This is the second
week in a row we've been in a series of
messages called Cabin Fever, and we're going to jump into
our Time of Bible Study now. So if you have a
Bible, turn with me to the Old Testament
book of Habakkuk. And I'm going to give to
you a message that I'm calling Hold on for
Dear Life, Hold on for Dear Life from Habakkuk. If you don't know
how to find Habakkuk, let me give you a pro tip. Go to Matthew, which is
the first book in the New Testament, and then go
to the left five books. So Habakkuk is the fifth to the
last book in the Old Testament. And then you get to Matthew. That's how I find it. But if you're on a device
where you can see us, which you no doubt
are unless you're listening to this on Spotify
or on the iTunes podcast, you can just look at the
verses on the screen. Habakkuk, Chapter 3. The title the message is
Hold on for Dear Life. We began last week talking
about how Paul in jail wasn't going stir crazy. And the origin of
that phrase actually have to do with prison. People in solitary
confinement can at times become mentally ill. And in England back
in the day, they said that person got crazy
because they were in the stir. And the stir was a
nickname for prison. So stir crazy, literally,
is I'm confined, and it's getting to me. And we're all kind
of feeling that. All of us, to some degree,
can feel a little cabin fever. Now, for many of
our states going on six weeks in quarantine, it's
like I'm turning Jack Nicholson status up in here, up in
here, a little Redrum, if you catch my drift, right? It's like, what do
we do with that? Well, Paul says,
hey, the cure is to see your confinement
as being in Christ. He said, I'm not in chains. I'm in Christ. And if I'm in chains in Christ,
then my chains are in Christ. So he's giving us a whole
new way to look at it. He's saying, we can say my
quarantine is in Christ. My pandemic is in Christ. That's some encouragement for
you this Sunday, just to know, or you're watching
this on Monday or watching this on Wednesday,
or you're watching this down the road at some point,
months or weeks later, whatever you're facing today,
because this situation is going to come to an end. This pandemic
won't last forever. But guess what? Newsflash, there's going
to be a new crazy thing. There's going to be
a new hard thing. There's always going to be some
new challenging chance to trust God, until we get to heaven. So whatever you're
facing today, in Jesus, you can say that my
situation is in Christ. And Paul told us, we can
always find silver linings. He said, I see that I'm in jail. And since I'm in jail, I shared
the Gospel with this soldier, and he got saved. So he's pointing to
the soldier, going, if I hadn't been sent into
here, how would he have heard? He's telling us about Caesar's
household getting saved and saying, maybe I
was sent into prison so I could share the Gospel with
this person who would share it with that person. And eventually, this
super influential person in Caesar's government
ends up getting saved. So what a wonderful
thing for us to rejoice. All of us right now
can think of something that we, as a result
of this situation, have found was possible. I never would have spent
so much time with my kids, or I wouldn't have been
able to be in this position to read this book, or whatever
it was, because of this. It recalibrated me and I think
that's one of the benefits is oftentimes, there are good
things that come as a result. But what Habakkuk is going to do
is he's going to say, OK Paul, I see you. You see good coming
out of this bad. But what about when I
can't find anything good? What if I'm looking
around trying to find someone who got
saved because of this, and there ain't very nobody that
did, that at least I know of? What do you do when you're
going through something bad, and nothing good that
you can tell has come from it? Well, in that situation,
you hold on for dear life. Verse 17, Habakkuk 3,
though the fig tree may not blossom, nor fruit
be on the vines, though the labor of
the olive may fail, and the fields yield no food,
though the flock may be cut off from the fold, and there
be no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice
in the Lord, I will joy in the God
of my salvation. The Lord God is my strength. He will make my feet
like deer's feet, and He will make me
walk on my high hills to the chief musician, with
my stringed instruments. And Jesus, I just pray
a special blessing on every single person,
on every unique situation. You don't see crowds. You don't see multitudes, so you
don't see the cumulative tens and tens and tens of
thousands of people listening to this message. You see every single person. You know their name. You know what they
had for breakfast. You know what they're
struggling with today. And I pray You give
them peace right now in this situation, that like
Habakkuk they could choose joy in the midst of difficulty. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. A couple of weeks back,
I was watching TV. It was actually a YouTube
video, and it ended. And when the
YouTube video ended, there's always that algorithm,
suggested options of hey, you might want to watch this. And I always wonder, how
do they pick those videos, and how do they almost
always get it right? And I ended up-- I don't remember
what I was watching. But when it ended, it
brought up this video of this guy who had gone hang
gliding for the first time. And I've never hang glided,
and to my knowledge, I've never clicked
anything anywhere that would indicate I would be
the kind of person that would like a video about a
guy who went hang gliding. But it turns out YouTube, as
always, was in fact correct. I did enjoy this video about
this guy hang gliding so much, I enjoyed it so much that I
wanted to share it with you. Check this out. True story. This is 2018, a guy
named Chris Gursky. And he and his wife
went to Switzerland, and he decided to jump
off a mountain connected to hang glider-- or was he? Because as soon as they
got off the ground, he felt the sensation of I'm
only hanging on by my hands. Turns out the
instructor had forgotten to connect Chris's carabiner
that should be going up to the hang glider, but instead
it's just hanging and dangling from the back of his harness. So he is literally powering
only by his two hands, not falling to his soon, swift
death on the Swiss Alps below. You could see him
struggling to hang on, eventually desperately
only clutching at the pants of the
hang glide instructor and just thinking
to himself, I hope I can hang on till we
can land this thing. I mean, you see the left
hand, he's got a vise grip. And the hang gliding
instructor is like, let me try and help you hold
onto your grip here. Unbelievable to watch him
white knuckle this thing. He hung on for an incredible
two minutes and 14 seconds as they tried to
come down to a field where they could
get a landing in. And it looks pretty
gentle, but I'll let you know that
we are at this point going 45 miles an hour when
he thinks it's safe for me to jump, at which point-- look at that. Oh my gosh, I'm sweating
just watching this. He tumbles to a landing,
breaking his wrist as he hits the ground. And then we didn't show it,
but the hang glide instructor comes in for the softest
landing you've ever seen in your entire life, but
not so much for, Chris Gursky. But incredible to me
that he didn't die, incredible to me that he
held on and didn't fall. And yes, I did get my
Snopes on and make sure this was not a fake. It in fact did happen. How incredible, and
how perfectly he illustrates what we have before
us in the book of Habakkuk, a book written by a man whose
name literally means, hold on. That's what Habakkuk means. It means embrace. It means don't let go. It means someone who hugs. Too soon, Levi. None of us have had
a hug in six weeks. OK, I get it. But what he was saying is,
I'm not going to let go. That's what his
name actually means, and that is exactly
the life that he lived. Like Chris Gursky, who
when he was asked later on by reporters, what was
going through your head as you were dangling
from this hang glider by the power of
your grip, I mean you try to hang
onto a pull up bar for two minutes and 14
seconds, and you will find there is a real
struggle doing that. Matter of fact,
medical investigation later found he actually tore
his bicep in his left arm from the dead weight
of his body hanging for so long on that left arm. But what he said,
the two things he was thinking as he hung
there was number one, try and stay calm. He kept telling himself that. Stay calm. And the second thing he told
himself was don't let go. Hold on for dear
life, which is exactly the reason that I
think God has brought this broadcast into your life. I don't think it's an accident
that you're watching this. I don't think that
God made a mistake. I think He has you
listening to this message so you can hear
those two things, stay calm and don't let go. Hold on for dear life. And what was the
situation that caused Habakkuk to need to write this? This has been called, by the
way, the greatest confession of faith ever articulated, the
greatest confession of faith that's ever been spoken. Well, the situation was he
was looking at the world and saying, things
aren't as they should be. There had been a
massive, massive issue, a civil war that led to
the north and the south in Israel being divided. They were never meant to
be divided, and they were. The north got dragged off
into slavery, into exile, and it seemed like
the southern tribes were going to follow suit. He was just brokenhearted
for his people. He was a priest by trade. He was by vocation a priest who
led God's people in worship, and to see his people given
over to idolatry, the revivals that King Josiah had most
recently led the people and were long distant
memories, the fires were not roaring in
their spiritual walk. The fires were we're
down to an ember and he was just brokenhearted,
seeing his people so far from their faith. And he was crying out
and begging for God to revive the people's
spiritual faith. And that was not looking at
all like it was something that was going to happen. And then the things
that he mentions that we read, he talked about
an agricultural disaster, to look out at fields
but not to see any crops, to see grape vines
with no grapes, to see fig trees
with no figs, to see olive trees but no olives,
to see empty pens that should hold sheep but don't
have any, to see the barns, where there are stall
after stall after stall, but no cattle in it. Now, let's translate
that, because the produce from the ground represented
the portfolio of these people. So he's talking about opening
up the Bank of America app to find out that you're
overdrawn in every account. He's talking about
checks bouncing. He's talking about your
assets being liquidated. He's talking about
your savings depleted. He's talking about you having
to cash in your 401(k). When he says, there's no
olives, there's no grapes, there's no cattle, he's saying
what are we going to do? Because the problem
isn't there's no toilet paper at
the grocery store. The problem is we don't have any
money to buy any toilet paper, if there was any. And so this situation
for him is one that I think a lot of us in this
time of economic uncertainty and massive unemployment
and difficulty is one that we can relate to. He's telling us, what do we
do when we find ourselves in a dark day? The answer is, we
choose to rejoice. What am I trying to say? I'm trying to say that
joy is a decision. Joy, first point, is a decision. We're going to have six
things about joy today. The first is, it's a choice
that you have to make. It's not a feeling
that that comes to you. It's not I'm so happy, I
feel so joyful right now. That's amazing if
and when it comes, but the reality is, the
frothy kind of a joy can't sustain you in
the dark times of life. It's not the champagne suds. It's the spikes that come
out of the snow tires that you put on so
you don't fall off the road when you're
driving in a blizzard up a mountain in the winter. It's not this fun dip, I've got
a candy stick, it's delicious. I can put it in the powder. That's strawberry. That's not the joy we're
talking about here. We're talking about the
joy that can sustain you like a slab on grade
can cause a house to be able to withstand
hurricane winds. That's the kind of joy
that Habakkuk models. Come onto my preaching, good. Joy is a decision in
the YouTube chats. Come on, say that. It's a decision. It's a decision. It's a choice that you make. When there's no
cattle, when there's no olives, when there's no
money, when there's no job, it's a decision. It's then that joy matters. But notice, it's
not just a decision. It's a decision that can be
made in advance, a decision that can be made in advance. I think a lot of power comes
from pre-loading a decision. Don't make me get my swipe
right hat on and start talking to you about
how you should not wait to make a decision
about your sexual boundaries until you're on that date. You got to make that
decision in advance. You've got to
predetermine what you're going to do in the
difficult day of temptation, or you're going to fail if you
wait until everything's flaring and hormones are
firing and you're in that moment and the
chemistry in his eyes, and all the fields, right? You've got to decide in advance
what you are going to do and you aren't going
to do with your body. Don't you wait till you're
sitting on the computer to decide what websites
you are going to visit and aren't going
to visit in an era when all the porn
sites are giving free discounted you know
memberships to the porn subscriptions that
normally cost money. They're trying to get
that hook set deep in your mouth in this time. Don't you dare wait until
you're in a temptation situation to make a decision. And Habakkuk does
the same thing. He says, you'll
notice, in verse 17, even though the fig
tree may not blossom, meaning it's not at
a situation where that's happening right now,
but it could potentially, hypothetically, one day. He's not looking out into a
barn where there's no cattle. There's still cattle. What am I trying to say? The tree's still
got fruit on him. He's still got money
in the account. But he's hypothetically
saying, even if it got worse, and so
worse, and badly enough that this was happening, my
choice would still be joy. He's pre-loading
a decision to joy off into the future in a worst
case scenario hypothesis, which is what they say is
one of the reasons that people are successful
in accomplishing dreams versus those who just
have good intentions but never follow through. I read some work this week
written by Gabriele Oettingen. And she's a professor
at New York University, the author of the book
Rethinking Positive Thinking, and one of the foremost
respected voices in the science of dream fulfillment. There are a lot of people
who have good dreams. I'm going to start
a new business. I'm going to go to New York and
you know eventually start up a musical career, or I'm
going to run a marathon, or I'm going to write a
book, or whatever it is. A lot of people have dreams. She says that the primary thing,
according to her research, that separates those who have
good intentions versus those who actually accomplish
what they set up to do is the failure of so
many people to rub their plans against reality. I love that. Rub your plan against reality. So what does that mean? Well she gives this
acronym, WOOP, W-O-O-P. Come on in the chat,
someone say woop, woop. W-O-O-P. Here's what it stands
for, wish, outcome, obstacles, plan. Wish, outcome, obstacles, plan. Now, the first two are
pretty self-explanatory. What is your wish? Well, my wish is
to run a marathon, or my wish is to write
a book, or my wish is to start this new company. OK, great. What's the outcome? If you accomplish it,
how will you feel? Well, I'll feel
good, or I'll feel like I'm doing what
I was created to do, or I'll feel like I've
helped a lot of people. OK, so you actually need to
live there and think about it. You need to get enough
of a good outcome that it causes you to be able
to weather all the storms that are going to come. Most people stop there. All right, I'm ready to
go start my company are, or I'm ready to go
move to New York and start my singing career. Hold on a second. what obstacles
will you encounter? This is where you rub
the plan against reality. Oh, it's all nice
and well to talk about running the marathon
until you're mile 11, huffing and puffing, realizing
that you-- oh, I don't know, ate deep dish pizza
for dinner last night for the past 15 years. So you see the
point, what barriers you're going to hit against. Oh, I don't know, the fact that
I'm generally out of shape, and 26 miles is a long
freaking way to run. And it's very nice
to romantically think about living in New
York and being a singer and a songwriter, right? Yeah, but you know what's
really expensive in New York? Everything. And do you know
what's really hard? Getting traction in the
music industry, where there are a billion people who
seem better than you who have dreams just like you, who are
all applying for the same job that you are. So how can you rub some
reality in your plan? You know, we talk about this
on our staff a lot about well, we're going to do this webcast. What's it going to look like? What's the lighting
going to be like? Is the internet robust enough? We're pulling off today
broadcasting from White Fish. We got worship and Polson. We got live chat
moderators, right? You can't make a plan. You take that plan and push
it up against some obstacles. What are the obstacles
to writing a book? I don't know, how about
writer's block, right? So then the most crucial
thing, Gabriele says, is that you then
plan for what you're going to do when you hit
each of those obstacles. When you come against
those roadblocks, what's your preplanned
decision that you're going to do when you get there? This is Habakkuk, right? With all respect to Gabriele,
it was Habakkuk who said woop, there it is, long
before she ever did. Because he's here saying, I
wish I was seeing revival. I'm not. I'm longing for these
things to happen. They're not happening. Great. I choose joy anyway. Oh, and even if it gets worse-- what kind of worse? No money, I'm still
going to choose joy. And what about agricultural
shortages over here? Guess what, still
going to choose joy. Even though this
happened, I will. He's saying, if x happens,
then y is what I will do. And for him, y is the same
thing that you and I need to do, and that's to choose to rejoice. I choose joy. Joy is not an accidental
accidental feeling. It's an intentional decision
to place your worship and well-being
into something that can't be taken away from you. That's what he does. I rejoice in God my Savior. I rejoice in the Lord. There's nothing wrong with
taking joy from your car, job, hobbies, friends, all of
those wonderful things, but those things can all
be taken away from you. So take joy from everything
that's a good gift from God, but don't base your
joy on anything but God who is your salvation. And that's Habakkuk. Even if all gets
taken away from me, God never can be
taken away from me, and His salvation will always
flow up and well up inside of me. What he's really telling
us is that whenever we look at things in this world
that aren't doing what they're supposed to do, we are
to always resort back to what we were created to do. Because remember, a sheep pen
is intended to hold sheep, and a grape vine is
meant to grow grapes. Much like looking at footage
of New York City right now, it's eerie, because you
see a city that's meant to be hustling and bustling. To see the streets
empty, it feels useless. It feels strange,
much like it must be for you to drive by the
place where you work and see no one working there. To think about Disneyland
right now, just sitting empty, it's meant to be full of joy
and whimsy and make a dream, wishes coming true, all
those things, right, proposals happening. Just to see it empty, it's
like, man, that's not right. And much of us right now are
looking at our lives going, this isn't how it's
supposed to be. So when the world isn't doing
what it's supposed to do, don't join it. Do what you're supposed to do. And what are you supposed to do? You were created to worship. It's Matthew 21, one
of my favorite verses. Jesus is being
praised by children, which is so wonderful. And his enemies go,
can you believe it? They're worshipping you. And he says, tell him
to stop it, Jesus. Do you hear what they're saying? And Jesus says, verse 16,
Matthew 21, yes, I hear them. And haven't you
read in God's Word-- tell me that's not
sassy, by the way. Jesus is telling these guys,
you read the Bible for a living, and maybe you should
read the Bible sometime. Because the prophets
foretold that from the mouths of
children and babies I'll furnish a place of praise. I love that. Jennie and I really
enjoy interior design and getting on house and
looking at different things, and and appreciating
different styles of design. And you know, this house,
to think about my friend Eric who built it and
chose for the steel to be around the fireplace and
chose this TV, why, because it can turn into a painting and
not be just a black screen, and pick these tall windows
and everything about it, the cement that's
got heating in it, it was all built intentionally. It was all planned. Even these logs
being placed in here, it's all been crafted
to create a certain feel and sense of aesthetic. And the Bible says
that God has always been looking for a place
for his praise to be. Why? Because our praise gives
him a place to come into. Our praise literally
says-- when it says that God inhabits the
praises of his people, what that means is He pulls
up a chair and sits down. So when you or I who
are created to glorify Him and enjoy Him forever,
when we worship Him, we allow Him to furnish a
place for his praise to dwell. And as His praise dwells
there, He inhabits the praises and sits down. It allows there to be in our
situation, which is nothing that we want more now
than to have God with us, to have God near to us, to know
that God's blessing our homes and in our lives
and in our finances and all of our difficulties. And so what you choose
to do in praising Him allows Him to furnish
a place for His praise that He then can inhabit and
be with you in your difficulty. And I love the idea of Him
being with us in this trial, but that's a decision
that you have to make. All right, secondly, this joy
sparkles in times of confusion. That's our second
word, confusion. Make the decision, especially
when you're feeling confusion. I haven't intended to
make Habakkuk seem larger than life in this. Yes, it's an amazing bold
choice he made to worship God. But if you read the
rest of the book, you really see his
human side come out. Even his name, Habakkuk, meaning
I'm going to hold on to you, you almost get the picture
that he's saying to God, I don't like what You're
doing and I don't understand Your plan, but I'm not
going to let go of You, much like Jacob,
who said, I'm not letting go of you
till you bless me. Habakkuk was hugging
the situation now, holding on for dear
life, not letting go God. Even when God
answered him, Habakkuk hated what God told him. Because I'll have you know
that Habakkuk asking God, why aren't You doing anything? Your people are wicked. They need to be revived. They need salvation. God says, I am going
to do something. I'm going to bring
judgment on them. And Habakkuk's like,
that's exactly the opposite of what I want you to do. I want you to save them
so they get forgiven. You're saying I'm
going to work-- so really, it shows us
that the only thing worse than not getting what
you want, sometimes, is getting what you want. Habakkuk wanted
God to do something and was mad He did nothing. And then when God did
something, Habakkuk didn't like that, either. And so, really, he was confused. And at one point, he says,
are You not from everlasting? Almost questioning,
are You not good? Because that doesn't seem like
a good plan that you're doing. I don't understand
what you're up to. The reality is that
him knowing why God was doing what He was
doing wasn't something that was going to help him out. Why? Because our brains are
too small to fathom the bigness of what God's
doing from beginning to end. And your greatest need
is not information. It's revelation. Learning the specifics
of God's next steps made Habakkuk even
more confused. What actually helped him
was when God showed him how great He was. And he got a glimpse-- and if
you read the rest of the book, you see this picture
of him seeing God majestically and full
of power and full of might. And that prophetic
demonstration of His ability to do great things was the
thing that gave Habakkuk the most encouragement. So his understanding
God was not the issue. His worshipping God was. I choose to rejoice even when
I'm angry, sad, confused. There's one point when he
says, I cry out to You, and I even scream out to You. Some have said that the book
started with a sob, then went to a scream before
it ended with a song. And you might be somewhere
in one of those categories or right there in the middle. There's a range and a
spectrum of what it looks like to choose to trust God. You could be angry at him today. That's OK. He can handle that. You might be screaming
out in frustration or in grief or in desperation. That's OK. But give your pain to God. Give your pain, give
your frustration to God. And say, I'm not
letting go of You. I don't understand it. I don't even like it. But I trust you. I worship you. And in my confusion,
I give you my worship. Thirdly, there's repetition. His decision wasn't
made just once. It was made repeatedly. In verse 18, you'll notice,
"I will rejoice in the Lord. I will joy in the
God of my salvation." It's over and over again. Why? Because repetition
reveals importance. That's one of the reasons
why there's four gospels. There's not just one gospel. We're told the story,
but, hey, don't miss this. Hey, don't miss this. Hey, did you hear it Luke said? I'm John. Yeah, well, I could tell
you the same thing again. Why? We're wanting to not
miss the main thing. It's why teachers who are
gifted repeat themselves a lot. Let me say that again. [LAUGHING] What you see in
Habakkuk is is, I'm going to make this
decision, but I know that my decision today
is not enough for tomorrow. I'm going to need to make it
again and again and again. And so will you. It's good that you trusted
God the day you got saved. It's good that last
Sunday God spoke something to you in His word. But you need to wake up
tomorrow and do it again. And when you do that enough
times, over and over again, eventually you become
low-maintenance in your faith. The devil would love for all of
us to be fair weather friends. Fair weather
friends is basically where you live your
life constantly needing God to prove His love for you. All right, God, what
can You do for me today? And almost as though
we're each day trying to allow God to build
His case as to why He should get our worship. And that's basically what the
devil thought Job was like. He said, Job doesn't
really love You. He just is in it for what
you're going to do for him. And if you turn
your back on him, he will be the first one out the
door turning his back on You. And Job proved
that, no, he wasn't just in it for the perks. He had a low-maintenance faith. He said, though You slay
me, I will follow You. And I trust You no matter what. Job was like the opposite
of the princess and the pea. You know that story? There's pea under her mattress,
so she couldn't sleep. And it didn't matter
how many mattresses they put on top of
the mattress below it, she still could feel it. 100 mattresses later, she
still felt that tiny pea. What God wants us to see is that
Habakkuk and Job both model-- Paul in prison--
a faith where you put 100 peas under
a single mattress, they don't flinch at all because
their faith is low-maintenance, and God doesn't need to come
through today to show you why He should be your guy. He's never auditioned
for anybody. But He did send his
son Jesus Christ to die on the cross for you
to prove His love for you once and for all. And if you will repeat that-- I'm going to joy. I'm going to joy. I'm going to joy. Like Paul said in verse
18 of Philippians 1-- "I rejoice. Yes, I will rejoice,"
and in all, there's 19 mentions of joy
in Philippians. Once you do that enough
times, it eventually becomes honed into your muscle
memory, where it doesn't really matter what's happening. You're not basing
your joy on what's happening today
circumstances don't change your joy because
circumstances didn't give you your joy. God gave you joy
and enough reasons to joy forever
because of what He did when He sent His son to
die for you on the cross, and that repetition builds
you to a place of power. All that to say, when we get
those things into a groove, we then get to encounter
the phenomenon of joy. Hey, I'm so sorry for
interrupting the message, But I just wanted to talk to you
for a quick second about Fresh Life Leadership college. We're currently
taking applications for our fall semester,
which begins in August. And you can get all the
information and application and all those details at
freshlife.church/college. Maybe you or someone
that you know would want to pursue a
degree that would help you both in ministry or
marketplace opportunities by studying alongside the staff
and dedicated impact team right here Fresh Life Church. And the college, which
is in beautiful Montana, would be an amazing
place for you to be, to live, to serve, and to grow
in your relationship with God, but also pursue what
He has for you next. Pray about it. Look at the website
for information. And hopefully, we'll
see you out here. I love this. This is really the whole reason
I preach this sermon to show you, when you make
that decision, even when you're confused,
and you do it enough times, eventually you see
what Habakkuk did, that your circumstances
don't necessarily change, but you always do,
for joy changes you. It changes you, much
like King Tirian learned. My family and I are going
back through The Chronicles of Narnia. I love these stories. We've been doing something
that we've never done before. We'll put the Kindle book
on my phone on the TV. You know you can airplay
your phone on the TV. And then we'll take turns
reading through the pages. So I'll read a page. Then Jennie will read a page. And it keeps us all switched in. It's like combining
TV with reading. I'm not sure if that's even
good, but it works for us. And it's been really fun to do
that and laugh at each other when we can't pronounce C.S.
Lewis's old English words. And Clover did not
want to say "ass" because there's a
donkey in it, and she was super confused why that
would be in C.S. Lewis's book. Anyhow, there's this
great part where King Tirian, in the last
battle, ends up tied to a tree. And everything in the world
is dark, and he's been beaten, and he's got blood
running down his lip, and he's tied up to this tree. And in the middle of
all that, he prays. And I love what he
says in this moment. He calls out, Aslan, Aslan! Now, in the book,
Aslan represents Jesus. "Aslan, Aslan, come
and help us now." But the darkness and the
cold and the quietness went on just the same. "Let me be killed,"
cried the King. "'I ask nothing for myself,
but come and save all Narnia.' And still, there was no change
in the night or the wood, but there began to be a kind
of change inside Tirian. Without knowing why, he
began to feel a faint hope and he felt somehow stronger." Still tied to the tree,
still bleeding from his lip, in the same position
he was a minute ago. But now he's got
hope, but now he feels stronger because he
chose to hold on for dear life. That's the phenomenon of joy. Somehow, he began
to feel stronger. That's what Habakkuk
says can happen to you. What do you mean? He says, even though, I will. Even though, I will. Even if the worst happens, even
if your greatest fear comes to pass, in that situation-- no olives, no cattle, no sheep-- I still got salvation All right. We're back in business. I will rejoice. In that situation,
what happened? He said, what on earth
is happening to my feet? He made my feet like
the deer's feet. You know those centaur
mythical creatures, half horse, half dude, flowing
hair blowing in the wind? Did you see Onward? Fabio-like hair
blowing in the wind. The crazy thing about
what Habakkuk's saying is, I somehow felt stronger. And what's that? My feet-- they're
becoming like deer's feet, where I was slipping down the
mountain trying to get up this. God, why would you
let this happen? I'm falling. I'm falling. I'm falling. And all of a sudden,
I got deer's feet. I got deer's feet that
can grip and don't slip and can make my way
up to the high hills. God made my feet
like the deer's feet. Now I got traction. Now I've got a firm foundation. Now I'm ready to go where
God's calling me to go. Whatever You want to do-- if You
want to bring judgment, great. You're God. If you want to not
answer my prayers the way I thought they should
be answered, that's cool. You're going to do
something so powerful. The knowledge of the glory
of the Lord covers the earth. Right now, the water currently
cover the face of the Earth. So I'm in for that. I'm in for your glory. Whatever it takes for You to
get Your kingdom across, great. You now have made my feet
like the deer's feet. I think that's the
phenomenon that takes place. This remarkable, observable
outcome of choosing joy is that, all of
a sudden, you now have the ability to
run and not grow weary. And if you go to
the national parks, like Glacier or
Yellowstone or Grand Tetons and you see these
big horned sheep, you see these mountain goats-- they run up stuff
that's vertical. How do you run up
those craggy cliffs? That's what he's
saying now I can do. Before, I was basically trying
to get up in flip-flops. But now I got deer feet. I'm able to do this because
I'm running on my high heels. My wife Jennie preached that
text one time and she said, God gives me strength to
walk in my high heels. Now, I don't know
exactly what that's like. I understand it's level of
difficulty times 10 to do that. I don't think many of you have
been in your high heels lately. But God is going to
give you the strength to do what's impossible
because of His spirit upon you. Therefore, we can
rejoice even more when life gets harder,
because we're just getting new chances to
run up steep mountains with our deer feet
that He gives us. Romans 5-- Paul
puts it this way. "Even in times of trouble,
we have a joyful confidence, knowing that our outer
pressures will develop in us a patient inner
endurance, and patient endurance will refine our character. Improving character
leads us back to hope, and this hope is not a
disappointing fantasy because we now can experience
the endless love of God cascading into our hearts
through the Holy Spirit who lives in us." Tell me that is not worthwhile. Facing chemotherapy,
facing unemployment, facing a horrible situation
where someone in your life has tragically died too
soon where are you now look at this cliff and
go, I don't know how, but all of a sudden
the Holy Spirit transforms your feet
into the feet of a deer to where you can walk and
even run in these high places. And the greater the pressure,
the greater the treasure. The more we will have
occasion to rejoice. The blacker the night
becomes, the more joy will sparkle and
shine in our hearts like diamonds that show up. And what happens when
you have that phenomenon? Well, then you turn
to other people and you want to
make a contribution. Let me talk about
the contribution of joy for a second. Joy is never selfish,
and joy is never stingy. When you realize the joy of
the Lord is your strength, your initial and swift reaction
is to always try and think of who else needs that joy,
and that's what Habakkuk did. Theologians point out
that the language he uses of harvest
language-- because it should be harvest time--
olives and cattle and crops. Crops come out of the
ground at harvest time. So he's using
language of harvest. And then the
rejoicing in God pivot hearkens back in the way he
uses the language as a priest, talking about first fruits. Now, Habakkuk, as a priest,
knew all about first fruits because the people were called
by God when they had a crop to bring the first
fruits to the storehouse that there might be
food in God's house to do the work of God and to
do the benevolent ministry of sharing with other people. And Habakkuk would
have facilitated that. So of course, that
language would have been natural for him. So the language
he's using suggests that he's saying,
even in hard times, my mind is still on a mentality
to resource God's kingdom and that, even when
I barely have enough to keep going myself,
I'm still going to be contributing generously to
the work that God wants to do. And I think that's going
to be true in our hearts. And many times, it
has to be by faith. And that's really why he
calls it to be first fruits. If you wait till the end of
the month and then look back and see how much money you made
that month and give the 10% that way versus from the very
beginning, from the get-go, the first fruits of the
month when it takes faith to give-- when it's scary
and hard but we still, instead of clenching
down on our finances, continue to still have that
mentality, what are we doing? We're contributing
generously with joy. But that's not all. Habakkuk wasn't just talking
about financial resources. He was also talking
about sharing the lessons he learned, i.e. we're, today, reading
the Book of Habakkuk, because he learned
all this stuff and he was kind enough to
keep a journal and keep a log and send it out into the world. And that, by the way,
is one of the reasons I'm so excited for next week for
the Fight to Flourish series. One of the things that,
having read the book, I will tell you will
impact you tremendously is my wife graciously
enough opened up many of our journal entries
that she wrote very honestly-- scream if you got
to scream, type. Cry if you've got to cry-- from a sob to a
scream to a song. And she, in The
Fight to Flourish, gives many of the journal
entries and lessons she learned in the most
difficult days she's ever faced and some of the current issues
she's still dealing with, being married to me among them. And she, in the book and
in the message series, is going to allow you
to get to do what we're doing to Habakkuk's book and go,
wow, your life's an open book, and I'm encouraged to know
that I'm not the only one who feels this way sometimes. Here she is, a woman of God
but being real and honest, and we're going
to learn from her. She's contributing because of
the comfort she's received. Habakkuk, though, didn't
just give resources financially and a book. He also, if you'll
notice, ended the chapter with this statement-- "to the chief musician"--
this is verse 19-- "with my stringed instruments." What is he doing? As a priest, he was over temple
worship and over the gatherings and what the songs would be
sung by the different priests. And he says as he
finishes this book, take all this stuff that I've
learned and set it to music. Set my guitar up,
because when I come back, I'm going to be putting together
a worship song for the people of God to be able to sing. We should always be singing
the lessons we've learned. We should be taking the
revelations of God's goodness and glory, what He's
brought us through, what He's done in the past, what
He's going to do in the future, and who Jesus is, and
setting that stuff to music and then bringing it
to the people of God so they can look to Jesus and
be transformed by these songs. What are we doing? He is helping furnish
a place for praise in the mouth of God's
children based on the lessons that he has just had to
claw his way through. He's chosen joy again
and again and again. God's showed up. And now let's set it to song,
contributing something for us to sing based on the hard
things that he had faced. And I think that's
exactly what God has for us to constantly be doing. You're not the
first to struggle, and you're not going
to be the last. So look to others, how
they've contributed, and then take those
lessons that you learn and contribute it to the
greater story of what others have done as well. In verse 4, God told
Habakkuk-- this is chapter 2-- "Write down the vision, and
make it plain on tablets that he may run who reads it." In other words,
God's saying, don't lose any of these lessons. Keep them so that other
people can benefit by them. This whole miniseries
Cabin Fever has come, really, as, a
result of God telling me for us, our Fresh Life
online family and church, to focus in on joy for these
weeks, to really let joy shine out. And the reason that I
feel this is so important is this idea that the joy that's
in you isn't just for you. Yes, God wants you to choose
joy, but that privilege of joy should always pivot out
to the responsibility of showing and sharing
that joy for the benefit of other people. All right. We're going to end this
message with the person of joy. Yes, there's a decision and
a confusion and a repetition and then a phenomenon of it. But lastly, there's a person
of joy, and, good news, that person is not you. You don't need to have
all the pressure that comes from you needing
to perfectly carry that joy to the world. It is a little
intimidating to see Habakkuk's resolve, the
greatest confession of faith in all of history. I will choose joy
even with no olives. I will choose joy. And we almost get
this George Washington crossing the Potomac, hands
on hips and chiseled jaw. I am Habakkuk. I have two Ks in my
name, and I choose joy. And I approve this
message, by the way. And you're like, man,
that's a lot, Habakkuk. Could you ease it
back a little bit? Because I'm just struggling
just to even do the dishes and and brush my teeth. And I yelled at
my kids last week, and I just feel like a hot mess. And let me encourage
you with this idea. Habakkuk didn't perfectly
live out the stuff that he's telling us
that he wanted to do. He had low moments. He had moments of doubt. He had moments where he almost
accused God of not being real. So I mean, there's a
very humanness to this. But again, Habakkuk
isn't the person of joy. Jesus is. And the Book of Habakkuk
is all about Jesus. We know that, from Luke 24,
where Jesus, on the road to Emmaus-- we talked about this
on Easter Sunday. If you're on Spotify, go
back two episodes to The Show on the Road. And Jesus and Luke 24
said, you know the prophets and you know the books of Moses? They're all about me. You probably think this
song is all about me. And Jesus is like, yeah, it is. This song is all about me. In fact, the entire
Old Testament just pointed forward to me. So what that means is,
that day on the road, he talked to them
about Habakkuk, and he showed that he is the
person who perfectly embodied joy when everything
was taken from him. That we know of, Habakkuk
never had a situation where everything was pried
from him that he had and he had to die with nothing. But Jesus faced that,
and He did it for you. And Hebrews says He did
it with joy on his mind. This is Chapter 12,
verse 2 of Hebrews-- "Looking unto Jesus, the author
and finisher of our faith, who for the joy set before Him
endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat
down at the right hand of the throne of God." I'm so excited to
tell you about this. Jesus faced everything Habakkuk
hypothesized could happen. Everything that can
go wrong did go wrong. Jesus didn't deserve
anything He faced, but His life was taken from him. His friends abandoned Him. At Calvary's Hill,
the soldiers even took His clothes off of his
body, stretched Him out. No olives, no cattle, no sheep. Are you kidding me? And joy was what he chose. What words did He
say on the cross? My God, my God. What did Habakkuk say? Even if that happened, I
still will rejoice in my God. Habakkuk's a picture of Jesus. What he said, I would hope I
would do in that situation, is what Jesus did do. So the person of joy is Jesus. The pressure's
off for you and me to be perfect specimens of joy. The pressure is
on for us to trust in Jesus who already did
it for us on our behalf, and joy was on His
mind as he hung there. What joy? Your joy, for the
joy He knew could be yours if you trusted
Him and walked in Him and allowed His joy to
shine in your heart. That kind of a joy will
change your life forever, not the pressure of you
trying to be perfect but trusting in the
One who is perfect. Now, to end where we began,
I want to bring you back to Chris Gursky. Remember? He went to Switzerland with
his wife to go hang gliding. They didn't plug him in. They didn't connect him. And as a result, he had
to hang on for dear life and almost fell to his death
but fortunately did not. What was crazy to
me in researching this was coming
across an article from CNN that, a year later,
after he had healed up his bicep and his wrist
was well, him and his wife got back on an airplane, flew
once again from Florida back to Switzerland. Why? Because he wanted to
stand on the same mountain he had stood on before, the
one that he had jumped off, not connected to anything but
by his hands to the hang glider, and he wanted to do it again. And in fact, look
at this picture. He chose once again
to conquer that demon and to go hang gliding. The most incredible
thing to me in the world is, when interviewed--
and they said, what was that instructor's name? He said, I will not name him
because I will not shame him. He made a mistake,
a very bad mistake. Yes. And no, he did not
go hang gliding with that same instructor again. With a different
person, he went. One of the best hang gliders in
the world offered to take him. Talk about running toward
the roar in that situation. But he said, I
will not name him. I will not shame him. And they said, well,
how much did you get in the settlement,
the lawsuit, inevitably, that took place? He said, I did not sue him. There was no litigation. He said, I didn't
want to sue anybody. All I wanted was
to go hang gliding. And so he went back to mountain. Why? Because even though he had
been hurt, even though he had fallen, even
though someone had done something wrong to
him, he still wanted to fly. And I think that's the sweetness
possible when we choose joy. When we choose to look at
Jesus-- what He went through, what He did, what He faced,
that He did that for you-- you're going to become a person
who's sweet and not salty even when life has been
bitter because Jesus went through worse, and
He did it for you, and you're going to still keep
climbing those high hills. Why? Because you still want to fly. So you're not just someone
with feet like a deer. You're also someone with
wings like an eagle. And as you keep
trusting in God, you're going to be on the
scale those high hills and keep leaping off into
new seasons, into new vistas, into new updrafts, into a
new breath of the Holy Spirit blowing you to the
places that he wants you to go to take you to
do the things he's caused you to do in Jesus' name. Yes. And father, we do pray for
those kind of anointings on us. If you could, just
while you're watching, I know this is a
little bit weird, but maybe you're
driving in your car and this is playing
through system there, could you just touch
your lips and just commit because of
Jesus to letting your mouth be a place of
praise for God this week. May your lips, the words you
speak, the songs you sing, may your mouth furnish a
place for God to sit down and enjoy a seat at
the table of your life. Help us to not speak
words of death, Jesus, but words of life. Help us build up our
families, our teams, help us to build up ourselves,
to encourage ourselves. Could you now, I
know this is weird, but could you touch your feet? Just pray for a
blessing of your feet to become like the feet
of a deer this week. That as you run you would be
able to run the race of faith without slipping,
without falling, and that you would be able
to scale high hills that seemed impossible to you. This week's going to
have lots of moments that are really hard. But when you feel like
the feet of a deer, you're going to scale and dance
and sing upon these high hills, and you're going to soar
with wings like an eagle. And just make sure you remember
to sanitize your hands later because you've been
touching your feet. And I you do your lips
first just for that reason. But I want to close this message
with an invitation for anybody who listening to this
hears this and goes, man, I want a joy like that. I want a faith like that. I want a power like that. And I want to tell you
all of this can be yours, but not by you, like I said,
resolving more this week. I'm going to this
week do better. I'm going to trust God more. It's about what Jesus
has done for you. It's about his finished
work on the cross. The Bible says because
of his death, burial, and Resurrection, he's taking
care of everything that needs to happen in
order for you to have a relationship with God. And now he stands at the door
of your heart and he knocks. We had someone knock
at our door this week and ding dong ditch something. And the door knocked,
and then we opened it, and there was no one there. It was just a little gift on
the front door, an invitation to a scavenger hunt, actually. And I think about how we
have a choice every time a door knocks. Do we open it or do we not? Now we have apps where we
can see who's at the door. You don't have to wonder
and you don't have a ring or a nest installed. I can tell you
who's at the door. Jesus is at the door. He wants to come
into your heart. He wants to come into your life. He wants to furnish
a place of praise for his presence to
dwell in your home, but you have to invite him in. And we're believing
and praying that as you listen to this
message, if you're not a person who knows Jesus
to live inside your heart that you would
make that decision. And on the authority
of God's word, I can tell you right now, if
you ask for him to forgive you, he will. If you ask for him
to be your Lord, he will not turn you away. If you ask for him
to come in your heart and to allow joy to shine
forth from your life so you can run on some high
hills this week, he will come. In fact, I believe it's
just for that reason that God has drawn you
to this moment listening to this on Spotify, or
YouTube, or Facebook. He loves you and will save you,
but you must confess your sins, believe in your heart
that Jesus is Lord and that God raised
him from the dead, and turned from those sins
turning to him in faith. And then you will watch
this life transform into a journey of discovery,
watching his plan unfold itself in glorious ways. Would you pray with me? Bowing your head,
closing your eyes. And if you're ready
to make this decision to give your life to Jesus,
pray these words with me. Pray them out loud, but
mean them in your heart. Dear Lord, I know I'm a
sinner, and I can't fix myself. I turn from my sins. I turn to you. Please come into my heart. Make me brand new. Thank you for the cross. Thank you for the resurrection. I will rejoice in God my Savior. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen. Hey, Fresh Life family. It's so good to
be with you today. Worshipping with you from
my home to your home, so thank you for having me. I know Pastor Levi just
preached in an amazing word about worshipping in the
midst of every season and how joy comes
out of that, how joy is found just
in God's presence no matter what's going
on around us, no matter whether or not we see fruit
in that season or not. And I know that to be
so true from my life. In fact, I wrote this
song out of a season where I wasn't seeing fruit
of what I was praying for. And I was frustrated, and
I was finding my heart being so torn between
being so obsessed with what I was getting or not getting
from God versus just being thankful for his presence. And I wrote this
song just coming back to that thankfulness,
that joy in his presence. And one thing I do know
is true in this season is that God is with
us and God is for us. And thank God for
that, that nothing can ever separate us
from the love of God. Nothing can take
away his presence. You can take away so many
things from us right now, but nothing can take us away
from the presence of God. So there's joy in
his presence today. I pray that right now,
wherever you are, in your home, in your car, in your hospital
room, wherever you may be, that you just feel surrounded
by the presence of God, that your family
feels surrounded by the presence of God today. So let's just worship
together with this song. [PIANO PLAYS] I'm caught up in your presence. I just want to sit
here at your feet. I'm caught in this holy moment. I never want to leave. Oh, I'm not here for blessing. And Jesus, you don't
owe me anything. More than anything
that you can do. I just want you. I'm sorry. When I've just gone
through the motions. I'm sorry. When I just sang another song. Take me to where we started. I open up my heart to you. I'm sorry. When I've come with my agenda. I'm sorry. When I forgot that
you're enough. Take me back to
where we started. I open up my heart to you. I'm caught up in your presence. And I just want to
sit here at your feet. I'm caught up in
this holy moment. I never want to leave. And oh, I'm not
here for blessing. No, no. Jesus, you don't
owe me anything. And more than anything
that you can do. I just want you. Oh, I just want you. And nothing else. And nothing else. Nothing else. will do. I just want you. And nothing else. And nothing else. Nothing will do. I just want you. I said, sing it out. Oh, nothing else. And nothing else. Nothing else will do. I just, from your heart straight
to Jesus, oh, nothing else. And nothing else,
Jesus, nothing else. We're coming back to your heart. Back to what really matters. I just want you. Oh, and nothing else. And nothing else. And nothing else will do. I just want you. And nothing else. And nothing else. Nothing else will do. I found joy here
in your presence. I found peace here
in your presence. And no matter what
it looks like, I'll give you the
worship you deserve. Jesus, I lay every
burden at your feet. Lay my life at your feet. Jesus, you're worthy. Worthy, worthy. So feel every home
with you joy right now. Feel every heart with
your joy right now, Jesus. We can rest in your presence. We can rest in the fact
that you never leave. We're caught up
in your presence. And I just want to
sit here at your feet. I'm caught up in
this holy moment. I never want to leave. And oh, I'm not
here for blessing. Jesus, you don't
owe me anything. More than anything
that you can do. I just want you. God bless you guys.
