Lessons from Sunday Sermons - August 4, 2025

This weekend our pastor taught from Habakkuk, one of my favorite books of the Bible. I was reminded today that keeping my mind fixed on who God is resets my perspective when things look grim.

I have been struggling with my health, mentally and physically, for years now. In the midst of those struggles, I’ve created some bad habits, and I’ve allowed sins I abandoned years ago to creep back into my life.

When these struggles happen, I often isolate myself from God. I tell myself I am not worthy to approach Him. I am convinced He will not hear me or answer me. Though there is a reality that my unconfessed sin causes a rift in my relationship with God, but that distance is meant to draw me closer to Him.

Habakkuk found himself in a similar situation, except it was the entire nation of Israel that had sinned. As a prophet, he spent time connecting with God, hearing from Him, and asking God for wisdom.

In just three chapters, Habakkuk’s entire outlook about the difficulties he and the nation of Israel were facing. This short book was written during the Babylonian occupation, when Daniel, Hannah, Mishael, and Azariah were serving Nebuchadnezzar. Understandably, there were a lot of questions the nation was asking about why God allowed such things to happen.

Habakkuk is a book of lament, full of the prophet’s prayers of grief, sorrow, helplessness, and repentance. And the prophet’s lamenting lead him to a better understanding of who God is and what God is doing in their lives.

To be clear, the prophet wasn’t angry at God. He wasn’t accusing God of doing wrong or of being unjust. He was lamenting the situation he and the rest of the nation had found themselves in. He wanted to know why. And he wanted to know how much longer it would last.

This prophet asked hard questions of God and got answers.

Habakkuk knew the nation had sinned by not obeying God’s law. He understood that the Babylonians had captured them as a consequence of their disobedience. It was a situation that had happened before in their history. But he asked God why the Chaldeans? Why would a good God use such a horrible nation to punish His chosen people?

God lets Habakkuk know He is fully aware of the Chaldean evil, and that He will bring the nation down. But for now, they serve His purpose, and the Israelites must learn to trust God in the midst of suffering, again.

It’s easy to look at the world and wonder why God allows such awful things to happen. We can get angry and accuse Him of doing nothing to stop it, even blaming Him for causing it. But when we choose to get angry, we cut ourselves off from His wisdom, and His answers.

Instead, we can choose to lament, asking for His wisdom in the midst of the suffering in our life and the lives of those around us. We can believe that we will see the salvation of the Lord, and we can wait in patient worship, trusting He knows everything.

When we position ourselves in a posture of lament, when we choose to worship through the sorrow and the confusion, God will comfort us in the midst of our struggle. It might not be the answer we want because there are consequences for our actions and the actions of others, but He will show us He can be trusted.

When we choose to worship, we are in the right frame of mind to recount to ourselves who God is, what His promises are, and how He has been faithful to us and His children in the past. Habakkuk did, and it changed his heart and mindset despite the trials they were experiencing.

He reminded himself of who God is, and how God has always kept his promises in the past.

Habakkuk begins by calling God Everlasting and Holy. He reminded himself that God is not affected by time. He sees all and knows all. Then he calls God holy. He establishes God’s purity, and this is partly why Habakkuk has questions. Why would a pure God use a sinful nation to correct His own people? As I read the next line, I can almost hear Habakkuk relax just a bit. He reminds himself God will not let them die. He indicates the trust he has in God because they’ve been in this situation several times before, and God did not allow their captors to wipe them out.

Even as I am struggling with the sin in my life, if I remind myself of who God is, and what his promises are, I can worship and pray even when I know I’ve failed him. When the enemy wants to convince me I’ve sinned one time more than God will forgive, I remind myself of the command Jesus gave His disciples when they asked Him how many times they should forgive others. (Matthew 18:21-22)

He commands his disciples to forgive 70x7 times or 77 times. He tells them to forgive as many times as they have to. If that is the command He gave the disciples, how much more then will he forgive me when I ask? This is a promise. What he commands us to do, he has already done in greater quantity and to a greater extent than we ever can.

By reminding myself of this principle, of this promise, I am able to forgive myself for the way I failed Him. It brings me back into a relationship with Him again.

Things to Think About:

How do you approach God when life gets hard? Anger or worship?

What promise of God do you need remind yourself of when your perspective of Him needs reset?

Playlist:

Mighty Name of Jesus by Hope Darst

You’ve Already Won by Shane & Shane