>YOUR EMERGENCY LIGHTS
>
>Old Testament prophet Habakkuk - a man who felt like all the lights 
>had gone out. He was really
>struggling with events that he didn't like - he didn't understand.
>His book opens with him asking a question many of us have asked at 
>one time or another, "How long, O
>Lord?" He was having a hard time waiting for God to
>do what He was going to do. Nothing was going the way Habakkuk had 
>hoped it would.
>
>But his heart has totally changed by the end of the book. In 
>Habakkuk 3:16 he says, "Yet I will wait
>patiently." He's taken hands off and he's finally quit
>trying to tell God how to run things. Now here's where he describes 
>a situation like that stormy
>night, that we've all experienced from time to time, when everything 
>that might
>produce light fails.
>
>Verse 17, "Though the fig tree does not bud and there no grapes on 
>the vines, though the olive crop
>fail and the fields produce no crops..." Now think just
>a minute, in a farming area, this is a description of total 
>disaster. He says, "though there are no
>sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls." OK,
>wait a minute. We're talking the total triumph of Murphy's Law here. 
>Everything that can go wrong
>has gone wrong. Does that sound familiar at all? All
>the reasons for being happy seem to have failed. The lights of joy 
>have gone out.
>
>Though all the external sources of joy have failed, Habakkuk 
>concludes, "Yet I will rejoice in the
>Lord. I will be joyful in God my Savior. The Sovereign
>Lord is my strength." This man of God says, "I've found a source of 
>joy that is totally independent
>of how things are going, totally independent of any
>circumstances. I am anchoring myself to the Sovereign Lord who is 
>totally in charge, whether it
>looks like it or not...on my God who is my Savior in this
>situation...on my Lord who literally is my strength to handle this hard time."
>
>We're talking Murphy-proof joy; a light that stays on when all the 
>external power sources fail. And,
>as a result, "The Sovereign Lord" he says, "enables
>me to go on to the heights." By carrying me through this disastrous 
>time, God has put me on a high
>place where I have the perspective to see the big picture,
>to see my personal situation, my personal history through God's eyes.
>
>So, if your joy is attached to your circumstances, when the storm 
>knocks them out, you'll be in the
>dark. But if your joy is internally generated from an
>unshakable relationship with your awesome, Sovereign Lord, then you 
>have light that will be there
>when every other light fails.
>
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