Trusting God No Matter What

• Why does God seem so far away?

• When will this shelter-in-place end?

• Why did I lose my job?

• Why did He take away my loved one?

• Why doesn’t God stop this virus?

• Why do I worry so much when I know I should be worshipping?

Please turn to the Book of Habakkuk. The best way to find this peculiar prophet with a hard-to-pronounce name is to locate Matthew and go left five books. Habakkuk was a contemporary of Jeremiah and he ministered in a culturally and politically turbulent time, right before Babylon took Judah into exile.

The reason I want us to look at this book is because Habakkuk, whose name means “wrestling,” had a number of questions for God. Habakkuk is unique among the prophets because he didn’t speak for God to the people, but rather spoke to God about his questions. The book is actually an intense dialog between the prophet and God, with Habakkuk arguing that God’s ways are unfathomable and even unjust. He no doubt gives voice to some of our concerns and questions as we worry about the coronavirus.

Some time ago, Shane Hipps wrote an intriguing article called, “Praise That’s Premature.” He suggests when worship is just celebration it becomes a kind of pep rally to inspire excitement about who God is. Because grief is an unpleasant emotion, we tend to deny our suffering in favor of celebration: “Authenticity and integrity in worship means expressing both lament and praise. Each element completes the other. Without lament, praise is little more than shallow sentimentality and a denial of life’s struggles and sin. Without praise, lament is a denial of hope and grace, both of which are central to our life of faith...”

A lament is a prayer of pain that leads to praise. Over 1/3 of the Psalms are laments and the Book of Lamentations is filled with lament as is Habakkuk. Hipps points out these Scriptures employ “a narrative arc, a movement from grief and lamentation to celebration and joy.” Let’s take a look at this narrative arc where Chapters 1-2 contain prayers of pain and chapter 3 is filled with praise.

Here’s the main idea today: Prayers of lament can lead us to praise the Lord. Let’s learn how to do that.

When Pain Keeps You from Praising

1. Declare your questions. Habakkuk is in a quagmire of questions as we see in 1:2-3: “How long, O Lord, shall I call for help, and you will not hear? Or cry out to you, ‘Violence!’ and you will not save? Why do you make me see iniquity, and why do you look idly at wrong?” He’s basically charging the Lord with loafing on the job, being indifferent, and inactive. Do you ever feel that way? You cry out to God and all you hear are crickets.

When tragedy leaves you teetering, it’s not unspiritual to declare your questions to God. He’s big enough to handle your cries and your concerns, your fears and frustrations.

What do you do when you’re faced with an avalanche of agony and you feel like God is playing “hide and seek” with you? Perhaps you think Christians shouldn’t question God, and so you keep your concerns bottled up. Listen. It’s much better to ask God where He’s been than it is to wear your spiritual smiles and act like everything’s going well when you know it isn’t. It’s better to express it to the Almighty than it is to suppress it and live in agony.

The root word of question is the word “quest.” If you’re on a quest to understand, and serious about seeking answers, then don’t hesitate to declare your doubts. If you don’t ask, you might miss out on some surprising answers and ultimately short-circuit some growth God wants to accomplish in your life.

2. Describe your complaints. His main beef is he doesn’t think it’s fair for God to use wicked people like the Babylonians to punish God’s people. Habakkuk spells it out in 1:13: “You who are of purer eyes than to see evil and cannot look at wrong, why do you idly look at traitors and remain silent when the wicked swallows up the man more righteous than he?”

3. Deepen your commitment to God. Now Habakkuk is in position to move to the next step in the praise process. We see this in 2:1: “I will take my stand at my watchpost and station myself on the tower, and look out to see what He will say to me, and what I will answer concerning my complaint.”

Habakkuk is now ready to hear God’s answer even though he’s not going to like what He has to say. We can learn from this same process. If you have questions and complaints, don’t stop there. Express them and then turn again to the Lord.