Walking in Faith

     In What Are You Afraid Of? Facing Down Your Fears With Faith (Tyndale House), David Jeremiah describes Englishman John Pounds (1755-1839) as an example of facing debilitation with faith. While working at the docks as a teen, Pounds fell from a ship’s mast. Recovery took two years. Out of boredom while bedridden, he began reading the Bible and soon accepted Christ.

     Once well enough, Pounds worked for a cobbler and later bought his own shop, making orthopedic shoes for disabled children. His own body had healed crookedly, resulting in constant pain, so he could identify with the people he served. Pounds also fed homeless children, taught them to read and told them about Jesus.

     “What might John Pounds have become had he not been severely injured?” Jeremiah asks. Our struggles often enable us to empathize with and help people we wouldn’t have met otherwise. Through our weakness, God can minister to others (2 Corinthians 12:9).

  But He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is perfected in weakness.”  Therefore, I will most gladly boast all the more about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may reside in me.  So I take pleasure in weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and in difficulties, for the sake of Christ.  For when I am weak, then I am strong.  2 Corinthians 12:9-10