said, "Not my will, but yours be done." In Luke 22:42.
We can be real about our pain while still trusting the one who lives within us. Joanie discovered that her paralysis gave her a platform she never could have imagined. From her wheelchair, she spoken to thousands who would never have listened to another athlete success story. Her weakness became the very thing God used to display his strength to the world. But here's what I want you to really hear. This isn't just Joany's story. This is the story of every believer who's ever faced trials.
When suffering meets divine nature, when we approach our hardships from the reality of who we are in Christ, everything changes. You're not a victim of circumstances. You're a vessel of the most high God. You're not defined by your diagnosis. You're defined by the divine one who dwells within. You're not limited by your weakness. You're empowered by his limitless strength.
You're not alone in your pain. You're inhabited by the comforter himself. One of the most powerful things Joanie learned came from a friend who told her, "God permits what he hates to accomplish what he loves." Think about that in terms of the cross. God hated the torture, injustice, and treason that led to the crucifixion, but he permitted it to accomplish the salvation he loved. That same principle applies to our suffering. God doesn't love your pain.
He doesn't delight in your struggles. But he permits what he hates, the suffering, to accomplish what he loves, your transformation into the image of his son, the full revealing of his glory through your life. This is why James could write something as seemingly crazy as, "Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance." James 1, 2, and 3.
Joy and trials only when you understand that those trials are producing something eternal in you. Only when you know that your divine nature is being refined and revealed through that fire. This is the paradigm shift we need. Instead of always praying for God to remove our suffering, what if we start praying for him to reveal his glory through it? Instead of seeing trials as evidence of God's absence, what if we saw them as opportunities for his presence to shine brighter? Joan story offers us this profound truth. After 50 plus years in a wheelchair, dealing with not just paralysis, but chronic pain and even breast cancer, she can say, "The beauty of such grace is that it eclipses the suffering until one July morning.
You look back and see five decades of God working in a mighty way. Grace softens the edges of past pains, helping to highlight the eternal. What you are left with is peace that's profound, joy that's unshakable, faith that's ironclad.
That's what happens when suffering meets divine nature. The suffering doesn't disappear, but it's transformed. It becomes a servant rather than the master, a teacher rather than the tormentor, a strange and difficult companion that nevertheless leads us to treasures we never would have found otherwise.
So I ask you today, what's your wheelchair? What's the thing in your life that feels like a limitation, a source of ongoing struggle, a thorn in your flesh that won't go away no matter how much you pray? Now, what if that very thing could become the platform from which God's glory shines brightest through your life? What if your depression could become a doorway to discovering the God who is present in the darkness? What if your chronic illness could become a canvas on which God paints his sustaining grace? What if your broken relationship could become a bridge over which others walk to find healing? What if your financial struggle could become a testimony to God's faithful provision?
What if your addiction recovery could become a beacon of hope for others in bondage? The Apostle Paul, who knew about suffering, who dealt with that chronic thorn in the flesh, who was shipwrecked, beaten, imprisoned, and eventually martyed, wrote these words. Therefore, we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. 2 Corinthians 4:16-1 17.
Light and momentary troubles. Paul faced things that would break most of us, but he could call them light and momentary because he understood something profound. He was an eternal being carrying divine nature and his troubles were producing something of infinite value. You are that same kind of being. You're not just a physical being. You're an eternal being inhabited by God's own spirit temporarily wearing a body that sure might be broken, might be in pain, might be facing challenges that seem insurmountable.
But that body, that broken, struggling body is what Paul amazingly calls a temple of the Holy Spirit in 1 Corinthians 6:19. Do you know what that means? The same glory that filled Solomon's temple, causing priests to fall on their faces, lives in you. That same power that spoke worlds into existence has taken up residence in your being. The same love that drove Jesus to the cross pulses through your veins. This is who you are. This is what you carry.
This is why suffering, no matter how severe, can never have the final word in your life. Joanie learned to paint holding a brush between her teeth. Think about that image for a moment. What looked like total limitation, no use of her hands, became simply a call to creativity. The divine nature within her found a way to express beauty despite the obstacles. And isn't that what God does with all of us? He takes our limitations and finds ways to express his unlimited nature through them.
As we close, I'm going to leave you with this truth. The core of God's plan is to rescue us from sin. Not primarily to make us comfortable, but to transform us into accurate reflections of his glory. Sometimes that transformation happens in sunshine and ease. But more often it happens in the forge of suffering where the heat and pressure produce something pure and beautiful.
If you're suffering today, if you're in a place of pain where it seems overwhelming and hope seems distant, remember this. You're not alone. You are inhabited. You're not merely enduring. You're being transformed. You're not just waiting for heaven. You're carrying heaven within you right now.
The question isn't whether you'll face suffering. Jesus guaranteed you would. The question is whether you'll let that suffering drive you deeper into the reality of who you are in Christ, deeper into the divine nature you've been given to share. Yony's wheelchair became her pulpit. What were your point of pain become? What glory might God want to reveal through the very thing you wish he'd remove? The journey from suffering to glory isn't easy, but it is possible.
Not because you're strong enough, but because he who lives in you has already overcome the world. Not because you can handle it, but because the one who handles all things has made his home in you. So today, right where you are in whatever you're facing, you can choose. You can choose to see yourself as a victim or as a vessel. You can choose to focus on what you've lost or on what you've been given. the very nature of God living within you. You can choose to let suffering embitter you or to let it drive you deeper into the heart of the one who suffered for you and now lives in you to transform your suffering into glory.
The choice is yours. But know this, you don't make it alone. The spirit of the living God is within you, ready to strengthen, comfort, guide, and transform. Your suffering may be great, but the one within you is greater. Let this be our prayer. Aba Father, thank you that you don't abandon us in our suffering, but inhabit us through it. Thank you that we're not just broken humans trying to survive, but temples of your spirit, carriers of your divine nature, designed to reflect your glory even in our weakness.
Help us to see our trials not as punishments, but as invitations to discover more deeply who we are in you. Give us Joany's courage to thank you even for our wheelchairs, knowing that you can transform any limitation into a platform for your glory. Remind us daily that Christ lives in us, that your strength is perfected in our weakness, and that our suffering is producing an eternal weight of glory. Help us to stop seeing ourselves as victims and start seeing ourselves as vessels. We trust you to use even our deepest pain for your highest purposes. In Jesus' name, who suffered and rose and now lives in us. Amen.
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