Joy and Strength (Christian life and music)

I recently finished teaching a 6-week study on Habakkuk from Dannah Gresh's book. Here are a few takeaways that I gleaned. Habakkuk was a prophet of God. He seems to start out self-focused but eventually comes around to aim his focus on God instead. This, I believe, is the daily choice we all face throughout our faith walk with Christ. Will we choose to let the cares of this world affect us, have more import in our souls than Christ? Or will we choose to trust in Him no matter what? Habakkuk had a relationship with God. That's where it all starts for each of us. How we respond in and to that relationship is entirely up to us. Pause and think on that! The God of the universe, the One holding everything together, deigns to have a relationship with us! And most are wandering through this life without knowing Him at all. I say wandering, because if they are without Christ, they are lost. No exceptions. Habakkuk learns to cling to God. This means that he took his eyes off

I see it in the faces of those around me everywhere I go - even the masks can't hide it. People have been broken by the events of the past eighteen months.  They are worn out.  Humbled. How can this be good? When we reach the end of ourselves, where do we turn?  I am in the habit of turning to Jesus as the Source of my strength.  His strength remains the same during a pandemic.  Always. But for those who do not have the Lord, where do they go?  Stripped of all social gatherings, we were left to ourselves and those we live with.  If we relied on the bottle before, we turned to it even more. If we relied on reasoning and figuring out, we were stumped.  How do you figure out a pandemic, all of its ramifications, or its end date? Frankly I don't know how people do life without  the Lord.  We weren't built to "do life" apart from God. We were created to live in communion with our Creator.  But the damage from the fall left us (wrongly) thinking that we are on our own;

God's plans for us are good.  He promises us this. Christians love to quote this verse from Jeremiah.  We all want to know that our future is a good one. But what does God deem "good?"   I have had so many trials and tribulations in my life.  If I were to freeze-frame each one, they would hardly look like they were part of a "good" plan. We have been mislead to think that the American Dream is God's good plan for our lives.  If that were all there was to it, then how would the world discern between those who belong to Christ from those who are in the world?  If God is there only to "make all our dreams come true," then we're under a false belief.  That is not what God means when He talks about His good plan for our lives. Sometimes, the truly "good life" looks worse than what others have.  For example, did Paul believe in God's "good plan" for him when he was beaten, shipwrecked, going hungry, left for dead, beaten, thro