Joy and Habakkuk

God, I long for and deeply desire the outlook and the effect of the outlook that Habakkuk has. At the end of his book of lament and doubt over God's judgment of his people, he writes in 3:17-19 what are to me some of the most phenomenal when I stand back and compare them to my own life.

As you read it, replace the fig tree and the olive crop and the lack of sheep & cows with things like "supermarkets have no food," "every Starbuck's crop froze," "every the cow has madcow disease," "every chicken has bird flu," "the stock market crashed," "you got fired from your job," "your car was totaled," "you got diagnosed with cancer," etc. Could I still say this...

"Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines,
though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food,
though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls,
yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will be joyful in God my Savior.
The Sovereign LORD is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, he enables me to go on the heights."

Dr. Piper explains "when all the supports of human life and earthly happiness are taken away, God willb e our delight, our joy. This experience is humanly impossible. No ordinary person can speak in truth like this. If God alone is enough to support joy when all else is lost, it is a miracle of grace" (25). Oh, how I want that miracle!

Do People Control You?

I started rereading Ed Welch's When People Are Big and God is Small today, a book for understanding and then fighting what our culture calls "peer pressure" if we're teenagers or "codependency" and "people pleasing" if we're adults, but what the Bible calls the fear of man, which is a sin.

At the heart of this sin is that we're being controlled by--we are enslaved to--other people, and not God. Here's how the author puts it:

People who fear men "are fairly sure that God loves them, but they also want or need love from other people--or at least they need something from other people. As a result, they are in bondage, controlled by others and feeling empty. They are controlled by whoever or whatever they believe can give them what they think they need. It is true: what or who you need will control you." (13-14).

I'll try to talk through this book more, but for now meditate on that description. Does it describe you? I know it does me.

As an aside: If you're interested in the book, it no longer looks like the picture above because it's been updated. I use that picture because that's the edition of the book I'm reading.

Thoughts from the Valley

I wanted to share this part of a prayer called "Pride" in the amazing little book, The Valley of Vision:

"Help me to see myself in thy sight, then pride must wither, decay, die, perish. ... As water rests not on barren hill summits, but flows down to fertilize lowest vales, so make me the lowest of the lowly, that my spiritual riches may exceedingly abound. ... If I fail let me hide myself in my Redeemer's righteousness..."

The last line is essential for living the Christian life and a real joy releaser! The word "if" conveys confidence in God's answering his prayer by supplying him the power he needs to fight pride, while his acknowledging Christ's righteousness shows that his confidence in the face of pride is not in his performance, but in Jesus' performance--a perfect life and a perfect sacrifice, both of which are his by faith!

I know my only hope in the face of my own pride is that Jesus died for it and I'm forever standing before God in His righteousness, not my own.