StuMo Philippines - Debrief Devotional

Introduction

2010 - Hired as the associate pastor of the church

We were a small church plant and it was a ton of really hard work, but it was a lot of fun.

early Sunday mornings setting up, staying late afterwards to pack everything back up.

We were a tight knit staff with a ton of zeal and vitality.

After several years of meeting in a movie theater, and then a school cafeteria, we finally made the move to a church building of our own.

It was nice, not having to be at church early for set up and instead of just having a place to gather for a few hours on a Sunday, we had a place where we could do ministry all the time.

After we got settled into our building and began to find a bit of a routine, things just started to drift a bit.

We had gotten ourselves pretty well established, but relationally, there was a pretty big disconnect forming between the staff and our lead pastor.

We were busy, so mostly, we all just put our nose to the grindstone and kept working.

2014 was awful - I describe it as the worst year of my life.

I had gone through the traumatic loss of my brother to suicide in the fall of 2013 and I was trying to process that while things at the church were sliding downhill fast.

Our staff was no longer that band of ride or die renegades.

We were distant - and even began to grow cold towards one another.

Our lead pastor, who I once really enjoyed hanging out with had become hard and demanding and nothing that we did was ever good enough or right.

It felt like he just didn’t like us anymore and it was obvious that he didn’t want to be around us.

Additionally, I ended up battling some crazy anxiety that had started manifesting itself in my physical health.

All I wanted to do was quit…

I think that what was extra difficult to reconcile was that my spiritual life had been so dramatically hindered.

I did not like that my heart felt far from God.

I felt lonely, and almost as though the Lord had forgotten me.

There was so much unknown… so much loss… so much discontentment.

The thing I wanted more than anything was to find hope in the middle of it all.

But I felt completely overshadowed by darkness.

Devotional Portion

This morning, for our devotional, we are going to spend a few minutes in Habakkuk 3

Setting the stage:

Today we will be in Habakkuk 3:17-19, but I want to set the stage and make sure that we get the context of Habakkuk’s words.

Israel was under the rule of Assyria and they were about to be conquered by the Babylonians.

The first half of chapter 3 has apocalyptic imagery where Habakkuk asks the Lord to remember mercy in the midst of His wrath.

We are told that before the Lord went pestilence and plague followed at his heels

and that He marched through the earth in fury and threshed the nations in anger.

I am not sure about you, but these words leave me with several questions:

How could the Lord allow such things to happen?

How could the Lord use something or someone as evil and destructive the Babylonians to bring about His will?

What good could come from something this terrible?

Was this God’s will to allow His people to experience so much pain, fear, and uncertainty?

So that is the tone of much of the book of Habakkuk...

Yet in v. 17 there is a somewhat unexpected moment that comes at the end of Chapter 3 - The tone goes from that of darkness and despair to hope and even joy.

Habakkuk 3:17–19 (ESV)

17 Though the fig tree should not blossom,

nor fruit be on the vines,

the produce of the olive fail

and the fields yield no food,

the flock be cut off from the fold

and there be no herd in the stalls,

Before we keep reading, let’s just unpack what Habakkuk just said here:

No fig blossoms = no figs for harvest

Fruit vines are bare

the olive harvest failed

Flocks were cut off

no herd left to put in the stall.

If we play this out, what we are talking about is a famine of epic proportions that is going to be devastating.

I look at this a little like I was looking at my situation at the church… there was nothing good that could possibly come out of this.

My expectation would be that the next words on the page would be something like: We have been utterly forsaken and things could not be worse.

But that isn’t what we see…

Habakkuk 3:18–19 (ESV)

18 yet I will rejoice in the Lord;

I will take joy in the God of my salvation.

19 God, the Lord, is my strength;

he makes my feet like the deer’s;

he makes me tread on my high places.

All of those things going wrong, and Habakkuk closes his book with words of incredible of hope!

What does this tell us about hope, and joy, and peace?

They are not circumstantial

Or at least they don’t have to be…

I must admit, often, hope, joy, and peace rise and fall depending on how hard of a day/week it has been…

When things are good, I have joy and peace

When things are rough, I embrace sorrow and despondency.

Habakkuk says that their hope would not be found in the bounty of their crops or their flocks

In fact, their hope would come in spite of those things all failing, because their hope would be in an unshakeable God.

Why do most of us struggle with this being our reality?

In part, because we don’t have an eternal perspective

What we long for is heaven on earth, where everything is great and awesome, and so we try to make earthly things fit the bill for us.

We put our hope for joy in our job, or our relationships, or our abilities, or our financial well being, or whatever…

And when those things fail to add up, we are wrecked - because that is where we had our hopes and dreams pinned up.

When we disconnect our hope and joy and peace from earthly things, and connect them to a God who is beyond these things, then the result is hope, joy, and peace that cannot be shaken.

Instead of despair and despondency, we would respond with a declaration of hope and joy.

Even if our livelihoods are taken from us, we could rejoice in the Lord, because we cannot be taken away from Him.

This is how Christians can have Peace in the midst of the storm

Here we are 2600 years after Habakkuk and we find ourselves facing some unsettling times.

No we are not being devastated by ruthless Babylonians.

But our lives have been upended in many ways because of this pandemic - and that is on top of all of the normal difficulties that we endure.

We still have some of the same questions that we asked about Habakkuk’s situation, don’t we?

How can the Lord allow such things to happen?

How could something as devastating as COVID-19 be used to bring about His will?

What good could come from something that is this terrible?

Was this God’s will to allow His people to experience so much pain, fear, and uncertainty?

When we focus our hearts on the right here and now, it is next to impossible to not be brought to despair.

Returning to my story of TSF

When I was in the middle of the worst year of my life, I found that the more I focused on the pain of my current situation, the more despondent I became.

I didn’t hold an eternal perspective, so things were pretty hopeless.

It seemed like there would never be an end to this hurt.

I remember the Lord impressing on my heart that I was trusting in worldly things to give me what only He could give and that I needed to trust in HIM not the things of this world.

Habakkuk 3:17-19 needed to be the song of my heart

That no matter what would come, I could never lose my position as God’s child and THIS needed to be my source of hope and joy.

This gave me the courage to begin to face these problems head on - and they needed to be faced.

I went to talk to my pastor.

I unpacked everything to him - and it was painful.

Secretly, I was actually hoping that he would fire me… because if he fired me, that would be very clear that the Lord had released me…

In the meeting, I tried to own what I needed to own, but I also shared with him how he had hurt me and others over the past two years.

It was a terrible meeting… but God showed up in some big ways.

He moved in my heart and in my pastor’s heart and broke us both of some sin that we had been holding onto.

He broke down the grudges that we had been holding against one another.

The Lord began to restore the relationship on the staff.

Slowly, We started to look more like that rag tag group from the beginning of it all.

What was shocking to me was that the healing came when I shifted my source of joy from this world to the Lord.

Which meant that I could have gotten fired at that moment and I still would have been able to sense and experience joy.

I could have lost my friendship with my pastor and the staff, and I would still have had hope.

But in His grace, the Lord gave me both and enduring peace and reconciled relationships.

I went on to serve there for another three and a half years and when the time came for me to leave, it was really hard!

the Lord had redeemed something that I did not think could be redeemed.

Close

All of us will face uncertain days ahead...

We will experience loss and devastation alongside the rest of the world…

People will let us down and relationships will be strained and perhaps even broken.

We will not find the ultimate fulfillment in our work, our abilities, our accomplishments or anything else.

But we will find joy and hope in the Lord, and that cannot be taken away.

Our message needs to be one of hope

It is a message that the entire world is hungry for.

It is a message that they will see as Christians live out this bold confidence as the storm rages on around us.

May we have the refrain of Habakkuk 3:17-19 echoing through our hearts and souls

That though brokenness has affected almost every facet of our lives, yet, we will rejoice in the Lord. We will take joy in the God of our salvation. For He is our strength.

But my prayer is that we would bring people with us!!

May we invite others taste of the same hope we have been given.

The Lord has come for the salvation of His people - for the salvation of His anointed.

Let us be found faithful to guide others to that salvation in this uncertain time.

Reflect

As we close, I want you to take a time (5-7 minutes) to reflect on this passage.

Read it, process it, internalize it.

What are those things that you’re balancing your hope on, and are they able to sustain it?

I want you to write down the things that you tend to try and use to find your hope and joy.

Then I want you to ask the Lord to transfer your hearts affections and desires from those things to HIM.