#266: 3 Lessons from Habakkuk

Welcome to Kingdom Writers, where we help equip and empower Christian writers of all genres to share your unique gifts with the world. We're your hosts, C.J. and Shelley Hitz.

This podcast is filled with spiritual encouragement as well as prayers to help you overcome the resistance you face as a writer. Your story matters.

I wanted to just share three little lessons that we can learn from three little chapters from this little minor prophet at the end of the Old Testament, you know, Habakkuk. Interestingly enough, the name Habakkuk means embracer. And how many know that we.

Every day of our lives, essentially have to learn to embrace things, even if we don't enjoy them? I mean, you know, Shelly and I, in a lot of ways right now, during these days that we're out in Ohio, we're embracing some things that, you know, we didn't know about a week ago, we. We didn't know we were going to be out here. Matter of fact, it was maybe four days ago that we just booked a plane ticket last minute. And, you know, life is about embracing what comes our way. And so I want to look at three lessons, and the first lesson that I want us to consider in Habakkuk is to let our complaints be heard. I don't know about you, but it seems that in so many churches around the world, especially in the United States, and I know many of you are Americans in this academy, but, you know, the American church sometimes can. We can put on a good face on Sunday mornings. We can act like everything's okay. Oh, just doing great. I'm blessed in the Lord, whereas, you know, on the inside, we might be really struggling. We've got complaints, we have issues, but we put on that face. We do it for God, almost as if he can't handle a complaint. And then we sometimes do it for those around us because, well, we just don't want to get into the issues and we don't want to waste their time. And we. We just want to put a good foot forward. And what we can learn from this little prophet is that he was straight to the point in what he was sharing with those who would read these words. And he didn't hold back. He complained. And I want to just start off by saying.

Looking at Habakkuk 1, verse 2. This is the first part of Habakkuk's complaint. He says, how long, O Lord, must I call for help? But you do not listen. Violence is everywhere. I cry, but you do not come to save. How many of us could say, how long? How Long Lord. How long before my book's published? How long before I get out of this rut that I've been in? How long before I'm able to change jobs? How long before my family members begin to understand me or, you know, something changes, whatever it might be in your life, My life. We need to feel free to air our complaints because we serve God, who can more than handle it. And I'm talking about legitimate complaints and not keeping things inside, but instead airing them out so that they don't just eventually explode. Because those of you that know when we hold things in and we're frustrated and we've got disappointments and we've got complaints, by holding those things in, we're a time bomb for those around us. But also just making rash decisions in a lot of ways.

Yeah. There's actually current brain research that shows that when we suppress our emotions, instead of embracing them, we actually make them worse. We actually make the situation worse. And in our brain, it actually makes it worse. And so Dr. Caroline Leaf has done a lot of research on this, and. And she says the first step is to embrace what you're feeling, to embrace that and to acknowledge it. But then you move forward through her process that she calls a neuro cycle. And I really recommend her book, Switch on the Brain, but she helps you walk through that process so you don't stay stuck there. You process it, and then you move forward.

Yeah. In this regard, in this instance, Habakkuk.

He is essentially complaining about his own people. How long, Lord? What's going to happen?

And then the Lord replies to Habakkuk, oh, don't worry, I've got things in order. And this is exactly what's going to happen. I'm glad you asked, Habakkuk. I'm actually going to punish your people with the Babylonians. You almost think, oh, my goodness.

Habakkuk's probably thinking, I'm sorry I asked. I'm sorry I complained. Because if you know anything about the Babylonians, they were ruthless. They were running all amok across the world, conquering everyone in sight, rolling them like steamrollers. And the Lord says, I'm going to use these people to actually bring some punishment to the complaints that you just aired. You've aired complaints about your people. Guess what? I'm already on the move. The Babylonians are coming. Now we move down. And Habakkuk actually shoots one question after another to the Lord after the Lord tells him that the Babylonians are going to be the punishment. I want to read these Questions to you, because many of these, we might have questions. These are about our spiritual enemies or we just feel like we're being steamrolled. We just feel like one thing after another keeps hitting us. One thing after another keeps preventing us from producing the book that God wants to do through our lives. We just feel wrecked. We feel like we've gone through a meat grinder. We can't focus. One distraction after another starts hitting us. We can't sit down and write for five minutes, all these things. Now listen to Habakkuk here. O Lord, my God, my holy one, you are eternal. Surely you do not plan to wipe us out. O Lord, our rock. You have sent these Babylonians to correct us, to punish us for many sins. But you're pure and cannot stand the sight of evil. Will you wink at their treachery?

Should you be silent while the wicked swallow up people more righteous than they.

Are? We only fish to be caught and killed? Are we only sea creatures that have no leader?

Must we be strung up on their hooks and caught in their nets while they rejoice and celebrate? Then they will worship their nets and burn incense in front of them. These nets are. Are the gods who have made us rich. They will claim, will you let them get away with this forever? Will they succeed forever in their heartless conquests? And so you can just hear.

Habakkuk's frustration now, like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. You're going to send the Babylonians. What? What? You're a good God, right? You're for us. You're not against us. Do you intend to completely annihilate us? Wipe us out? These are valid questions. I think sometimes we have questions for God. The question I have for us is, are we airing those questions before God? Are we letting them be heard? Are we complaining in a constructive way? Again, we're not demeaning. We're not being disrespectful toward God. What we're doing is we're just airing our emotions. Like, man, this is how I feel. Lord, I'm really frustrated right now. Will you not act on my behalf? I'm struggling here. Can you throw me a line? Can you do something? I'm drowning.

And so Habakkuk complains.

The second.

Point, the first one is to let our complaints be heard. The second lesson I think that we can learn from this little minor prophet is to then after we complain, then wait on the Lord for his reply. Don't just scurry around like, ah, he's not listening. I'm just going to go ahead and make this decision. I'm just going to do this and that.

How many of you know, we just don't like to wait. And if we don't get an answer quickly, we just make a rash decision because, well, there's. There's. There's too much dead air. And we don't like to. We don't like the dead air. We keep our televisions on, the radios on. We want noise to stimulate us, and we're not willing to wait. But listen to this.

Habakkuk. Two verses. One. He says this. I will climb up to my watchtower. He's already complained. Now, I will now climb up to my watchtower and stand at my guard post. There I will wait to see what the Lord says and how He. He will answer my complaint. Notice this. Now he will wait and see. Now, waiting, I believe, is a key characteristic that all.

Christian writers, especially Kingdom writers, I believe we especially need to have a waiting attitude. Because, yeah, we could spew off all kinds of words and string together sentences that turn into paragraphs, that turned into chapters. But how many of us really are waiting for something good that God wants to put on our hearts? We want to wait upon Him. We want to wait upon content that he wants to share through us with a starving world. And so that second lesson is to wait, wait on the Lord, even though that's something not many of us want to do.

And then.

Verse 2 there in Habakkuk 2, then the Lord said to me, write my answer plainly on tablets so that a runner can carry the correct message to others. Okay, so you see there, God is answering. I don't know how long Habakkuk had to wait. It might have just been a few minutes, a few hours, a day or two, I'm not sure. But what I know is that when we wait, we do eventually get an answer. God speaks through his people. We asked our pastors, we asked some prayer partners that we have. Would you please pray for us as we go out to Ohio? Because we're not sure on certain things. We're just going out there, and we have serious decisions to make regarding Shelley's father, would you please pray that we are given wisdom? And you want to know what we receive confirmation on numerous things just in the short time that we've been here so far. Confirmation to say, you know what? Yes, we are to move Shelly's dad, Chuck, down to Florida. We weren't sure because there's positives and negatives. And yet we needed clarity on this issue. Many of Us need clarity regarding the content of our books. We think we've got some good ideas, but man, if we just waited a little bit longer, I wonder what the Lord would continue to birth through us if we would wait upon him. Even see this waiting theme in the New Testament with Jesus, you know, Jesus tells his disciples, I want you to wait in Jerusalem. I want you to wait for the gift that we're going to give you, the gift of the Holy Spirit. I want you to wait. There was a gift for the waiting. There was, was a reward that would come through the waiting.

And he was, Habakkuk was being intentional, says, I will climb up to my watchtower and stand at my guard post. He wasn't just staying in self pity of like, oh, woe is me. He was being intentional to look and to wait for the Lord to answer. And that's one of the reasons we recommend so much that you have your at least weekly business meeting with the Lord. I try to have one every day for our business. But to be having those weekly business meetings with the Lord for your writing, publishing, and then especially your marketing as you're now trying to, you know, you're birthing this book out into the world, it's easy to get frustrated. It's easy to try things and see that it's not getting the results that you want and want to just, you know, stop, stay stuck in self pity of like, woe is me. Why is things not going my way? And yet here he was being intentional, waiting for the Lord. And you know, it's hard, it's hard to sit in a business meeting with God and then just, and then to write out what he's, you know, saying to you and, and then do it. Right. But, but I like that about Habakkuk, that he was being intimate.

Yeah. And that intentionality led to an answer from the Lord. You know, if you read the rest of chapter two, it's essentially the Lord telling Habakkuk, hey, I've got you man. I'll have the last word, don't worry. Yes, I'm using the Babylonians, but no, they will not have the last word. I will have the last word. And finally, so the first two lessons are, number one, let your complaint be heard. We just need to air out our complaints before the Lord regarding everything about our writing, our books, our frustrations in life, outsider writing, whatever it might be. Air those out, even air them out to a trusted friend or a relative, family member.

Yeah, and there's another verse that says, do everything without grumbling and complaining. So we're not saying to go against that verse, we're saying to embrace your emotions. Yeah, to embrace your emotions in that. And probably just that translation, the way it was saying, you know, he was bringing his complaints to the Lord, but not necessarily in a complaining self pity.

Not a whiny way. But I need an answer here. What's going on?

The second thing is waiting on the Lord. And the third lesson we can learn from this little minor prophet is to praise God regardless of the circumstances. To praise him regardless of the circumstances. And I want you to see this. You know, Habakkuk had this prayer in chapter three. That's basically what chapter three is about. It's him then seeing this glimpse of the splendor of God being humbled, being silenced almost. He trembled at some says and he then closes out with to me one of the most beautiful passages in all of scripture. And listen to this. And it almost reads, this whole chapter three almost reads like one of David's psalms, one of his praises, you know, to God. And it even says at the beginning of chapter three that this is to be set to music.

So Habakkuk was giving a musical lesson or prayer a praise. But listen to this Habakkuk, chapter 3, starting in verse 17.

Even though the fig trees have no blossoms and there are no grapes on the vines.

So even though there are no words on the pages.

Yeah.

Even though there are no sales publishers knocking at my door.

Even though.

My books so far have not sold well. Even though you get that picture here. Even though the figs have no blossoms, the fig trees and there are no grapes on the vine. Even though the olive crop fails and the fields lie empty and barren. How many of us have said, have felt barren as writers at times. Even though the flocks die in the fields.

And the cattle barns are empty.

Yet. Verse 18, I love that. Yet. Even though, yet, yet I will rejoice in the Lord.

I will be joyful in the God of my salvation. The sovereign Lord is my strength. Yes. He makes me as sure footed as a deer able to tread upon the heights. You just think about a deer on some really rough terrain. All you need to do is actually YouTube mountain goats or bighorn sheep or some of these, these, these rocky, these creatures that, that practically climb up sheer cliffs and one wrong step and they're falling hundreds of feet. This is the idea here that Habakkuk wants us to see. That's the kind of terrain that was going on as he's writing this.

You know, he makes me as sure footed as a deer. The footing may be unstable, but he's giving me every step, every step of the way is, is he's got me. He's. He. He's ordered my steps and I'm able to tread upon those heights that have some treacherous places. No matter where I find myself in life, God is making me as sure footed as a deer. And Habakkuk is intentional about giving God that credit, that it's God who makes him as sure footed. And again, just a reminder, that name Habakkuk means embracer. Embracer of anything that comes his way. And by the end, he was essentially, literally living out the meaning of his name. I'll embrace anything, Lord, even after I've complained, you've replied.

I've waited.

I may not get the exact response that I'm wanting right now, but I embrace it and we're going to move forward. And I know with you, Lord, I can face anything.

And so in this season, many of you know that we started Lent a week ago. That's the season that leads up to Easter. And in many instances people will fast from something or they'll give up something. It's sort of a dying, you know, it's a dying period. You know, it's a leading up to ultimately the death of Christ, but that glorious resurrection as well. And what I want to say is that in this season of life, and isn't it true that in many ways we've probably felt like we've been in a season of Lent for the last year.

It's like been a year long Lent season for a lot of people. It's because of all that we've had to endure.

In this season of Lent. We're reminded of how our Lord Jesus agonized.

In the garden while surrendering his will to the Father's will. He was in that garden of Gethsemane and he uttered words to his Father. If there's any way, Father, that you can take this cup from me, if there's any way whatsoever.

Please, please do. But at the end of that prayer, he says, nevertheless, not my will.

But your will be done. It was full surrender. And this is in a lot of ways what Habakkuk is teaching us. No matter what happens, I still will praise you and I will embrace your plan, because I know you have good plan for your people. Even if we have to go through some punishment, even if we have to have some eye openers to get our attention again, to set our gaze back upon you.

I'll Embrace this fully. And that's what Jesus lays down in his example for us. He embraced whatever would be ahead of him. And we see looking back now this side of the cross, how good that was and what he eventually would do. And so I just want to, I want to close this in prayer and I just want to ask that you would just lift your voice up to the Lord, air out your complaint, your emotion, the thing that has been stirring inside of you, the thing that, that you're wanting to seek the Lord on. You're not sure why things are happening the way they're happening in your life. Maybe that's been that way for some of you for the last year in this season that we found ourselves in, what we've all around the world had to adjust to. But maybe you've been hit particularly hard. I want you to voice your complaint, voice that to the Lord. Then will you just wait? Will you spend a season.

Whether it's hours, days or weeks, just waiting, saying, lord, I don't hear your answer yet, but I trust you. I trust you. I believe that you've put this book upon my heart and I believe that you're going to be faithful to complete that work within me. You've given me the idea, you've me given birthed that in me. And now I believe that you're going to complete that work. And so I want to just close this in prayer and I want you just to lift up the, the cry of your heart as well as I'm doing that. And let's just lift that up together. So Father, we thank you so much that you are guiding us, that you're making our feet as sure footed as a deer. It seems like many of us have been on a lot of rocky terrain that seems very uneven, it feels like it's shifting beneath our feet. But we put our trust in you and you alone, Father. We ask Lord, that you would hear, hear our complaints, you would hear our frustrations, you would hear our heart and the deepest questions that we have. Just as we see the example of Habakkuk crying out to you, not understanding what's going on. But we lift these things up to you, asking that you would speak to us and help us. Give us patience, Lord, help us to wait upon you, not to rush and make any rash decision that eventually we look back and regret. But I pray Lord, that you would allow us to wait on your very best for us regarding our book, regarding our families, regarding a situation at work, whatever it might be. I pray that we would really be able to press in and wait for you. And then, Father, we rejoice in saying you are worthy of our praise.

Even if we're not seeing what we want to see, even if we're not seeing the production of what we'd like to see with our books, we're still going to rejoice knowing that you are going to complete the dreams and the things that you've placed upon our hearts and our minds. And so we, we give you praise no matter what circumstance we find ourselves in right now, because you are always worthy, always worthy of our praise and our adoration. And you're a good God. We know you're for us, you're not against us. And yet I just pray that with each person crying out to you, you'd hear their prayer, Lord, and eventually respond to them in your due timing. And we'll give you the glory and the honor for the things you do through us. In Jesus name, Amen.

Amen.

Yeah, Makes me think, you know, when you're in the midst of the circumstances and you can't always see what God is doing, you know, Corrie Ten Boom often would say that. It's like, have any of you ever done like, cross stitch? I used to do that when I was younger. And you'd have, like, you'd be cross stitching and on the underneath there would just be a mess of threads and knots. And a lot of times we're looking at that part and God is designing something amazing on the other side. And so just encourage you, you that he is with you. He is. He is. He sees you, he hears you. Your waiting is not in vain. And you know, we're in it with you. You know, we have our own things. I have three books that have been on my heart for a couple years. And it's like God keeps giving me other things, like finishing the CBA curriculum. That was my assignment the last couple. Couple years. And now maybe this year I'll get to birth all three. We'll see. We'll see what he does. But I'm like, okay, God, here I am leading this academy, and I haven't even. You know, I didn't even publish a new book last year. That was my first year in a long time. But maybe this year I'll have three, so maybe the waiting will be worth it, right?

All right, well, we love you guys. We're so grateful that you're here.

Here.

Yeah, I've seen. Amen. Great lesson. I've been right in the center of this issue for a while. This was meant for me. Then another comment. Beautiful things are birthed out of the struggle of waiting. Yes, so true. So we love you guys. We are excited to to be in this with you and thank you for joining us again today.

Thank you for listening to this episode of Kingdom Writers. We believe that you, as a Christian writer, have a specific role to play in the Kingdom of Heaven to impact lives for eternity.

And because of this, we choose to pour out our lives into encouraging writers like you to not only tell your stories, but to take the courageous step of self publishing your stories in books that will outlive you and leave behind a powerful legacy. This podcast is sponsored by Christian Book Academy where where we help you give birth to your books. We invite you to join our community of Kingdom Writers.