This is what it looks like to live your faith out loud. After nine years of being involved in the fitness industry and human services, Tony Nuñez now serves in full-time ministry as the student pastor at River of Life Church. In the same month he was offered the position, he was diagnosed with ALS, Lou Gehrig’s disease. Tony and his wife Cori, the “scholar and the sunshine,” have been married since August of 2013 and they have three beautiful girls together. Cori, a full-time wedding photographer, serves alongside him with the students. While ALS continues to add physical limitations to Tony and has deteriorated his body, Tony and Cori know God is faithful and has a purpose in all things and are pressing forward through this diagnosis to serve the students and further the gospel at all costs.
“What God has done for my soul far outweighs anything He has not done yet for my body. God drew me to Himself, and through His Word, I found words for what was going on. He gave me opportunity to trust Him early on. I chose to do that, and I began to realize how amazing He was. I began to trust Him with everything I was faced with. I know exactly who I am. I know how desperate I am for His grace and mercy. He owes me nothing. Nothing. Always going back to what He has done for my soul. He knows what He’s doing. He made me His son. Anything that’s happening to me is permitted within His sovereignty.
“We have to be careful not to dismiss the fact that He uses the good, the bad, and the ugly—that all things work together for those who love God and are called according to His purpose. I love Him because He has proven His love for me and has totally claimed me and I know without a doubt that I have been called according to His purpose. So I trust what comes before that—all things—not some things or most things, the good, the bad and the ugly. The tragic, the difficult, all things. I believe His Word and I’ve seen Him make ways when there was no way. His timing is perfect. I know, as His son, that He will make a way. He is faithful, and we believe Him. God is not limited by my limitations. I have learned how little of me God needs to fulfill His high calling in my life.”
To help make a difference in finding a cure for ALS, visit helpmayuri.com. {eoa}
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Charisma Staff