Spiritual Disciplines

From Routine to Real Relationship with God Part 2: A Study in Habakkuk

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Prayer is where we enter into God’s presence to speak to God like a child does to a parent. God does not need prayer, but we do. In prayer we do not tell God something He does not know or get God to do what we want Him to do. Instead, prayer is largely about deepening a real relationship with God, because all relationships require time and talk for people to grow together.

Prayer can easily become routine for us. Prayer can fall into just another task to be completed, with little passion, before we eat our dinner or fall asleep at night. Chapter 3 of Habakkuk is a prayer from the journal of a real man in real toil crying out to a real God for real comfort. He says it this way in Habakkuk 3:1 (ESV): “A prayer of Habakkuk the prophet.” 

From the example of Habakkuk, we can learn a lot about prayer, including five benefits.

Five Benefits of Prayer

Prayer is how you let God be God.
Since God knows all and rules over all, prayer reminds us that we do not have to do God’s job. This should relieve a lot of our stress.

Prayer is how you let you be you.
In prayer, we can get honest with God about who we are, where we are, and what we are struggling with or are grateful for.

Prayer is how you deepen relationship.
No relationship can flourish unless the persons involved get together and talk at the heart level. The same is true in our relationship with God.

Prayer is how you release pressure.
Life continually brings us stress and pressure. In prayer, a release valve is turned so that our stress levels are reduced. This keeps us from blowing up physically, mentally, spiritually, and/or emotionally.

Prayer is how you transfer burden.
In the ancient world, much of the heavy work of labor was done by an ox that would pull a load or a plow. When the job became too much for one ox to bear, people would yoke two oxen together to carry the load. Jesus knows that we also find ourselves laden with burdens that we cannot bear and loads that we cannot carry. He therefore tells us to pray and transfer much of the burden to Him, saying in Matthew 11:28–30 (ESV),

“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

What is your prayer routine? Is your prayer routine building your relationship with God? If not, what changes can be made?

From Routine to Real Relationship with God Part 1: A Study in Habakkuk

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We are creatures of habit. From morning to bedtime, we follow routines and routes to our most common destinations (that we could make with our eyes closed). Life falls into predictable patterns. These routines are not necessarily bad for tasks, but they can be detrimental to relationships with people. After all, people need us to be emotionally present, engaged, and responsive for there to be a healthy relationship, while tasks don’t require relationship at all. Since God is a person, our relationship with Him requires connection.

Habakkuk is a man who walked with God as a mature believer by all accounts. His prayer life, Scripture study, and worship of God in the Old Covenant version of church were almost certainly frequent and faithful. Everything changed when his life got shaken like a snow globe. Everything that he had seen as stable in his life was moved, and he needed to go to a deeper level of faith in relationship with God to get through a crisis that was overtaking his life. This may sound like your life or the life of someone you know: The routine with God was “working” until the circumstances of life so change that you need to move from a routine to a deeper and more real relationship with God.

Sadly, some people do not use their troubling times to press into deeper and more real relationship with God. Instead, some simply deny that God exists. Others, sadly, seek to edit God and create a version of Him that is not the real God. Still others run from God rather than to Him even using their suffering as an excuse to justify their sinning. What Habakkuk does and what we should do is run to God. Often, we want God to bring resolution, but He is more concerned about our relationship. We want God to remove our problems, but He is more concerned about inviting us into His presence. This is the case with Habakkuk.

How do you know that you have moved from routine to real relationship with God? In examining the example of Habakkuk throughout the book, which reads like pages from his personal journal, we learn the following six signs that you’ve gone from routine to real relationship.

Six Signs You’ve Gone from Routine to Real Relationship with God and Others

You bring up your tough times.
You own your own struggles, fears, and shortcomings.
You can talk about tough times in an honest and healthy way.
You have worked it through with God and can help others.
You have grown in your love for and faith in God.
You are able to worship God from the heart no matter what happens.
What is your routine with God in regard to prayer, Bible study, and worship? Is that routine strengthening or weakening your relationship with God?

Habakkuk #4 – From Routine to Real Relationship With God

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After you have cried to God, freaked out a bit, and begged God what do you do when the future you were fearing becomes the life you are living? That is precisely the pain of Habakkuk. In the final chapter of his tear soaked book, we discover 3 things that God uses to move us from routine to real relationship – prayer, Bible study, and worship. In this very practical sermon, we will examine how to really pray, really study, and really worship by getting out of our routine relationship with God and entering into a real relationship with God. Some of us don’t do these 3 things, and others of us need to learn to do them in a fresh way to grow our faith.

3 Things Your Soul Needs

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We spend a lot of time looking after our bodies. We shower every day (hopefully), eat a good diet, exercise and take our medicine when we need it. So why do we neglect our souls’ health?

In fact, before you meet Jesus, your soul is dead! And the only way to bring it to life – and keep it healthy – is to ask God for 3 things. Watch the video to discover what they are!

Do you have a question you’d like me to answer? Email me at [email protected] today!

Habakkuk #3 – If God Is Good, Why Is There Evil?

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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. And, 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

God is not all powerful – Finite Godism

God is not all knowing – Evolutionary Godism, Open Theism

God is not all good – Pantheism, Panentheism

There is no suffering and evil – subjectivism, pluralism

God is not done yet so live by faith, not sight – Christianity

Which does Habakkuk choose? Which will you choose?

Learning to Lament

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“How are you?”

“I’m great! How about you?”

“I’m great!”

Sound familiar?

In our culture, we’re pretty good at pretending everything is perfect. But most of the time, it’s not. And when your life gets torpedoed, you need to grieve, heal, and move on. In other words, you need to learn to lament.

So watch Pastor Mark’s video below to discover 7 aspects of lamentation that will help you move forward in a healthy way.

And if you have a question you’d like answered, email it to [email protected] today!

Habakkuk #2 – Learning to Lament on That Day

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That Day! At some point, everyone finds themselves with a day, unlike any other day. That day is the day that someone or something that is against you is bigger than you and is in the process of defeating you. On that day, the doctor says that there is nothing more they can do to treat the cancer, the lawyer says that the divorce is final, or the nurse says it’s time to pull the plug because the person you love has seen their earthly life come to an end. When that day comes, you can either get frustrated with God or bring your frustrations to God as an ancient believer did in the tear-stained journal he kept. Through lamenting, we learn to grieve like Jesus and grow to be more like Jesus.

Parenting On Point Day 3: God’s Love Is Like an Oxygen Mask

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If someone asked you “what is the most important thing that someone could possibly do,” what would your answer be?
 
Jesus’ answer in Mark 12:30 is “love…God.”
 
Love is one of the most important words in the Bible and appears roughly eight hundred times in the Old and New Testaments. In our culture, though, it is one of the most misunderstood and misused words.
 
Simply put, when the Bible says that God is love, it means that He is relational. God wants a relationship with you. This is why He speaks to us through Scripture and listens to us through prayer. Furthermore, God made us like Him, in a limited sense, to be in loving relationship with Him and others, starting with what Jesus calls our “neighbor.” Therefore, our loving relationships are supposed to start at home with our family members who sleep in the rooms next to ours.
 
Here’s how God explains it in Genesis 1:26, “God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.’ ” Did you catch the “our” language? Again, this is the Bible’s way of letting us know about the Trinity, that there is “one” God made up of the three persons, Father, Son, and Spirit. It’s important to remember that our God is ALL ABOUT loving relationships. This is not merely what God does, this is how God is!
 
Our God is a loving and relational God, and He made us to be loving and relational people. We are literally handmade and hardwired for loving relationships. We are not supposed to live life alone. In fact, while the world was still perfect and before sin occurred, God said it was “not good” for us to be “alone” in Genesis 2:18. Today, in our sin infected and corrupted world, our need for loving relationship is even greater.
 
If you have ever flown on an airplane, you have likely heard the safety speech that is given at the beginning of the flight. We are told that in case of an emergency oxygen masks will drop. The attendant tells us to put our own mask on first before we put the mask on a child with us. This allows us to be healthy and alert when caring for the child.
 
Life is like a flight. Jesus is our captain. Our relationship with Him is our proverbial oxygen mask. On Jesus Airlines, when the storms hit and lightning strikes, there will be times of turbulence until we land in His Kingdom. Both parents and children need to have their masks on so they can stay alive and alert. In order for this to happen, parents (and other caregivers) have to put their mask on first. If we are not in a healthy, life-sustaining relationship with God where the Holy Spirit puts His life-giving nourishment into our soul, then we will not be able to care for the child sitting on the flight next to us. This is what Jesus means in Mark 12:28–31 saying that we need to first “love God” and then second “love our neighbor.”
 
How is your Bible reading? How is your prayer life? How is your relationship with God? How can you improve your relationship with God? What are some practical things you can do this week to help your child’s relationship with God?

What do you do when you’re struggling to pray with your family?

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We all go through seasons when it’s hard to pray with our spouse or kids. Maybe you’re stressed, or hurt, or just really busy.

But the times when you’re stuck and don’t want to pray are actually the times when you need to pray the most!

So watch above as Grace and I share some simple steps you can take to get back to praying with your loved ones – and discover why it’s so important that you do!