From His Heart

Dr. Jeff Schreve: What do you do when you've fallen and you can't get up because life has mowed you down? It's a good question because life does that to us. So when life comes and smashes you and knocks you down, and maybe you say, "That's my story. Jeff, life has hit me out of the blue. Disaster has come, divorce has come, disease has come. I've fallen, and I can't get up."

Larry Nobles: Has life knocked you down? Maybe you're afraid to get back up for fear of getting knocked down again. God has the answers for you and the power to empower you and take you to new heights if you'll let Him.

This is From His Heart with Pastor Jeff Schreve. Thank you for joining us today for the broadcast where you'll discover how to get up when you're down. That's the title of the lesson from Pastor Jeff's five-message series, Got Trouble? What to Do When You Don't Know What to Do.

You can listen to any of these that you've missed from this series when you go to fromhisheart.org and click the "listen" link. Now, though, open your copy of God's Word to the book of Habakkuk, found between Nahum and Zephaniah. It contains a dialogue between the prophet Habakkuk and God, written during the rise of the Babylonian Empire. And we'll start in chapter 3 to learn how to get up when we're down.

Dr. Jeff Schreve: If you have your Bibles, please turn to the book of Habakkuk. Habakkuk is toward the end of the Old Testament. If you start at the end, Malachi, and just keep taking a left, you'll finally hit Habakkuk. Habakkuk has a great word for us today.

Some of you may remember that in the late '80s and early '90s, there was a company that had a commercial on television. The company was called LifeCall. It was a medical alarm company, and they produced this commercial. Actually, they produced a product and they had the commercial to promote the product. But the product was very good.

It was a little pendant that elderly people who lived alone and disabled people who lived alone could wear. It was a medical alert pendant, and if they fell or they got in trouble, something happened and they needed help, they could just press that button and it would immediately call this network. People would be there to help them and call doctors and ambulances and things like that.

Well, in that commercial, they didn't spend a lot of money on the commercial. The commercial had this cheesy reenactment and they showed an elderly woman and her walker was knocked over and she was on the ground. She presses the button and they say, "What can we do to help you?" And she says, "I've fallen, and I can't get up." Does anybody remember, "I've fallen, and I can't get up"? It became a catchphrase in American culture.

Now, when you fall down physically and you can't get up, it's good to have LifeCall and you press the button and somebody can come and help you get up. But what do you do when you've fallen and you can't get up because life has mowed you down? It's not a physical fall. It's an emotional fall, a spiritual fall, a mental fall. Your life has been blindsided by life. How do you get up when you're down?

It's a good question because life does that to us. To quote one of my favorite philosophers, the Italian philosopher Rocky Balboa, he said, "Ain't nothing hits as hard as life." And so when life comes and smashes you and knocks you down, and maybe you say, "That's my story. Jeff, life has hit me out of the blue. Disaster has come, divorce has come, disease has come. I've fallen, and I can't get up."

God has a word from His word today to speak to you, to speak to your heart, to encourage you. One of my favorite verses, Romans 15:13, says, "Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit." God is the God who can turn things around in your life. God is the God who can take the worst of situations and turn them into the greatest of blessings.

Habakkuk was a man who knew what it was like to be down. He was a prophet who lived in the late 600s, early 500s BC, a prophet who lived at a time when Judah was going out as a nation. Babylon was coming on the scene and God told Habakkuk, "Babylon is coming and they're going to wipe you guys out."

If you know anything about the history of Judah and Jerusalem, you'll know that in 605 BC, Babylon came and they came after them and attacked the city and took back hostages: Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego. They were part of that group in 605 BC. They put Judah under their thumb. They're the big bad boys now. It used to be Assyria, but now it's Babylon with its king Nebuchadnezzar.

That happened in 605, and Jerusalem had terrible trouble. Then in 597, Nebuchadnezzar came back because Judah began to flex its muscle and say, "We don't have to pay you tribute, Nebuchadnezzar." So he came back, slapped them around some more, and took more captives back to Babylon.

Then in 586 BC, Judah said, "We're not going to serve you," and Babylon came in and broke down the wall of the city and destroyed the temple. There was complete and utter devastation. If you want to read how bad it was, take time this afternoon and read the book of Lamentations. Jeremiah weeps and cries over the devastation that came upon Judah and Jerusalem.

Habakkuk knows what it's like for life to plow you over and knock you down. He also knows how you get up when you're down. In the book of Habakkuk, just three short chapters, he wrestles with God in chapter 1 and then he embraces God in chapter 3. He says this, one of the greatest statements of faith in all of the Bible, in verse 17:

"Though the fig tree should not blossom and there be no fruit on the vines, though the yield of the olive should fail and the fields produce no food, though the flock should be cut off from the fold and there be no cattle in the stalls, yet I will exult in the Lord, I will rejoice in the God of my salvation. The Lord God is my strength, and He has made my feet like hinds' feet, and makes me walk on my high places." For the choir director, on my stringed instruments.

How do you get up when life knocks you down? In these verses that we read, God gives us a three-step action plan to put into practice anytime life knocks you for a loop. Step number one in the three-step action plan is you run to God with your questions. You run to the Lord with your questions.

To be sure, when you get blindsided in life and things just slam and knock you down, you have questions. Have you ever been in a car and you get hit in the car and you don't see it coming? It was in your blind spot or something like that, and all of a sudden, bam! It's like, where did that guy come from?

Or you back into a telephone pole and it's like, that wasn't there just a second ago. It just comes up out of nowhere and you're just so startled. Anytime that happens, we have questions. It's normal and natural to have questions. Habakkuk, whose name means to wrestle or to embrace, is in chapter 1 wrestling with God over the current state of affairs.

Because in Judah, the nation of Judah with its capital in Jerusalem, there is spiritual decline and corruption. There is moral decline and corruption. There is political decline and corruption. Everything is going down the tubes. God tells them Babylon is coming to totally wipe them out. It is bad news.

He starts it off and he says this: "How long, O Lord, will I call for help and You will not hear? I cry out to You, 'Violence!' yet You do not save." Then he goes on in chapter 1 to ask a series of why questions. Seven questions that he asks God in chapter 1. Four "whys." God, why don't You hear me? God, why don't You help me? Have you ever asked God that?

When life blindsides you, you ever ask God, "Hey, God, why aren't You hearing me? Hey, God, why aren't You helping me?" It's an honest question. There's nothing wrong with asking questions like that. Jesus on the cross asked why: "My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?" So there's nothing wrong with that.

We can come to God with our questions. He wants us to do that. He doesn't mind that we wrestle with Him with the questions of life. But now remember this: when you come to God with your questions, always come with reverence. Always remember who you're talking to.

You're not talking to some high school clerk who miscounted your change. You're not talking to the shoeshine boy who missed a spot. You're talking to God, the God who spoke the worlds into existence. The scripture says in Hebrews chapter 11, verses 28 and 29: "Therefore, since we receive a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us show gratitude, by which we may offer to God an acceptable service with reverence and awe; for our God is a consuming fire."

You always come before the Lord with reverence and awe. The Lord, the Bible says in Psalm 47, is a great King over all the earth, a great King who is to be feared. So you always come with reverence.

Larry Nobles: As Pastor Jeff has pointed out, God doesn't mind our questions as long as the attitude of our mind maintains a reverence for His great power and holiness. Stay with us. Pastor Jeff returns in a minute to bring the second half of the message, "How to Get Up When You're Down."

A lot of people in this world feel desperate and down. The world is filled with noise and confusion, and people are searching for an answer. Pastor Jeff created this daily radio broadcast 21 years ago to reach people every day who are listening by driving to work, sitting at home, or scrolling through stations wherever they are, so that they would hear a message that they didn't expect to hear from God but who meets them right there in their time of trouble.

Maybe that describes you. That's the beauty of radio, of course. It reaches people who may not be looking for Him but desperately need to find Him. Even today, it remains one of the most effective and cost-effective ways to share the life-changing message of Christ. From His Heart exists because people in your hometown and around the world, maybe in your home, support us financially.

Would you like to be a part of something touching lives with a message like you're hearing today? This month, for your gift of support to From His Heart of any amount, we'd like to say thank you by sending you Pastor Jeff's new series, God and Money: What the Bible Says About Managing Money. This is three messages on USB flash drive, CDs, DVDs, or an MP3 download.

To get your copy of this wonderful series, call 866-40-BIBLE or go online to fromhisheart.org to make your gift of any amount today. Thank you so much for making it possible for us to be here each day and to reach people across our nation and around the world with the real truth of God's word. We are eternally grateful for you. Now let's get back to part one of our lesson today called "How to Get Up When You're Down."

Dr. Jeff Schreve: You always address God with reverence because He's a consuming fire. But then you always come with confidence. Because the great King over all the earth, the consuming fire, is Daddy, who loves you and loves me. Scripture says in Hebrews 4:16: "Therefore let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need."

If you have a pen or pencil, circle that word "confidence." "Let us draw near with confidence." That word literally means freedom of speech. It means that we can come before the Lord and talk to the Lord about anything. We can pour out our heart to God. We can share those things that bother us. We can share those questions that we have.

Nothing is off-limits. If you come with reverence and you come with awe, God says, "The door is open. You come and talk to Me, and you share your heart with Me." That's how you get close to God. It's when you're vulnerable with God, when you share things with God.

When you don't share with God and you bottle up questions and hurts, and life knocked you down and you don't know why, but you're not going to go to God with it, let me tell you, it's like burying toxic waste. You're going to try and push it down, but it's going to come up, and you're not going to get rid of it. The way you get rid of those things is you pour out your heart to the Lord. You share those things with the Lord. You bring those questions to the Lord. You come with confidence, with freedom of speech, and talk to God about it.

That's the first step in the action plan. What do you do when life knocks you for a loop? You run to God with your questions. Second step: you rejoice in Him in your problems. Now Habakkuk, in verse 17, paints a picture of the worst economic collapse you can possibly have. We freak out in America when the Dow drops 300 points in a day. We think everything's falling apart.

Well, what does he talk about? He lives in an agrarian society and there's no more agriculture. Everything's gone. "Though the fig tree should not blossom and there be no fruit on the vines." That's a bummer. We don't have any figs. We're a big fig producer. No figs, no fruit on the vines, no grapes there. "Though the yield of the olive should fail." Well, that's a problem because we're a big olive producer. We've got no olives. "And the fields produce no food." We have no wheat, we have no barley, we have nothing in the fields.

Well, at least we've got our sheep. "Though the flock should be cut off from the fold." Now we don't have that. "And there be no cattle in the stalls." We don't have anything. Everything is gone. "Yet I will exult in the Lord, I will rejoice in the God of my salvation." That's what he says.

You say, "What? You're going to exult in the Lord?" The word "exult" literally means to become jubilant, to jump for joy. Now that doesn't seem to match, does it? Everything is gone and the Dow Jones is at zero and there's famine. When there's no food, there's famine. And when there's famine, there's death.

What's Habakkuk doing? He's jumping for joy like a little kid before Christmas. You say, "What are you smoking, pal? This is crazy. Why would you rejoice in this situation?" He's not rejoicing in the lack. He's rejoicing in the Lord. "Yet I will exult in the Lord, I will rejoice in the God of my salvation." You rejoice in Him even in your problems.

You mark it down. I don't care what's going on in your life. You can make the choice to rejoice. Paul was in prison. He was waiting to get his head cut off. He didn't know if he was going to live or he was going to die, and he wrote the book of Philippians, which is the book of joy. And he says in Philippians 4:4, "Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice." He just made a choice to rejoice.

And you can too. Habakkuk looked out in chapter 1. Everything is bad. And maybe you look out in your life today and you say everything is bad: my job's bad, my family's bad, my future's bad, my health is bad, my outlook is bad. Hey, if your outlook is bad, try the up-look and look up to God and jump for joy in Him.

Many of us were disappointed in the election because the moral issues of the day—traditional marriage and the protection of the unborn and the public acknowledgment of God—those things were put on the back burner and people voted primarily for the economy and for handouts and entitlements and things like that.

Man, you could wake up and be very discouraged. But you don't have to be discouraged. You can exult, you can jump for joy in the Lord. You know why? It's because the tomb is still empty. God is still God. His word is still true. My citizenship is still in heaven. The Lord is coming back for me.

The scripture says, "Look up, be watchful, for your redemption is drawing near." Whenever everything gets dark and gets black and gets bleak, it just shows us we are one step closer to the Lord Jesus Christ returning for His own. And so we can exult, we can rejoice in Him.

Listen, nobody likes hard times. Nobody does. But we can't get away from the fact that the scripture says in the last days difficult times will come. For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of pleasure, lovers of money, haters of God, haters of good. We're living in the last days, in the last of the last days, and we're going to experience that.

When you start talking about no figs and no fruit and no yield of the olive and no food and the Dow Jones going down, down, down, that could easily happen to us. You don't have to walk around with headline hysteria saying, "Oh no, what's coming to the world?" You can say, "Praise the Lord. It's getting gloriously dark. Jesus Christ is coming for me, and Jesus Christ is on His way."

So I can exult, I can jump for joy in the Lord. You can make the choice to rejoice. You say, "Well, Jeff, that sounds good. But I'm not like you. You seem to be a person who has lots of faith, but I don't have that much faith and things are hard for me and life has knocked me down and I can't get up. I wish I could make the choice to rejoice, but I can't make that choice because I don't have the ability to do that."

You mark it down. Rejoicing is not an act of ability. It's an act of the will. "Yet I will rejoice in the Lord," he said. "I will exult in the Lord, I will rejoice in the God of my salvation." He did it by an act of the will.

No matter what's going on, it doesn't have anything to do with ability. It has to do with you just making the choice and you taking your will and saying, "You know what? I will do this. Rejoice in the Lord and praise the Lord."

There is power when you praise God. He inhabits the praises of His people. In Acts chapter 16, Paul and Silas were preaching in Philippi and then beaten because they cast out a demon of this girl who was bringing much profit to her masters because she could foretell the future.

All of a sudden these people get mad. They turn on Paul and Silas, they beat them with rods, they throw them in prison, they put them in the inner stocks. They're bleeding, they're hurting, and they're in the stocks. It says, "But about midnight Paul and Silas began to pray and they were singing hymns of praise in the prison, and the prisoners were listening." When they sang hymns of praise, God answered.

God sent a jailhouse rock and God caused the chains to fall and the doors to open, and there was a great revival that took place in the prison house. It all started because they praised. What do you do when life knocks you down? You exult in the Lord, you rejoice in the God of your salvation. Listen, if you're struggling today with depression, the very best medicine for depression is praise. To praise the Lord because it lifts you up and it takes you to a new place and it helps you to see life from God's perspective.

Habakkuk, in the midst of terrible situations that he could foresee that were coming, said, "I'm going to exult in the Lord, I'm going to make that choice." And you can make that choice too.

Larry Nobles: It's so easy to give in to the gloomy outlook of everything around us. But we can choose to either focus on circumstances or on the sovereign God of the universe. Make sure that you're with us next time for the conclusion to "How to Get Up When You're Down" from the series, Got Trouble? What to Do When You Don't Know What to Do.

If you find yourself right now down in life, you'll want to be sure to go to From His Heart's website to sign up for Pastor Jeff's weekly Real Hope email encouragement letter. It comes into your inbox every Friday morning. These are very helpful and practical teachings that'll bring you real hope each and every day.

Listen, if you know today that you have never received Christ, you've never humbled yourself in repentance and faith and asked Him to come in and live inside you, then we'd like to invite you to visit the "Why Jesus?" tab on our homepage at fromhisheart.org. It'll encourage you, answer your questions about what that really means to you, and help you discover how to know you are a child of God for now and for eternity.

Again, that's at fromhisheart.org. Time's gone for today on the broadcast. I'm Larry Nobles. Thank you for being here. We sure do appreciate that. And we hope you'll join us again for part two of this message when Pastor Jeff continues his series, Got Trouble? What to Do When You Don't Know What to Do. Join us Monday for part two of "How to Get Up When You're Down." That's right here on From His Heart.