How to act when God does not make you feel

Last Sunday we talked about when God does not make sense, when God does things that do not compute in our minds, they do not seem to agree with the just, generous, kind, faithful God who does things as he promises in his word. When things happen in our life, in our nation, our society that we live in, when the world gets a little weird and we don't know how to interpret what's happening, and we're not sure where God is at that moment. When there are moments of adversity and trial in our lives, it can be at the level of a collective, social, global situation, such as when there are war situations in our countries or rampant crime or a disease, a plague that spreads. It can be on a very large collective level, but also on a personal level, when things happen in our lives that we say, wow, why, I didn't deserve this, and where is the faithful God and the just God who blesses those who they serve it, and why then is this happening to me.

When there are moments that God does not make sense and we saw that God is present, God is speaking, God is moving, sometimes the Lord moves in unexpected ways and takes time to do things. We have to be like Habakkuk when the Lord responds and says, I am going to send a horde, a plague of violent, malignant, sinful people, and I am going to execute my people, and Habakkuk says, Lord, but how is it possible? I spoke to you saying that there was injustice in the nation but it was not for you to send such terrible destruction through terrible hands.

And we saw that God is a complex God, a God who sometimes works in unexpected ways but he always has a purpose and he always makes sense in the end, but at the moment we often do not know how to understand and that is why we have to look at the things through the lens of the word and through the spirit. We have to ask the Lord to give us discernment to understand why what is happening to us many times in our lives.

God uses all things, he says, for the good for those who love the Lord, but there are moments when you are going through the sugar mill and they have you in the place of trial, you don't know why God is doing that, they don't send you a manual saying, look on page 32, chapter 4, verse a, b, c and there you will find. No. Many times God does things and you have to, while out of breath, try to interpret.

And we saw that many times what seems like a curse is more like a blessing in disguise. What seems like a dead end situation often turns out to be something that will greatly glorify the Lord and ultimately edify and bless you. That is to say, Habakkuk is a book written for our times, a book for times of urgency, of difficulty, of crisis as we are experiencing in our nation and throughout the world, where God is doing things that blow our brains out, so to speak many times, where there are rumors of war, the world is turned upside down. Time magazine which is one of the great magazines in the world came out with a front page article – we got the magazine in the mail yesterday – it says 'is the truth dead?' talking about this nation where there is so much lying, so much manipulation on so many different levels and there has already been, because that is not now. The lie and manipulation on the part of politicians have been going on for many years, but especially for a while.

So like Habakkuk sometimes we find ourselves in situations like this and Habakkuk is a book that gives us an example of how a man dealt with a situation where God did not seem to make sense. We are going to see that much of it depends on the perspective that we adopt, as we have said.

And I want to talk today, as a conclusion to these sermons, about how to act when God doesn't make sense, how to conduct ourselves, how to behave, what advice the Bible gives us when something happens in our life that God doesn't make sense of. From Habakkuk we can learn some beautiful lessons about it, when we are confused and perplexed.

Because Habakkuk actually begins with an expression of confusion and perplexity. The first two chapters show us a man in agony, asking God why this, why that, and God answering him in ways he doesn't like. And from that dialogue we learn a lot. Habakkuk begins by saying, in verse 2:

“How long, O Lord, will I cry out and you will not hear, and will I cry out to you because of violence and you will not save? Why do you make me see iniquity and make me see trouble? Destruction and violence are before me and lawsuit and strife arise."

And so it goes on. Those first 4 verses are devastating. This man is confused, he is perplexed, he is seeing things in his nation, injustice, the law is not respected, God is not worshiped and served properly and he is confused and says, Lord, how long am I going to have to endure so much sin around me? He was a fair man.

That dialogue that takes place, God answers him, then Habakkuk answers him again and God tells him other things again and there is that encounter between God and Habakkuk that shows us something very important and that is that one of the first things we have to do when God is not making sense in our lives, it is to do what Habakkuk does, which is to go before God and seek an answer from him.

Situations are going to come to our individual, personal life, that are going to make us question. For example, I think when a mother loses a child, whether it is a mother who is pregnant and her baby loses it in the seventh month or in the sixth month, or at 2 years old, or an older child. We know situations in which we have prayed for a straying son and we have asked, Lord, rescue him and he never comes to the ways of the Lord or something happens, we lose a son. And we have done everything that was on our part, prayed, fasted, sought advice, counseled and God does not seem to listen to our prayers.

What happens when you tithe and offer and serve the Lord and you believe that God is going to bless you and prosper you financially but a setback comes, you lose your job, you lose your house, your car is taken away, something happens financially. You say, Lord, the pastor said that you were going to multiply my goods and you were going to give me a blessing, what happened? Where is the disconnect? What happened? I have served you, Lord, I have been faithful, for many years you have blessed me and now everything is falling apart. What's happening?

What happens when you live a healthy lifestyle? You eat well, you exercise, you do what you have to do, you take care of your body and at the age of 50 you are diagnosed with an incurable disease or something that you are going to have to take for the rest of your life, or a serious illness situation, he says, Lord, but I have done everything I could, I have behaved well, I have taken care of my body, I have declared healing and health in my life, why does that come to me?

I know that many of you can echo this and a hundred other things that I have not mentioned, where just and good people suffer adversity in their lives. How do we react in that sense? How do we behave when God doesn't make sense?

In the case of Habakkuk, the question is broader because it has to do with something at the level of his nation, like in these times. Lord, I have been praying for my legal status for a long time. I work hard, I pay my taxes, I am a faithful member of my community and I have felt that you have told me that this is going to be resolved but there is no answer, I am already tired of waiting. How do we react in those situations? And it seems like things are getting worse instead of better. How do we react when we don't know how to put our brain around a situation?

And again, the first thing that Habakkuk does is he goes before the Lord. He brings his perplexity, he brings his confusion before God. he fights with God, he asks for an answer from God and in times of affliction, trial, difficulty, the first thing we have to do is direct our anguish towards the source of all wisdom and all solutions, which is our God. . Instead of staying in that dungeon of depression, confusion, resentment against God, we can choose that. We can make our situation a very high pit from which we cannot get out and we don't want to get out, because many times we want to stay there in that place of self-pity.

Habakkuk shows us that instead of wallowing in anger and despair we should direct our energies toward the Lord. What does Habakkuk do? He takes his negative energy, what he feels, confusion, anger, bewilderment, something that is different from what he expects, and he takes that energy and instead directs it at himself, which is what constitutes depression. Psychologists and psychiatrists say that depression is anger directed inward.

He takes anger and turns it towards God, not in the sense of coming before God in a disrespectful way, but in his burden. The Lord says, bring your yokes, come to me if you are sad and burdened. I will make you rest. What many of us do is take our yoke and follow it… God wants to take it away from you and you say, no, no, I want to continue with it. God says, but give it to me. Talk to me, bring your need to me.

There is a movie “The Mission” – it seems that Meche and I have been married for many years – this is like the wedding show, one says something and the husband or wife quickly has the answer. Which is your favorite color? The yellow.

The Mission is a very beautiful film and it has one of the most beautiful cargo break scenes I've ever seen, where this missionary priest who loves God, loves people, but... he's not a priest, he's a man who has a very large load of guilt and he is carrying that bundle of guilt there and someone comes with a knife and tired of seeing this man carry that physical load in this case that he has imposed on himself, and with a sword he cuts the rope and that is falls for this man.

And so it is that God asks us, bring your anger, bring your confusion, bring your pain and talk to me, I'm going to put on some boxing gloves with you. Come, let's go to the ring and give me everything you want. I want to hear your pain. I want to talk to you. I want you to talk to me, to be honest with me.

Habakkuk takes his pain, transfers it to the Lord and that is what prayer is often. Prayer is taking our burden, our confusion and sometimes our anger and saying, Lord, I need an answer from you because I don't like what you have done and God is willing to hear our prayer.

Paul in Philippians, chapter 4, verse 6 and 7, I have referred to many times because it is a passage that deserves repetition, it tells us what we have to do:

“Be anxious for nothing – say nothing, finances, health, marriage, family, political or documentary situation – be anxious for nothing – eager means anxious.

Now let me tell you that our first reaction and sometimes even our second reaction in times of difficulty can be worry or anxiety. I think it is legitimate when one has a difficult situation to feel anger, anguish, anxiety. Now, the important thing is not to stay there. The important thing is not to stay splashing in anger, in anxiety, in depression, but to get out, run for your life. Never let depression become a condition. Or rather, depression is something that we have allowed to become a condition.

Sometimes we can feel anger and bewilderment in a moment, but what we have to do as quickly as possible, before it becomes a hard scab that is hard to pull off, transfer it to the Lord. Go in prayer, cry out to God, pray.

For me, as I have said so many times, prayer is a psychiatric process where I release myself before God. Prayer is not just a shopping list, give me, give me, give me, the value of prayer is apart from that, it is where I dialogue with God and I unload and speak to my heavenly Father who already knows what I need and I let him listen. All that garbage comes out. It is a therapeutic form. Prayer changes us. Remember what I told you? Prayer changes us first because coming before the Lord is like a therapeutic process of releasing the burdens we have.

And when one learns and trains in that direction, one receives more and more rest from prayer. People, for example, who have consulted psychiatrists or psychologists for many years, already train and get more and more benefit because they have become accustomed to the process and then it makes better use of it. so it is with prayer. At first, perhaps it does not give you so much benefit, but as you exercise in it, you receive more and more blessings from exercising it. It's already like the air you breathe, you can't be without it.

So, Paul says, "Except your requests be made known before God in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving..."

Later we are going to talk about that part, that many times we have to thank God by faith and praise Him by faith because at the moment we may not see the reason to do it but by doing it by faith it becomes a reality later on.

“…with thanksgiving and the peace of God that surpasses all understanding…”

Something supernatural happens when we bring our burdens to the Lord. There is a peace, there is a rest. It is not a human peace, it is not a peace that is easy to understand or explain, it is not a psychological peace, it is a peace – I called it this morning – an objective peace. It is a peace that is a peace of the spirit.

Do you know that it is possible many times to be sad and at the same time to have peace in your heart? Do you know that it is possible to know that when one goes to look for sugar in the morning for coffee, there is not even a grain, you say, what a pity, gosh, but you also say, but the Lord is my strength and I know I'm going to take it like this and it's going to taste like sugar in the name of the Lord.

It is possible to be in situations, I know that no one here has ever gone through that situation of not having sugar in the house, but how good it is to know that in the midst of this the Lord is with us too. It's possible. That peace that surpasses all understanding, one learns to live in those dimensions where emotions say one thing but our spirit says another. And I believe that a great part of Christian maturity is learning more and more to dwell in that dimension of the spirit and disconnect from emotions and feelings and dwell in that place where the peace of God enters our hearts and maintains our minds and our hearts focused on Christ Jesus.

And I understand why Paul later in verse 8 says, "As for the rest, brothers, whatever is true, honest, just, pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good name, if there is any virtue, if there is something worthy of praise, think about this.”

Do you know why? Because he says here, “…and keep your mind and heart in Christ Jesus. And then he says, think about these good things. You know that when you focus on Christ instead of the serpent biting your heel, you receive peace and you receive rest and strength from the Lord. When instead of listening to Lady Gaga you listen to a adorer, José Luis Reyes, Nancy Amancio, what happens when you listen to adoration, something that blesses you, edifies you, when you keep your mind on the word of God, on the principles of the Kingdom of God, do you go to church, do you listen to a good word? Your mind is being formatted in the principles of the Gospel and your spirit is strong and therefore your emotions will also be strong.

If you keep your eyes on Jesus Christ, you will receive the peace that passes all understanding. So one of the things we have to do is turn our gaze towards God, return from the place of the crisis and the difficult situation, look for a good conversation, look for a brother who will bless you, who will strengthen you, because he is a person who speaks positively. Do not look for a person who is bloody and gossipy so that you can receive rest. Look for strong people in the Lord, who will bless you, encourage you, and strengthen you, because otherwise the two of them will end up jumping off a bridge. Look for people who will build you up, strengthen you, and encourage you in the Lord. Look for spaces like this where God speaks to our lives.

Instead of staying at home with the sheet up to your head, come to church, even if you don't wear lipstick but come and seek the Lord here, if you're depressed, crawl, come in your pajamas, we give you permission, come with your stockings, but look for that strength. Look towards the Lord.

That is what Habakkuk does in his time of difficulty, of confusion, of great urgency, he goes to the Lord and directs his burden to the Lord and complains before him. And that is something we have to learn. Prayer is the great escape valve, the great rest valve when the key is opened so that it is not all in and the stove explodes, release it in prayer, in praise, fill your mind with the promises of the Lord. Do it as a matter of hygiene even if you don't feel like doing it. But if you do the math it will work and it will give you rest and transformation.

I remembered this morning the beautiful hymn, 'Sweet Prayer.' How many know that hymn? It was written in 1845 by a man blind from birth who refused to give in to depression and self-pity and used his mind to remember… people who knew him thought he had the whole Bible memorized because so many parts of the Bible were memorized because I couldn't read it. And he then let the word of God run through his life and he composed hymns and one of the hymns that he composed was this hymn 'Sweet prayer' he says, sweet prayer, sweet prayer, from all worldly influences you lift my heart to tender heavenly Father. Oh how many times I had help in rude temptation and how many goods I received through you, sweet prayer.

Sweet prayer, sweet prayer to the exalted throne of goodness, you will take my request to God who listens with mercy. Believing I hope to receive divine and full blessing and that you help me to live with me, sweet prayer.

How beautiful, right? It's 3 verses long and google it there it is, and use that as a meditation. Prayer is that, it is a place that takes us to the heavenly throne and that allows us to find rest in our times of great anxiety. These are exhausting times, the times we live in. The newspapers, the news fill us with anxiety, what we see in our communities, young people dying of overdoses everywhere, violence, terrorist acts, a totally locked and divided government, a world with war and rumors of war, migratory fluctuations of great proportions , human masses of hundreds of thousands of human beings moving like hunted animals from one place to another without finding rest.

And all these images we see on television, we hear them on the radio, we see them in the cinema, we hear them in the workplace. It is a time of great anxiety and we find no rest. And the only place where we can truly rest is in the place that Habakkuk found, the place of dialogue with God. Prayer should be that, a part of our life.

The second thing precisely that Habakkuk teaches us in chapter 3 about everything and in the whole book in fact, is that one can choose. And here the emphasis is on choosing, the freedom that the Christian has to choose what his reaction will be when the time of suffering or affliction or trial comes, when God does not make sense. You can choose how you are going to react.

And that is a revolutionary concept for many of us, because we are used to thinking that we are like trained animals, if they press a button there is a reaction, if something bad happens to me I am going to react with depression or sadness. And many of us live our lives thinking like this, when suffering, difficulty comes, we collapse and go to bed until the problem passes. We don't go to church for a while, we take a vacation from God and until we already forget what happened.

But there is another way of seeing things and that is what Habakkuk teaches us. And I want you to learn this, you can choose how to react when trials and suffering come into your life. You are not an animal simply automatically condemned to a Pablovian reaction but you can choose.

It's like I was telling the brothers this morning, how many times have you opened the pantry upstairs and dropped a can and it landed on the same big toe that you still hadn't put your shoes on, and the can fell on the foot, and you know what happens? The brain, that stimulus that falls on the foot, takes a microsecond to rise from the foot to the brain and for you to say, it hurts, and then you let out the cry. There is a microsecond because it is a physical matter, there is a signal that the foot tells the brain, there is pain, interpret it.

And it has happened to me, something is wrong with me and I say, this is going to hurt. And it takes a microsecond and boom then the pain explodes. Well, between the moment the stimulus was given and the moment the brain knew what had happened and interpreted it, that microsecond you can decide how you are going to react, with an industrial-sized curse, with a forced blessing or with a simple ouch or a macabre dance on one foot or whatever. But you can decide what you are going to do at that moment, yes or no?

We thought, no, if you're used to swearing and profanity it's going to come in a cascade. But you can gradually train yourself to make that reaction an acceptable reaction before the Lord. I'm not telling him to start laughing either because then he has to be taken to a psychiatrist. But at least it's a reaction...

I also say that between every situation in life and our reaction to it there is a space where we can choose. It is the space of freedom that we have in Christ Jesus to decide if we are going to get depressed, we are going to curse God, we are going to do anything else, or if we are going to say, Lord, despite everything, I believe in you and I I'm going to wait and I know I'm upset but I'm going to come to you.

If you have lived a life where you get depressed, angry, resentful when something adverse happens to you, believe that God can change that program in the name of the Lord. Many times we don't even try and we have lived in families where depression runs rampant, where anxiety runs rampant, where alcoholism runs rampant, drug addiction, rampant sensuality, a number of things, and we believe, well, that's my family, that's the way it is. They were my uncles, that's how I am, that's how my dad was, that's how my mom was, I'm condemned to the same thing. In Christ Jesus we have broken those chains, brothers, we have freedom in God for us to decide how we are going to react.

And part of the sanctifying process of the Christian life is learning to change the program on which we operate. Many of the reactions that we have are the product of a recording that we have there working within us that tells us, look, this happened, this is for this reason, and that's how you have to act.

But depending on how we reprogram the world and how we see ourselves, we can gradually change our reactions to life. And one of the things we have to say is, Lord, give me discernment to discover those invisible programs that I don't even know are inside me and that lead me to act this way when something negative happens in my life, to curse, to criticize, to reveal myself, to respond badly, to counterattack, to depress me, to whatever, and teach me the way in which a child of God can and can act in times of difficulty and urgency.

Ask the Lord. You don't have to live in generational damnation. You have the power in Christ Jesus. What Christ does is break the inevitability of sin. So he changes the program, he believes that there are creative ways to deal with life's adverse situations. Sanctification is the reprogramming of our biology, of our neurology. We have to learn more and more to move not in the flesh but in the program of the spirit, the principles of the Kingdom of God, learn to do things by what God says.

The Bible says, man will not live by bread alone but by every word that comes out of the mouth of God, meaning, man does not live by his appetites, his emotions, his material impulses, the Christian lives by the principles that They come from the mouth of God. We substitute negative, carnal actions for positive spiritual reactions. We can choose. We are not in captivity to our emotions. Christ gives us freedom to act and react in positive ways.

Habakkuk did that. Habakkuk could have been filled with bitterness and said, how come, Lord, that you are going to bring a horde of violent and evil people and they are going to destroy our nation? Are they going to take our children captive? You are dropping an atomic bomb where perhaps what you should do is a disciplinary intervention and we are going to suffer that way. No, I better deny that God. I don't want to serve that God.

But Habakkuk controls his reaction and turns it in a constructive way. And you can do the same. I assure you that if you believe it in the name of the Lord you will do it. Fill yourself with that strength in God and say, I can do everything in Christ who strengthens me. I can get out of depression, I can get out of anxiety, I can get out of resentment, I can get out of that memory of rape or whatever, or past abuse and I can start living a life of blessing and hope because God gives me that power to do it. So, train yourself to believe in the power of God to free you from your deformations of the past.

The third principle that Habakkuk shows us is that we have to exercise patience at times until God has completed his mysterious processes. God sometimes takes time to keep his word, to keep his promise. God is a God of mysterious procedures and if one is short-lived and short-tempered, when God is crafting a masterpiece that takes time and what we see is only the ugly part of the process, let's step out and go miss the opportunity to see the glorious work of God in our lives. God takes time sometimes to fulfill a blessing.

And sometimes before you reach the blessing that God has for you, you have to go through a long time of blind alleys, going this way and not finding the solution, going the other way until God finishes the process. And God is glorified in everything. God can make a beautiful work of art out of a pile of garbage, out of all the situations that you have been through in your life, God can take those ugly and smelly materials and make something that when you look at it you say, wow, how could God get it something so beautiful about this?

You know that some of the great artists have made works of a number of things. Andy Warhole, one of the great modern artists, one of the most expensive works that he did is a Campbell's soup can that he painted and things like that, brethren, where many times God works through all these things.

And we have to be patient to let the Lord complete his work in our lives. Habakkuk says this, in chapter 2, I already read it last Sunday, when God tells Habakkuk, I am going to destroy and I am going to bring a violent nation to carry out my actions and my judgments, Habakkuk takes a deep breath, takes two aspirin and look at what it says, "I will stand on my guard and I will establish my footing on the fortress." Sometimes you have to affirm your footing to see what God is going to tell us.

The Apostle Paul in Ephesians, chapter 6, says "when the bad day comes to your life, stand firm." Sometimes when the gale comes you have to hold on to a beam until the gale passes and when it passes they find it firm. When the bad day comes, we have to take on the whole armor of God, says the Bible, all the spiritual armor and look for the weapons of prayer, fasting, positive confession, keeping ourselves in the company of people who believe in God and who are strong in the Gospel and until it has passed, until the devil has thrown all his fiery darts, and when he has nothing more to shoot, you are still firmly in your place. And then God says, now I am going to give you rest, I am going to give you peace, I am going to give you blessing because you stood your ground.

Then, he says, “I will set my footing and watch to see what will be said to me and what I will answer regarding my complaint. And Jehovah answered him and said, write the vision, declare it on tablets and although the vision will take a while longer, it hastens to the end and will not lie. Although it will take time, wait for it because it will undoubtedly come and it will not take long.

Many times God's processes take time to complete. You have to wait for it. Something that the Christian urgently needs is patience because many times God is using ingredients that you don't know why he is using them, but he has a purpose in it and when God cooks he sometimes cooks with very strange seasonings. He adds a little cinnamon, ginger, and we are used to garlic, onion and chili, thinking that cumin and other strange things. The world has hundreds of spices. Indians cook with curries and other things. The Chinese have their own spices and there are beautiful foods. One of the blessings we have in Boston is that there is food of all kinds and one learns to appreciate the foods of different nations.

Many times we Caribbeans, for example, in our case we cook with 3 or 4 seasonings, that's all, salt, chili pepper, onion and pepper in the best of cases and a little oregano from time to time. Let's learn to appreciate all God's seasonings in our life. God uses different processes sometimes, brothers, and sometimes he brings things…and if we say, no, this is not going to taste good. Give it time, wait, try 2 or 3 times until you get used to the taste.

How many times have you rejected something and then liked it? God takes time and we have to be patient and Habakkuk says, I'm going to wait. I am going to see what God is going to answer me regarding my complaint.

José God promised royalty, he gave him a dream when he was about 14 years old. What the dream wanted to say was that his mom, dad, and brothers were going to end up kneeling in front of him. Imagine in a Hebrew social context that you said to your dad, dad and mom, I saw one day that you are going to end up kneeling in front of me. Look boy, a tabanada that I'm going to give you. This is how José's parents reacted. That was what I dreamed of, I am simply reporting it. God told him that there was something in his life, God was going to lift him up, use him, put him in authority, even over his parents and siblings.

The Bible says that at the age of 30, when he was 30 years old, 17 years later, it was when he appeared before Pharaoh, after 14 years of captivity. Since he uttered that word of blessing that God had revealed to him, all hell broke loose, hell broke loose. His brothers began to criticize and hate him, they sold him as a slave. He arrives at a house and there they slander him and put him in jail after a time of blessing. In jail he performs miracles on behalf of certain people and people forget about him instead of blessing him when they return to positions of authority. And there is the blessing of God simmering. Because? Because God was forming a man who was going to lead a nation in crisis, because that's what Joseph did.

He was building a man who was going to be the vice president of the most powerful nation in the world at the time, Egypt, a statesman who needed strength, poise, gravitas, weight, and you don't get that in a rose garden. And God put it there, squeezed it, loosened it, shaped it in the oven. Do you know where we get stronger many times? In the test, that's where one creates humility, patience, a sense of our own limitations.

You know that you can never do someone good until God has disqualified you and broken you several times, until you don't have snot coming out of your nose crying and remembering that you are not the last Coca Cola in the desert, God you can't use it. That's what he did with Pedro, that's what he did with Elias himself, such a powerful man, he pushed him to the extreme until Elias wanted to die. He did so with so many great men of God, Moses.

And God takes time and God uses instruments that look like instruments of torture but are surgical instruments that form us and create that man of God. I believe that until God treats us and tests us and puts us on the operating table, we cannot be used by God greatly. And that is why we have to have the patience to wait until God has completed his mysterious purposes. We have to arm ourselves with patience.

When the time of trial comes in your life, fasten your seatbelts, have a coffee, rest in the Lord, put on the armor of faith and say, I know that the trip is going to be a little stormy, but I am going to wait on the Lord, and I know I'll come out shining like gold when that time comes. So we have to be patient and wait for God's timing. Arm yourself with patience.

A fourth principle in this book. Praise the Lord. The praise of faith The objective proclamation of the goodness of God and of the God who is in control, despite the fact that he appears to be not in control. When the world gets chaotic, when you don't feel like praising the Lord, worship the Lord right then. That sacrifice of praise that comes out of the spiritual part of your being and that you pronounce simply because you know that it is a weapon against evil, instead of cursing, bless the Lord, instead of talking about the injustice of God, talk about God's control in your life and say, the devil is not the one in control right now, God is in control and he is doing something that I don't understand but I praise and glorify him.

Habakkuk is full of moments where, in the midst of the declaration of affliction and pain, there are also beautiful moments where glory is given to God. Look for example, chapter 1, verse 12, Habakkuk says:

“It is not you from the beginning, O Jehovah, my God, my holy one. We will not die…”

There is a moment that in the midst of that declaration of affliction that is coming, he says, we are not going to die in the name of the Lord.

Chapter 2, verse 4, says, "Behold, he whose soul is not upright is prouder, the just shall live by his faith." That is a statement that struck Martin Luther when he was working with the Reformation process, that salvation is not by works but by faith, by grace, by believing God. and that declaration of Habakkuk in the midst of the test, that the just will live by faith, impacted the life of the great reformer, impacted the life of the writer of Hebrews who also speaks of the just one living by faith, I don't know if in Galatians, but the idea is that instead of works it is faith that saves.

And we have to understand this part that we live by faith, not by feelings, not by what we experience or what we see, it is by what God has declared. They are verses that bring a lot of peace to the heart. Verse 14 in chapter 2;

“…For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.”

He knows that this is what encourages us in this world, knowing that God has not yet finished with the earth and that there are still many blessings that are coming to the world, there is still hope for the nations so that they may know the Lord. The earth will be filled with the glory of Jehovah. And there will come a day when this will be fulfilled in a definitive way, when this world has ended and the world only reflects the will of God without any resistance and we live for that day.

There is a hymn that says, "I just wait for that day when Christ will return." Another beautiful hymn. And we await that day, that great redemption, when the whole earth will be filled with the glory of God, all injustice, all tears will be removed from our eyes.

And that hope often keeps us in the midst of… One of the things that helps us the most is that one day all this will end. This world is not absolute and many of us only live in this world, in time and space. The man who only lives in history, in circumstances has nowhere to go, but the one who knows God and knows that there is a world of eternity before us, that dilutes the afflictions of life.

I'm sorry to put my sister Iris to the test, but while I was watching Iris up here adoring the Lord this morning, Iris has just officiated or witnessed the death of her mother, a beautiful woman of God, our sister Luisa whom we love so much Through many years, and I saw Iris, who is the one I know best in the family, with her mother's coffin in front of her, I saw her with such poise, such peace, such dignity, greeting the brothers who had attended the funeral, and today I see her here worshiping the Lord just a few days ago…

I say, wow, that's what God does. Because? Because she knows that her mother is with the Lord. She knows that this world did not end everything. This world may have put a parenthesis in Sister Luisa's life in her relationship with us, but at some point we will jump and see her there in the heavenly homeland and that comforts us. That brings peace to our hearts. That day when the earth will be filled with the glory of the Lord. That day when we can look and say, yes, I am going through a trial situation now but I know that the moment of redemption is coming, that the moment of restitution of everything that has been lost is coming.

In verse 20 also another statement of great blessing, great inspiration, 2:20, "But the Lord is in his holy temple, let all the earth be silent before him."

A declaration of God's lordship over the world. Even though the world looks like it is going to hell in a basket, we say, no, the Lord is on his throne. God is in control, it is not man, it is not the president of North Korea, the madman who is there running that nation, throwing missiles everywhere like rockets at Christmas. No, God is in control. It's not Isis over there killing people, God is in his temple. All the earth fall silent before him.

What an invitation to be in awe of God's lordship over history. These are moments when the writer blesses instead of cursing. Brother, instead of your confessing negativity, confess positivity. The Lord is with me, God is going to get me through, I know that God is faithful and even though I don't understand what is happening, he is in control and he is going to get me through. That is what Job does when he is in the midst of the great suffering of his life and his wife tells him, look, curse God and die. Well, Job has two moments, one moment is when he suffers and doesn't understand what God is doing and he wonders what is happening in my life and he complains before God. That is the first moment.

What we cannot do is stay there. What we have to do is dialogue with God and bring our bitterness before him. How does Job say? In verse 7:

“Behold, I will cry out grievance and I will not be heard, I will cry out and there will be no judgement, God fenced off my path and I cannot pass and put darkness on my paths. He has stripped me of my glory, he has removed the crown from my head, he has ruined me on all sides and I perish and he has made my hope pass like an uprooted tree,” and continues.

And one would say, wow, this man is going to shoot himself at any moment. You're almost closing your eyes so you don't see it when you do it. But what happens later? In verse 25, he goes on a note of complaint before his God by speaking, pleading his cause, and says:

"I know that my redeemer lives."

Brothers, the time has to come when you stop lamenting, complaining, accusing God and the time has to come when you kiss his hand. I have had times in my life when I wonder, Lord, why that stone that you threw at me, where did it come from? Because? And one is scratching his head and complaining against God. But at the very moment of my pain I know that either tomorrow or in a week, I'm going to have to come to Dad and kiss his hand, I'm going to have to tell him, Lord, it's okay, you know what you're doing.

You can have a party time of self-pity and it's okay up to a point, but know, tell yourself yes, but at some point you're going to have to pull yourself together, you're going to have to worship God again, you're going to have to seek the Lord, because you are not made to live in the dungeon. You are made to fly and soar through the air like an eagle.

Job goes through his struggle, he goes through his affliction, but then he says, “I know that my redeemer lives and will finally rise above the dust. And after my skin is discarded in my flesh I have to see God whom I will see for myself and my eyes will see him and no other."

He is stating something that he himself may not be sure of, brethren, but he is saying it by faith. And many times what we declare with our mouth by faith becomes a reality. Do not wait to feel praise to praise. Praise and you will feel praise. Write me that there. Don't wait to feel the joy of the Lord to praise him and declare joy. Declare joy and the joy of the Lord will become a reality in you.

I would tell someone the other days that I had a great resentment towards a person and thank the Lord I had brought this person through the counseling dialogue to a point of being willing to consider forgiving because this person had been offended in a way very serious, very serious And one of the most difficult things for a person who has been violated in their life and assaulted is to forgive.

And many times part of the problem is that people think that for us to forgive we have to feel forgiveness, but in the history of counseling it has been learned that many times forgiveness begins with an objective statement of forgiveness even if you don't feel it. Because many times if you wait until you feel like forgiving, you will never forgive. But what one discovers is that many times when he says with his mouth, I forgive, even though an injustice was committed, I forgive and many times when we say, I forgive, something happens inside us that what is a judicial declaration, becomes in an intimate feeling and then we feel forgiveness.

Never wait for the noble impulse to come before doing something noble. Do it like a soldier who is saluting before his general and do what God asks of you and then you will see how that becomes a feeling, an internal conviction of blessing. Learn to declare things with your mouth in the name of the Lord prophetically. Speak to your spirit, speak to the nobler faculties of your being and command them to do something in the name of the Lord because God says so and because I have to and because I am a soldier in the divine army, and then the blessing will come.

If you have any resentment against someone, if there is something in your life that is captivating you in the name of the Lord. Let's lower our heads. You have the control. The devil is not in control. Your past is not in control, your tormentors are not in control, your past terrible experiences are not in control, your rapists are not in control. They cannot live inside you polluting your inner space. get them out. Let them go. Release them. Choose the place of praise, choose the place of confession that God makes sense in every situation.

And if you have offended the Lord, I am sorry to say this, on behalf of the Lord, even if you have offended God and feel that you are captive of your past sin, this afternoon I also invite you to open the cell that you yourself you have built, perhaps God has already forgiven you because you have confessed your sin, but open the door and come out in the name of the Lord and declare freedom in the name of Jesus.

Forgive, praise, confess positively. Say, I am free in the name of the Lord, even if you don't feel free but confess freedom and you will feel freedom. Confess power and you will feel power. Confess sufficiency and you will feel sufficiency. Confess that you are not a victim and you will feel the victory of God in your life. Confess that your past has no control over you and the past will flee like a demon that will crawl through a crack and have to leave your life in the name of the Lord.

Worship the Lord. Wait on the Lord. I patiently waited for Jehovah and he leaned down to me and heard my cry, he pulled me out of the pit of despair, from the muddy lake and placed my feet on rock and straightened my steps.

And I want to take you to that point of a new song. He put a new song in my mouth, praise to our God. You know that Habakkuk ends with the beautiful chapter 3, which is a beautiful psalm of adoration to the Lord and a declaration of total independence from all circumstances, from everything that happens. Beautiful verses, I want you to go to that place this afternoon and if you feel that you want to come here so that we can make a collective prayer of liberation from any situation that may be in your life, I invite you without any shame because you are here in family, stand up or as you feel in your heart, declare freedom this afternoon, declare freedom in the name of the Lord, declare liberation, God frees you from every inferiority complex, every wound from the past, every tendency to be the first to you leave, you slip away because you feel that you are not worth enough.

Habakkuk says, even though the fig tree does not flourish nor are there fruit on the vines, even though the olive produce is lacking and the fields do not provide maintenance and the sheep are removed from the fold and there are no cows in the corrals, yet I will rejoice in the Lord and I will rejoice in the God of my salvation. The Lord, the Lord, is my strength, who makes my feet like servants and makes me walk on my heights. Glory to the name of the Lord.