Wrestling With God | Habakkuk | Pastor Chris Kouba | United City Church

Grab your Bibles and open them up to the book of Habakkuk.

The book of Habakkuk, no judgment here.

If you need to go to the table of contents, it's okay.

It's spelt H A-B-A-K-K-U-K.

If you look it up on the UVersion Bible app, it's going to be somewhere in the middle.

It's maybe for some of you who brought your Bibles.

It's that it's page 785 for me.

It's in that spot where the pages are stuck together because you don't you haven't probably opened them very often.

All right.

You can go ahead and find those.

All right.

We are starting a brand new sermon series today, and it is called Have You Read My Book?

And the whole goal of this sermon series is to try to keep you from an awkward situation.

I'm looking out for you and I'm trying to help you.

Okay.

What that awkward situation is, is that let's say you die and go to heaven, you believe in Jesus, you've given your life to him, you've received his grace and mercy.

So you get to heaven.

Praise God for that.

You get into heaven, and while you're in heaven, you get an opportunity all of a sudden meet people that you've read about.

Okay.

You get a chance to go talk to the Apostle Paul, and you're getting to download with him a little bit and ask him some questions and talk to him about stuff.

Then you go to King David and you're talking to him about leadership and what does this look like to follow after King David and what does it mean to be him and all those types of things.

And then over in the corner, you see this guy that is standing there that is waiting to talk to you, very eager to have that conversation with you.

It's a guy named Obadiah.

Obadiah's got like a couple of pages in the Bible, all right?

He he wrote a couple, he wrote a book.

It's got a couple of pages, right?

And Obadiah walks up and he's super excited.

He's like, hey man, you're new to heaven.

And so you get there, and he's like, Hey man, what'd you think about my book?

And we don't want you to say, uh, I read Psalms a lot, I read the gospels over and over again.

I never got to it, all right?

That would be an awkward encounter.

So what we want to do is prepare you so that you can make sure when you get to heaven and you meet Nahum and you meet Obadiah and Zephaniah, you can be like, dude, you crushed it.

All right.

I read your book in 2025 at my church, and it was awesome.

Okay.

It was so, so good.

I want everybody to take their phones out for me.

And what I want you to do is I want you to take a picture of this QR code that's gonna be on the screen because we want to put some resources in your hands because we're gonna go through four of the minor prophets, the 12 of them over the next four weeks in the month of October.

But we're gonna ask you to read all of the minor prophets on your own.

And on this website here, there are two Bible reading plans that will take you through all of the minor prophets.

Now you're like, 12 books?

That's a lot.

I haven't read a book in a long time.

Let me just tell you, they're minor in size, not minor in importance.

They're really short.

I promise you, it's not that hard to do.

All right.

And so it guides you through this.

In addition, we have got four videos put out by the Bible Project, which I cannot more highly recommend to you.

Anything the Bible Project does, I totally think you need to download it, watch it, enjoy it.

It's got overview videos in a very creative way over what all four of the books that we're gonna be walking through are about.

So this is a great resource for you.

Again, I want to encourage you to read all of the minor prophets, but today we're gonna talk about the first one, which is the name Habakkuk.

Habakkuk is an interesting one.

I actually picked it first because it's different than all the other minor prophets.

You see, the way the minor prophets work is that typically God gives some word to a prophet, and then that prophet gives that word to the people.

So at some point, he's gonna say these words, thus says the Lord, and he's gonna give them the judgment or give them the warning or give them the message.

But in the book of Habakkuk, it's not like that.

Instead of seeing God's words to the prophet, to the people, what we instead see is the prophet Habakkuk's words up to God.

You're gonna get like a peek into his journal, where he's writing out his honest, raw emotions and thoughts, and we're gonna see how he talks to God, gives us some insight into how kind of relationship God desires and God would allow us to have with him.

The the name Habakkuk is an interesting one because we actually don't know anything about Habakkuk except for this book.

And in this book, in the book, it talks about his name, which in the Hebrew means two different things: it means wrestler and embrace.

Wrestler and embrace.

And what you're gonna see in a story is that Habakkuk starts off wrestling with God, and by the end of the book, it leads him to embracing God.

I got a little confession to make to you.

I grew up loving wrestling.

Any other folks out there that maybe love wrestling going up, okay?

Secret wrestling folks fans.

I mean, I loved it.

Like I was so into wrestling, you have no idea.

Like I mean, my brother would all the time, we would break beds because we would basically go and we'd act like we were on top of the turnbuckle and boom, you know, kind of giving the little the I mean, we would act it all out.

We had the figures and we would do stuff.

One of the greatest moments of my life, 1988 or 1999, I'm not positive which one it was, but my dad took me to go see Hulk Hogan wrestle for WrestleRamba at the summit down in Houston.

It was absolutely, I mean, I remember it like it was yesterday.

It was so real to me.

It was such an amazing thing.

I was excited when I looked up on Netflix looking for something to watch.

I saw that there was this documentary that showed you the behind the scenes of wrestling.

And I'm gonna be honest with you, I only got one episode in.

I've never watched it again, and I'm still a little bit traumatized from that experience.

It showed, on the one hand, how athletic these guys are, how they put their bodies on the line each and every single night, and really the physical specimens that they are, but it also showed the dark side of wrestling.

It showed the fact that they always, no matter what, have to be on when the cameras are rolling.

It showed how if you have a character who's a big deal in the wrestling world, but then all of a sudden the producer decides he no longer fits where they're wanting to go, then he basically just gets discarded and kind of thrown out.

I know, I know, and I've known for a long time that wrestling is not real, that it's fake.

But it crushed me to see how unreal that it is, to see the choreographed nature of all of the different things.

And I'm just gonna tell you, when I was growing up, you could not have convinced me that it wasn't real.

I remember even after I was told that it was fake, for years, I'm like, nope, they're lying, there's no way.

I was so vested in that experience.

I mean, I'm just talking Hulk Hogan, Andre the Giant, Randy Michelman, Savage, right?

I had on my wall growing up a picture of Michael Jordan and the Steiner brothers.

I mean, it was like, that's who I wanted to be with my life.

I mean, it was totally Stone Cold Steve Austin.

Are you kidding me?

Like, I'm just all of those guys just brought so much emotion as I watched.

And no matter the fact that I knew that it wasn't real, to me, it felt real in every way.

Okay, now that I got it off my chest, I can continue the message.

What I want to talk to you about today is not wrestling that has prescripted outcomes.

I don't want to talk to you about wrestling that has choreographed moods to end up with the conclusion that has already been predetermined.

I want to talk to you about a prophet who is real, who is raw, and who wrestles with his God.

And it shows us something pretty interesting things.

One, that God is okay being wrestled with, and even shows us how we're supposed to do it.

Look at Habakkuk chapter one.

Let's begin reading in verse one.

It says the oracle that Habakkuk the prophet saw.

Oh Lord, how long shall I cry for help and you will not hear?

Or cry to you violence and you will not save.

Why do you make me see iniquity and why do you idly look at wrong?

Destruction and violence are before me, strife and contention arise.

So the law is paralyzed, and justice never goes forth.

For the wicked surround the righteous, so justice goes forth perverted.

I want to give you three things about wrestling with God.

Number one, are you wrestling with doubt?

Are you wrestling with doubt?

If so, here's what you need to do.

You need to get honest with God.

Are you wrestling with doubt?

If so, you need to get honest with God.

Look at verses two through four again.

Counterback is questions, verse two.

How long?

Verse three, why?

Why do you look idly at wrong?

That's not an prayer, that's an interrogation.

This is not Sunday school answers.

We just act like everything's great, but it's not.

This is raw God, where are you?

Honesty.

He's doubting whether God sees, he's doubting whether God is active, he's doubting whether God is present in the situation.

This is a man who has reached the end of his breaking point and he's laying it all out before his God.

Have you ever been there?

Are you there right now?

This kind of hits different in 2025.

Look at your news feed, you begin to look at your social media feed.

What do you see?

You see another church has a shooting, somebody drives their car into the building, sets the place on fire, and tries to kill people.

See another school shooting.

Guess what?

The government shut down, and it's the other people's fault.

How many times have we seen that play itself out over and over again?

Or maybe you see some other senseless tragedy, and it just makes zero sense, and you find yourself like Kabaki.

God, where are you?

Like it'd be a good time for you to show up right now.

Maybe for some of you it's more personal.

You've been praying that God would do healing and work in your marriage for the last three years, and it's not any better.

Maybe you've been praying that the treatments that would have been experimental would be successful in your mom's cancer.

And guess what?

You just heard the report that they were no longer gonna continue the treatments that they weren't working.

You've been begging for the miracle, you've been claiming the miracle, you've been doing all the things that you've been told about getting your breakthrough and your moment and your all the things, but guess what?

Your job is no different than it was before, and you feel like you're praying up to God and it's going straight to voicemail.

He's not answering the call.

I love what Habakkuk does.

It doesn't start with God, you are sovereign and you are good, but I got some stuff to talk to you about.

No, no, no, no.

There's no theological disclaimer, there's no spiritual small talk, it's just raw, unfiltered.

God, what are you doing?

And why are you doing this?

Here's the shocking part God doesn't rebuke him, he engages with it.

Habakkuk is giving you permission to be real with your God.

This is not the only time we see this in the Bible.

Job did it, Elijah did it, David did it, Moses did it, even Jesus did it.

He was in the garden and he's like, I don't want to do this.

But if you want me to do it, I'll follow your will to be done.

You need to understand, God would rather have your honest questions than your fake worship.

He is not threatened by your doubts.

In fact, he might respect your authenticity more than he will your pretense.

So if you're in the middle of one of those seasons, here's my advice to you: get it out.

Don't hold it in.

Don't hold back, you be real before your God.

He can handle it, he can handle you, and he can handle whatever it is that you're upset about.

Wrestle with God through your doubt.

Don't run away because you can't understand him.

Wrestle with him so that you can be like Habakkuk and go on a journey where that wrestling eventually leads you to embracing.

Habakkuk gets brutally honest.

But what I want you to see is the response from God, maybe the most shocking passage in all of Scripture.

Look at what it says beginning in verse 5.

It says, 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.

The Chaldeans is another name for the Babylonians.

Uh, we know the Babylonians from history, but let's just see what the scripture here says about the Chaldeans and the Babylonians.

It says, That bitter and hasty nation who march through the breadth of the earth to seize dwellings not their own.

They are dreaded and fearsome, their justice and dignity go forth from themselves.

Their horses are swifter than leopards, more fierce than the evening wolves, their horsemen press proudly on, their horsemen come from afar, they fly like an eagle swift to devour.

They all come for violence, all their faces forward, they gather captives like sand, at kings they scoff, and at rulers they laugh.

They laugh at every fortress, but they pile up earth and take it.

Then they sweep by like the wind and go on.

Guilty men whose own might is their God.

Here's what he says.

Okay, big boy, if you're gonna come and lay it all out before me, let me tell you what I'm gonna do.

I'm gonna get a nation that's ten times worse than you, and I'm gonna use them to be the answer to your prayer.

And here's what Habakkuk's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, that's not what I asked for.

I didn't want that.

That's not what I'm what I'm looking for.

Second thing I want you to see when it comes to wrestling with God, number two, wrestling, are you wrestling with injustice?

You gotta trust God's process.

Are you wrestling with injustice?

You gotta trust God's process.

You gotta understand something.

The Babylonians, the Chaldeans mentioned here aren't just another nation.

They're brutal, they're pagan, they're more wicked than Judah.

It's like God saying, You think your country has problems?

Let me show you a country way worse than you.

They're gonna come fix your problems.

How does that work?

Alec Garalsik is um uh he's my pest guy.

He he he runs Nomo Pest, okay?

Which you should hire him just because his name's Nomo Pest.

All right, that's pretty cool, all right?

But Alec, uh, a couple of months ago, I called him up and I'm like, dude, I got a problem.

I I'm seeing these bugs in my house.

I don't really know exactly what they are, but I don't think I like them.

And I and I'm pretty sure that it's not the good one.

And so uh sure enough, I had evidence, the potential evidence of termites.

So I called Alec.

I'm like, man, what do I need to do?

So Alec comes over and kind of walks me through the whole plan and does the whole treatment at the house and all that kind of stuff, and it's great.

Haven't had any issues with it since.

However, if Alec would have come up to me and been like, hey man, I got a plan to fix your situation.

Here's what it's gonna look like.

I'm gonna bomb your house and we're gonna get rid of the termites.

Not like put a fogger, like like put a bomb in your house and blow your house up.

It would clearly fix the termite problem, but it would also cause more damage and it wouldn't really be helpful.

If the solution can't be worse than the problem, that's what Habakkuk feels like.

He feels like God is saying, Hey, I'm gonna deal with your termite problem by bombing the land.

Like I'm gonna do something which doesn't make any sense to you.

So what we see is at the end of chapter one, verse 12, all the way through 17, he's getting his complaint out again.

He's kind of letting it here I go, I'm getting it all out.

And then he moves to chapter two, verse one.

There's a huge shift.

He says, I will take my stand at my watch post and station myself on the tower and look out to see what he will say to me and what I will answer concerning my complaint.

After Habakkuk vents everything, he does something that we rarely do.

He stops talking and he starts listening.

He says, I'm gonna stand at my watch and I'm gonna see what God says.

He's not storming off in a huff.

He's not giving God the silent treatment.

He's saying, Okay, God, I've said my peace.

Now I'm gonna shut my mouth and I'm gonna let you respond.

Please hear me.

We can have a relationship with God that lets us get all of it out.

But wrestling with God requires both honesty and patience.

And when we're finally quiet, I think that is when God begins to remind us.

Hey man, I see things that you don't see in this.

I'm jumping on a plane after the service here today, and um, anytime I'm on a plane and I'm in the uh uh window seat, one of the things I enjoy doing is just kind of flipping up the the deal there and being able to look out and see the terrain below, particularly if I'm ever flying like in a mountainous region.

Uh I've driven on the mountains just hundreds of times.

Uh and whenever you drive in the mountains, like I mean, even roads that I like know and I'm familiar with, you still kind of like, I just feel like it's tense.

Like you can, you know, you're just kind of like you turn the radio down a little bit, everybody needs to be quiet in the back.

And let's just kind of like, I kind of need to concentrate, I need to think clearly because it feels like when you're driving in the mountains that these turns come out of nowhere, like it makes zero sense whatsoever.

And then all of a sudden it feels like, oh, I'm in an unsafe situation, or even if I know what's coming, and maybe the it feels like it's hard to always judge the speed, and it feels random, it feels chaotic, it feels like there's no one thought this thing through whenever you do the turns when you're driving in the mountains.

But whenever you have the ability to be at 30,000 feet and you're sitting in the window and you look out, you kind of look and you're like, Oh, I see how it goes.

I can see how it winds over here, I can see why it needs to go this direction, I can see why it goes over here, and I just and I and I see the whole picture, I can see where we're going.

And guess what?

All of the chaos down on the ground looks totally calm whenever you're at 30,000 feet.

That's exactly how God views your situation.

You're worried about the turn, and God's like, oh, you're exactly where you need to be.

You're exactly in the spot that I want you to be.

Because see, I know what's about to happen over here, and then I know what's about to happen over here, and what's happening over here, and therefore, as a result of that, you're gonna end up over here.

You're perfect, you're great.

And so, what God is asking and calling us to do is to believe that he sees the beginning and the end, the cause and the effect, the ultimate purpose behind every seemingly random turn in our lives.

And here's what he responds.

Look at this bombshell statement in verse 2.

And the Lord answered me, write the vision, make it plain on tablets so that he may run who reads it.

Translation Hey, big boy, you got all your issues out, you got all your complaints out.

I want you to sit down, I want you to write something because you're about to go from a place of fear and doubt to a place of confidence, and I want to make sure you're about to run.

Before you were scared, now you're about to run.

Write it down, buddy.

This is what I'm about to do.

This is what it looks like to wrestle with me.

In verse 3, he says, 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.

You might recognize that phrase that's quoted three times in the New Testament.

It's quoted in the book of Romans.

That's in my personal time with the Lord.

I'm reading through Romans, I just read it.

It's the theme of the book of Romans, where it tells us that the righteous they don't live by sight, they don't live by feelings, they don't live by circumstances or understanding, they live by faith.

And faith isn't believing that God will do what you want Him to do.

Faith is believing that God will do what is right even when you can't see how it's gonna work.

This is what it means to live and trust in God's process.

There's two aspects of this.

One, you gotta trust God's plan.

You need to understand something.

We're playing checkers, he's playing chess.

Checkers, you see the board, you know exactly what's going on, you know what your move is gonna be, you know what their move is gonna be.

They have one or two options, maybe that's about it.

What happens whenever somebody's really good at chess?

They're playing a game and they're playing five steps ahead of you, and you don't realize that's what's happening.

It may look like temporarily the other opponent is winning just so that he can set you up to put the kill shot.

Please understand something, folks.

We're playing checkers, God's playing chess.

He sees way more than we can see.

In light of that, we've seen in the Bible he uses Pharaoh's stubbornness to display his power, he used Judas's betrayal to accomplish salvation, he used Rome's crucifixion method to defeat death itself.

God specializes in using broken people and broken systems to accomplish perfect purposes.

God's not limited to only using good people because there are no good people.

Sometimes God will do things that don't make any sense and that you may not even like.

Make no mistake about it, it doesn't.

Mean that he's wrong.

You gotta trust his plan.

Second thing though, you gotta trust his timing.

Look at verse 3 again.

Still the vision awaits its appointed time.

Not the preferred time, not your urgent time.

The appointed time.

Abraham waited 25 years for Isaac.

Joseph, we just talked about him.

He waited 13 years in slavery and in prison before he got to rule.

David had to hide in caves before he became the king.

The promise was certain, but the timing was God's.

Faith is that gap between God said it and I get to see it.

Sometimes that's a small gap.

A lot of times that's a long time.

And we've got a choice to make in that moment.

Am I gonna choose cynicism, which says this?

God can't and God won't fix this.

Or am I gonna choose faith, which says this?

God sees what I see, but he also sees a thousand things that I can't see.

And I'm gonna choose, in the midst of the situation, to trust, to believe in him.

You know what's interesting in this moment, if you look at the end of chapter two, you begin to see that God references the Chaldeans, the Babylonians, and he speaks judgment and woe against them.

You know, a lot of times when you're in the middle of stuff, here's what you begin to think.

Maybe God can't see what's going on.

Maybe you're in a situation right now where you're watching your industry collapse, you're watching your kids make terrible decisions, you're watching injustice flourish, you're wondering when's God gonna step in.

That's when you gotta make that choice.

Either I'm gonna say God can and he won't, I'm gonna be cynicism, or I'm gonna choose faith.

No, no, no, God sees it.

It doesn't mean he's okay with what they're doing, but it does mean he's gonna use it and potentially accomplish his purposes, so at the end of the day, that's not your problem.

You just trust me.

You're wrestling with him.

Look at what the end of the chapter says in chapter verse 20.

It's the same thing that takes place at the beginning of chapter one, or excuse me, but verse one of chapter two.

It says, But the Lord is in his holy temple.

Let all the earth keep silence before him.

You can get it all out! And you need to.

But you haven't arrived at that place until you get to the point where you've said so much that you just keep your mouth shut instead of your holy god.

And you ultimately say this, and I don't understand you! I don't even agree with you.

This posture leads to the final point I want to make today about wrestling with God, and that is this are you wrestling with difficulties?

You worship anyway.

Are you wrestling with difficulties?

You worship anyway.

Chapter three is just absolutely beautiful.

What you see is that at the beginning of chapter one, Habakkuk started with questions.

You kind of see him sort of move along the way to reluctant trust, but then he's gonna show us something that will change your life in chapter three.

How to worship your way through your difficulty.

Most of us, when we think of worship, we think of worship backwards.

You come to church, you come into the services, and you worship because you had a good week.

You worship because things went well.

And so basically, it's like I'm gonna respond to the goodness of God.

Of course, there's an aspect of that.

What I think he's trying to show us in this passage is that worship isn't the result of blessing, worship is the path through difficulty.

He moved from chapter one saying, God, why are you doing this?

to chapter three, being like, Let me tell you about my God.

He worshipped his way from wrestling to leading to a place of embracing.

I want you to look and see what it says that he talks about.

He kind of talks, starts talking about his character instead of his methods.

Look at what it says in verse one of chapter three.

It says the prayer of Habakkuk the prophet according to Shiganaf.

Oh Lord, I have heard the report of you and your work.

O Lord, do I fear?

In the midst of the years, revive it.

In the midst of the years, make it known in wrath.

Remember mercy.

God came from Tamon and the holy one from Mount Peran.

His splendor covered the heavens, and the earth was full of his praise.

What I want you to understand of, look at the end of verse 19.

It says, To the choir master with stringed instruments.

Look at the beginning of verse one of chapter three, a prayer of Bakkuk the prophet, according to Shiganoth.

The word shiganoth means an overture, meaning this.

We're about to sing.

All of chapter three is like the sheet music for the everybody to know what they're supposed to do, for the band to know how they're supposed to play, for the singers, the worship leaders to be able to lead, and for the congregation to be able to sing.

This is the content of the psalm that we're singing.

So all that you are reading here is actually a worship response back to God.

And what I want you to see Habaki doing, he's not trying to slack himself up.

He's not doing positive self-talk.

He's doing something much more powerful.

He's actually aligning his emotions, which we saw at the beginning of chapter one, are real and raw with eternal truth.

He's singing his soul back to reality.

He's singing and worshiping and praying to match his feelings to what he knows is actually true.

He had learned along the way that God is good even when his methods are mysterious, that God is sovereign even when his circumstances are chaotic, that he is faithful even when his timing is unclear.

And so therefore, he is singing his way to believing what he knows to be true.

Look at what it says at the end of verse 3.

It says, Selah.

You see that?

Look with me again in verse nine.

It says Selah.

Look at me again in verse 13.

It says Selah.

What does that mean?

Don't rush through this.

Let us sit for a second.

Don't move on to the next thing.

Here in United City, at our 11:30 service each week, we have what we call song one.

Song one is kind of typically more of an upbeat song.

Uh it's one that's kind of meant to kind of wake you up, kind of engage you, try to help you uh be able to be uh a part of the worship service and all of that.

Some of you have never heard song one because you've never been here at 11:30.

We know who you are, all right?

Just so you know, we start services every week at 11:30, all right?

Right on time.

And so some of you walked in halfway through song one, you're like, that's that song's pretty cool.

Yeah, it was cool at the beginning too, all right?

And some of you never heard it, okay?

You just showed up for song four, all right?

You're you're just here, right?

But it's great.

But but song one, all right, what happens is song one is like a battle.

Because you're walking into the word service, and you know you may have gotten a fight on the way up here, or maybe you've got all these distractions, you got a bunch of couple emails, or some notifications, or something that kind of your mind began to get enveloped with all of that, or perhaps you've got something you gotta do after this afternoon, and so your mind's kind of thinking towards that, or maybe you've got something heavy that you're weighing through, and so you're kind of coming here to the service, and you chose to come to church for a reason.

My assumption is to hear from God and to be able to meet him, but there's this battle going all along on song one because all of song one is basically who's gonna win today.

The song is upbeat, the song is engaging, the song is all of that, but at the end of the day, you're just trying to get all these distractions out.

So you're just constantly trying to shut off the distractions, move them out of the way, and try to somewhat by the end of song one, somewhat be mentally engaged in the midst of that.

And then we get selah.

Take a deep breath.

Let's pause for a second.

Then comes song two.

This morning it was thank you, Jesus, for the blood.

In the midst of song two, what happens?

We begin to all of a sudden now have our hearts to begin to see these lyrics that we're now singing, and we begin to all of a sudden realize, oh, those things are true.

I wasn't thinking about the blood of Jesus when I came in here.

I was thinking about the problems that I've got to deal with.

But now all of a sudden, as I'm listening to this, I'm like, this makes sense.

Your emotions begin to kind of maybe start shifting a little bit from anxiety to all of a sudden being like, no, I mean, the blood of Jesus is kind of a big deal.

Like it kind of doesn't matter.

And all of a sudden you're you begin to kind of feel yourself kind of shift a little bit, and then guess what?

Say la.

Take a deep breath.

Soak it in for a second.

Then you get to song three.

Song three is like the banger song, all right?

It's like the song like you all know, and you're like, it's gonna be so great, it's gonna hit, it's gonna be total, it's gonna slap, it's gonna be perfect, it's gonna be good.

Did I use that appropriately, by the way?

Slap, is that okay?

Okay.

I know I negated it by asking the question, but still it's fine.

You slaps, you know, it's gonna hit, it's gonna be good, it's gonna be great, all those things, okay?

And so all of a sudden you're pretty excited about that song three, because guess what?

Now, all of a sudden now you begin to feel emotion.

For some of you, that emotion can go like this.

You basically have your hands in your pocket the whole time, and now all of a sudden you just do this.

Your hands are out of your pocket.

It's about to get crazy in here.

You took your hands out of your pocket.

Whoa! For some of you, it may look like this.

For some of you, it may look like this.

For some of you, it may look like this.

Touch down all the way, baby.

Here we go.

At first, you begin to do it and you're kind of like nervous because you don't want somebody to look at you weird and you're gonna be thinking about that.

So you're kind of looking around and somebody looking at me, and then all of a sudden, after a while, here's what you begin to realize I don't care.

I don't care what anybody looks and says about me.

Because I'm not here to worship them and they're not here to worship me.

And then all of a sudden, what happens is that my my heart begins to be able to sing these songs and to sing these lyrics that are come from God's word and that are filled with all of these truths.

And guess what?

All of a sudden, all of the baggage and the circumstances and all the junk that I walked in here with suddenly feel different, yet none of the circumstances changed.

But in the midst of the worship of being brought into the presence of God, my feelings toward those things changed.

I worshiped my way through those difficulties.

And even though I didn't feel it when I started, I feel it as I worship.

Suddenly I begin to have confidence in the God who's like, He's got this.

God's fine.

He's not scared by this, he's not thrown off by any of the stuff that I've got coming to him.

And then what happens ultimately?

We get to that bridge of that main song.

And that bridge is like the killer.

Like it's like it's on, you know what I mean?

Like if you're one of those churches, you'd start running, right?

This is like the time, okay?

Like it's it's and don't run, by the way.

I understand that, but I'm just saying if you were, that's the time you would do it.

It's that moment, okay?

It's that bridge, it's that chorus, it's that recognition of like, man, I am in the presence of a holy God and I love it.

I want you to look at verse 17 in Abak chapter 3, which is the bridge.

It's the moment.

It says, 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, none of that is good.

Modern translation, even if my 401k crashes to zero, even if I lose my house to foreclosure, even if my kids reject everything I've taught them, even if my marriage falls apart, even if my health fails completely, or anything else on your list.

Don't miss, don't miss verse 18.

Yet I will rejoice in the Lord.

I will take joy in the God of my salvation.

God, the Lord is my strength, He makes my feet like the deers, He makes me tread on my high places.

This is worship as warfare, that I will choose to rejoice in the Lord.

I will find joy in the God who saves me.

I am declaring that my happiness, my happiness is not held hostage by your situation or mine.

I'm gonna worship my way to that place.

Man, when I watched wrestling growing up, it was pure entertainment and it was the best.

But can I tell you, whenever you wrestle with God, it's not entertainment, it's how God transforms you.

It's how he changes you, it's how he moves in you.

And you have a choice to make.

You're either gonna wrestle when you have these trials and these doubts and these difficulties or injustices that you see, and you're gonna wrestle with God and say, God, why are you so unfair?

Why do you do this?

And it's gonna lead you away from him, or you're gonna be like Kabak.

You're gonna say, God, why did you do this?

But I'm gonna shut my mouth and I'm gonna listen, and God's gonna show you that I know things that you can't see, and that I do things that you'll never understand, and you need to trust me, and you're gonna look up and you're gonna say, That's my God.

And you're gonna move from the place of wrestling with God to ultimately being in the place where you embrace.

Father in heaven, we come before you and we thank you.

How real, how raw, how true our relationship with you can be.

Whatever stage we may be in today, Lord, I pray that we would worship.

We'd give you glory, we'd give you praise, that you would change the countenance of our hearts even now in these moments.

It's in the name of Jesus that I pray.

Amen.

Thank you so much for joining us this morning.

We can't wait to see you next week for any of our services at 8 30, 10, 1130, or Espanol at one o'clock.