The Healing Word

Pastor Jack Morris: What are you asking God to show you? Do for you? Help you with? Resolve in your life? What is it? Think about it today because God's coming through! Yet, you and I are going to praise the Lord.

Guest (Male): Welcome to The Healing Word, a radio ministry of the Largo Community Church. Here's Pastor Jack Morris with today's message that will grow your faith in God and lead you to a closer walk with Jesus.

Pastor Jack Morris: The title of the message is "Yet I Will Rejoice in Him." The King James has it, "Yet will I praise him," meaning whatever is going on now—and there are a lot of things that are going on that are not pleasant and far from being ideal—but yet I will rejoice in him. Though I don't understand, though I'm having a difficult time receiving and maneuvering in the situation that I'm presently in, yet I will rejoice in him because he's going to take care of it.

He's going to handle it. He's going to make a way. He's going to do it because he loves me, because he's my God, my heavenly father, my heavenly parent, and I'm going to rejoice in him. I might not be rejoicing this morning. You might not be rejoicing to the degree that you would like to be rejoicing because you would like to see your situation resolved, your prayers answered, the victory come. You would like to see it, something visible, something tangible, something that you can put your hands on and say, "God did this."

But you don't see it yet. But yet I'm going to rejoice in him because I am going to see it. I might not see it now, but I'm going to see it. That's what my sermon's going to be about today. I hope it's faith-building and it'll help each of us. How do we respond to circumstances that cannot be changed? How do we do that? We've asked God a lot of questions. I have. You have. And sometimes our information coming from heaven, the answer, is not very clear.

What do we do in a situation like that? We pray. We have been praying, but the answer is not clear. We want God to clear it up. We want God to make it much more visible. We want to experience it and know beyond a doubt, "Thus saith the Lord, this is what has happened," and we have a tangible result that we can put to. But I know some of us are praying and the answer isn't quite clear. A lot of us are asking God a lot of questions like, "Why, Lord? Why me? Why my marriage? Why my family? Why my finances? Why my children? Why?" And the answer just isn't quite clear.

What are you asking God to show you? Do for you? Help you with? Resolve in your life? Think about it today because God's coming through. Yet, you and I are going to praise the Lord. Ask the questions. It's not wrong to ask God questions. It's okay. But the name Habakkuk, his name means "to embrace." My message this morning is about embracing things that we do not want to embrace. Are you listening? Accepting things that we don't want to accept.

Accepting things, embracing things that we can't change. We want God to do things. We find ourselves so helpless in making the change, and so we ask God for a miracle and make it change. And it still doesn't change. What do you do? How do you embrace that? How do you go on as a Christian? How is your faith still strong during those times? Listen, this is the word of God. Habakkuk went through it, and we're going to look at his example, and we're going to have God do great things in us even as he did to Habakkuk.

Some of us are living in places that we must embrace situations that are far from ideal. There are some marriages far from ideal. You've prayed and it hasn't changed. The situation remains the same. The weeks have gone by. The months have gone by. Even years have gone by. You continue to pray and you wonder, "God, will it ever change?" I'm almost ready to say it's never going to change. How do you embrace a situation like that and still believe and still have faith and still go forward?

How does a person who is ill, who is sick, who believes in miracles, who prays, "God, heal me from this cancer," and you get weaker and your body, flesh begins to diminish, and you're still not healed? The doctors say, "I've done everything I can do for your mother, for your spouse, for your child, for your uncle," and you see them deteriorating. You say, "Lord, I believe. I believe you have the power to do it." And the person keeps getting ill, getting ill, getting ill. You're praying, "God, save them. God, heal them," and the person dies.

God's not always going to answer prayer the way we think he's going to answer. He's not always going to do what you think he's going to do. But I'll tell you this: if you hold fast and trust the Lord, yet I will praise him. Yet I will rejoice in him, even when I don't understand. God has a way. Hallelujah. God has a way. Now, Habakkuk. Point A in your outline. Here's some of his questions. Here are some of God's answers. Find yourself in this passage this morning and find your situation.

Habakkuk chapter one, verse two. Look at the screen. Read it with me. Here is his word: "How long, O Lord, must I call for help, but you do not listen? Or cry out to you, 'Violence,' but you do not save? How long?" Now, I want you to go to the Psalmist. Here's another one of God's great people. Read this: "How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and every day have sorrow in my heart? How long will my enemies triumph over me?"

Does that sound like you? Some of your prayers or some of your feelings, some of your thoughts? Habakkuk was simply asking, "God, are you there? Are you listening? God, do you care? Do you see what is going on? Do you know how this is making me feel? God, where are you?" That's what he was saying. That's exactly what the Psalmist was saying. Here's what happened in Habakkuk. Josiah, the good king, was killed, and Jehoiakim was put on the throne, the bad guy.

Here's a very perplexing situation. God, why did you allow the good guy to be killed and the bad guy to become king, elevated and prospered? The good guy dies, the bad guy prospers. That was the whole message. That was the entire motivation of his prayers and of the questions that Habakkuk was asking. "God, I have prayed and the good king, the king that loves you, the king that led Israel in green pastures, the king that did your bidding, God, not only did he die of sickness, but an enemy killed him. Why didn't you kill the enemy, not the good king?"

And now we've got a king on the throne that is a despot. He's belligerent. He hates your people. He's selfish. He only takes care of himself. "God, why did the good guy die and the bad guy live and prosper? Come on, God." That's what he was saying. This man was mixed up. Habakkuk, confused. There was a lady, a Christian woman in full-time Christian service, married, having two children. This woman was abused as a little girl. Terrible things were done to her when she was just a little child.

As she grew up, she trusted God, prayed to God, repressed those memories, pushed them out of her mind, married a fine Christian man, and went into full-time Christian service. When her second child was born, all of this surfaced. All that happened to her when she was a little girl, but she was old enough to remember the mistreatment and the terrible things that happened to her. These hormones started moving through her body as the second child was being born. They triggered things in her body. They triggered things in her brain.

That which she thought she had repressed and pushed out all came back. It came back with such force that this wonderful Christian woman in full-time Christian service was committed to the psych ward. You say, "God, what's going on? What's going on here, God? This is your handmaiden, full-time Christian service." For nine months. And finally she was released after much psychotherapy. When she was asked, "How do you picture God now?" Do you know what she said?

She said, "I picture God with his hands in his pocket. That's my picture of God. He's just standing over there somewhere in the corner, leaning up against the wall with his hands in his pocket. He sees everything that's going on and all the bad in the world, and he's got his hands in his pocket." Have you ever felt that way? That God's got his hands in his pocket? He's not doing the things, he's not reaching out, he's not touching, he's not blessing, he's not ministering. He just has his hands in his pocket.

Well, yet I will rejoice in him. I don't know when. I don't know how. I don't know under what circumstances. But I know this is what Habakkuk said. I will yet praise him. I will yet rejoice in him. How do you embrace a situation like that? How do you live with that? How do you do that and still remain a Christian? How do you do that? Here's a wife. Let me tell you another one. Here's a wife with her children, a good woman. She's meek.

She loves her children, has a tender heart. Her husband now is running around with another woman. She knows he's out there. She starts praying, "God, bring him to his senses. God, stop him." This woman was a housewife. She really didn't have any skills. She was scared to death. Who's going to feed my children? "God, stop this man." She's a believer. She takes these children to Sunday school and church every Sunday while he's out catting around, and she knows it.

But she can't talk to him because he'll curse and swear and throw dishes and just carry on and call her every name that he can possibly call her. Yet here's her babies. And finally the man walked out on her and left her. Now she prays, "God, bring him back. Bring my husband back. Bring him back and he'll support the children. Bring my husband back." Instead of bringing him back, this husband marries the other woman and has children by the other woman.

Now, how do you embrace that and say, "Oh, that's okay. All things work together for good to those that love." Don't tell that woman that scripture, Romans 8:28, because that's not going to work. How do you change things that you can't change? That man can't be changed. That marriage can't be changed. He has other children by another wife. That can't be changed. How do you embrace that and still go on living for the Lord, serving God, smiling? I've seen God's people go through some of the most difficult situations, coming to me with questions that I can't answer, and God isn't answering either at the moment.

But now, are you still with me? Now, Hallelujah. Can you say, "Now, Hallelujah"? Now I want you to look at Habakkuk chapter one, verse five. Read it with me: "Look at the nation and watch. Be utterly amazed. For I am going to do something in your days that you would not believe even if you were told." God is now telling this man that has all these questions without any answers. The good king dies, the bad king now takes over, and Israel is terribly persecuted.

And God now says, "I'm going to do something. Look at the nations and watch. Just watch. God's coming through. Be utterly amazed at what God is going to do. Be utterly amazed, for I am going to do something in your days." It may not be today, but you're going to live to see the impact of God's blessing. It's going to come. It's going to come to you. Things are going to change. It's going to happen in your days. And if I were to tell you now, God is saying, you wouldn't even believe it.

It's going to be so great, so wonderful, so astounding, so miraculous, so divine, so filled with grace. God's going to do it. "I'm going to amaze you." This is what God is saying. Now Habakkuk sees God's beginning to move. God doesn't move according to your clock or calendar, or mine. This world is never meant for us to live forever. People are going to die of heart attacks. People are going to die in accidents. People are going to die of cancer.

We are under the curse. This is not heaven yet. There are going to be circumstances and things that we cannot understand. If God would continue to heal everybody, people would live to 500 or 1,000 years old. But it's not meant. Listen, I'll tell you what is meant: it's appointed unto man once to die, but after this the resurrection. God's always going to have the last word. Can you say Amen? Now, I want you to look at the screen and read Habakkuk chapter two, verse one.

"I will stand at my watch and station myself on the ramparts. I will look to see what he will say to me and what answer I am to give to this complaint." Now, Habakkuk is beginning to feel guilty for questioning God. That's what's happening. But this is what he says: "I don't understand." He is saying something like Job said: "Though God slay me, yet will I serve him. Though God slay my children and God take everything I own," says Job, "yet will I trust him."

You know, some people can only be good and shout and sing and happy and smile only when they're on the mountaintop. But if there's a mountain, there has got to be a valley. You don't have mountains without valleys, do you? Valleys are inevitable. So this is what Habakkuk is saying. Notice he said, "I will look to see. I will look to see what he will say to me and what answer I am to give to this complaint." I know God's going to take care of the situation.

I wavered. I doubted. But I've come to my senses. I know what God has done for me. Now God is telling him that a savior is coming, a Messiah is coming. The earth is full of sin, wickedness, discrimination, prejudice, starvation, nakedness. The earth is cursed. The earth is cursed. And this man is saying, "I'm going to stand and I'm going to watch. I'm going to look to the one who's going to send me the help that I need." Ultimately that help is Jesus, and he was looking ahead.

Now look to Proverbs. Read Proverbs 3:5-6: "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him and he will make your paths straight." What's he going to do? Make your paths straight. Again, when we pray, most of us think this is how the answer's going to come. We already have it fixed in our mind. But God doesn't do what always we expect in way of the answer. God has a better answer.

God has a better way, and his way is an eternal blessing. Now trust in the Lord with all your heart, all your heart. What I'm doing this morning, I'm going through the whole book of Habakkuk and I'm taking key verses from chapter one, chapter two. Let's go to chapter two. There's another verse I want to read to you and want you to read. Habakkuk chapter two, verse six. Have we have that? Maybe I didn't put that one in my notes.

But this is what he says. This is before the answer came. This is before he felt the peace of God returning to his heart. Habakkuk chapter two, verse six: "How long must this go on? How long am I going to have to put up with this?" How long must this go on? My problem. How long must this go on? My situation, my circumstances in my home. How long must this go on? How long must this go on in my family?

How long must this go or how long must I endure this unfairness? He wasn't getting any answers to those kind of questions. God had a great answer for him. Now here's what God said. Habakkuk 2:4. Are you listening? Habakkuk 2:4. The answer finally came. The answer was this: "The righteous will live by faith." You know what Habakkuk basically said? That was not the answer I was looking for. "The righteous shall live by faith."

"God, I've prayed and I've asked and you answer me like that? I don't want to hear that! That means patience. That might mean it's going to take time. And God, I'm not very good at patience. Matter of fact, I'm poorly at that. So don't tell me an answer like that. I need help. My family needs help. My marriage needs help. My children need help. The church needs help. And you answer me 'the righteous shall live by faith'? That's the help I get? That's what you're saying to me?"

I didn't want that. But do you know what it means to trust in the Lord? It means to be living, waiting, and watching. You see, friends, God, listen to me very closely. God did not say that sparrow would not fall. But he said it would fall with the Father. You cannot promise your children that everything's going to go well in their lives. You can't promise your children that they're not going to be hurt. Even though you have the family altar and you have prayer.

You bring your children to church, they're being built up in the faith, you're giving them what God wants to give to them, you're making them available, you're exposing them to truth. But you can't promise your children that they're not going to be hurt, that they're not going to be discriminated against. You can't promise them that because you know it's not going to happen. But how do you embrace that? All the prejudice, all the discrimination, all the pain, all the hurt that has come to you in your growing up years.

Now you know your kids are going to have to go through it. How do you embrace a world that is governed by sin and the devil? How do you do that? By embracing God. By trusting in the Lord. By putting a covering over them. For believing for them. Holding on. You can tell your children, "My little darlings, when the world hurts you, when the world discriminates against you, when the world puts you down, little darlings, God will be there. The sparrow may fall and will fall. You will be hurt. These things will happen. But the Father will be there. You'll make it. Hallelujah, you'll be there."

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