“Though the fig tree does not bud and there is no fruit on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though the flocks disappear from the pen and there are no herds in the stalls, yet I will celebrate in the Lord; I will rejoice in the God of my salvation.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

When you are the pastor of a church in a small town, you wind up getting to take part in a whole lot of the normal rhythms of the community. It’s really one of the things I enjoy most about serving in the kind of community where God has planted us. As an example of this delightful part of the job, this afternoon I get the privilege of giving a short devotion to a great group of students before they go to their activities for the evening. When doing this kind of thing, there are all kinds of approaches you can take. I decided on a little different approach than most guys will take. These kids live in a world that is beset by anxiety. Most of the fault of this lies at the feet of social media and a rapidly declining engagement with a genuine faith community. I’m not going to tell them to go to church. But I do aim to give them a little bit of hope in the midst of a world that is often dark and discouraging. As something a little different than our usual Friday fare, here’s what I’m going to say to them.

In a couple of weeks, I am going to start a sermon series with my church that will walk us through the little collection of prophecy in the Old Testament that we call Habakkuk. Raise your hand if you have heard of Habakkuk. Raise your hand again if you have seen the word Habakkuk and had no idea how to pronounce it. You are in good company. It’s pronounced in all sorts of different ways. What is more important to know is what is actually in the book. 

Habakkuk is not like most of the other books of prophecy you can find in the Bible. He doesn’t call down judgment on anybody. In fact, there’s really not anybody who is the target of the prophecy. Instead, the whole thing is a conversation between the prophet and God. This wasn’t some sterile, polite, religious-sounding conversation like you might expect to find in the Bible, though. It is raw and emotional and uncomfortably direct. The prophet tells God exactly what he thinks, God responds, and then the prophet tells him again in even stronger terms. Check this out. 

“How long, Lord, must I call for help and you do not listen or cry out to you about violence and you do not save? Why do you force me to look at injustice? Why do you tolerate wrongdoing? Oppression and violence are right in front of me. Strife is ongoing and conflict escalates. This is why the law is ineffective and justice never emerges. For the wicked restrict the righteous; therefore, justice comes out perverted.” 

That’s pretty bold stuff to throw in God’s face! This is not some, “Hey, God, I’m really not too happy with how things are going right now. Would you please do something about it?” This is more of a, “God, this place is totally screwed up and you’re nowhere to be found. Everything around me is broken, and I can’t find the first bit of evidence to suggest that you actually care. What are you doing? This is why no one wants to have anything to do with you: because you tell us to shape up, but then let us make a mess out of everything anyway without doing a single thing to help.” 

I know you guys have probably not ever asked God why He forces you to look at injustice before, but I don’t know…maybe some of you have faced something really hard that wasn’t your fault but which affected you anyway, you asked God to do something about it, and then nothing ever seemed to happen. And maybe that didn’t bother you too much, but maybe you got really angry at God. You may have toyed with saying, “To heck with the whole Christianity thing.” Maybe you even pulled the trigger on that, figuring you were better off taking things into your own hands because God didn’t seem interested in doing much to help. 

Can I give you the encouragement that you’re not the first ones to ever feel something like that. I mean right here in the Scriptures we have clear evidence that at least this one guy was wrestling with something similar in the neighborhood of 3,000 years ago. And he told God about it. All about it. Do you know what that means? It means you can too. When you are struggling with something, and it feels like God is absent from the scene, it’s okay to tell Him about it. You don’t have to worry about choosing the right words or having the right posture much beyond acknowledging that He’s God and you’re not. You can be as emotional as you are actually feeling inside. You can be raw and unfiltered with Him. And He’ll listen. We know He’ll listen because He listened to Habakkuk. 

Actually, that’s where part of the tension here lies. God listened and answered Habakkuk, but the prophet didn’t like His answer. At all. God told Habakkuk that He was going to send the Babylonian army as an instrument of judgment to deal with all the injustice and oppression and violence in Israel. This would be a little like you complaining about some undesirable situation to God and His saying that He was going to fix it by putting you in an even less desirable situation. “You think things are bad now, just wait until I start to solve the problem.” 

Habakkuk responded to God’s proposed solution with the equivalent of, “What?!?!? That’s a terrible idea!” But Habakkuk did more than merely complain about his terrible situation and God’s proposed solution to it. Instead of throwing his complaint in God’s face and walking away without waiting for an answer like we are often tempted to do, the prophet decided to show God the respect of waiting to see how He would answer this time. “I will stand at my guard post and station myself on the lookout tower. I will watch to see what he will say to me and what I should reply about my complaint.” 

Habakkuk waited on the Lord, and in his waiting, he sought the Lord. He sought the Lord and he continued to seek Him even though he really didn’t like God’s answer. But then something began to happen. The more he sought the Lord while waiting on His response, the more he came to know the Lord. He gradually came to have a better understanding of God’s character. He came to realize just how patient God and how compassionate He is with those who are hurting. He started to be able to see that even when God doesn’t move in the time and ways we want Him to move to fix something we think needs to be fixed, still, His plans are better than ours. To put that another way, He came to trust in the Lord. He came to trust that even when things are terrible both in the world around him and in his own life situation, God is still good and is still worth trusting because He really does have the perfect solution all worked out to all of our problems, and when we stick with Him, that solution is what we will experience. And that solution and its aftermath are going to be good. That’s not the same thing as saying they’ll be easy. But they will lead us to God’s goodness, and that’s a very good place to be. 

Listen to how he expresses this: “Though the fig tree does not bud and there is no fruit on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though the flocks disappear from the pen and there are no herds in the stalls, yet I will celebrate in the Lord; I will rejoice in the God of my salvation!” 

Can you hear what he’s saying there? Even though everything around me is falling to absolute pieces and I have no idea how I’m going to get through all of this, yet I will trust in Him. Guys, I’ll be honest with you: giving that kind of trust isn’t easy. It’s often excruciatingly hard. It can seem wildly counterintuitive. But as Habakkuk discovered, it’s still worth doing. It’s still worth doing because we’re not doing it for the sake of what’s going to happen just tomorrow. We’re looking entirely further down the road than that. I know that’s tough to see sitting here as a teenager, but would you be willing to take my word for it that the things which seem to define your circumstances now likely won’t even register as important in a few more years? If you’ll take the courageous step of faith and put your trust in the Lord, through Jesus, and demonstrate that trust by keeping the one command Jesus’ followers are expected to obey (to love one another after the pattern of His own love for us), God’s goodness will yet be revealed for you. 

Whatever it is you’ve got going on right now, if you will trust in Him, He won’t leave you alone in it. The path through may yet be hard, and you are welcome to tell Him all about it in the strongest terms you need to use, but if you’ll trust Him, He will lead you through it to the abundance the life waiting for you on the other side.