Holding On - Part 1 & 2
No matter what the writer had gone through or was going through, he knew that God was his refuge and his very present help in the time of trouble. Maybe it was written for you to help bring you through some tough time in your life. Maybe you need a hiding place, a refuge from the tolls and troubles of life. A refuge is a place where one is guarded from attack or injury. It is also a condition of safety or security. We need a place of refuge for are physical body but we need refuge for our mind and our spirit. Satan will attack your body but most of time he will do his damage to your mind and spirit.
He will make you feel that every one around you is your enemy and that your situation is worse than anyone else ’s situation. He will try to keep you from seeing any good in life and try to take away your reasons for living.
One young lady told her father that no matter what she did everything seemed to turn out wrong. She said she felt like giving up. (Has anybody here ever been there)?
Her father was a quite man and he was a cook by trade. He listened to her and after she paused for a moment he asked her to follow him into the kitchen. He put three pots of water on the stove to boil. In the first pot he put a carrot. In the second pot he put an egg and in the third pot he put some coffee beans. He let them boil while his daughter waited impatiently. After they had finished boiling he took the carrot out and said see the carrot went in strong and hard and unrelenting but after being in the boiling water it became soft and weak. (Talk tough but really weak.) Next he took the egg out and said this was fragile when it went in but after going through the boiling water it looks the same but it is hard on the inside. (They look just like the other church folk but have become hard on the inside.) Next he asked her to taste the coffee. She said it had a strong taste. He said they all went into the same situation. The carrot became soft and the egg became hard on the inside but after the coffee went through the boiling water it became stronger and richer. Then he asked her; what are you a carrot, an egg, or coffee. When the enemy attacked you remember that God is your refuge and your very present help in your time of need. He will preserve you when the fires of life are raging all around you and you will become stronger and richer.
THE WRITER SAID FEAR NOT.
How do we trust God when it seems like life is crushing us? If we are going to survive those times, there are some foundational truths to which we must commit ourselves. The first belief we must continue to commit ourselves to when facing suffering is this: God is good, even when life is bad. Habakkuk was a prophet during of the darkest days of Judah. King Josiah’s glorious reign and religious reform had ended. There was a moral decline in the nation. Babylon was rising to power and was an eminent threat to Judah. Like Jeremiah, Habakkuk complained: “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? Why do you take me look at injustice? Why do you tolerate wrong? Destruction and violence are before me; there is strife, and conflict abounds. Therefore the law is paralyzed, and justice never prevails. The wicked hem in the righteous, so that justice is perverted” (Habakkuk 1:2-4). Habakkuk is honest and transparent about his feelings toward God and how he is feeling about the evil and inequity in the world. He was confused. How can a righteous God seemingly overlook evil? How can a good God allow such evil to happen? How can a loving God allow his people to suffer? He questioned and he brooded, but when he came to the end of all his quarreling with God, he ultimately said, “Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior. The Sovereign Lord is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, he enables me to go on the heights” (Habakkuk 3:17-19).
At some point you have to come to the place where you stop demanding that you understand what God is doing and why. After airing your complaints and asking God to act, you ultimately have to trust God, even though you don’t understand and nothing make sense to you. You have to say with Habakkuk, “Even if everything continues to go wrong, I am going to trust you. Even if the basic needs of my life are not being met, I place my trust in you.” What is the alternative? Anger and despair. You can be bitter at God and angry at life, or in your hurt and confusion make a conscious decision to trust God, even though it doesn’t make sense right now.
Ann herself had experienced pain and loss in her childhood. Briscoe days, “I think of Ann as a 15-year-old, an only child just losing her mother. She came into my youth group in Liverpool straight from the funeral. I said to her, ‘You all right, Ann?’ ‘Uh huh,’ she said. ‘Wrote a
poem.’ And she handed me this: I’m leading my child to the heavenly land and guiding her day by day. And I ask her now as I take her hand to come home by a rugged way.
‘Tis not a way she herself would choose,
for its beauty she cannot see.
But she knows not what her soul would lose
if she trod not that path with me.
That is the choice: to choose to trust the goodness and love of God and live in hope, or turn from him in bitterness and live in despair.
The second belief we continually need to commit ourselves to when facing suffering is this: God can redeem the evil that comes into our lives. The cross is certainly the most vivid example of this truth. Seen by the disciples and others who loved Jesus, it was the most evil thing that could have happened. If ever there was a time when it seemed like God was not in control, this was the time. If ever they questioned God and wondered about his powerlessness and failure to act, this was the time. It was impossible for them to understand what God was doing. If you would have asked them, they would have stated with firmness and finality that no good could come of this crucifixion. Everything seemed to be in ruins. But God would have the final say. It wasn’t until Pentecost that Peter finally got it and proclaimed to the very ones who had plotted the crucifixion:
“This man was handed over to you by God’s set purpose and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross. But God raised him from the dead, freeing him from the agony of death, because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him. . . . Therefore let all Israel be assured of this: God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ” (Acts 2:23-24, 26).
The third truth we need to commit ourselves to when facing suffering is: We must do the right thing, even when it does not seem to pay off. Obeying God when it is easy, and the results are visible and immediate is wonderful. But it means so much more when we are faithful and obedient even when nothing seems to come from it. The problem sometimes is that it might be that our obedience is the very thing that brings trouble and sorrow into our lives.
Maybe you are in God’s waiting room right now. You don’t understand the situations that have brought you here. It doesn’t seem fair. You are wondering if God loves you or hates you. You’re not sure when you are going to get out of this waiting room. It is an unpleasant and unhappy place. You want this to be over and not have to wait any more. It is all you can do to obey the scripture that says, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding” (Proverbs 3:5). But this is not a time to just lay down and resign yourself to defeat and say, “It’s all over for me.” It is a time to rise up and say, “Now that I’m here, Lord, what’s next? In what redemptive way can you use this mess?”