📌Dear Sir,

I have been thinking about Joni Eareckson Tada.

I see the pain in the faces of those she ministers to. I know she encourages them to trust Jesus in the middle of their struggles, and she continues to urge them to keep going even in times of discouragement. I know she is helping many people by offering hope and pointing them to Christ.

But I wonder — is she only encouraging them to endure within the limits of her own testimony of suffering? Is she teaching people to accept their condition as permanent, glorifying God in each step of their trial with the hope of heaven’s healing? Or is she still personally believing for complete healing on this side of eternity?

I asked the Lord if we could pray for her healing. My immediate thought was how she might feel if she realized all that she could have received through Christ and yet had missed. She has suffered faithfully for decades, and she has even advocated for finding purpose in suffering. Wouldn’t it be overwhelming for her to suddenly see that perhaps healing was always available?

Then another thought came: what about the testimony of her being healed now? Wouldn’t that be powerful? It is not really about her regrets or past struggles, but about the glory God would receive and the encouragement it would give to countless others if she were miraculously restored.

What do you think?

🔻Answer:

Dear Friend,

Your question touches on a tender place: the balance between faith for healing and the mystery of suffering.

Joni Eareckson Tada has lived as a radiant testimony of God’s sustaining grace. Through her quadriplegia, she has modeled perseverance, deep trust in Christ, and compassion for the brokenhearted. In that sense, her life has been a pulpit from which she has preached Jesus faithfully. Thousands who suffer have found strength because she refused to give up.

But you are right to ask — does that testimony of endurance cancel the promise of divine healing? The answer is no. God’s Word still says, “by His stripes we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5; 1 Peter 2:24). His promises are not void because of our circumstances. Faith in healing is not diminished by someone else’s journey; in fact, it should stir us to press in.

Some believers, like Joni, emphasize glorifying God in suffering. That is biblical too: Paul gloried in weaknesses so that the power of Christ might rest on him (2 Corinthians 12:9–10). At the same time, Paul also experienced miracles of healing (Acts 28:8–9). The tension is that both can be true in the kingdom: sometimes God reveals His strength through endurance, and other times through deliverance.

As for Joni personally, only she and the Lord truly know if she is still contending for her own healing. But here is the freeing truth: our prayers for her are never wasted. Whether God raises her up in full restoration now or continues to shine through her in her wheelchair, His glory will be revealed.

And imagine this: if she were healed, what a testimony it would be! The world would see that decades of paralysis are no match for the power of the cross. Yet even if that healing does not come in this life, the witness of her faith has already drawn multitudes closer to Christ.

So, should we pray for her healing? Yes — in love, in hope, and in faith. Not out of pity, nor to point out what she may have missed, but because God is able, and because the name of Jesus is magnified when we believe. And while we pray, we can still honor the work God has already done through her endurance.

Let us hold both truths: the God who heals, and the God who sustains. He is glorified in both.

🦋

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