Finding Stubborn Joy
Written by Ed Allen
Saturday, 25 November 2000 19:00
Amidst the chaos and joy of this Thanksgiving I realized there really is a formula for being in an atmosphere of support and fun. There aren't many formulas in life, which makes this one all the more compelling. Here it is:
An atmosphere of support and fun
This is what we experienced this past week. Diane's family has a history of loving one another and supporting one another. It is not perfect, but it is a great example of what family can be. They also invest time with one another. They make efforts to see one another. And they talk frequently. Months ago they decided to spend Thanksgiving together -- all five families. Weeks of conversations followed; what games would we play, what will we eat all weekend, what will we eat for Thanksgiving meal, how will we entertain the children, when and where should we go out to eat...
We had a great time.
I believe this is a metaphor for the truth that the prophet Habakkuk unlocks for us in the third chapter of his series of sermons. This may be the clearest word in all of the Bible on finding stubborn joy. I ope and pray that our hearts can hear it today with the power and clarity of Habakkuk's experience of it. I believe we can fairly express Habakkuk's heart like this:
Stubborn joy
I. Relationship with God
- Habakkuk was a prophet
- Familiar with God's ways
- God's spokesperson
- Familiar with God's character
- Related to God!
- Motivation was not religious, if by religious you mean out of guilt or even obligation. His motivation was an authentic relationship with God. This was his heart!
- He was disappointed and hurt by God
Habakkuk 1:2
“(2) 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?”
- He waited and listened to God
Habakkuk 2:1
(1)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.
- Signs of relationship. This is what you do in relationship. This is not formalism. This is not ritual. This is heart and soul of relatedness!
- Look at how he ends his dialogue with God
- Doesn't say “I need to be a better person.”
- Doesn't say “I need to start going back to church”
- He says: “God makes me glad and I will find my delight in Him!!”
- He was disappointed and hurt by God
- Do you have a relationship with God?
II. A significant time investment
- This is the problem with my family. We do not spend time together. Do not pursue one another. This wonderful thanksgiving with Diane's family was a result in part of a history of time invested.
- This is what Jesus meant in John 15 “remain in me”
John 15:4-7
“(4) Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. (5) I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. (6) If anyone does not remain in me, he is like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. (7) If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you.”
- Clearly, Habakkuk has invested time with God.
- True chapters 1 and 2 are complaints. But these are not complaints about God. These are complaints taken to God.
- Chapter 3 recites history of God's dealings with his people. Habakkuk knows this history because he has invested time. He longs for the power that he has heard about to be shown in his day.
III. Adequate preparations
- Habakkuk did 2 things to prepare for the breaking in of stubborn joy.
- He cleared the air with God.
This week I read Greg Taylor's review of the book Yet Will I Trust Him by John Mark Hicks. Hicks' experience provides a powerful punctuation of what Habakkuk experienced. Let me read you some of Taylor's review.
After writing The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoevsky responded to reviewers who criticized him for writing a novel that deals with suffering but does not point to clear answers. Dostoevsky replied that his critics could not fathom the depth from which his faith had come. He had been an atheist. “It is not like a child that I believe in Christ and confess Him, ” he said. “My hosanna has come forth through the crucible of doubt.”
In Yet Will I Trust Him, John Mark Hicks describes his own crucible--his first wife died and one of his sons suffers from a rare terminal disease--and refines his own faith and the theological debate on suffering. Hicks was, by his own admission, arrogant and naIve as an undergraduate Bible student. He and his late wife, Sheila, wanted to be missionaries in Germany, where Hicks hoped to study under a well-known theologian. But the first dark clouds of suffering appeared in 1980 when a postoperative blood clot stopped his wife's heart and she died. Hicks, who believes he had set a wrong course for himself, says with the Psalmist, “It was good for me to be afflicted so that I might learn your decrees” (Psalm 119:71).
“Faithful lament,” Hicks writes, “provided the occasion for my finding God through seeking him, though my seeking was probing, doubting, and questioning. The biblical story gave me the lens to understand my experience and interpret its meaning.”
One of the most poignant moments in his story comes when Hicks tells about his 15-year-old son boarding a school bus one day. Hicks had married again in 1983, and their third child, Joshua, suffers from a terminal genetic condition called Mucopolysacchar idosis IlIA (Sanfilippo Syndrome A).
Hicks wondered why Joshua, who had loved riding the school bus, had begun objecting to doing so. Hicks understood when his son boarded the bus. Older students ridiculed Joshua for needing diapers and mocked him as he stumbled down the aisle to find a seat.
The rest of the day, Hicks writes, he wanted “to take some of those older kids aside and heap some abuse of my own on them.” Instead, he turned to lament.
“I went to my office and poured my heart before [God]. Why was my son born with this condition? Why are others permitted to inflict pain upon the innocent? Somewhere in the middle of that complaint, in the middle of the lament, I became intensely aware that my complaint had been heard. . . . It was as if God said to me, 'I understand...they treated my Son that way, too.' In that moment God provided a comfort that I cannot yet explain but one that I still experience in my heart.”
The book culminates as Hicks lays out the reason for our hope: while we live and groan in a suffering world, God's Spirit is present and real among us.
- Just like Hicks, Habakkuk takes his complaint to God and God answers with His presence.
And in Habakkuk's case with a view toward the future. - What do you need to do to clear the air with God?
- Not only does Habukkuk clear the air but he also rehearses the history of God's faithfulness.
- Diane's family reviewing family history, laughing, crying, reviewing their love for one another
- Habakkuk rehearses
Habakkuk 3:2
“(2) LORD, I have heard of your fame; I stand in awe of your deeds, O LORD. Renew them in our day, in our time make them known; in wrath remember mercy.”
IV. Stubborn Joy:
Habakkuk 3:17-19
“(17) Though the fig tree does not blossom, and no fruit is on the vines; though the produce of the olive fails, and the fields yield no food; though the flock is cut off from the fold, and there is no herd in the stalls, (18) yet I will rejoice in the LORD; I will exult in the God of my salvation. (19) GOD, the Lord, is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, and makes me tread upon the heights. To the leader: with stringed instruments.”
Habakkuk looks out over the high mountains and sees a deer bounding across the heights, leaping effectively from rock to rock. The prophet sees from this image that the mountain is not flattened. The rocks are not removed, but the deer is enabled to move across them because of the strength and agility of his legs. God does not remove us from suffering, but He enables us to move through it effectively because of the power of his spirit working in us.