Joni Eareckson Tada - 31 Days Toward Intimacy with God

31 DAYS TOWARD INTIMACY WITH GOD
published by Multnomah Books
Published in association with the literary agency of Wolgemuth and Associates, Inc.

2005 by Joni Eareckson Tada

Portions of material previously published in Secret Strength, Glorious Intruder, and A Quiet Place in a Crazy World

Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from:
The Holy Bible, New International Version 1973, 1984 by International Bible Society, used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House
Other Scripture quotations are from:
New American Standard Bible ( NASB ) 1960, 1977, 1995 by the Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.
The Holy Bible, New King James Version ( NKJV ) 1984 by Thomas Nelson, Inc.
The Holy Bible, King James Version ( KJV )
The Living Bible ( TLB ) 1971. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved.
Holy Bible, New Living Translation ( NLT ) 1996.
Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved.
The Message 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002 Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group
The New Testament in Modern English, Revised Edition (Phillips) 1958, 1960, 1972 by J. B. Phillips
The Holy Bible, English Standard Version ( ESV )
2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Contemporary English Version ( CEV ) 1995 by American Bible Society

Published in the United States by WaterBrook Multnomah, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House Inc., New York.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Tada, Joni Eareckson.
31 days toward intimacy with God / Joni Eareckson Tada.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-307-56347-7
1. Christian lifeMeditations. 2. Devotional calendars. I. Title: Thirty one days toward intimacy with God. II. Title.

BV4832.3.T33 2005
242dc22

2004026706

v3.1

For Careen Peterson
Its a joy to seek the heart of our Savior
every time we travel together!

S moothed and flattened, the wrinkled sheet of wide-lined tablet paper lay in the center of my empty desk.

A crayoned sun in the upper right corner beamed five thick rays onto the happy faces of dancing flowers. A white house with two large windows and red shutters sat squarely in the middle. In front of the house,sitting in a chair with large, spoked wheels, was a girl with blond hair, two pink circles on her cheeks, and a wide smile with neatly lined teeth.

I smiled. A portrait of me?

Big blockish letters scrawled with a red marker bore the following message:

DEAR JONI,
I LIKE MY CAT AND I LIKE SCHOOL.
WHEN I GROW UP I WANT TO HAVE A
WHEELCHAIR JUST LIKE YOURS.
LOVE,
SHANNON

My smile broke into laughter.

Shannon is a healthy, active little girl who plays hopscotch, four square, and Mother, May I. She may not realize it now, but she has absolutely no use for a wheelchair.

Try telling that to Shannon! A wheelchair would top her birthday list, more coveted even than a purple bicycle with pink and white streamers on the handles. As far as shes concerned, a wheelchair means adventure. A joyride. An initiation into a very special club.

Shannon hasnt a clue about the price one actually pays to join such a club. The pain. The paralysis. The disappointment. The heartache and the hurdles. She discounts all that. She disregards the dark side, considering it not worth even knowing. All she desires is the chance to identify with me, to be like me, to know me. If that means having a wheelchair, then greatshell take it!

It takes a child like Shannon to illuminate the meaning behind Pauls words to the Philippians:

I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death.

3:8, 10

Theres no better way to identify with Jesusto be like Him and to know Himthan to gain initiation into the fellowship of His sufferings. Or as Shannon might say, the Club.

Suffering has a way of taking life out of the abstract, out of the theoretical, making it painfully concrete. Lofty sermons from eloquent Bible teachers dont bring release to people locked in suffering. Ph.D. programs in ivy-walled seminaries dont deliver hope and comfort to those in deep pain.

When we suffer, we realize we are not handling theological ideas, we are rather being handled by a Personthe warm and intimate Person of the Lord Jesus. At other times, when life is rosier, we may slide by with knowing about Him. With imitating Him and quoting Him and speaking of Him. But only in the fellowship of suffering will we know Jesus. We identify with Him at the point of His deepest humiliation. The cross, symbol of His greatest suffering, becomes our personal touchpoint with the Lord of the universe.

No ones asking you to beg membership in the Club as my little friend Shannon might. But there is something about her wonderful, wild abandon, her childlike trust, that must endear her to the Lord.

You dont have to choose suffering. You dont have to choose pain and humiliation. All you need do is choose Gods will, as Jesus did on His cross. When you do, youll be initiated into the Clubthe fellowship of His suffering. And this is intimacy of the highest order.

Dear friend, since youve picked up this particular book and read this far, I think I know something about your heart. You have a longing to move toward a closer, deeper, more intimate walk with our God. Thats what I want, too! More than anything. So why dont we agree to walk together for a while? Lets take a thirty-one-day journey toward the heart of heaven, and into the love of our Father and our Savior. Since we can never come to the end of His love, or truly understand the fellowship of His suffering, this little excursion represents only a few steps on the way.

Maybe so. But they will be steps in the right direction.

R EACHING FOR
H IS H AND

T his is a crazy world.

TV ads for luxury SUVs and sports drinks bookend stories of car bombings in Baghdad. A handicapped infant is left to starve to death in a neonatal unit, while a couple two thousand miles away search high and low to adopt a childany child. Millions of dollars are spent to protect the eggs of birds on an endangered species list, while human babies are aborted in the third trimester. Battered wives paste on smiles as they dress for church. A preteen girl writes in her prayer diary, My daddy took away my innocence last night.