As I write this, Ian and Larissa’s video has been viewed almost 500,000 times! Please pray that saints all over the world would be encouraged to persevere and that those who are currently blind would be given eyes to see, through the testimony of a disabled life, that God is more glorious than anything this world has to offer.
Please also pray for this young couple. Satan hates them for this testimony and how he can’t use the things this culture fears to shake their faith. They, like our loved ones with disabilities, are very dangerous to his evil cause because of how God’s strength is magnified in weakness.
If you haven’t seen Larissa’s three blogs, all are worth reading. I’ve included a brief excerpt from each.
And even though we chose marriage, we chose it sadly. Sorrow has been a permanent resident in our 20s. It feels like the rest of the world uses these years for really fun things. But in our 20s, we have watched our future crash with him in that white station wagon and we now live with two versions of Ian. Weʼve watched all of our friends get married and have health. Iʼve watched as my girlfriends and sisters found husbands who could dance with them at their weddings and drive them to church on Sunday morning. Weʼve watched our dad fight and be taken by brain cancer, only to see life keep marching on.
Fortunately, our hope is that weʼve also watched all of these alongside Jesus, who is our own man of sorrows, acquainted with grief (Isaiah 53:3). So we have not walked it alone.
Learning Contentment in Suffering:
I didn’t know contentment in my prosperity — contentment then meant health and ease, not God. God has not given us an indication that Ian will be fully healed here, which means that we have needed to enlist ourselves in our suffering. We still pray for complete healing, but we also pray for strength to endure a life-long disability. We are learning that contentment is produced as we obey and act on His promises, like the one mentioned above, “I can do all things through him who strengthens me.”
In the middle of these losses, though, sometimes weʼre given little glimpses of the beauty God has designed in disability, and in Ianʼs in particular. Ian is the happiest and funniest person that I know.
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