Emotional Health

Frustrated and fearful, a man named Habakkuk brought his burdens to God in faith. Culture was against him, but he knew that giving in to sin wouldn’t pay off in the end. God tells Habakkuk in Habakkuk 2:2–5 (ESV),

And the Lord answered me: “Write the vision; make it plain on tablets, so he may run who reads it. For still the vision awaits its appointed time; it hastens to the end – it will not lie. If it seems slow, wait for it; it will surely come; it will not delay. Behold, his soul is puffed up; it is not upright within him, but the righteous shall live by his faith.”

God reminds us that there is culture on earth that we do see, and a Kingdom in His presence that we do not yet see. Cultures upon the earth are marked by addiction, pride, anxiety, and greed. All cultures have an expiration date when they will come to an end. The Kingdom of King Jesus, however, will never come to an end. As we await the coming of our King and His Kingdom, opening God’s Word to get a vision of the great victory that God’s people will share in forever gives us hope to continue trusting the Lord and living for His Kingdom because Team Jesus wins in the end!

In Habakkuk 2:6–20, we are told of five woes that are promised for those who rebel against King Jesus and His Kingdom. We are told that the cultures of the earth are marked by the gathering of riches through stealing, obtaining safety by neglecting and abusing others, expanding empires through violence and crime, enjoying sexuality through getting people drunk and abusing them, and living to worship things that are made (e.g., possessions, prosperity, pleasure) rather than the Maker of all things.

One day, King Jesus is returning to establish His Kingdom. To help us grow in faith until we see Him, He taught us to pray, “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” in Matthew 6:9–10 (ESV). We who are citizens of Jesus’ Kingdom should remain loyal to our King while we are advancing through enemy territory in culture amidst a great war for souls, including our own. Until that day comes, Habakkuk 2:20 (ESV) tells us that “the Lord is in his holy temple; let all the earth keep silence before him.” Practically speaking, until Jesus leaves His heavenly home and returns, there is not much for us to say as He will ultimately get the last word.

What part of culture do you find most frustrating? What part of culture do you find most tempting?

The Bible is the most honest book ever written. Page after page are real stories about real people with real struggles and a real God who alone can really help. One of the most real books of the Bible is Habakkuk. In it, we read the tear-soaked prayers of a man who is on the brink of losing hope for his own life and for the world in which he lives. Here are his own words as he meets with God in Habakkuk 1:12–17 (ESV):

Are you not from everlasting, O Lord my God, my Holy One? We shall not die. O Lord, you have ordained them as a judgment, and you, O Rock, have established them for reproof. You who are of purer eyes than to see evil and cannot look at wrong, why do you idly look at traitors and remain silent when the wicked swallows up the man more righteous than he? You make mankind like the fish of the sea, like crawling things that have no ruler. He brings all of them up with a hook; he drags them out with his net; he gathers them in his dragnet; so he rejoices and is glad. Therefore he sacrifices to his net and makes offerings to his dragnet; for by them he lives in luxury, and his food is rich. Is he then to keep on emptying his net and mercilessly killing nations forever?

When life collapses around you and you find yourself stressed and depressed, it is vital that you do three things, learning from Habakkuk’s examples.

One: you must accept reality. Denying reality, ignoring reality, or pretending that reality is not real does not help, because reality exists whether or not we agree with it. When speaking of who and what he was up against, Habakkuk uses the following brutally honest words: evil, wrong, traitors, wicked, rejoices and is glad (over injustice), luxury, rich, and mercilessly killing.

Two: you must remind yourself of God’s character. When life’s problems are big and bad, we have to remember that our God is bigger and better. Habakkuk reminds himself that God is “everlasting,” “Lord,” “my God,” and the “Holy One” who has “purer eyes than to see evil and cannot look at wrong.” God knows the future since He has “ordained” it; He is our Judge who brings “judgment,” and our Creator (“You make mankind”).

Three: you must meet with God. Habakkuk 2:1 (ESV) says, “I will take my stand at my watchpost and station myself on the tower, and look out to see what he will say to me, and what I will answer concerning my complaint.” When trouble is present, it is more important than ever to seek God’s presence. This is what Habakkuk does. Like him, we need to get away from our problems to get focused silence and solitude as we meet with God. This happens through opening our Bibles, praying, and seeking the mind of God. In order to listen to God, we must be quiet and be patient as we await His instruction and direction.

Four: you must get above your circumstances. By getting above, Habakkuk literally changed his vantage point. Spiritually speaking, when we meet with God, we should be seeking to do the same.

Perhaps a classic preaching analogy will help us understand this point better. When a weaver uses a loom, the work looks very different from under the loom as compared to above the loom. When looking up from under the loom, one only sees knots and haphazard bits of yarn that seem out of place, random, and disorganized. Yet, when looking down upon the loom from the top, the picture is entirely different. From above, we can see that the weaver had a beautiful picture in mind, meticulously labored to bring to pass. So it is with God. As we look up, we do not see what He is doing. By getting spiritually above the loom of life through prayer, Scripture, and time with the Spirit, we can begin to see that God is good and working out all things for the good of those who love Him as Romans 8:28 promises.

Is there anything pressing in your life right now that would benefit from an extended time away? When can you schedule a meeting with God to work it through together?

At various points in life, we inevitably arrive at seasons where we have a God-sized problem. Something (or someone) is too big for us to bear, and the situation is out of our hands. When that time comes, we have two options. One: we can get frustrated with God as if He were the problem and not the solution. Two: we can bring our frustrations to God, trusting by faith that He is the solution.

Surveying all of the evil, injustice, and suffering in the world, a man named Habakkuk brought this question to God: “You who are of purer eyes than to see evil and cannot look at wrong, why do you idly look at traitors and remain silent when the wicked swallows up the man more righteous than he?” (Habakkuk 1:13 ESV).

In more philosophical terms, Habakkuk is asking a question that today is commonly referred to as “the problem of evil,” or “theodicy.” Here’s the question: If God is all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-good, why is there suffering and evil?

This is one of the most practical, painful, and problematic questions that every generation asks about God. This is the same question that Habakkuk brought to God for an answer. If this were a multiple-choice test, here are the possible answers:

There is no God.
Atheism wrongly concludes that there is evil and suffering because there is no God to stop it.

God is not all-powerful.
Finite Godism wrongly concludes that God is impotent and lacking the power to overcome evil and suffering.

God is not all-knowing.
Evolutionary Godism, also referred to as Open Theism, wrongly concludes that God does not know the future but is experiencing life as it comes, doing His best to learn, grow, and respond to His experiences much like we do.

God is not all-good.
Pantheism and Panentheism, found in many Eastern religions, wrongly conclude that God is both good and evil and that both darkness and light come from and are expressions of God’s character.

There is no suffering and evil.
Subjectivism and Pluralism wrongly conclude that evil and the experience of suffering are not absolute but rather relative and therefore not always wrong or negative.

God is not done yet, so live by faith, not sight.
Biblical Christianity rightly concludes that God is all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-good. Therefore, suffering and evil are not the way that God is, the way that God made the world, or the way that the world will be when Jesus returns and unveils His Kingdom. Until then, God reminds us in Habakkuk 2:4 (ESV) that “the righteous shall live by his faith.”

Which of these options have you chosen in your life? Which will you choose for your future?

In the Western world, we simply stink at grieving, mourning, and losing. We celebrate our wins publicly and grieve our losses privately. No one ever makes a blockbuster movie about the athlete who lost and never recovered or the investor who lost everything and never got it back or the broken heart that never quite mended. Nope. Every story has to have a happy ending, which is a cultural way of lying.

In our own lives, we even use social media to create a fictitious version of our own life that omits all of our faults, flaws, and failures as if we’d already moved to heaven. When’s the last time you got really honest with anyone about how you’re doing, either in person or online. Imagine your social media status being, “Today, I put on a few pounds, am very gassy, got dumped by the person I was dating, cannot pay my bills, found a new zit, and my mom forgot it’s my birthday.”

#lamenting just ain’t trending.

Having faith in God gets us through tough times, but there’s another piece that will allow us to heal up once the storm passes. Lamenting is big in the Bible. In the book of Psalms, the major category of songs are laments. People broken by life and crying out to God grieve and mourn as they move toward healing. Even David the tough guy who could kill soldiers and take down lions knew how to cry a good cry when appropriate. The book of Habakkuk is largely the lament of one man bringing his brokenness to God for healing. You can read his little book in 10–15 minutes and feed your soul for 10–15 years. Here are seven things that help us learn to lament:

Seven Steps to Learning to Lament

When I lament, I allow myself to feel.
When we are hurting, we often numb ourselves to turn off the pain we feel. When we go numb we harm our relationship with God and others as we become emotionally dead. Sometimes this includes self-medicating with your pleasure of choice (drugs, alcohol, food, sex, shopping, entertainment, etc.). Lamenting instead allows us to actually feel all that we are experiencing so that we grieve the losses and experience the loving presence of God and those who love us.

When I lament, I process pain.
By working through hurt, grief, loss, and anger, we get through our healing process. This allows us to not get stuck in the pit of despair, but rather sit in that pit for a while until we are ready to crawl out and move on with life in hope.

When I lament, I grieve my involvement and shed my victim mindset.
When we are hurting, it can be difficult to see any fault or responsibility we have for our suffering. The unfair boss fired us, but we did show up late a lot and not do a great job? The unloving person left our dating relationship, but did we give them some fair reasons to do so? As we lament, we are open to any learning opportunities we have to admit our past failures so as to not drag them into our future.

When I lament, I don’t lash out in vengeance at others.
Hurt people can be counterpunchers by nature. They return hurt for hurt, hatred for hatred, and decibel for decibel. By lamenting, the pressure valve in our soul is turned to release enough pressure that we can return to our saner selves and not hurt everyone around us just because we are hurting.

When I lament, I empathize with others who are hurting.
When we are hurting, it is easy to make ourselves the center of our universe. We want everyone to stop what they are doing, run to our rescue, and make us their priority. We can easily forget that they likely have their own grief and struggles to deal with. Lamenting our trouble allows us to heal up a bit thereby enabling us to have compassion for others who are hurting as well. This is why the greatest ministry comes from the deepest pain.

When I lament, I feel hope for the future.
Lamenting allows a heart funeral for the past. This allows us to have a sense of closure so we eventually get up and move forward to the future that God has for us, with hope that the worst day will not be every day.

When I lament, I escape anger and depression.
Statistically, women and men manifest their angst differently. Women are more likely to express symptoms commonly known as depression – weepiness, sadness, and withdrawal. Men, on the other hand, generally don’t like feeling emotional or vulnerable, so they turn on their anger to feel strong and able to rise up and go to war rather than sit down to weep. In fact, many angry men may actually be depressed; they languish because do not know how to lament.

In His First Coming, the Lord Jesus was a lot like Habakkuk. Isaiah promised He would be a “man of sorrows” and “familiar with grief.” Jesus’ weeping over Jerusalem and the death of His buddy Lazarus were, in fact, perfect lamenting. The same is true of Jesus’ bleeding, weeping, and surrendering on the cross as that was lamenting that changed the world. The God that Habakkuk cried out to is the same Jesus of whom Hebrews 4:15 (ESV) thankfully says, “we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses.”

Today, everyone who, like Habakkuk, asks, “How long?” is ultimately longing for the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, whether they know it or not. When we see Him again, faith will become sight and lamenting will become rejoicing just as He said in John 16:20 (ESV): “You will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn into joy.”

What thing(s) are you most frustrated, exhausted, or stressed about right now? Have you brought those things, with emotional vulnerability and real honesty, to God to lament?

Upon hearing that God would use really bad people to discipline His people, Habakkuk could have easily stopped trusting God. As a godly man, he is barely holding on to his sanity in a godless world, crying out to God for answers. The only life raft that Habakkuk can hold onto is faith, which is the theme of the entire book: “The righteous shall live by his faith” (Habakkuk 2:4 ESV).

Five-Fold Faith

Faith is not our way of getting what we want, but rather accepting what God wants.
Sometimes we think we know what we need, so we get frustrated because God seems unwilling to do what we want. Instead, true faith believes that we must trust God even when we do not understand or agree with what He’s doing. He knows what He is doing far more than we do. This is the exact process that Habakkuk undergoes.

Faith combats frustration with God by bringing our frustrations to God.
When we get frustrated with God, we can give up on our relationship for a while, grow bitter against God, rant about God to others, or even start to find some clever theological way to edit God into a more suitable version that we find more acceptable and less frustrating. Instead, faith brings our real frustrations to the real God seeking a relationship based on trust even if there is not resolution to our frustration. This is the model we see on display with Habakkuk.

Faith helps us have questions for God rather than accusations of God.
Have you ever had someone rush to a judgment about you that was simply wrong? In this person’s mind, the case was tried, the guilty verdict was rendered, and all that was left was sentencing you to your just consequences. However, this person did not know all the facts, never bothered to ask any questions, and, as a result, rushed to a wrong conclusion. That happens to God all the time. Rather than sitting in judgment over God with accusations, we can learn from the example of Habakkuk to bring our questions to God, starting in His Word.

Faith sees the difference between hurt and harm.
Sometimes we wrongly think that if God were good we would never hurt. There is a big difference between hurt and harm. Sometimes God allows a bit of hurt to prevent a lot of harm. In the same way, a doctor will hurt us by plunging a scalpel into our body to remove the cancer that will kill us. In Habakkuk, the godless nation coming to deal with God’s people is a scalpel in the hand of the Great Physician bringing a bit of hurt to prevent the eternal harm they will experience in hell if they do not repent.

Faith is what gets us through the bad times as we await the good times.
In the good times, sight will suffice. In the bad times, faith continues to trust that God has a future for us filled with joy – a future that we cannot see because the damp, thick fog of misery has settled over our life.
How are you at truly, practically, daily living by faith? What keeps you from trusting God more than you do currently?

Because of Habakkuk’s close relationship with God, he, – with voice raised, brow furrowed, and hands thrown up in frustration – just unloads his grief to God. God answers, but His response isn’t exactly what Habakkuk was expecting. There would be more suffering before relief, which we see in Habakkuk 1:5–11 (ESV):

“Look among the nations, and see; wonder and be astounded. For I am doing a work in your days that you would not believe if told. For behold, I am raising up the Chaldeans, that bitter and hasty nation, who march through the breadth of the earth, to seize dwellings not their own. They are dreaded and fearsome; their justice and dignity go forth from themselves. Their horses are swifter than leopards, more fierce than the evening wolves; their horsemen press proudly on. Their horsemen come from afar; they fly like an eagle swift to devour. They all come for violence, all their faces forward. They gather captives like sand. At kings they scoff, and at rulers they laugh. They laugh at every fortress, for they pile up earth and take it. Then they sweep by like the wind and go on, guilty men, whose own might is their god!”

Sometimes, we just wish God would tell us what He was doing. He did just that to Habakkuk, but things only got worse, not better. God’s plan was to use the most ungodly, powerful, ruthless, cruel, and unjust military power as a wooden spoon to discipline those who were supposed to be His people. Essentially, being oppressed by a demonic army sent directly from the bowels of hell to unleash fire on the earth, things were about to go from bad to very bad for Habakkuk and his nation.

Counselors often talk about something called complex grief. Complex grief is what happens when difficult experiences pile on top of one another, becoming an overwhelming deluge so quickly that you do not have time to process anything. That is the kind of thing Habakkuk is experiencing. Overcoming the situation will require tremendous faith that God is good, in charge, and knows what He’s doing. This is precisely what faith is: moving forward in the dark trusting that God is ahead somewhere.

How has God proven faithful to you in past circumstances that felt overwhelming to you? What in your life currently requires a new level of faith to trust God?

Sometimes, the most frustrated people are also the godliest. Anyone paying attention to how fallen our world really is has wondered how to persevere in hard times. Trusting in God’s character, Habakkuk has hope for the future. He begins the book bearing his name with a bit of a rant, saying in 1:2–4 (ESV),

O Lord, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not hear? Or cry to you “Violence!” and you will not save? Why do you make me see iniquity, and why do you idly look at wrong? Destruction and violence are before me; strife and contention arise. So the law is paralyzed, and justice never goes forth. For the wicked surround the righteous; so justice goes forth perverted.

Why is Habakkuk so upset? Because he is a godly person who knows the character of God and Kingdom of God. Subsequently, all of the sin and suffering that he sees in the world enrages him. Evil marches over good while brutal bullies are laughing and their victims are languishing. To make matters worse, the cultural corruption has overtaken the government, court system, and lawmen who were supposed to serve as the dike holding back the flood of evil.

When you start to really understand the Bible and what the world is supposed to be like once sin is gone and our King Jesus has come, then you start to see how bad the world truly is. In the coming Kingdom, sin, evil, sickness, death, conflict, hatred, injustice, poverty, war, elections, crime, lying, stealing, cheating, and weeping are banished. Sounds amazing, doesn’t it? Just knowing that this Kingdom is coming and will be ruled by our King Jesus makes us ache for the day it shows up and He shows off.

Meanwhile, time marches on, but only in a circle. Times have changed, but people have not. Habakkuk expresses fury and frustration over the exact same things that cause people to post nasty comments online and cuss one another out today. Habakkuk’s two questions are the same ones we are asking more than 2,500 years later.

How long? How long will God watch the world devolve from people made to act like Him to people who act like animals? When do we get to quit our jobs, put on our party hats, and blow our kazoos because Jesus came back? This question is asked dozens of times throughout the Bible, most often in Psalms when those in great suffering cry out to God asking when they get to be Home.

Why? Why does a good and all-powerful God put up with so much rebellion? Why does God not fix the things that only He can fix when we are at the end of our resources and rope? Why do godly grandmas die in poverty of cancer while drug dealers, naughty movie makers, and immoral celebrities live long lives in big mansions to be worshiped like gods?

Habakkuk’s righteous anger is ultimately a result of his knowledge of how God made the world conflicting with what he sees around him.

What are you most looking forward to in Jesus’ Kingdom? What are you must frustrated by on the earth right now?

At some point, everyone experiences a day unlike any other day. That day is the day that someone or something bigger than you is in the process of defeating you. Fear races in as hope runs away.

On that day, the doctor may say that there is nothing more that can be done to treat the cancer; the lawyer may say that the divorce is finalized; the nurse might say that your loved one’s earthly life has come to an end. When that day comes, it’s easy to get frustrated with God, but you can also bring your frustrations to God, just as an ancient believer named Habakkuk did in his tear-stained journal. He lets us join him in the middle of his own crisis of faith in not knowing what the future might hold for him.

We know little to nothing about Habakkuk; his family and history are a mystery. In Hebrew, his name means embrace, which is fitting since he embraced God’s will. In Akadian, his name is a bit more obscure and refers to a plant or fruit tree.

Habakkuk begins by reporting “The oracle that Habakkuk the prophet saw” (Habakkuk 1:1). The concept here is that he is by faith carrying a great burden to God in hopes of finding hope and comfort. God’s response was to meet with Habakkuk and reveal to him some of what the future would hold amidst his fears. This somehow happened through a vision, or dream, where the recipient is awake. Perhaps it was a bit like watching a screen more than 2,500 years ago, or even like today’s virtual reality.

In this book, which you can read in about 10 to 15 minutes, there are four main characters. First, there is God. Second, there is the godly man Habakkuk along with a few righteous believers. Third, there are rebellious and ungodly “believers” who may or not belong to God but associate with His people nonetheless. Their sins are so significant that in addition to Habakkuk, God raised up other prophets – Nahum, Zephaniah, and Jeremiah– in the same season to preach repentance. While priests were often raised in religious homes and educated in religious schools, prophets were wild men often raised in the woods and working from the margins of society, as God’s fire alarm, calling people to run from sin and hell. The fourth and final characters are the ruthless, heartless, and godless enemies of God and His people.

Rather than getting frustrated with God, the prophet Habakkuk takes his frustrations to God. With the “good” guys acting as wickedly as the “bad” guys – and nothing but financial, moral, political, and spiritual death on the horizon – he brought his frustrations, fears, and faith God.

What are you frustrated about or fearful of right now? Have you earnestly brought those frustrations to God as Habakkuk did? How could this happen?