Listen, Write, Wait

So, last week, we talked about the dip.

Do you remember the dip from Habakkuk?

And we talked a little bit about the fact that it represents a person becoming a Christian at point A, where you put your faith in Christ.

And normally, very commonly, point B is an upgrade, because there's forgiveness, you get to know the Lord, and you come to know Christian community, there's a sense of peace, it's a wonderful thing.

It's almost like a honeymoon period, when you first become a Christian.

And then, most of us experience what is at point C, where things drop off a little, and not everything is going so, so well, and you've got to hold some questions in tension.

What you think you believe, maybe isn't happening.

And certainly, this is what is happening for our prophet.

We're looking at Habakkuk.

He's looking all around him, and he's asking the question, Lord, are you fair?

Do you know what's going on, Lord God?

Where are your people?

You're the God who created everything, and you run the universe, and yet, evil seems to prosper.

Are you even there, Lord God?

What are you doing?

He's literally complaining.

And we talked about the fact that this is quite common in life, and at that point where we hold in tension questions and faith, and like our world view about how things should be and how we see, and we ask the question of plausibility.

Does this faith work?

And sometimes people decide to go back to point B, and sort of go, I'm not even gonna listen or think about what I'm seeing.

I'm just going to believe no matter what.

That's not a bad thing to do, really.

We are called to believe and have faith in God's goodness.

So that's one option.

Just say everything's okay.

I'm not even gonna think about the stuff that's bad.

Sometimes people go back to pre-A, when things go the way they don't expect them to as a Christian.

They say, well, I'm abandoning you, Lord God.

If you could allow this to happen to me, or those other people in the world that I've seen on the news, I'm out.

I'm abandoning.

Or the third option is you go into D.

You keep going, and you trust that God is at work even though you can't see what he's doing.

And this is really where I think the Book of Habakkuk leads us.

He's one of the minor prophets we find in the Old Testament.

He lived around 600 BC.

God is bringing judgment towards the end of the kings of Israel.

And it's Judah, and they're about to lose Jerusalem and even the temple itself.

God is bringing judgment through a people who are quite surprising that he would choose.

They're the Babylonians.

They're very evil.

And yet, he's chosen to use them to execute his judgment on his people.

Habakkuk is hearing about this testimony, this truth, and it's a challenge.

And he's holding questions and faith together.

And so, as G.

Mayso clearly read for us, we are in chapter 2, verse 1.

I will stand at my watch, Habakkuk says, and station myself on the ramparts.

I will look to see what he will say to me and what answer I am to give to this complaint.

Then the Lord replied, Write down the revelation and make it plain on tablets so that a herald may run with it, for the revelation awaits an appointed time.

Three things you can do in the dip.

The first thing is listen.

When you're in the dip, and we talked last week about the fact that everyone's either heading towards the dip, in the dip, or coming out of the dip.

Because it's sort of par for life.

It's going to happen.

Things are going to be challenging and we have to learn how to live in that space and learn what God wants to teach us there.

Amen.

That is the whole point of this sermon series, I think.

I will stand at my watch and station myself on the ramparts.

I will look to see what he will say.

You know, God speaks, doesn't he?

He loves to speak because he is the original relational being.

If you, we often talk about this, but if you strip everything back in creation, in existence, and you go all the way back, you don't find eternal matter.

You find eternal, triune personhood, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, which is a wonderful truth.

At the beginning of everything, there is an eternal being who is found in relationship.

Hallelujah.

So, the one who is relationship loves to build relationship with creation, certainly the pinnacle of creation, humanity.

So God is a relational being.

He certainly walked in that sort of way with Adam and Eve in the garden at the very beginning.

He has always revealed himself as the God who speaks, and it's one of our core values.

God speaks, we listen.

Can I suggest to us today that if you're in the dip in life, God is not that far away.

He's omnipresent.

He's everywhere all the time, but sometimes in the dip, in the challenges of life, it feels like God is nowhere to be found, but that's not true.

He is close.

Listening to God, let me just ask you, who finds hearing from God easy?

Put your hand up.

Well, look around.

Isn't that encouraging?

Sometimes it's easy.

You read the passage and it's just, whoa, is that highlighted?

And I didn't do that highlight.

It's like God is just speaking so clearly.

But yeah, let's be real.

It's often hard to hear his voice, certainly in the dip, yes?

Because when you're in the dip, often it involves an emotional pain that is producing a level of depression.

And depression tends to make our hearts and heads go foggy.

It's hard to understand or hear.

Also, some of us know exactly what it's like when you're in the dip.

Sometimes it's not so much emotional pain.

It's literally physical pain, isn't it?

We're going through a tough physical issue.

And when you're in pain, physical pain, it's hard to hear what God is saying.

So there are challenges to this idea of listening, but we know that God is a God who speaks, and we know that we should, like Habakkuk, listen to what he is saying.

So how do you do that?

Answer number one.

Yes?

The Bible.

Sometimes you don't feel like reading the Bible when you're in a difficult situation.

Anyone agree?

But may we be encouraged.

Keep reading the Bible.

God speaks and he's constantly speaking, and he wants to speak into our challenging situation that we're calling the dip.

Something that is overlooked, a method of hearing from God that's overlooked, I think, is listening to your feelings.

Some of us want to say, heretic, heretic, you can't trust feelings.

Has anyone been taught that?

It's certainly a classic teaching.

Feelings go up and down.

It's the Word of God.

It's rational thought that you can trust.

I want to push back a little bit on that.

And I want to suggest to you that we are rarely closer to God than when we are completely honest with our own feelings.

You're rarely more close to God than when you are completely honest with what you are feeling.

For me, as I reflect on my memorable times with the Lord, and I'm an emotional guy, you might say, but I would, I just think, when you're feeling convicted, there's a sense often of guilt, sometimes shame, shame that produces remorse and a whole lot of feelings of sadness.

But it's not all bad.

Joy and peace and freedom and thankfulness are all emotions that are part of hearing from God.

Let's remember, emotions are like gauges that tell us what's going on inside.

We should listen to what they are telling us.

Have you ever allowed yourself to completely, in an unrestrained, cathartic way, express everything to God?

Have you done that?

In that place, did it affect your posture?

I'm actually looking for a hand, isn't it?

It does affect your posture, because it's cathartic, it's unrestrained, it's not nice and neat.

When you go to that place of crying out, sometimes it's like, God, I am so afraid here.

You might be on the ground, face down, there are often tears.

The volume of your expression could be high.

There's no one around.

You're saying, God, why?

Help me.

Where are you?

And in that moment of raw honesty, it feels like God is a long way away.

Can anyone relate to that?

It's like, God, where are you?

And it feels like the prophet Habakkuk.

Here's my complaint.

Here's my grief.

Here's all my fears and my pain.

And I was thinking about this week, and I thought, yeah, and God, you feel so far away.

But then I was thinking about Jesus, and he's on the cross, and it's the focal point of his whole life, of the history, of history itself.

He's about to die on the cross for the sin of humanity.

And what does he say in that Psalm 22 expression?

He says, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

He has never been more abandoned than in that raw expression.

I mean, he's the Messiah.

He's the King of Kings.

Surely, you could polish up your heart and mind and just finish well.

But he quotes Psalm 22, abject, raw honesty.

God, what are you doing?

And then very soon after that, he, I think, has the most emotionally intimate moment in his whole life.

He takes his spirit and says, Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.

Dad, are you there?

Here.

He gives away his life.

And I find that just so powerful.

At the greatest moment of abandonment, in his raw and honest expression of emotion, he says, I feel abandoned, and then he has the most intimate moment with his dad.

I want to encourage us to think about that.

Think about our emotions when you're in the dip.

And it's not to just let them rule the roost.

It's so that your emotions, which are God-given, can help us understand what am I feeling?

What's making me feel like this?

And then when I understand what's going on, honestly, then what do we do?

We take all that good truth, and we apply it to our minds and renew our minds.

Amen?

It's not that we don't find the truth, but without the emotional honesty, I think sometimes we just don't access the truth.

Does anyone agree?

I will stand at my watch and station myself on the ramparts.

I will look to see what he will say to me.

Stop and listen and maybe allow those emotions that are God-given to speak to you as well, and then find God and His voice in the midst of it all.

And then write.

A really good thing to do after listening, and while you're listening is write.

Then the Lord replied, Write down the revelation and make it plain on tablets so that a herald may run with it.

Now, is this taken from a particular context?

Yes, of course.

God wants to speak through a prophet to his people.

So we don't want to just take it out of context.

I mean, that is the context.

God's judgment is coming on Israel.

He wants that message to be conveyed.

But is it a universal principle?

That in the dip, it's a good thing to write?

I think it is.

I really think it is.

And the reason it is, is when we write down what God has done for us or what he has said, it gives us a really good chance to keep giving him all the glory.

You know, the devil, the Bible says, comes to kill, steal and destroy.

The devil wants to take that revelation, that amazing truth that God gave you in the dip, and he wants to nick off with it.

Has anyone discovered that?

Has anyone discovered that writing down what God has done has been helpful in your life?

It really is.

Journaling is a wonderful thing to do, to just write down.

So that when I forget, and when maybe the devil steals it from me, that memory, no, no, there it is.

You did this.

You said this.

You saved me, Lord God.

I love the story of Phil and Chris Pringle.

They're in New Zealand.

They're the pastors now retired of Christian City Church C3.

It's sort of a global church.

They've been incredibly blessed.

They've done a lot of great work for the gospel.

But before they even started a church, they're in New Zealand and they feel called to come to Australia and plant a church.

And I remember when I was young, they had this church down at Brookvale.

And I remember hearing about all this tongue speaking Yahoo stuff going on.

That's what they called them in the 80s.

I speak in tongues.

It's not being negative, but I was seeing miracles happen and it was a very dynamic church.

But back in New Zealand, they wrote down, they drew a vision of the church they wanted to build in Australia.

This didn't happen until Oxford Falls.

Years and years later, they built Oxford Falls and then Oxford Falls Grammar.

And they sat back with the picture that they wrote down.

And they were like, wow, it's the same.

Isn't that amazing?

It's basically the same.

What God gave them in New Zealand more than 30 years before is what He gave them all those years later.

Write down what you are learning, what you are feeling.

Somehow, someone, we don't know who wrote most of the Old Testament.

It's really is a bit of a mystery.

But somebody wrote this down, Habakkuk, and we're learning from it today.

Listen and write.

And the third part is the hardest.

For the revelation awaits an appointed time.

The third thing to do in the dip is to wait.

It speaks of the end and will not prove false, though it linger, wait for it.

It will certainly come and will not delay.

This is a revelation God is giving for a future event.

It's about to happen about 20 years later.

Babylon will come.

They're going to destroy the temple.

It's unimaginable.

But God leaves.

Ezekiel says the Spirit of God has departed.

And they come and they route the temple.

They destroy Jerusalem.

And God's judgment comes on them.

And so there's a very real outcome for this revelation of this prophet Habakkuk.

But I think that the Bible speaks to our day and age in the 21st century, obviously.

And in the same way that Jesus Messiah was promised that he would come and solve the problem of sin through his perfect life, death and resurrection, we are also promised that he will return.

And he will wrap up this planet and we will be ushered into new creation and all who put their faith in Christ will live forever.

So we know that the Bible speaks to us and we're told to wait.

But have you found that it's a pretty universal principle that God loves, I don't know if love is the right word, but he certainly chooses to allow us to wait regularly.

It seems like it's his modus operandi.

We write down what he's doing and then we wait.

Enjoy waiting.

The people on the line have now stood up off their couch and checking to see if the audio is working.

Any musicians amongst us, any jazz musicians?

No one wants to claim it.

The improvisers amongst us, the jazz musicians would know that when you hear someone who's a competent musician and they hear some chords playing and they're able to come up with an improvised solo.

I'm a jazz musician, and so I love doing that sort of stuff, mainly on saxophone, but what you need to know is they're sort of cheating.

They're playing a bunch of riffs together.

They know a riff that works, and then another riff, and a good player might have a hundred riffs, but they just sort of know a bunch of things their fingers do, and they put it together and it sounds good.

One of God's signature sacred riffs is he makes his people wait.

Don't you reckon?

But when he's just working out his beautiful masterpiece of history, he doesn't seem to mind doing what we just did before.

We're like, keep it moving, Jono.

What did you...

Come on.

Rate of speech, work on that.

Are you waiting?

It's awkward.

God's delays are not God's denials.

That's a cute Christian saying.

It's not so cute if you write in it, but I think it's the truth.

Certainly, God's delays are not necessarily God's denials.

And it's just not hard at all to see this signature riff all the way through the Bible.

Well, you think of Moses.

Moses, he kills an Egyptian, and then he waits 40 years in his own wilderness experience.

Then he gets called by God to lead the people of Israel out of Egypt.

Then he spends another 40 years in the wilderness.

Joseph, that great leader, who's maybe the greatest Christ figure we find in the New Old Testament, two years in prison waiting for God's revelation to pass.

The Apostle Paul gets called to preach the Gospel.

He's at least three years in Turkey.

It may be more like 13.

Waiting, it's God's signature riff.

Have you ever seen a waiter in a restaurant sitting around doing nothing?

It's not often.

They're normally serving.

It's not a bad thing to remember.

But when you wait, what do you do?

Serve.

Serve God and wait for his appointed time.

That's what Habakkuk was told.

Erwin McManus is a futurist.

He's a pastor and a great preacher.

I was really struck by him, I guess, 20 years ago in his ministry.

And he tells the story of being a youth pastor in his early 20s.

He's from El Salvador and he's pastoring in Los Angeles.

And he's a youth pastor and he's off at a high school, junior high girls camp.

So he's at the girls camp, comes home, he's married, and he comes home and he's got a massive citywide crusade to be an usher at.

Now this is a huge stadium like event.

He comes home late on that Saturday of the event after this camp.

He's like, I'm not going to this, I'm just wasted.

So then his wife says to him, Erwin, you need to go, God's just pressing on me.

You need to go tonight.

Oh, okay.

So he's got no clothes, they're all dirty.

So he stops off at a shop, a cheap secondhand clothes shop, he grabs some jeans that don't fit him and he turns up.

And then about an hour and a half before this massive, massive conference outreach happens, because he's going to be an usher to help the altar call people find where to go for prayer.

Anyway, the guy who's running it, he says he's offended multiple times, comes up to him and says, Erwin, the main speaker has dropped out, he's sick.

I need you to preach tonight.

Now the weird thing was, when he was just coming out of his ministry training, he felt like he had this vision as sort of a nobody, had this vision from God that he was going to preach to 20,000 people.

And he told one other person, he was quite embarrassed, he thought this is just pride.

He told one other person that God had sort of said to him, I'm going to open up an opportunity for you to preach to 20,000 people.

Anyway, he's like, obviously you're taking the mickey out of me because I've offended you multiple times.

And then the guy's like, no, no, I'm serious, the speaker can't make it.

God's told me to tell you, you're up tonight.

And so Erwin's story is, he goes over in a corner behind the, first of all, he doesn't have a Bible, so he gets, finds a Bible from somewhere, and goes over and while he's sort of crying and praying after saying, yes, I'm going to do it, he says, I look up, and the only guy in all the world who knew what God had said to me walks by.

And Erwin says, it's the time.

And he got up and he spoke to 20,000 people.

And he went on to have a really fruitful, quite globally impacting ministry.

Of course, that's not the path for all of us, but do you believe that God is interested in your life?

Do you believe that you have one unique, never to be repeated life to live?

And that God is interested in your life and mine?

If nothing else, do you leave with today?

I want to leave you with that question.

Do you believe that God who created the universe knows who you are, in fact, designed you, created you and has a calling for your life, your unique, never to be repeated life?

Many of us feel like, no, no, I'm just a pleb.

Well, I want to challenge that.

I think he knows.

I think he's very interested in our lives.

And one of the main reasons I think that is he was interested in a nobody called Mary.

Just pick them out of the blue.

An Abraham, an Abram, nobody.

He constantly, it's another signature riff of his, isn't it?

He picks nobodies to do extraordinary things through them.

How are you going in your waiting?

Habakkuk waited and the revelation, excuse me, the revelation came to pass.

And then, and God speaks, we haven't looked at much of the rest of the chapter, but I'm going to have a quick look now.

Verse four, he says, see Babylon is puffed up, but his desires that they're not upright, the righteous will live by their faithfulness.

And then God very clearly speaks from verse five on, he says, I know basically, Habakkuk, you don't trust on at work, but I am, and this is what's going to happen.

Verse six, the thieves, those who deal in stolen goods, they're going to get what they deserve.

Verse nine, the deceivers, those who live for unjust gain, they're going to get what they deserve.

I'm bringing judgment.

Verse 12, the violent, they will be judged.

Verse 15, the partiers, the hedonistic revelers, they will be judged for their sin.

Verse 19, the idolaters, the worshipers have created things.

I'm going to bring judgment, God says.

And many commentators would say that the key verse, and I think it is, key verse in the whole book of Habakkuk is found in chapter 2 verse 4, the righteous will live by faith.

Faith in what they've heard, recorded it, and waited for.

Amen?

Faith in what they believe, not necessarily what they see with their eyes.

And this is what we're told about in Hebrews.

Hebrews chapter 11, by faith, we believe the heavens were made.

By faith Noah built an ark in the face of ridicule and adversity.

By faith Abraham believed the promises of God that he would be the father of many nations.

The righteous will live by faith, and we could maybe add in the dip.

It's gonna involve the dip.

The righteous live by faith.

Abraham offered Isaac as a sacrifice, Hebrews 11 tells us, until God said not to do it.

By faith the great city of Jericho fell to Joshua.

By faith they walked miraculously through the Red Sea in freedom.

And by faith, you can make it through the trial you are in right now.

By faith.

And what do you do if you don't see what you have believed for?

Because that's a big part of the waiting journey, isn't it?

To be honest, as I reflect on it, I think, man, Habakkuk's story is so our story.

I don't know about you, but I find it regularly a challenge, the apparent inconsistency of answered prayer.

It's just hard.

It's hard to deal with it.

As Christians, I want to celebrate God and His answering of prayer.

It's almost transactional.

In the name of Jesus, boom.

But it so often doesn't happen like that.

And it's just hard.

It's a challenge.

And I feel myself uttering, even last night, uttering the words of Habakkuk, Lord, are you even in control?

And then I hear the other side of me say, of course you know He is.

He's God.

You just don't know what He's doing.

It involves faith.

And so what do you do in these regular moments when it's like I'm holding the questions and faith, and it's almost feeling like I'm about to break?

I think we turn to Habakkuk 2.20, but the Lord is in His holy temple.

Karen mentioned it in her prayer.

Habakkuk says, I may not see what I want to see basically, but the Lord is in His holy temple.

What He's meaning is God is still on the throne.

Amen.

God is still on the throne.

That's the faith belief.

That's the rock-solid belief that we have as Christians.

We do not know what He is doing, but we know what He has done.

God is still working out history and He's working things together for good for our one unique, never to be repeated life.

I will wait upon the Lord, is what the psalmist tells us.

Listen, write, wait.

As the band come up to serve us again, could we bow our heads?

I encourage you to bring your waiting before the Lord.

Lord Jesus, I pray for my brothers and sisters here and online.

And I thank you that you are at work in our lives.

I thank you that you have good things in store for us, for those who wait.

I pray, Lord Holy Spirit, that you would bring strengthening and peace in the name of Jesus.

I thank you, Father, that you have said you won't tempt us beyond what we can bear.

So Lord, I pray for our church family, for those who need to come up for air, that they would get a whole bunch of oxygen of your grace.

We ask in Jesus' name that you would help us see what this is all about.

That we might see you high and lifted up in all your glory.

That our hearts might be renewed and minds renewed.

That we would not lose heart, even though outwardly we waste away.

But inwardly, may we be renewed from glory to glory, in a way that far out shines and outweighs what we experience on the outside.

Lord, I pray for your grace to help us process our emotions.

I want to say thank you, God, that you invented emotion.

You've given them to us to help us identify with who you are.

Lord, for those who need lots of help right now to cope with what they're feeling, I thank you that your grace is sufficient.

Your grace is sufficient.

It's enough.

What you have done is enough.

Your love, your guidance, your comfort, it is enough.

Now as we sing together, may you be glorified, Lord.

We exalt you, because it's the only normal response of humans gathered together, thinking about how great you are.

We want to exalt you.

In Jesus' name, Amen.

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