Telling the Truth

Guest (Male): Today, Jill shares encouraging truth to help you wait on God and renew your strength when it feels like your life is at a standstill. That's coming up next on Telling the Truth, but first...

Stuart Briscoe: So many people read their Bible, go to church, serve on mission trips, and go through the motions. Yet, still struggle to find God. Jill Briscoe has a surprising and deeply encouraging answer to this dilemma, which she shares in her three-message series titled Finding God.

The Finding God series is our thanks for your gift today to help more people experience life through the teaching and resources of Telling the Truth. And if you're able to make your gift monthly, we'll also send you a special Telling the Truth travel mug to remind you God is always with you. So request your resources when you give today: 1-800-889-5388. That's 1-800-889-5388, or you can give online at tellingthetruth.org. Now, here's Jill Briscoe with her message, Finding God in the Delays of Life.

Jill Briscoe: I am going to be thinking about a man today who didn't like waiting. Do you like waiting? I hate waiting. In our instant society, it is very hard, isn't it? We don't like waiting. Maybe your heart, like his, is asking, as he does in the very opening words of this first chapter of Habakkuk, "How long, O Lord?" Have you ever said that?

Who or what are you waiting for? Job, a friend to be a friend, someone to love you or for you to love back? Are you waiting for a break or a baby? A child to say they're sorry? Reconciliation, perhaps, or an important prayer to be answered? Maybe you are waiting for the bullying or betrayal to stop, or lying, hating, injustice, corruption, or hurt.

Perhaps you are in a crisis of faith that needs to be resolved and God seems far away, and you're saying, "How long, O Lord, must I wait before all these things are realized?" Well, if those are the sort of things that are in your heart, then listen up because God has something from his word to say today. And if that's not you, wait a bit. It will be. All of us will be waiting for something before we see him face to face.

Habakkuk learned to encounter God in the waiting. That basically is the core of what I want to tell you. Habakkuk encountered God. That's what waiting periods are for: to know God in a better way, to know yourself in a way you've never known yourself, to understand other people. All of that and much more God wants to see happen in our hearts and lives during the waiting.

Habakkuk was able to say in chapter three as he sang—actually, it's a song at the end of this book in chapter 3:17: "Though the fig tree doesn't bud, though there are no grapes on the vine, though the olive crop fails and the field produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stall, yet I will rejoice in the Lord. I'll be joyful in God my Savior, for the Sovereign Lord is my strength. He makes my feet like the feet of a deer. He enables me to go on the heights."

It says, "For the director of music." This is a man who was a Levite, a singing Levite, a prophet, a Levite who was in the temple choir, possibly a composer as well. He sang a song in all the waiting that God called him to embrace and to endure. Well, Habakkuk engages in chapter one, and we hear him: "How long, O Lord, must I call for help and you don't listen? Cry out 'violence' and you don't save? Why do you make me look on injustice? Why do you tolerate wrong?

Destruction and violence are before me. There is strife and conflict around. Therefore, the law is paralyzed and justice never prevails, and the wicked hem in the righteous so that justice is perverted." So we have this prayer time. Habakkuk is just one great big prayer time. That's what it is. I loved when I was studying prayer and writing a book on it years ago.

I just started to realize how much of the Bible is a prayer, like the whole of the life of Elijah is a prayer. There is nobody else there but God and him, and it's what he says to God and God says to him. That was hugely helpful for me, and I thought, "This is the way I can learn to pray prayers that work." And here we have Habakkuk in a prayer. The whole thing is what happened in his prayer time with God.

That sort of makes me excited too. What happens in your prayer time? What happens in mine? Do I really hear God? We hear a lot about hearing God. How do we hear God? I was asked that last night by a young woman. "I don't know what I'm listening for. I feel stupid. I am speaking into the air. What am I supposed to hear?"

"How long, O Lord? I don't hear anything." I don't know what he was expecting—a human sort of voice or whatever—and we're not told how God answered him. We're just told that he did. I was talking to this young lady, and I said, "I can't tell you how he will. I'm just telling you he will, probably in your thoughts." That is one way God speaks to us.

And so, he is having this talk with God. Actually, he is asking a lot of questions, and he doesn't feel that God has been giving him any answers until he really gets serious, perhaps. And so, he asks him, "This world I live in is a mess. This society is falling apart. Israel is a mess. The Babylonians are coming, or so they say. They've already destroyed Israel.

Now little Judah, us, are left here waiting for them to come and dispatch us as well. And we've been praying, 'Stop them, Lord,' and you haven't stopped them. Not only that, but in our courts and the life of Israel itself, there is nothing right. And the Lord, we in the temple and the priests and the prophets that are left and the remnant who really love you have been praying, 'Turn us around. Renew, as you did in the old days, our vibrant faith.'

You haven't heard that prayer either because Israel's behaving just like unbelievers, Lord." And he is complaining, he's whining, he's grumbling to God. Now, Habakkuk—his name, incidentally, is "Embrace." I love the theme of the whole book because he is called to embrace what he is called to endure. God calls some of us to do that too.

I think waiting is akin to suffering. We're to embrace the waiting. We're to encounter God. We're to say it was very, very hard, but I'm so glad that God made me wait because this is what I've found out. And so, here he is in a very sticky place and he's asking God a lot of questions. I heard about the father that had a little boy, and the little boy kept asking him questions.

"Daddy, how many people are in the world?" "I don't know, son." "Well, how many countries?" "I don't know, son." "Well, how many languages?" "I don't know, son." "Dad, I hope you don't mind me asking all these questions." "No, son. How are you going to learn if you don't ask questions?" That's what he felt like. Do you ever feel like that?

Is it that I'm not hearing, whatever that means? Is it that I'm not seeing? When, when, when am I going to get some answers to my questions? Well, I think he was probably sorry he asked because God answered. "Look at the nations and watch and be utterly amazed, for I'm going to do something in your days that you would not believe even if you were told."

Now, I have heard that quoted literally in a sermon as something positive. "Look up, Habakkuk! I'm coming! I'm going to answer your prayers and I'm going to take these people and I'm going to show my glory and I'm going to restore Israel to vibrant spirituality." It's absolutely the opposite. "You've seen nothing yet, Habakkuk. You think this is bad? The Babylonians are coming, and I'm not going to stop them.

I'm just going to let this thing take its course." For Judah—first Israel, now Judah. The kingdom was split. One part went away from God into captivity. The other part is just about to face the same fate. Babylonians are coming, and then for the rest of chapter one, it describes—or God describes to Habakkuk—what sort of people they are. They will sweep through the whole earth.

They are a law to themselves. They promote their own honor. Their horses are swifter than leopards, fiercer than wolves at dusk. Their cavalry gallops headlong. Their horsemen come from afar. They fly like a vulture swooping to devour. They've come in violence. The Lord answers Habakkuk. "How long?" You don't have to wait long for this. The Chaldeans, the Babylonians are coming.

Stuart Briscoe: Don't go anywhere. There's more life-giving truth from the Briscoes headed your way. Tellingthetruth.org and the Telling the Truth app are great resources to help you grow in your spiritual life. Packed with videos like Ask the Briscoes, articles from Stuart and Jill, and encouraging audio teaching content, you'll find a treasure trove of resources to encourage you and others in your faith.

And while you're there, you can also request this month's featured resource when you give a gift to help more people around the world experience life in Christ. So visit us online or download the app today. We look forward to connecting with you. Okay, let's get back to Jill with today's message from her series Finding God.

Jill Briscoe: Habakkuk's second complaint starts at verse 12. "I don't get it. Aren't you from everlasting? Aren't you the God that lasts? Aren't you the God that never changes, that's always the same, that comes to the help of his people? My God, the Holy One, we won't die. O Lord, you've appointed them to punish us." He's got a whole lot more questions and he doesn't get it.

We never know what trust in God will do until we have to really trust in God. Waiting is the seminar, is the workshop of learning to trust, learning to lean on a God who will not fall over. And so, Habakkuk says, "Okay, I've got to use my faith. Faith in who?" And God leans out of heaven, hearing his prayer: "Renew us in our day, in our time. Make your things known. In wrath, remember mercy."

Another—it's better in the King James. It would be more familiar in the King James, that verse, for you. But it is: "Renew us, bring us to life, refresh us. Renew us in our day, in our time. Make these things known through us. Use us, live in us, work in us, speak through us, sing through us." God gives him a vision of the Holy One, glory covering the heavens, and he's standing in prayer on his high tower internally, watching what God is going to do. And he's given a look at God.

In verse 16, he says, "I heard, my heart pounded, my lips quivered at the sound, decay crept into my bones, my legs trembled." Oh, he's seen the Babylonians. No, he's seen the Lord. When we get more fearful of the God in the right sense, the holy fear of God in awe, then we can deal with the Chaldeans. We can even deal with the waiting. And he says, "Though the fig tree doesn't bud, though there are no," etc., "yet will I rejoice."

Chapter 2, verse 1 in the Amplified says, "I stand upon my post of observation, station myself on the tower or fortress, and will watch to say what he will say within me and what answer I will make as his mouthpiece." That's what the high tower is for. "I will not leave my post, the place in which God has put me, but will wait in the faithful discharge of every commanded duty, the solving of my doubts, the removal of my difficulties."

The secret of life is to realize the unseen, and to this man, the world is full of the unseen majestic presence of God. That's what I want when I go to my high tower—that my inner world is full of the unseen majestic presence of God. The very air he breathes throbs with the very pulse of God, and the silence may be broken anytime by God's voice. So what do we do? We watch, we listen, and we obey as his mouthpiece.

We build a watchtower in our lives. We build discipline to make that happen, and that builds faith. That's how we're going to live through the waiting—the hard waiting that's akin to suffering times in the high country. And so, he embraces what he's called to endure, for his name was "Embrace." He's able to say, "Though the fig tree," security, prosperity, medicine, "though the fig tree doesn't bud, though the vine doesn't produce any grapes."

A wonderful picture of family: "the wife shall be like a vine," doesn't mean she's climbing the walls on the walls of your house, proverb, "and your children like olive plants around your table." I have this wonderful picture of little olive plants around the table and the wife. What if? No wife? What if my wife leaves me or my husband? What if there are no children, or if there were children and now they're not? God give you hind's feet?

Yes. God will give you hind's feet. What if the fields, no harvest? What if there's no sheep in the fold, no animals to do the donkey work and I have to do the donkey work, literally? What if? Yet will I. What if? Yet will I. What if? Yet I will rejoice in the Lord. I will get on with it. Will we? Listen to this in the Amplified, Habakkuk 3:19: "The Lord is my strength, my personal bravery and my invincible army.

He makes my feet like hind's feet and will make me walk, not to stand still in terror but to walk and make spiritual progress upon my high places of trouble, suffering, or responsibility." Because the high places are the low places. The high places that he's talking about, the mountain, he's like a deer picking his way on the dangerous, dangerous peaks.

Anytime that little deer might fall, but God makes us surefooted. The high places are the low places. But it's in the high places that are the hard places that we encounter God. You need hind's feet? I need hind's feet. I don't know anybody that doesn't need hind's feet. It isn't what we do for God; it's God for whom we do it that matters.

I love Jim Elliot, Elisabeth Elliot's husband's diary. If you haven't read all the books, the Elliot story, you should collect them and read them. The day before this man was martyred with five other missionaries—if you've not read that story, you should read it, you should read it with your family—Jim Elliot went out in the area of South America where he lived, knowing they were going to fly in a little plane and land on a little beach and meet a tribe who were cannibals.

They had been dropping presents for two years to try and make contact with this tribe. Now, these five men who had spent ten years getting ready for this moment to reach the Auca Indians were going to get in that little plane and go. And the women gathered for the last songs and prayers. And then Jim Elliot left that little group, and this is what he said: "I walked out to the hill just now. It was exalting, delicious to stand in the shadow of a friendly tree with the wind tugging at your coat tails and the heavens hailing your heart to gaze and glory and give yourself again to God.

What more could a man ask? Oh, the fullness, pleasure, full excitement of knowing God on earth. I care not if I never raise my voice again for him, if only I may love him, please him. I want to know God like that." Do you want to know God like that? Well, if you don't want to know God like that, you won't. But if you do, you will. You see, and that's what waiting is for.

Stuart Briscoe: Now, here's Jill to answer a few questions for you about waiting on God.

Guest (Male): Jill, you know sometimes we don't hear God because we don't want to. How do we go back to him ready to listen?

Jill Briscoe: You can read your Bible and you might as well not because if you read it with an attitude that if I find something here I don't like, I'm not going to do it, then you're not going to hear anything. So, you might as well not read. We need to read, mark, learn, inwardly digest what we read. We need to think as we read. We need to pray as we read. Then we will hear God.

If we don't want to hear what he says and we're not willing to obey him, save your time, do something else. It's not going to work. So, don't bother reading your Bible unless you come to it believing it is his word to your heart for today. It is ever relevant, it is ever living. And even though you might be frightened, you can say, "I'm willing for you to make me willing if that's necessary."

And if you're not, say, "Well, I'm willing to be willing for you to make me," just keep going back until you ask God to work on your willingness. And if you come to God's word with an open heart, frightened though you might be by what you read, and say, "I'm scared out of my mind, Lord, but I'm willing to do what I feel you're telling me to do from this passage of scripture, to say what you're telling me to say from this passage of scripture," then you will find help, strength.

You will find the power to do what God is asking you to do. He's calling you from everyday pieces of scripture. There's not going to be a flash of light or a sudden illumination of the page that you're reading. Every single day, you'll find something he wants you to say, do, pray, think about.

Guest (Male): Jill, why does waiting for God bring us to an encounter with him?

Jill Briscoe: Not waiting for God. God is within us. We go to prayer, we open ourselves up to the Holy Spirit, who we have already in our hearts, and we are willing internally to listen to him. So, we don't need to wait for that to happen. We need to thank him that he is there already and just say, "I'm ready to hear you, I'm ready to encounter you," and then read the scriptures first and then think about it.

Don't trust any little voice that comes into your head. Make sure that you read scripture and you're thinking about that. That way, you will encounter God.

Stuart Briscoe: Thanks for being with us today here on Telling the Truth. We pray today's message encouraged you and helped you experience life in Christ. So many people read their Bible, go to church, serve on mission trips, and go through the motions, yet still struggle to find God. Jill Briscoe has a surprising and deeply encouraging answer to this dilemma, which she shares in her three-message series, Finding God.

In this inspired series, you'll discover how you can stop spending so much energy on finding God and let him find you. By slowing down and putting yourself deliberately in his presence, you'll recognize that he's already there waiting for you. You'll be uplifted as Jill explains how God worked in the lives of men and women in the Old Testament and how he works in your life too, even when you don't see him and feel his presence.

The Finding God series is our thanks for your gift today to help more people experience life through the teaching and resources of Telling the Truth. And if you are able to make your gift monthly, we'll also send you a special Telling the Truth travel mug to remind you that God is always with you. So request your resources when you give today: 1-800-889-5388. That's 1-800-889-5388, or you can give online at tellingthetruth.org. Thanks for listening today. Be sure to come back again for more biblical encouragement and teaching from the Briscoes. Experience life next time on Telling the Truth.