JR. Forasteros - August 3, 2014
Habakkuk
We live in a world of towering evils; they overwhelm and paralyze us. How are people who love God to respond to evils too big for us to address? According to Habakkuk, we do what we can. We act faithfully. We do the next right thing, even if it's small. Our faithfulness to God is grounded in God's faithfulness to us, and we have the confidence to trust God is restoring and will resurrect us!
From Series: "Major/Minor"
We live in turbulent times - from endless war to a slowly recovering economy to a looming educational crisis and ineffective government. While we take care of our lives one day at a time, we can't help but sense a storm gathering on the horizon. In this, we are much like the Jewish people who lived at the time of the prophets. Surrounded by forces outside their control, God called them to remain faithful in their daily life, to trust him to handle the big stuff. God spoke through prophets. Because their books are so short, we call them the Minor Prophets. But while their writings are short, their message has major implications for our lives today. Welcome to Major/Minor!
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God’s judgment is a scary thing to consider. Anytime a national tragedy strikes, there’re always people ready to claim it’s God judging us. So when 9/11 happened, Katrina or Sandy. The earthquake in Haiti. Or on a more personal level, we often think of the bad things happening in our lives as God punishing us. So if we get an illness or lose a job or something like that, we wonder, Did I do something wrong? Is God judging me?
And to complicate it more, some who experience those tough times, those personal or national tragedies claim they’re blessings. Some claim losing a job or getting cancer or losing a home was the best thing that ever happened to them, that their judgment was a wake-up call and they wouldn’t trade it for a million bucks.
So which is it? Are tough times blessings or judgments?
According to Amos, judgment is blessing. God sending judgment on us can very well be the best thing to happen to us. It makes sense if you remember that judgment in the biblical world was based in the world of the family, not of the courtroom. When God judges us, it’s correction, restoration. The point of God’s judgment is always to bring about repentance and restoration. So in that sense, God’s judgment is blessing.
But what makes the difference for us – whether we experience hard times in our lives as blessing or curse – has to do with our own character.
The question we want to ask ourselves today is, How am I preparing myself for judgment?
My cousin Tanner is a freshman at Ohio State. A couple of weeks ago, he decided to run a marathon there with a couple of his friends. He’s in ROTC, so he’s in pretty good shape – apparently good enough shape that he decided he didn’t need to train at all for the marathon. Then, as if that weren’t enough, he and his friends agreed to ride their bicycles to the race.
Which means they’d also have to bike home. After running 26.2 miles.
When he told his dad his plan, his dad said, I don’t think that’s such a good idea. Why don’t you let me meet you at the finish line with my truck. I’ll drive you and the bikes home.
My cousin said, No thanks.
You know how this story ends, right? After the race, he couldn’t even walk for at least half an hour. And then he and his friends had to ride their bikes back home. He said it was one of the worst, most painful experiences of his life.
Now, compare that with many of my other friends who’ve run marathons. Sure, it’s hard. Their bodies hurt afterwards. But they consider it a good experience. Hard, yes. Painful, yes. But good. Why? What’s the difference?
Mostly, it’s the way they prepared themselves. It’s how their internal character was prepared for the external circumstances.
That’s not how we think of judgment. We think that judgment is something that happens OUT THERE, not something contingent on IN HERE. But that’s exactly how Amos tells us to think in chapter 7.
