Photo By: Jordan Tarant http://jordantarant.theworldrace.org/
“You who are of purer eyes than to see evil
and cannot look at wrong,
why do you idly look at traitors
and remain silent when the wicked swallows up
the man more righteous than He?”
Habakkuk 1:13
After being in Africa for three months, a lot of conversations have been on the topic of suffering. There are so many people blind, deaf, mute, paralyzed, with twisted limbs, bearing scars from a war just 20 years ago, single mothers whose husbands have bought into the culture of infidelity and adultery, and children orphaned because their families thought they were a curse.
I think particularly what strikes me is what people are willing to turn to in their suffering. I’ve seen people turn to drugs, alcohol, other people, food, indignant pride and blame, working out, pursuit of money and material things, or even witch doctors. And even so, when it gets down to these people’s hearts, they haven’t found something to fill the giant hole that disease, disaster, death and disappointment digs throughout their lives.
And many times their hearts become calloused and hardened towards God. Because after all, how could a completely good God allow these things to happen.
During my time in Mozambique, I challenged the local people in their view and relationship with God during times of suffering as I preached on Habakkuk at a church plant. And even though this issue is far more complicated than the depth that I addressed it, I hope it challenged the believers as well as those whose hearts have been hardened by suffering to take a deeper look into the Gospel and the character of the God we follow.
We spent time with a Canadian missionary couple doing work in Mozambique. The husband, Ryan*, told us about his brother who was born with cerebral palsy and passed away around the age of ten. Ryan’s father was told that his son wasn’t being healed because Ryan’s father had unrepentant sin or not enough faith in God. Ryan continued to tell us about the suffering he’s seen in Mozambique, and passionately addressed the issue of suffering with the four of us in the back of the pickup. He said many things, but ultimately he looked back on the story of his brother, looked us straight in the eye and said, “I guarantee you my brother would not take back a single second of his disease because of how God has used it to heal many people and bring them into His eternal Kingdom.”
Talk about perspective. Ryan was saying that the other son of his father, was given up to death, with the plan of using his story as a means to bring people into the kingdom of God, and that ultimately Ryan’s brother would be exalted and live eternally at the coming of Christ.
“Look among the nations, and see;
wonder and be astounded.
For I am doing a work in your days
That you would not believe if told.
For behold, I am raising up the Chaldeans,
That bitter and hasty nation,
Who march through the breadth of the earth
To seize dwellings not their own.”
Habakkuk 1:5-6
God was also in control when the Holy and Perfect One allowed himself to be nailed to the cross. That’s the Gospel of Jesus Christ. That’s what He did on the cross so that we could all be exalted with him at his return. See, if God chooses not to heal someone, save someone from death, deter a disaster, or protect your heart from disappointment on this side of heaven, it does not mean that He is an unloving God. It means that He is willing to die to bring about complete redemption. It means that even though we live in an utterly fallen and broken world, He is willing to allow it to continue for a time so that He can gain as many people into His eternal Kingdom as He can before losing you forever to brokenness and pain. His heart is FOR you, if you only turn toward him and seek His understanding. He is merciful and gracious and has a plan to end every evil thing and to redeem, raise, and exalt the broken, mistreated, abused, despised and unqualified.
For I consider the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.
Romans 8:18
So during times of suffering, are you one that runs from God? Are you one that closes off to His understanding because it doesn’t make sense to you? Do you set your sights on the temporary things of this world or the eternal? Are alcohol, drugs, other people, sex, indifference marking your life? Or do you know true freedom that comes from being in relationship with Jesus Christ?
“Write the vision;
make it plain on tablets,
so he may run who reads it.
For still the vision awaits its appointed time;
It hastens to the end-it will not lie.
If it seems slow, wait for it;
It will surely come; it will not delay.
Behold, his soul is puffed up; it is not upright
Within him,
But the righteous shall live by his faith.”
Habakkuk 2:2-4
I challenge you, in whatever you are struggling with, in whatever form of suffering you are going through, look at the cross and the glorious hope it brings and cling to the God who loves you enough to give you the gift of life in and through his Son when all we deserve to suffer for our rebellion. He’s given us salvation from suffering if we only reach out to Him who’s reaching out His hand to us.
“I hear, and my body trembles;
my lips quiver at the sound;
rottenness enters into my bones;
my legs tremble beneath me.
Yet I will quietly wait for the day of trouble
To come upon the people who invade us.
Though the fig tree should not blossom,
Nor fruit be on the vines,
The produce of the olive fail
And the fields yield no food,
The flock be cut off from the fold
And there be no herd in the stalls,
Yet I will rejoice in the LORD;
I will take joy in the God of my salvation.”
Habakkuk 3:14-18
