welcome to gospel in life thank you for joining as we go through this special series of meditations by Tim Keller trusting God and difficult times this new series is meant to encourage you to trust God more deeply and to meditate on his word and what it promises to give you strength and hope in difficult times and now here’s today’s meditation for our last study on the book of Habakkuk we’re going to look at maybe the most famous verses in the book chapter 3 near the end though the fig tree tis not bud and there be no grapes on the vines though the olive crop fail and the fields produce no food though there are no sheep in the pen – no cattle in the stalls yet I will rejoice in the Lord I will be joyful in God my Savior now this is very famous because here you have Habakkuk talking about rejoicing in the Lord even when the circumstances around him are all basically falling apart in an economy like Israel’s in an ancient society have no fig tree fruit no grapes on the vines no olive crop the fields producing no food no sheep in the pen no cattle in the sauce this isn’t just a bad year I mean that’s a that’s a terrible time that’s a time of death it’s a time of famine that’s a that’s a awful time and yet he says I can still be joyful in the Lord how you do that one of the most moving pieces of church history I’ve ever read comes from 1851 where there was an English missionary named Allan Gardner he was shipwrecked with a number of other people on a very remote uninhabited island just off the tip of South America and they died on that island one at a time one at a time and if all we can tell he was the last one alive and he kept a journal that was found right next to his body and the very last entry was a quote from Psalm 34 verse 10 the Young Lions Douce luxe do lack and suffer hunger but they that seek the Lord shall not lack any good thing and the very last thing he wrote in his journal as he was dying and as he was dying all around him with people dying all around him and as he knew he would never see his family again he said I am overwhelmed with a sense of the goodness of God so here’s a man dying of starvation body broken all hopes dashed he wanted to be a missionary he never got to be a missionary and he says I’m overwhelmed with the goodness of God now you and I infer the goodness of God from the good things that are happening to us I think that’s how we do it when we say Oh God’s been very good to me we mean there are certain good things happening and then we infer the goodness of God but Alan Gardner must have gotten directly in contact with that goodness because there were no good circumstances everything was wrong the fig tree hadn’t butted there was no olives there was no grapes there was no cattle no she nothing and yet I’m overwhelmed overwhelmed with a sense of the glory of God how did he do that how does Habakkuk say to do it there’s three ideas even in these these verses repeating remembering and rejoicing repeating verse 18 I will rejoice in the Lord I will be joyful and God my Savior there’s a repetition and I don’t think we should forget about that if we’re trying to really rejoice in the Lord get in contact with his goodness directly we have to have practices in our lives we needed to pray to Him every day or maybe twice a day or maybe three times a day repetition is extraordinarily important why do we have four Gospels well why not just have one gospel I’ll tell you why because the repetition shows us Jesus over and over and over again somewhat different perspective each gospel goes deeper and so there’s a need for repetition there’s a need for Bible memory there’s a need for regular prayer there’s a need for daily hours of Prayer there’s a need for repetition because we are creatures that work through habit so first repeat secondly remembering the the rest of chapter three I only read you a little piece of chapter three most of chapter three is going back over the history of Israel and all the things that God has done and one of the ways to get in touch with the goodness of God when there’s no nothing happening right now in your life that seems good is to remind yourself of all the other things he’s done for you but lastly rejoice in the Lord I don’t know what that means I think it means praise not just think about the good things he’s done I think what must have happened to Alan Gardner there it was he was getting in touch with who God is he couldn’t say oh thank you for all the things that are happy good happening there good things that are happening because they they weren’t happening but he was actually thinking about God’s holiness and His grace and his love for us in Jesus Christ he was praising I do think a lot of us in our Paralyzed do an awful lot of petition and maybe even a lot of confession how much time do you spend praising how much the time do you spend rejoicing in God for who he is in himself so repetition through repetition remember and rejoice and praise Him and you can get directly into contact with the goodness of God and now here’s Tim and Kathy killer for a short time of qat on today’s meditation listening to you talk about that it just reinforced in me how big a deal circumstances are as far as our sense of God’s goodness to us we really do take our understanding of whether he’s been good to us based on whether our circumstances are good and if our circumstances are bad we’re begging him to change those circumstances I’m gonna ask you a question in a minute but I couldn’t help but think and I hope everybody will write this down the eulogy that Jonathan Evans gave for his mother at his mother’s you can google it Jonathan Evans Evy ans eulogy and there’s there’s the whole thing there you can read it all and I would encourage you to do that you can listen to whole but there’s a two-minute clip right at the top where he says that God was trying to teach him that just because I didn’t answer your prayer your way doesn’t mean I didn’t answer your prayer anyway we often don’t see God’s answers to prayer because we’re looking for something else we’re looking for him to fix this change that alter that change our circumstances somehow and we don’t see the answer that he’s actually giving how does one develop the capacity to see the answers that God is giving and not the answers that we’re looking for well John Newton has a line in one of his letters in which he says using slightly archaic language to us everything is needful that he sends nothing can be needful that he withholds now I turned that over the years as I’ve meditated on it into a statement that I think helps even though some people resist it but and so do i but here’s that here’s the statement God gives you what you would have asked for if you knew everything he knows now I think when logically that is hard to refute that if we had the perspective that God had if he could see the end from the beginning we could see all hearts if we knew everything that was all the contingencies that therefore what he was giving you was what you would have asked for that he actually always answers your prayer as you would have made it if you knew everything he knows and yet I find that that’s still on some occasions pretty hard for even me to swallow even though I formulated it out of John Newton’s principle so I think that’s the way to do it is to say in some ways he doesn’t answer prayers I mean obviously he you know he didn’t answer Jesus Prayer directly when he said let this cup pass from me but in other ways you answer he just said no yes they know isn’t it right and yet at the same time we all have a when we pray we not only have a something we we think will give us what we want but we also have the want and God is saying look I will give you the your heartfelt desires but not necessarily in the way you want Ashley you sort of I didn’t bring this up but that you’ve finished out Jonathan Evans thought in that eulogy he’s doing for his mother because see he goes on to say please Google about John Ryuji he goes on to say cuz he’s nothing Evan’s Evan’s not Edwards organs he says it so much better than I’m gonna be able to quote he says there’s only ever two answers to the prayer that you made his mother was dying that there’s only ever two aunt ways that prayer could have been answered either she was gonna be healed where she was gonna be healed either she was gonna be alright well she was gonna be alright she was gonna be with friends or she’s gonna be friends you know it we want it to be the first way our time our place you know our circumstances but the only way God answers prayers is with what we ask for or something better than we could have imagined [Music] if you found today’s meditation encouraging please subscribe below and be sure to share it with a friend to encourage them as well and if you’d like to hear more teachings by Tim Keller you can listen to new sermons every week at gospel and live.com slash podcast thanks again for watching gospel and life [Music]