Does anyone else feel that life is like a hot mess out there and maybe even in here? Pastor Chad took us into the book of Habakkuk this Sunday. He unpacked how Habakkuk’s name means ardent embrace it means to wrestle. This message was so good! How many times over the last season and even in this new season have you thought to yourself:

• This isn’t fair?
• I don’t get it?
• What’s happening?
• Where are you, God?

If you’re anything like me, you’ve thought this way a lot! So what do we do? Pastor Chad brought our 2 main points in the first couple of verses in this book.

1. GET REAL – listen God can handle your hurt, anger, upset and more. Pastor Chad said, “When God doesn’t seem real, that is the time to get real with Him!” Too often we just want to suck it up and deal with it but doing that often works against us. We were created to grieve and lament as a process to heal. When we don’t do this we end up stuffing it and moving on. Which makes our hurt, pain, and anger bigger and louder. We may even end up walking in bitterness and resentment bleeding our pain all over other people.
2. WRESTLING IS STILL EMBRACING: Just because we wrestle doesn’t mean we don’t have faith. It means we are walking in faith because we are still bringing these sorrows to God. Over and over through the scriptures, you will find faithful followers of God grieving and lamenting over the circumstances they are going through, the state the world is in, and even the condition of their souls. Everyone from David, Job, Solomon in Ecclesiastes, and Jeremiah wrote about their pain and sorrow. Even Jesus Himself cried out, “My God, My God why have you forsaken me!” This is the picture of what it means to be human and to have a God who knows our frailty and listens.

Questioning is an indication of faith not a mark of failure.

Romans 5:3-5 Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance,  and endurance produces character, and character produces hope,  and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

God is a God who cares about us. He knows this life is tough for us. We have hope because He promised to be with us when things were hard and the hard may not let up. It may get more intense. He never said it would be easy. He said He would be there.

All is grace,

Starla