Chronic Guilt

You are listening to a message from Thrive Community Church, a church located in Southwest Florida. For more info, visit us at thrive-fl.org. So we're in our second week of spring cleaning. And today we're going to be exploring how we can kind of clean out anxiety. Anybody feeling anxious? Hmm? A little fearful? Wondering what's going on? Things are topsy-turvy. I think anxiety is kind of like the dust bunnies in my house. I don't know if any of you have had those, but where they just seem to accumulate. It comes back again and again. And then all of a sudden, if I open the door and there's a breeze, all of a sudden they stir up and they kind of move around. And then I finally see them again. And during times of stress and strain and upset, it's like this COVID-19 pandemic has been causing. It's almost like God is taking us as a little snow globe and shaking up. And we get to see all that debris kind of flying around and going like, ah, there it is. We didn't see it for a while, but when times get tough, all of a sudden our anxieties are present. And we're going to be looking at how we can rid ourselves of that anxiety by learning to wait on the Lord. That is a cliche phrase, and I know people talk about it all the time. But what do I really know about waiting on the Lord? I can talk about it and throw it out there. But I think we're going to learn that the depth of what that really means in the Bible from a passage, as we read through the prophet Habakkuk chapter two. And Habakkuk writes, I will take my stand at my watch post and will station myself on the tower and look out to see what he will say to me and what I will answer concerning my complaint. And the Lord answered me, write the vision, make it plain on tablets so he may run who reads it. For still the vision waits. It's 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 faith. Waiting on the Lord. What does that mean? What is it really about? I think the only time I really learn about what waiting on the Lord is when I actually have to wait. And from Habakkuk today, I think we're going to learn in this book four different ways to deepen the understanding of what we mean by waiting in the Lord and what God is doing during a time of waiting, how he is doing some spring cleaning in our lives. So we're going to look at this phrase and we'll learn from this that we can learn to wait on the Lord patiently. Perspectively, obediently, and then theocentrically. We'll take these one at a time. First of all, patiently. You know, when everything is not making sense, when you're confused by the different opinions and conflicting ideas that are flowing around you, and when you're not quite sure what's right, what's up, what's down. When life is perplexing, and God doesn't seem to be doing the things that you thought he would do. It's not straightforward in your way. I think you understand what Habakkuk was going through. You see, the book of Habakkuk starts with Habakkuk looking at his society, his culture, the people of God in Israel at the time, and he complains to God about all the injustice he sees, and all the issues that are going on, and God responds to Habakkuk and his cry about the distortions and confusion in the society, and God says, Oh, great, yes, I will do something about that Habakkuk. I'm going to take the godless nation of Babylon and bring it to clean house among God's own people, and I'm going to bring them in, this godless nation, and take you off into captivity. Habakkuk goes like, Huh? Wait, what? How is that? You're going to take a more unjust culture to work? He's confused by what God is doing. Much like I think some of us are kind of confused as to what is all going on right now in our world. And so Habakkuk then responds with this passage that we just read, and he is trying to figure out, God, how are you going to be using a godless nation to do this, and how is this going to work out for your godly purposes in this world? And we learn Habakkuk is going to tell us the best thing we can do right now is, even if it seems slow, the passage says, wait for it. Be patient. Now you might be saying to yourself, well, I wish I could be patient, you know, but as if patience is some kind of genetic trait that some people have and some people don't. But according to the Bible, patience is not something you have naturally. No one is naturally patient. Rather, patience is an inherent trait, not an inherent trait, excuse me, that a few lucky people have. It is a practice, a disposition that one learns and God teaches. Patience comes, actually, from a few things that we clean out of our lives to allow other things to come in. And the first thing is that we're cleaning out my sense, your sense, of omniscience over what's going on, and have instead an attitude of humility. Now, two diffe...