Joni EarecksonTada
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First Person is produced in cooperation with the Far East Broadcasting Company, who rejoice in the stories of changed lives through the power of Jesus Christ. Learn more at febc.org. I don't want a thimble full of joy in heaven. I don't want a glass full. I want a ship full. And I'm going to stretch my soul's capacity to believe God more, trusting more, so that in heaven I'll have even more joy and opportunity to worship Him.

She is celebrating her 75th birthday this weekend. Come join us now for a first-person conversation with Johnny Erickson Tada, whose life and ministry is unparalleled in today's world. I'm Wayne Shepherd, and our conversation will begin in a moment. Thanks for listening to First Person, a weekly program highlighting the stories of people who, like Johnny, are celebrating the joy of living a life given over to the Lord Jesus Christ and obediently following Him.

These interviews are also available in podcast form when you search for First Person with Wayne Shepard on any major podcast platform or listen with our free smartphone app available in your app store.

Well, I've never met anyone who doesn't love Johnny Erickson Tada. She has an amazing love for the Lord and for people. As a quadriplegic herself, Johnny is the founder of Johnny and Friends, which is committed to reaching and serving people with disabilities with practical help and the saving love of Jesus. We'll have a link to her ministry in our program notes at FirstPersonInterview.com.

Back in 2020, Johnny and I found a few moments to sit down together in Nashville for a very personal conversation about her life and ministry. Your listeners should know that we are best friends over the years, many years of connecting in the media. So I remember sitting down with you and Ken, I think it was the first interview you had done together. That was years ago. I may be wrong, but I remember the two of you in the studio with me. Yikes. Okay. This must have been at least 38 years ago. Has it been that long? Yeah. Well, do I look?

that old not at all no you know neither one of us has aged a bit right okay you know i cover my grave you do not i know i gave up long ago good i gave up well tell me you're so well known and so well loved and your story is so well known johnny and i want to i want to explore some of that but just tell me something about you that we don't know can i can i uh plow new territory here

Well, you could probably hum the first five notes of any song, popular song from the 60s, and I'm going to include country music, and I would probably know it. Okay. In fact, this is kind of fun. Is that right? Oh, yeah. We run at Johnny and Friends retreats for special needs families. We'll have 49 in the U.S. this summer. These are five-day retreats for families affected, struggling with disability. 49 of them? Yeah, and 47 in developing nations. Okay.

where we provide five days of respite care, Bible studies, games, activities, one-on-one counseling for couples struggling with disability, sibling rivalry where there's a child with a disability, all kinds of things. But we have a family fun night, a couples night. And I was at one family retreat last year and...

Elvis didn't show up. He was supposed to show up and entertain the moms and dads. I know where this is going. Right. So they looked to me for entertainment. And I said, I can't replace Elvis. So I got up there and I said, okay, we're going to play a game. I'm going to sing like the first five notes of a song from the 50s or 60s because the audience was mostly, you know, 60s, whatever. And so do-wang, do-wang, do-wang, do-wang, do-wang.

An arm shoots up and they're like, he's so fine. The Shirelles. It was so much fun. So that's something that people don't know about me. Okay, thank you. I wish that I knew as many verses of scripture. Well, that says a lot because you know a lot of scripture and you know a lot of hymns too because you always impress me with your hymn knowledge. I do. Yeah, I love hymns, Wayne, because...

To me, the timeless hymns, and we're talking about Bernard of Clairvaux, what, from 3-400 AD. Just incredible. Martin Luther, we're talking. Isaac Watts, we're talking hymns when they wrote stanzas about the glory of Jesus Christ. They wrote stanzas about death and dying. They wrote stanzas about heaven. You don't hear many songs about dying. Right.

Well, we're at a large conference that both of us attend every year, the National Religious Broadcasters, and you just gave devotions at one of the meetings, and it just touched my heart so much. You're so vulnerable all the time. You share the deepest part of who you are, and I think that's what endears you to people. I read a survey just recently, a secular survey. It was a millennial survey, and the question was posed—

why don't you talk? Why the social isolation? Why are people of this new young generation so isolated? And the response was, I'm afraid. Really? Yeah. But then the researcher posed an interesting comment. He said, what would help you to generate a conversation? What would get you involved in a conversation? And they said, if somebody would just

be themselves, if they'd just be real, if they'd share their brokenness. That would get them talking. Isn't it interesting in the age of social media that that's true? Dwayne, you know me well. You have seen me over the years in this wheelchair. I've been in it for 53 years. Twice I battled with stage 3 cancer. I deal with

significant chronic pain. I have come to love God's word, hold fast to his promises, enjoy fellowship, sweet fellowship with the Lord Jesus in my most horrible moments. I remember one time coming home from chemotherapy, it was the last time I struggled with it and

I was so sick. I was so nauseous. I was so weak. I'd lost so much weight. And Ken Tata, my husband, he was in the driver's seat going down the 101 toward our home from the hospital. And I was tied down in the back. And we're having this conversation in the rearview mirror. We're talking about suffering. And I make this comment to him. I said, you know, I think that suffering is like a splash over hell. It just kind of wakes us up out of our spiritual slumber. It gets us

Thinking about the actual health from which Christ has rescued us. And so, God gives us these little tastes of Hades, of hell, so that we might in some way be jerked awake to appreciate what he's done for us. And so, that sparked the conversation, well then, what are splashovers of heaven?

if suffering is a splash over of hell, what are splash overs of heaven? Those easy breezy bright days when all is well, the pain medication is working, all your bills are paid, you can explain your EOBs, all your ATM receipts are in order, you know, everything is fine, the day is rosy, the sun is bright, the birds are singing. And I said, no, those aren't splash overs of heaven. Splash overs of heaven are finding Jesus in your splash over of hell. Right.

And Wayne, I guess that's why I am vulnerable before people, because so often it's so hard.

And yet Jesus is so sweet in the midst of those hard times. And what I've come to know about him and his ability to sustain me and his identification with me and my suffering as my great high priest who empathizes, oh my goodness, the coin has now flipped.

It's so sweet now that I can identify with him. Sure, he identifies with us and our weakness. But boy, when you really suffer, how wonderful it is to identify with him. I'm interested in hearing more about that. Earlier today, I heard you share, and I often think about you and all that you do. I wonder, how do you keep going? How do you get up and get going? How do you go to the office and carry on the lead role in the ministry that you have, Johnny and friends? And earlier today, you addressed that. You said, some days...

It's hard. Very hard. You're in pain on your way to the office, for instance. I am. When I had to work every day, I've got this mantra from 2 Peter 3, verse 8, where the apostle says, and he prefaces it like this. He says, my brothers, do not forget this one thing. So, right there, you know what he's about to say. Yeah, this is important. This is important. With the Lord, a day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years are as a day. Mm-hmm.

Now, we all know the adage that God looks at the last couple of thousand years as just a few days gone by, but flip the coin.

He also looks at our days as a thousand years. So that means every day, every 24-hour slice of time gives us this incredible opportunity to invest in a thousand years worth of eternity. And I'm a big believer that all my actions, all my words, my thoughts, my encouragements, my admonishments, my reproves and corrections to people, my words of hope,

Everything I do has a direct bearing on my capacity, stretching my capacity in heaven for joy and worship and service. And so I look at my day as this one big opportunity in which to invest in my own eternal reward, which will in turn accrue to greater glory to Jesus Christ. So every day is precious, isn't it, Wayne? Every day is a gift. Well, you were sharing that you verbalize God's promises as a way to

overcome the pain in a sense. Yes, and I hold him to him. I think God delights when he looks down and sees his children get serious about his promises. Oh, this child of mine means something here. He knows of what he speaks when he's holding on to this promise. I'm going to listen up and pour out my Holy Spirit upon him. This child of mine is stepping into the shower of my mercy. So often I will say things to God like, your grace is sufficient. You promise it's sufficient enough

And you know what? You promised it's going to be sufficient right now for this need. So...

I expect you, Holy Spirit, to give me energy, and I don't know where it's going to come from, but you're going to see to it. You're going to come through for me because you're good on your word. And to talk that way to God, to engage him, to use each Bible promise as a battering ram, I think that's what Spurgeon called it, as a battering ram, as it were, to bust through the gates of heaven and open up those floodgates so that God will pour out his resources and his favor and his approval and his joy and his enablement

And it's all based on his promises. So often you'll hear me say out loud, you are my ever-present help in every trouble, Lord God. You will never leave me or forsake me. You are for me, not against me. You fight my battles. I will constantly recurse to the Lord what I know to be true about you. We all should be verbalizing that when we don't even realize our need. Well, you know, life, I think that one of,

our adversaries' best strategies against us is to get us looking at life through the lenses of mediocrity, through temporal lenses that have us believing the lie that this life is the end-all, be-all, and it's not. Heaven is the bottom line for every Christian. And the few, what, 60, 70 years we enjoy, 80 years down here on earth, it

If we could only see in heaven ourselves looking back in the rearview mirror and thinking, ah, smack in our foreheads. Man, why didn't I trust God more? Why didn't I believe more? Look at what my prayers accomplished. And they were so faint and feeble. Why didn't I pray more earnestly? Why did I not give more? Why wasn't I more generous? Look what my few pennies did over here. So much more could have been done had only I believed.

The Bible tells us heaven is a place of no regrets. So, each of us in our own capacity will have joy overflowing. Wayne, I just want my capacity to be large. I just want it to be a tanker-sized truck full of capacity for enjoying God in eternity. I don't want a thimble full of joy in heaven. I don't want a glass full. I want a

I want a ship full. And I'm going to stretch my soul's capacity to believe God more, trusting more, so that in heaven I'll have even more joy and opportunity to worship Him. What a treat to have Johnny Erickson Tata as our guest on this edition of First Person. We're not done. We'll continue in a moment. ♪

Here's Ed Cannon on a vision for FEBC's weekly podcast. The primary purpose of Until All Have Heard, of course, is to share the experience that FEBC has because we have staff on the ground in so many oppressive places. But in addition to that, we're trying to speak to you in a way that only the kind of testimonies you'll hear from around the globe can do. Discover how the gospel is making a difference around the world.

My guest is Johnny Erickson Tata. I don't need to introduce Johnny any further to you, but earlier you told me something about you that we didn't know. Now tell me something about Johnny and friends that we don't know, because this is a ministry that is much larger than I think most of us realize.

Well, most people look at Johnny and Friends and they think of us as delivering wheelchairs, which we do. Hundreds of thousands of wheelchairs and Bibles to needy disabled people. Most of us think of the family retreats that we hold, both nationally and internationally, for families struggling with disability in places where in Africa...

cerebral palsy is considered a curse from a local witch doctor. There's so much social stigma and karma, bad karma connected with disability. So, we promote a biblical worldview when we do these programs, but

What most people do not know about us is that we have a lively internship program that is growing leaps and bounds. We have connections with some major Christian universities that have physical therapy departments, nursing departments, occupational therapy departments. What a great thing. I love that. Yep, and we're doing capstone projects with these universities. We are their tested individuals.

internship opportunities for their students who are going for their masters or their doctorate degrees. We get young people who aren't sure what sort of major they want to declare in college, but they've got this cousin with Down syndrome. So maybe we'll intern with Johnny and Friends for a summer.

Well, when they spend a summer with us and we send them off to Uganda to deliver wheelchairs or to work at a family retreat in Thailand or to serve with us locally in special needs churches or just spend a week studying a biblical worldview of disability.

Oh my goodness, these young people end up declaring majors in special ed or disability ministry. They want to serve families affected by disability. And to me, that's a way of reaching a brand new generation. It's a way of energizing them. Here's a way to authenticate your faith.

get your hands dirty, practice a little Christianity with the sleeves rolled up in wiping the drool of a kid with cerebral palsy and pushing the wheelchair and ministering to that special needs mom who feels lonely. You're thinking the future, this is going to outlast all of us then. Oh, I trust so. People aren't going to know me in the future. In fact, many people don't know me now. I go to some of our family retreats. In fact, Wayne, this was so cute. I was at one family retreat last summer and, uh,

I'm heading to the dining hall, wheeling up the path, and busting out of the dining hall comes a gag of giggling girls. They're young volunteers who were serving with us at that retreat. And they pass me, and I hear one of them say, who's that? And I hear another say, well...

I think her name's Joni and she has something to do with this camp, but I'm not sure what. I love that. It proves to me that the success of our ministry does not depend on my persona, nor does it depend on my presence. I'm not one of these founder visionaries who gets all parochial and holds things tightly to my fist. You're not doing things my way. Look, as long as we're holding true to our distinctives, that the gospel of Jesus Christ is presented,

that we are upholding the sovereignty of God over the most heinous disabilities and suffering. As long as we are promoting that, then I'm happy. As long as the Bible is preeminent, I'm happy. And thankfully, we've got folks in place, young people in place who just are just as passionate about it as I am.

One of the most touching things I see when I see you on YouTube or whatever is when you are in contact with a young person, perhaps with some sort of, some form of disability or Down syndrome, and the way you interact with these folks. I mean, it's just so touching. Well, these are my inspirational role models. My inspirational role model, sure, might be Elizabeth Elliot or Billy Graham or Corrie Ten Boom or Mother Teresa, and I could go on and on listing well-known people that we all admire. But the people I admire...

are the young guys with cerebral palsy who are believers and they live in residential facilities and it's kind of a dreary existence. Their minds are so sharp. And they love the Bible. They do online Bible training. They persevere, they endure, they keep their smile despite a very challenging existence where sometimes their families have even abandoned them. These are the ones who I look to and I love.

I was telling you earlier, Wayne, about a private Facebook page that I have called Johnny's Pain Pals.

I haven't met most of those people on that Facebook page, but we have been connecting on that page for about five or six, seven years. All of us live with intractable pain. Some of us live around the world, but we share essays from John Owen. We share essays from Spurgeon, Horatius Bonar, John Piper, John Blitwick. I mean, we just inspire and encourage one another, pray specifically about each other's upcoming operations. We don't talk about our scars. Yeah.

And this is not the kind of thing you put on a press release. This is just something you do from your heart. Absolutely. And these are, again, the people who are my role models of inspiration. I love connecting with them because I'm fed by their own testimonies and stories of perseverance. It's wonderful. Mm-hmm.

And then the encouragement you give to those who are caregivers of folks with disabilities. That's an important role as well. I wish my husband were here right now and he'd tell you all about it. He is quite the caregiver. And I've got a philosophy in that I want my caregivers to know that when they help me, they are serving the Lord Jesus.

Real quickly, Wayne, if you were to imagine yourself that day at Calvary, that dark, rainy afternoon when Christ was crucified, and imagine yourself there huddling with the others, and everybody else has abandoned Jesus but you, and it's pouring down rain, and your tears are weeping as well, and you look up and you hear your Savior say, I thirst. I'm thirsty. Mm-hmm.

I mean, what one of us wouldn't have run back down to Jerusalem to grab a hose, get a glass of lemonade, dig a well, do anything to give Jesus a drink? We're not going to give him a vinegar soaked on a sponge. I mean, this is our Savior up there on the cross. And yet, history's written and it can't be changed.

But maybe it can, because in Matthew 25, Jesus himself says, "If you give a drink to the thirsty, to the hungry, to the poor, the disadvantaged, you have inasmuch done it to me." So, we can still give Jesus that drink.

And it's by serving among people with disabilities. This is the rich reward that caregivers are accruing. When they look at their loved one with a godly perspective, with a heavenly perspective, they are serving Jesus. And I know my husband feels the same way when he, everything from wiping my nose to wiping my backside to giving me a drink to getting me dressed to, I mean,

I mean, my husband does a lot, as do the girls who also assist me, and they are accruing for themselves. They are laying up treasures in an eternity that's going to be so much happier because we do know that in heaven there are degrees of joy. Were there some who are to be considered great in the kingdom of heaven, some who will be lesser in the kingdom of heaven? And it all has to do with the way you live on earth.

And nobody's going to be envious up there because, as I said earlier, we'll all have our vessel completely filled, whether it's a thimble-sized vessel of joy or a tanker truck-sized vessel of joy. But...

The degree of that vessel's capacity depends on how we serve down here on earth. So I'm looking at my girlfriends who help me, and I'm thinking, boy, they're stretching their vessels. They're stretching their capacity for eternity's joy in a wonderful way because they're serving as God would want them to. Okay, bonus question, Johnny. Are you still drawing and painting? This is a hard question to answer because the answer is basically I can't.

My pain is such that, and the girls know it, when I even go to sign my autograph on a page of a book now, my head shakes so bad because of the pain. And I just don't have the physical wherewithal to get my head kirk-a-dirk-ered in these odd angles to reach certain corners of the canvas and the constant repetition of certain strokes on the canvas. It's very hard for me, and that is...

That is something that... I would imagine it's a loss in your life. It is. It breaks my heart. However, God's good. Because now, I am Microsoft's expert at Dragon NaturallySpeaking voice activation software. I mean, I am so good at Dragon NaturallySpeaking. You're thankful for the technology. Oh, my goodness. What I can do with my voice activation dictating is just...

stun you. I can order things off Amazon. I can go navigate through Google. I can correspond with friends around the world. I have so much freedom and independence at my monitor. And so I'm grateful that when God takes away something, he will give something else if we can but see it as a gift from his hand. That's Johnny Erickson Tata. And I submit that Johnny herself is a gift from God's hand to all of us.

As I mentioned earlier, this weekend, Johnny is celebrating her 75th birthday in California, and many are joining her for a birthday gala. For more about Johnny and friends and the multifaceted ministry reaching those with disabilities, please visit FirstPersonInterview.com. We'll provide a link there which will guide you in learning more about not only Johnny, but all that's being accomplished in Jesus' name. Go to FirstPersonInterview.com.

And once again this week, my thanks to the Far East Broadcasting Company for helping bring First Person to you each week. Like Johnny, FEBC is committed to serving Christ in this world and sharing the good news with everyone. For more, listen to the podcast Until All Have Heard with FEBC President Ed Cannon, which you'll find at febc.org and on most podcast platforms. Until All Have Heard from the Far East Broadcasting Company.

Now, with thanks to my friend and producer, Joe Carlson, I'm Wayne Shepherd. Be sure to join us next time for First Person.