How to Respond When God Doesn't Make Sense

Last Sunday we talked about those times when God does not make sense, when God does things that do not compute in our minds, things that do not seem consistent with the just, generous, kind, faithful God who does things as he promises in his Word. When things happen in our lives, in our nation, in the society in which we live, when the world gets a little strange and we do not know how to interpret what is happening, and we are not sure where God is at that moment. When there are times of adversity and trial in our lives, it may be on the level of a collective, social, worldwide situation, such as when there are wars in our countries, rampant crime, or a disease, a plague that spreads. It can be on a very large collective level, but also on a personal level, when things happen in our lives and we say, wow, why? I did not deserve this, and where is the faithful God, the just God who blesses those who serve him, and why, then, is this happening to me?

When there are times when God does not make sense—and we saw that God is present, God is speaking, God is moving—sometimes the Lord moves in unexpected ways and takes his time doing things. We have to be like Habakkuk when the Lord answers and says, I am going to send a horde, a plague of violent, evil, sinful people, and I am going to bring my people to justice, and Habakkuk says to him, Lord, but how is that possible? I spoke to you about the injustice in the nation, but that did not mean you should send such terrible destruction through terrible hands.

And we saw that God is a complex God, a God who sometimes works in unexpected ways, but he always has a purpose and he always makes sense in the end; yet, in the moment, we often do not know how to understand, and that is why we have to look at things through the lenses of the Word and through the Spirit. We have to ask the Lord to give us discernment so that we can understand why the things we go through so often happen in our lives.

God uses all things, it says, for the good of those who love the Lord, but there are times when you are being put through the wringer and they have you in the place of testing, and you do not know why God is doing that. They do not send you a manual saying, look on page 32, chapter 4, verses a, b, and c, and there you will find it. No. Many times God does things, and while you are breathless, you have to try to interpret them.

And we saw that many times what seems like a curse is actually a blessing in disguise. What seems like a dead-end situation often turns out to be something that will greatly glorify the Lord and that will ultimately build you up and bless you. That is to say, Habakkuk is a book written for our times, a book for times of urgency, difficulty, and crisis like those we are going through in our nation and throughout the world, where God is doing things that blow our minds, so to speak, many times, where there are rumors of war and the world is upside down. Time magazine, which is one of the great magazines of the world, came out with a cover story—we received the magazine in the mail yesterday—that says, “Is Truth Dead?” speaking about this nation, where there are so many lies, so much manipulation on many different levels, and there has been for some time, because this is not new. Lies and manipulation on the part of politicians have been going on for many years, but especially for some time now.

So, like Habakkuk, we sometimes find ourselves in situations like that, and Habakkuk is a book that gives us an example of how one man dealt with a situation in which God did not seem to make sense. We will see that much of it depends on the perspective we adopt, as we have said.

And today, as the conclusion of these sermons, I want to talk about how to act when God does not make sense, how to conduct ourselves, how to behave, what advice the Bible gives us when something happens in our lives and God does not make sense. From Habakkuk we can learn some beautiful lessons about this, for when we are confused and perplexed.

For Habakkuk actually begins with an expression of confusion and perplexity. The first two chapters show us a man in agony, asking God why this and why that, and God answering him in ways he does not like. And we learn a great deal from that dialogue. Habakkuk begins by saying in verse 2:

“How long, O Jehovah, shall I cry out, and you will not hear? And shall I cry out to you because of violence, and you will not save? Why do you make me see iniquity and cause me to see trouble? Destruction and violence are before me, and strife and contention arise.”

And so he continues. Those first four verses are devastating. This man is confused; he is perplexed. He is seeing things in his nation—injustice, the law not being respected, God not being worshiped and served as he ought to be—and he is confused and says, Lord, how long will I have to endure so much sin around me? He was a righteous man.

In the dialogue that unfolds, God answers him, then Habakkuk answers him back, and God tells him other things in return, and there is this encounter between God and Habakkuk that shows us something very important: one of the first things we have to do when God is not making sense in our lives is to do what Habakkuk does, which is to go before God and seek an answer from him.

Situations will come into our individual, personal lives that will make us question. For example, I think of when a mother loses a child, whether it is a pregnant mother who loses her baby in the seventh month or the sixth month, or at two years old, or a child who is already grown. We know of situations in which we have prayed for a wayward child and have asked, Lord, rescue him, and he never comes to the ways of the Lord, or something happens and we lose a child. And we have done everything in our power: prayed, fasted, sought counsel, given counsel, and God does not seem to hear our prayers.

What happens when you tithe and give offerings and serve the Lord, and you believe that God is going to bless you and prosper you financially, but then a setback comes: you lose your job, you lose your house, they repossess your car, something happens financially? You say, Lord, the pastor said that you were going to multiply my possessions and give me blessing. What happened? Where is the disconnect? What happened? I have served you, Lord; I have been faithful. For many years you have blessed me, and now everything is falling apart. What is going on?

What happens when you live a healthy lifestyle? You eat well, exercise, do what you are supposed to do, take care of your body, and at age 50 you are diagnosed with an incurable disease or something for which you will have to take medication for the rest of your life, or with a serious illness. You say, Lord, but I have done everything I could; I have behaved well, taken care of my body, declared healing and health over my life. Why is this happening to me?

I know that many of you can relate to this and to a hundred other things I have not mentioned, situations in which righteous and good people suffer adversity in their lives. How do we react in that regard? How do we behave when God does not make sense?

In Habakkuk’s case, the question is broader because it has to do with something at the level of his nation, as in these times. Lord, I have been praying to you about my legal status for a long time. I work hard, I pay my taxes, I am a faithful member of my community, and I have felt that you told me this would be resolved, but there is no answer. I am already tired of waiting. How do we react in those situations? And it seems as though things are getting worse instead of getting better. How do we react when we cannot wrap our minds around a situation?

And again, the first thing Habakkuk does is go before the Lord. He brings his perplexity; he brings his confusion before God. He wrestles with God; he asks God for an answer, and in times of affliction, trial, and difficulty, the first thing we have to do is direct our anguish toward the source of all wisdom and all solutions, who is our God. Instead of remaining in that dungeon of depression, confusion, and resentment against God, we can choose that. We can turn our situation into an extremely deep pit from which we cannot get out and do not want to get out, because many times we want to remain there in that place of self-pity.

Habakkuk shows us that instead of wallowing in anger and despair, we should direct our energies toward the Lord. What does Habakkuk do? He takes his negative energy—what he feels, confusion, anger, perplexity, something different from what he expects—and he takes that energy and, instead of directing it toward himself, which is what constitutes depression... Psychologists and psychiatrists say that depression is anger directed inward.

He takes the anger and turns it toward God, not in the sense of coming before God in a disrespectful way, but in the form of his burden. The Lord says, bring your yokes; come to me if you are sorrowful and burdened. I will give you rest. What many of us do is take up our yoke and keep carrying it... God wants to take it away from you, and you say, no, no, I want to keep it. God says, but hand it over to me. Talk to me; bring your need to me.

There is a movie, “The Mission”—it seems that Meche and I have been married for many years—this is like the marriage show: one says something, and the husband or wife quickly has the answer. What is their favorite color? Yellow.

The Mission is a very beautiful movie, and it has one of the most beautiful scenes of laying down a burden that I have ever seen, where this missionary priest who loves God, loves people, but... he is not a priest; he is a man who carries a very great burden of guilt, and he is carrying that bundle of guilt, and someone comes with a knife, already tired of seeing this man carry that physical burden—in this case, one he has imposed upon himself—and with a sword cuts the rope, and it falls away from the man.

And that is what God asks of us: bring your anger, bring your confusion, bring your pain, and talk to me. I am going to put on some boxing gloves with you. Come on, let us get into the ring, and give me everything you want to give me. I want to hear your pain. I want to talk with you. I want you to talk to me, to be honest with me.

Habakkuk takes his pain and transfers it to the Lord, and that is what prayer often is. Prayer is taking our burden, our confusion, and sometimes our anger and saying to him, Lord, I need an answer from you because I do not like what you have done, and God is willing to hear our prayer.

Paul, in Philippians chapter 4, verses 6 and 7—a passage I have referred to many times because it deserves to be repeated—tells us what we have to do:

“Be anxious for nothing”—say, nothing: finances, health, marriage, family, political situation, or immigration status—“be anxious for nothing.” Anxious means worried.

Now, let me tell you that our first reaction, and sometimes even our second reaction, in times of difficulty may be worry or anxiety. I believe that when someone faces a difficult situation, it is legitimate to feel anger, anguish, and anxiety. Now, the important thing is not to remain there. The important thing is not to remain there splashing about in anger, anxiety, and depression, but to get out, to flee for your life. Never allow depression to become a condition. Or rather, depression is something we have allowed to become a condition.

At times we may feel anger and perplexity in the moment, but what we have to do as quickly as possible, before it turns into a hard crust that is difficult to tear away, is transfer it to the Lord. Go to him in prayer, cry out to God, pray.

For me, as I have said so many times, prayer is a psychiatric process in which I unburden myself before God. Prayer is not merely a shopping list—give me, give me, give me. The value of prayer, apart from that, is that it is where I dialogue with God and unburden myself and speak to my heavenly Father, who already knows what I need, and I let him listen. All that garbage comes out. It is therapeutic. Prayer changes us. Do you remember what I have told you? Prayer changes us first because coming before the Lord is like a therapeutic process of releasing the burdens we carry.

And when a person learns and trains himself in that direction, he receives more and more rest from prayer. People, for example, who consult psychiatrists or psychologists for many years become trained in the process and get more and more out of it because they have become accustomed to it, and then it benefits them more. The same thing happens with prayer. At first, perhaps you do not get as much out of it, but as you continue practicing it, you receive more and more blessing from doing so. It becomes like the air you breathe; you cannot live without it.

Then Paul says, “but in everything, by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known before God...”

Later we will talk about that part, about how many times we have to thank God by faith and praise him by faith because, in the moment, perhaps we do not see any reason to do so, but when we do it by faith, it becomes a reality later on.

“...with thanksgiving, and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding...”

Something supernatural happens when we bring our burdens to the Lord. There is peace; there is rest. It is not a human peace; it is not a peace that is easy to understand or explain; it is not a psychological peace. It is a peace—I called it this morning—an objective peace. It is a peace that is a peace of the spirit.

Do you know that it is often possible to be sad and at the same time have peace in your heart? Do you know that it is possible to know that when you go looking for sugar for your coffee in the morning, there is not even a single grain, and you say, what a shame, goodness, but you also say, but the Lord is my strength, and I know that I am going to drink it like this and it will taste as though it had sugar, in the name of the Lord.

It is possible to be in such situations—I know that no one here has ever gone through a situation where there was no sugar in the house—but how good it is to know that, even in the midst of that, the Lord is with us too. It is possible. That peace which surpasses all understanding—we learn to dwell in those dimensions where our emotions say one thing but our spirit says another. And I believe that a large part of Christian maturity is learning more and more to dwell in that dimension of the spirit, to disconnect ourselves from emotions and feelings, and to dwell in that place where the peace of God enters our hearts and keeps our minds and hearts focused on Christ Jesus.

And I understand why Paul says later, in verse 8, “Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good report, if there is any virtue, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.”

Do you know why? Because he says here, “…and it will keep your mind and heart in Christ Jesus.” And then he says, think about these good things. Do you know that when you focus on Christ instead of on the serpent that is biting your heel, you receive peace, rest from the Lord, and strength? When, instead of listening to Lady Gaga, you listen to a worshiper—José Luis Reyes, Nancy Amancio—what happens when you listen to worship, to something that blesses you and builds you up, when you keep your mind on the Word of God, on the principles of the Kingdom of God, when you go to church and hear a good word? Your mind is being formatted according to the principles of the Gospel, and your spirit is strong; therefore, your emotions will also be strong.

If you keep your eyes fixed on Christ Jesus, you will receive the peace that surpasses all understanding. So one of the things we must do is turn our gaze toward God, turn it away from the place of crisis and the difficult situation, seek out a good conversation, seek out a brother who will bless you and strengthen you because he is someone who speaks positively. Do not seek out an ill-tempered, complaining person in order to find rest. Seek out people who are strong in the Lord, who will bless you, encourage you, and strengthen you, because otherwise the two of you will end up jumping off a bridge. Seek out people who build you up, strengthen you, and encourage you in the Lord. Seek out places like this, where God speaks into our lives.

Instead of staying home with the sheet pulled over your head, come to church; even if you do not put on lipstick, come and seek the Lord here. If you are depressed, drag yourself here; come in your pajamas—we give you permission—come in your socks, but seek that strength. Look to the Lord.

That is what Habakkuk does in his time of difficulty, confusion, and great distress: he goes to the Lord, directs his burden to the Lord, and complains before him. And that is something we have to learn. Prayer is the great release valve, the great valve of relief that opens so that everything does not remain trapped inside and make the stove explode; release it in prayer and praise, and fill your mind with the promises of the Lord. Do it as a matter of spiritual hygiene, even if you do not feel like doing it. But if you do it, the math will work out, and rest and transformation will come.

This morning I remembered the beautiful hymn, ‘Sweet Hour of Prayer.’ How many of you know that hymn? It was written in 1845 by a man blind from birth who refused to give in to depression and self-pity and used his mind to remember… The people who knew him thought that he had memorized the entire Bible because he had memorized so many parts of it, since he could not read it. And so he allowed the Word of God to flow through his life and composed hymns, and one of the hymns he composed was this hymn, ‘Sweet Hour of Prayer.’ It says: Sweet hour of prayer, sweet hour of prayer, from every worldly influence you lift my heart to the tender heavenly Father. Oh, how often I found help in you amid harsh temptation, and how many blessings I received through you, sweet hour of prayer.

Sweet hour of prayer, sweet hour of prayer, to the exalted throne of goodness you will carry my petition to God, who listens with compassion. Believing, I hope to receive a full, divine blessing, and that you will help me live with you beside me, sweet hour of prayer.

How beautiful, isn’t it? It has three stanzas; look it up on Google—it is there—and use it as a meditation. That is what prayer is: it is a place that takes us to the heavenly throne and allows us to find rest in our times of great anxiety. These are exhausting times, the times in which we live. Newspapers and the news fill us with anxiety: what we see in our communities, young people dying of overdoses everywhere, violence, terrorist acts, a government completely deadlocked and divided, a world with wars and rumors of wars, large-scale migratory movements, masses of hundreds of thousands of human beings moving like hunted animals from one place to another and finding no rest.

And we see all those images on television, hear about them on the radio, see them in the movies, and hear about them in our workplaces. It is a time of great anxiety, and we find no rest. And the only place where we can truly rest is in the place Habakkuk found: the place of dialogue with God. Prayer should be that—a part of our lives.

The second thing Habakkuk teaches us, particularly in chapter 3 and indeed throughout the whole book, is that we can choose. And the emphasis here is on choosing: the freedom Christians have to choose what their reaction will be when a time of suffering, affliction, or trial comes, when God does not make sense. You can choose how you are going to react.

And that is a revolutionary concept for many of us, because we are accustomed to thinking that we are like trained animals: if someone presses a button, there is a reaction; if something bad happens to me, I am going to react with depression or sadness. And many of us live our lives thinking this way: when suffering and difficulty come, we collapse and get into bed until the problem passes. We do not go to church for a while; we take a vacation from God until we finally forget what happened.

But there is another way of looking at things, and that is what Habakkuk teaches us. And I want you to learn this: you can choose how to react when trial and suffering come into your life. You are not merely an animal automatically condemned to a Pavlovian reaction; you can choose.

It is like I was telling the brothers and sisters this morning: how many times have you opened the upper cupboard and had a can fall out and land right on your big toe while you still had not put on your shoes? The can fell on your foot, and do you know what happens? It takes a microsecond for the brain—for that stimulus that strikes your foot—to travel from your foot to your brain so that you say, it hurts, and then let out a scream. There is a microsecond because it is a physical process: the foot sends the brain a signal saying, here comes pain; interpret it.

And it has happened to me: something happens, and I say, this is going to hurt. It takes a microsecond, and boom, then the pain explodes. Well, between the moment the stimulus occurred and the moment the brain knew what had happened and interpreted it, during that microsecond you can decide how you are going to react: with a colossal curse, with a forced blessing, with a simple ouch, or with a macabre dance on one foot, or whatever. But you can decide what you are going to do at that moment, yes or no?

We think, no, if you are accustomed to cursing and using obscene words, they are going to come pouring out. But little by little, you can train yourself so that your reaction is acceptable before the Lord. I am not telling you to start laughing either, because then we would have to take you to a psychiatrist. But at least let it be a reaction…

Likewise, I say that between every situation in life and our reaction to it, there is a space in which we can choose. It is the space of the freedom we have in Christ Jesus to decide whether we are going to become depressed, curse God, do anything else, or say, Lord, in spite of everything, I believe in you, and I am going to wait; I know that I am upset, but I am going to come to you.

If you have lived a life in which you become depressed, filled with anger, or filled with resentment when something adverse happens to you, believe that God can change that program in the name of the Lord. Many times we do not even try, and we have lived in families where depression runs in the family, where anxiety runs in the family, where alcoholism, drug addiction, unbridled sensuality, and any number of other things run in the family; and we think, well, that is how my family is, that is how my uncles were, that is how I am, that is how my father was, that is how my mother was; I am condemned to the same thing. In Christ Jesus, we have broken those chains, brothers and sisters; we have freedom in God to decide how we are going to react.

And part of the sanctification process in the Christian life is learning to change the program by which we operate. Many of the reactions we have are the product of a recording running within us that tells us, look, this happened, this is the reason why, and this is how you have to act.

But depending on how we reprogram our world and how we see ourselves, we can gradually change our reactions to life. And one of the things we must say is: Lord, give me discernment to discover those invisible programs that are within me, which even I do not know about, and which lead me to act this way when something negative happens in my life—to curse, criticize, rebel, answer harshly, counterattack, become depressed, or whatever—and teach me how a child of God can behave and act in times of difficulty and distress.

Ask the Lord. You do not have to live under a generational condemnation. You have power in Christ Jesus. What Christ does is break the inevitability of sin. So change the program; believe that there are creative ways to relate to life’s adverse situations. Sanctification is the reprogramming of our biology, of our neurology. We must learn more and more to move not according to the flesh, but according to the program of the Spirit, the principles of the Kingdom of God, learning to do things according to what God says.

The Bible says, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God, meaning that man does not live by his appetites, emotions, or material impulses; the Christian lives by the principles that proceed from the mouth of God. We replace negative, fleshly actions with positive, spiritual reactions. We can choose. We are not captive to our emotions. Christ gives us freedom to act and react in positive ways.

Habakkuk did that. Habakkuk could have become filled with bitterness and said, how can this be, Lord, that you are going to bring a horde of violent, wicked people who will destroy our nation? Are they going to take our children captive? You are dropping an atomic bomb when perhaps what you ought to do is carry out a disciplinary intervention, and we are going to suffer in that way. No, I would rather renounce that God. I do not want to serve that God.

But Habakkuk controls his reaction and turns it in a constructive direction. And you can do the same. I assure you that if you believe it in the name of the Lord, you will do it. Fill yourself with that strength in God and say, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. I can emerge from depression, I can emerge from anxiety, I can emerge from resentment, I can leave behind that memory of rape, or whatever it may be, or of past abuse, and I can begin to live a life of blessing and hope because God gives me the power to do it. So train yourself to believe in God’s power to free you from the deformities of your past.

The third principle Habakkuk shows us is that sometimes we must exercise patience until God has completed his mysterious processes. God sometimes takes time to fulfill his word, to fulfill his promise. God is a God of mysterious procedures, and if we have a short fuse and little patience, then when God is creating a masterpiece that takes time and all we see is the ugly part of the process, we will run off and miss the opportunity to see God’s glorious work in our lives. God sometimes takes time to fulfill a blessing.

And sometimes, before you reach the blessing God has for you, you must spend a long time going down dead-end streets, going one way and not finding the solution, then going another way until God completes the process. And God is glorified in everything. God can turn a pile of garbage into a beautiful work of art. From all the situations you have gone through in your life, God can take those ugly, foul-smelling materials and make something that, when you look at it, makes you say, wow, how could God bring something so beautiful out of this?

You know that some of the great artists have made works out of all kinds of things. Andy Warhole, one of the great modern artists—one of the most expensive works he made is a Campbell’s soup can that he painted—and things like that, brothers and sisters, where God often creates a work through all these things.

And we have to be patient and let the Lord complete His work in our lives. Habakkuk says this in chapter 2—I already read it last Sunday—when God tells Habakkuk, “I am going to destroy, and I am going to bring a violent nation to carry out My actions and My judgments.” Habakkuk takes a deep breath, takes two aspirins, and look at what he says: “I will stand at my watch and station myself on the fortress.” Sometimes you have to plant your feet firmly in order to see what God is going to tell us.

The apostle Paul says in Ephesians chapter 6, “When the evil day comes into your life, stand firm.” Sometimes, when the gale comes, you have to hold on to a beam until the gale passes, and when it has passed, may it find you still standing firm. When the evil day comes, we have to take up the whole armor of God, the Bible says, the whole spiritual armor, and seek the weapons of prayer, fasting, positive confession, and keeping company with people who believe in God and are strong in the Gospel, until it has passed, until the devil has shot all his fiery darts; and when he has nothing left to throw, you are still standing firm in your place. And then God says, “Now I am going to give you rest, I am going to give you peace, I am going to give you blessing, because you stood firm.”

Then he says, “I will station myself and keep watch to see what will be said to me and what I shall answer concerning my complaint. And the Lord answered me and said, ‘Write the vision; make it plain on tablets, and although the vision will still take some time, it hastens toward the end and will not lie. Though it delays, wait for it, because it will surely come and will not delay.’”

Many times, God’s processes take time to be completed. You have to wait for it. Something the Christian urgently needs is patience, because many times God is using ingredients and you do not know why He is using them, but He has a purpose in it, and when God cooks, He sometimes cooks with some very unusual seasonings. He adds a little cinnamon and ginger, while we are accustomed to garlic, onion, and chili pepper, thinking, “What is this cumin and these other strange things?” The world has hundreds of spices. Indians cook with curry and other things. The Chinese have their own spices, and there are wonderful dishes. One of the blessings we have in Boston is that there is food of every kind, and one learns to appreciate the foods of different nations.

Many times we Caribbean people, for example, in our case, cook with three or four seasonings—that is all: salt, chili pepper, onion, and pepper at best, and a little oregano now and then. Let us learn to appreciate all of God’s seasonings in our lives. God sometimes uses different processes, brothers and sisters, and sometimes He brings things…and if we say, “No, this is not going to taste good,” give it time, wait, try it two or three times until your palate gets used to it.

How many times have you rejected something and then ended up liking it? God takes His time, and we have to be patient, and Habakkuk says, “I am going to wait. I am going to see what God will answer me concerning my complaint.”

God promised Joseph royalty; He gave him a dream when he was about fourteen years old. What the dream meant was that his mother, his father, and his brothers would end up bowing down before him. Imagine, in a Hebrew social context, telling your father, “Dad and Mom, I saw that one day you are going to end up bowing down before me.” “Look, boy, I’m going to give you such a smack!” That is how Joseph’s parents reacted. “That is what I dreamed; I am simply reporting it.” God told him that there was something upon his life: God was going to lift him up, use him, and place him in authority, even over his parents and his brothers.

The Bible says that at the age of thirty, when he was thirty years old, seventeen years later, he appeared before Pharaoh, after fourteen years of captivity. From the moment he spoke that word of blessing God had revealed to him, all hell broke loose; hell itself was unleashed. His brothers began to criticize and hate him, and they sold him into slavery. He arrives at a house, and there he is slandered and thrown into prison after a time of blessing. In prison he works some miracles on behalf of certain people, and instead of blessing him when they return to positions of authority, those people forget him. And there God’s blessing is, simmering over low heat. Why? Because God was forming a man who would lead a nation in crisis, because that is what Joseph did.

He was forming a man who would be the vice president of the most powerful nation in the world at that time, Egypt—a statesman who needed strength, poise, gravitas, and weight—and you do not acquire that in a rose garden. And God put him there, squeezed him, released him, and formed him in the furnace. Do you know where we often become strong? In the trial; that is where a person develops humility, patience, and an awareness of our own limitations.

You know that you can never truly help someone until God has disqualified you and broken you several times, until your nose is running as you cry and you remember that you are not the last Coca-Cola in the desert; until then, God cannot use you. That is what He did with Peter; that is what He did with Elijah himself, such a powerful man: He pushed him to the limit until Elijah wanted to die. That is what He did with so many great men of God, with Moses.

And God takes His time, and God uses instruments that look like instruments of torture but are actually surgical instruments that form us and create that man of God. I believe that until God deals with us, tests us, and puts us on the operating table, we cannot be greatly used by God. And that is why we must have the patience to wait until God has completed His mysterious purposes. We have to arm ourselves with patience.

When the time of testing comes into your life, fasten your seat belt securely, have a cup of coffee, rest in the Lord, put on the armor of faith, and say, “I know the journey is going to be a little stormy, but I am going to wait on the Lord, and I know I will come out shining like gold when that moment arrives.” So we have to be patient and wait for God’s timing. Arm yourself with patience.

A fourth principle in this book: praise the Lord. The praise of faith. The objective proclamation of the goodness of God and of the God who is in control, even though it may seem that He is not in control. When the world becomes chaotic, when you have no desire to praise the Lord, worship the Lord at that moment. That sacrifice of praise that comes from the spiritual part of your being, which you utter simply because you know it is a weapon against evil—instead of cursing, bless the Lord; instead of speaking about God’s injustice, speak about God’s control over your life and say, “The devil is not the one in control right now; God is in control, and He is doing something I do not understand, but I praise and glorify Him.”

Habakkuk is filled with moments when, in the midst of declarations of affliction and pain, there are also beautiful moments in which glory is given to God. Look, for example, at chapter 1, verse 12. Habakkuk says:

“Are You not from the beginning, O Lord, my God, my Holy One? We shall not die…”

There is a moment when, in the midst of that declaration about the affliction that is coming, he says, “We are not going to die, in the name of the Lord.”

Chapter 2, verse 4, says, “Behold, he whose soul is not upright is puffed up, but the just shall live by his faith.” That is a declaration that deeply affected Martin Luther when he was working through the process of the Reformation: that salvation is not by works but by faith, by grace, by believing God. And that declaration by Habakkuk in the midst of the trial—that the just shall live by faith—affected the life of the great Reformer; it affected the writer of Hebrews, who also says that the just shall live by faith; I am not sure if it is in Galatians, but the idea is that it is faith, rather than works, that saves.

And we have to understand this truth that we live by faith, not by feelings, not by what we experience or what we see, but by what God has declared. These are verses that bring great peace to the heart. Verse 14 in chapter 2:

“…For the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.”

You know that this is what encourages us in this world: knowing that God is not yet finished with the earth and that many blessings are still coming to the world; there is still hope for the nations to know the Lord. The earth shall be filled with the glory of the Lord. And a day will come when this will be fulfilled definitively, when this world has ended and the world reflects only the will of God, without any resistance, and we live for that day.

There is a hymn that says, “I only wait for that day when Christ will return.” Another beautiful hymn. And we wait for that day, that great redemption, when the whole earth will be filled with the glory of God, and every injustice and every tear will be wiped from our eyes.

And that hope often sustains us in the midst of… One of the things that helps us most is knowing that one day all of this will end. This world is not absolute, and many of us live only in this world, in time and space. The person who lives only in history, in circumstances, has nowhere to go; but for the one who knows God and knows that a world of eternity lies before us, that dilutes the afflictions of life.

I am sorry to put my sister Iris on the spot, but as I watched Iris up here worshiping the Lord this morning, Iris has just officiated at—or witnessed—the death of her mother, a beautiful woman of God, our sister Luisa, whom we loved so dearly for many years; and I saw Iris, whom I know best in the family, with her mother’s coffin in front of her, and I saw her with such poise, such peace, such dignity, greeting the brothers and sisters who had attended the funeral; and today I see her here worshiping the Lord, just a few days after…

I say, “Wow, that is what God does.” Why? Because she knows that her mother is with the Lord. She knows that this world was not the end of everything. This world may have placed a parenthesis in Sister Luisa’s life, in her relationship with us, but at some point we will leap over there and see her in our heavenly homeland, and that comforts us. That brings peace to our hearts. That day when the earth will be filled with the glory of the Lord. That day when we can look and say, “Yes, I am going through a time of testing right now, but I know that the moment of redemption is coming, that the moment of the restoration of everything that has been lost is coming.”

In verse 20 there is also another declaration of great blessing and great inspiration, 2:20: “But the Lord is in His holy temple; let all the earth keep silence before Him.”

A declaration of God’s lordship over the world. Although the world may seem to be going to hell in a handbasket, we say, “No, the Lord is on His throne. God is in control; it is not man, it is not the president of North Korea, the madman over there leading that nation, firing missiles everywhere as though they were Christmas rockets. No, God is in control. It is not ISIS over there killing people; God is in His temple. Let all the earth keep silence before Him.”

What an invitation to stand in awe of God’s lordship over history. These are moments when the writer blesses instead of cursing. Brother, instead of confessing negativity, confess positivity. “The Lord is with me; God is going to bring me through. I know that God is faithful, and although I do not understand what is happening, He is in control and He is going to bring me through.” That is what Job does when he is in the midst of the great suffering of his life and his wife says to him, “Look, curse God and die.” Well, Job has two moments. One moment is when he suffers and does not understand what God is doing, and he wonders, “What is happening in my life?” and complains before God. That is the first moment.

What we cannot do is remain there. What we have to do is dialogue with God and bring our bitterness before Him. What does Job say? In verse 7:

“Behold, I will cry out, ‘Wrong!’ but I am not heard; I will cry aloud, but there is no justice. God has fenced up my way so that I cannot pass, and He has set darkness upon my paths. He has stripped me of my glory and taken the crown from my head. He has ruined me on every side, and I perish, and He has uprooted my hope like a tree,” and he continues.

And one would say, “Wow, this man is going to shoot himself at any moment.” You are almost closing your eyes so you will not see him when he does it. But what happens later? In verse 25, he moves from a note of complaint before his God—speaking and defending his cause—and says:

“I know that my Redeemer lives.”

Brothers and sisters, the moment has to come when you stop lamenting, complaining, and accusing God, and the moment has to come when you kiss His hand. I have had times in my life when I ask myself, “Lord, why did You throw that stone at me? Where did it come from? Why?” And you scratch your head and complain against God. But in the very midst of my pain, I know that whether tomorrow or a week from now, I am going to have to come to Papa and kiss His hand; I am going to have to say to Him, “Lord, all right, You know what You are doing.”

You may spend some time having a self-pity party, and that is all right up to a point, but know this; tell yourself, “Yes, but at some point you are going to have to pull yourself together. You are going to have to worship God again. You are going to have to seek the Lord, because you were not made to live in the dungeon. You were made to fly and soar through the skies like an eagle.”

Job goes through his struggle; he goes through his affliction, but then he says, “I know that my Redeemer lives, and at last he will stand upon the dust. And after this skin of mine has been destroyed, in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold him, and not another.”

He is declaring something about which he himself may not be certain, brothers and sisters, but he is saying it by faith. And many times, what we declare with our mouths by faith becomes a reality. Do not wait until you feel like praising before you praise. Praise, and you will feel praise. Write that down for me there. Do not wait until you feel the joy of the Lord before praising him and declaring joy. Declare joy, and the joy of the Lord will become a reality within you.

The other day I was speaking to someone who harbored great resentment toward another person, and thanks to the Lord, through the dialogue of counseling, I had brought this person to the point of being willing to consider forgiving, because this person had been offended in a very serious, very grave way. And one of the most difficult things for a person who has suffered violence and assault in life is to forgive.

And many times, part of the problem is that people think that in order to forgive, we have to feel forgiveness. But throughout the history of counseling, it has been learned that forgiveness often begins with an objective declaration of forgiveness, even if you do not feel it. Because many times, if you wait until you feel the desire to forgive, you will never forgive. But what one discovers is that many times, when one says aloud, “I forgive; even though an injustice was committed, I forgive,” something happens inside us: what began as a judicial declaration becomes an intimate feeling, and then we feel forgiveness.

Never wait for the noble impulse to come before doing something noble. Do it like a soldier saluting his general, and do what God asks of you; then you will see how it becomes a feeling, an inner conviction of blessing. Learn to declare things prophetically with your mouth in the name of the Lord. Speak to your spirit; speak to the noblest faculties of your being, and command them to do something in the name of the Lord because God says so, because I must do it, and because I am a soldier in the divine army. Then the blessing will come.

If you harbor any resentment against someone, if there is something in your life that is holding you captive, in the name of the Lord—let us bow our heads. You are in control. The devil is not in control. Your past is not in control; your tormentors are not in control; your terrible experiences from the past are not in control; those who violated you are not in control. They cannot live inside you, contaminating your inner space. Cast them out. Let them go. Release them. Choose the place of praise; choose the place of confessing that God makes sense in every situation.

And if you have offended the Lord—I feel led by the Lord to say this—even if you have offended God and feel that you are a prisoner of your past sin, this afternoon I also invite you to open the cell that you yourself have built. Perhaps God has already forgiven you because you have confessed your sin, but open the door and come out in the name of the Lord, and declare freedom in the name of Jesus.

Forgive, praise, confess positively. Say, “I am free in the name of the Lord.” Even if you do not feel free, confess freedom and you will feel freedom. Confess power and you will feel power. Confess sufficiency and you will feel sufficiency. Confess that you are not a victim, and you will feel God’s victory in your life. Confess that your past has no control over you, and the past will flee like a demon that slips through a crack and has to leave your life in the name of the Lord.

Worship the Lord. Wait on the Lord. I waited patiently for the Lord, and he inclined to me and heard my cry. He brought me up out of the pit of despair, out of the miry bog, and set my feet upon a rock and made my steps firm.

And I want to bring you to that point of singing a new song. He put a new song in my mouth, praise to our God. You know that Habakkuk ends with the beautiful third chapter, which is a lovely psalm of worship to the Lord and a declaration of complete independence from every circumstance, from everything that may happen. Beautiful verses. I want you to go to that place this afternoon, and if you feel that you want to come forward so that we can offer a collective prayer for deliverance from any situation that may be present in your life, I invite you to do so without any shame, because you are here among family. Stand up, or do whatever you feel in your heart. Declare freedom this afternoon; declare freedom in the name of the Lord; declare deliverance. God sets you free from every inferiority complex, every wound from the past, every tendency to be the first one to leave, to slip away because you feel that you are not worthy enough.

Habakkuk says, “Though the fig tree does not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines; though the produce of the olive fails and the fields yield no food; though the sheep be taken from the fold and there be no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will take joy in the God of my salvation. The Lord God is my strength; he makes my feet like the deer’s and makes me walk upon my high places.” Glory to the name of the Lord.