Trembling Faith: Trusting God in a distressed world with Taylor Turkington - Podcast Episode 148

Introducing Taylor Turkington and Her Book on Habakkuk

Welcome to the Got Questions podcast. On occasion, we like to invite a guest, either an expert on a topic or an author of a book, and that's what this episode is gonna be. Joining me today is Taylor Turkington.

She's the author of Trembling Faith, How a Distressed Prophet Helps Us Trust God in a Chaotic World. So Taylor, welcome to the show today.

So glad to be here, Shay. Thanks for having me.

It's awesome. When I read your book, one of the things that interested me most about it is that it's on the book of Habakkuk, which is probably my favorite book in the Minor Prophets. And just as a funny story, my wife at one time had a fish that she named Habakkuk.

So whenever I say the book of Habakkuk, I have to be careful to remind myself of the correct pronunciation. But Habakkuk, I think, is such a interesting book with so many things that can apply to us and questions that we have and struggles that we have in our lives.

So Taylor, why don't you tell our audiences a little bit about yourself and what led you to write Trembling Faith?

Yeah, thank you. Yeah, I live in Portland, Oregon with my family, and I direct a ministry called Bible Equipping. So a lot of my work revolves around how do we help women study and teach the Bible? But if I was gonna draw a timeline of my life and show you where things got really hard, there'd be a little dot there that said, when I ended up in the book of Habakkuk.

Because through my life, God has consistently comforted me.

Through the book of Habakkuk.

That doesn't mean I always understood everything that was going on, because it began even in my teen years when I was struggling to understand the chaos of the world and how things were broken and unjust.

And then later in life, when I was struggling with my health and in the hospital, wondering when I would get out. Or times when I had leaders making decisions that were really unhealthy and impacting my family.

All of these times when I was feeling like, God, what are you doing? I felt like there was a conversation with God in the book of Habakkuk. And he led me to this place of understanding how to walk in faith in the midst of a chaotic world.

Habakkuk’s Lament and the Call to Trust God

That's excellent. If I were to try to summarize the book of Habakkuk, I find that it's one of the easier, especially in the Old Testament prophets book to summarize, or chapter one, Habakkuk saying, Lord, there's wickedness all around me.

When are you gonna do something about it? God says, okay, here's what I'm gonna do. Habakkuk responds like, but the people you're gonna bring to judge us are even worse than us. How could he do something like that?

God gives his response. In chapter three is more of Habakkuk saying, Lord, I trust you. I know you're good. And I know you're gonna work it out in the end. So what are some of the aspects you have found in the book of Habakkuk that's really helped you in your walk with Christ?

Yeah, so in this, I thought your summary was great. It's this journey, right? Habakkuk's interacting with God and processing his own faith. And we get to kind of listen in. And at the beginning, there is that lament where it's almost feels scandalous to read it in the scriptures, where he's really saying, God, why have you not done anything yet?

Like if I was gonna read the first couple of verses here, let me turn my page. It says, how long, Lord, must I call for help.

And you do not listen,.

Cry out to you about violence and you do not save. And I think it has given me this understanding that God can hear our honest prayers. That lament is saying, God, you are good and just and right. And this world is not, like there is a discrepancy here.

And rightly so, it's okay to be upset.

And throughout this,.

We see all these different emotions in Habakkuk, fear and anger and sadness, and recognizing that we walk in this world with all of those, I have a four-year-old, so we call them sharp feelings sometimes.

But these hard feelings to deal with, and that God welcomes us into conversation about those things. And even though, like you said, the response to Habakkuk's prayer wasn't what he was expecting, or what he wanted, right?

And yet God still gives him these ideas of the next steps of this is how you walk in faith. The central verse of Habakkuk is that two, four, that vision that God gives of how the righteous live by faith, in contrast to the arrogant, who will not stand in the end, and who are self-dependent, rather than those who throw themselves on the grace of the Lord.

If I were to look at the most frequently asked questions, got questions that we receive, that Habakkuk answers and discuss, one of them would definitely be sort of the, why does God allow evil, injustice, suffering?

And that's something that Habakkuk deals a lot with, with his, both a call for justice, and then also a complaint against injustice, something that we all also struggle with. So if you were to be talking to the prophet Habakkuk right now, how do you think he would answer that question of why does God allow evil, injustice, suffering?

Why God Does Not Fully Explain Suffering

Yeah, and I think what's interesting about the dialogue in this is that I don't think God fully answers the question, and that he doesn't like pull back the curtain and say, Habakkuk, here's the whole understanding of it.

Instead, it's as if he brings Habakkuk to this high point on a hill, and says, look out over all of my big plan. I am the God that ultimately brings justice, Habakkuk. Because in the beginning, Habakkuk is complaining about the injustice in God's people in Judah, and that he's actually gonna bring, God is gonna bring discipline against them, that there is this discipline that they, because they've broken the covenant, so there's gonna be discipline.

And then God later says, yes, he agrees, the people that are bringing discipline, those Babylonians, are doing wrong as well. And there's a song in chapter two, verses six through 20 there, where he says that he's a God who ultimately is going to bring the consequences, the accountability.

And so I think in some ways, like Job, in the book of Job, we don't get the full answer. Instead, God tells us who he is. And like you said, I think chapter three is really Habakkuk's answer of this question of, okay, God, if things are so broken, I know this, I can trust in your character, which is this like fantasy language in the beginning of chapter three, this song where he sings about the power of God and ends with this joy, even if he loses things that he needs.

Did I not answer your question?

I did.

You did, I'm just like, my brain's going through other questions related to how you just responded. Because we just recently did a podcast episode on sort of a, why does God allow suffering? And ultimately that's the, we titled that episode was, the hardest question for us to answer.

Anytime you put a, why does God allow? And I loved how you said, like both in the book of Job, to a large extent, at least as it's recorded, God never explains to Job what was going on behind the scenes.

Same thing in Habakkuk, God doesn't necessarily explain why he's doing it the way he is. He just calls on Habakkuk to trust. And so the whole trusting God when you don't understand why he's doing something certain way, that's a huge question that we get.

And it's something we keep going back to is like this side of eternity. And I don't even know if the next side of eternity, if God's going to explain, answer all the questions we have. But learning to trust in the middle of lament, being able to mourn and grieve something terrible that has happened, something you don't understand, but continuing to trust God.

What have you found? What's the key to being able to do both to, both lament biblically and also can trust God wholeheartedly in the midst of that?

Trembling Faith, Exodus, and Joy in Grief

Yeah, and I think that if we're just gonna, if you were gonna narrow in on that third chapter of Habakkuk there, I've called this, it's a psalm, right? If you guys haven't read Habakkuk recently, it ends with this psalm or song.

And I think that I've called it the song for those who don't get their prayer answered how they want it. Because it's really Habakkuk's response saying, this is what faith looks like when you're grieving and you're afraid and yet still walking by trembling faith.

And it is a recounting through big poetic language of God's salvation in the Exodus. So it's looking back like, look, God is the one who saves.

Look, look, look at his power.

Look at the way he's cared for us. And if you look down, there's this repeated word of salvation throughout that chapter. And it's because they were supposed to be seeing God is the one who saves us. That's what all this power is working in the world.

And we don't look back to the Exodus remembering that our God saves us. We look back to the work of Jesus Christ and say, look, he's a God who saves us. And yet at the same time, Habakkuk is super honest.

He hit verse 16 in the chapter and he says that he is shaking, right? Like he's trembling. His guts are trembling. He's having a physical reaction to the very real emotions of grief and loss and fear.

And that's really good for us to recognize that that's very real in our lives. And that doesn't mean that we aren't walking with God. It doesn't mean that we aren't having faith that sometimes we can have all these emotions and think like, oh, I must not be walking with the Lord anymore.

But that's not true. That's not what we see in these examples. But rather Habakkuk says like we can have full grief, full fear, full anger even, that these are not, things are happening that don't feel just and still walk in faith.

The last verses that it goes after verse 16 there is the most famous ones in Habakkuk. So if our listeners have read Habakkuk, these might be the ones that they remember. It's where it talks about the fig tree doesn't bud and there's no fruit on the vines.

Though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food. Though the flocks appear from the pen and there are no herds in the stall. Yet I will celebrate in the Lord. I'll rejoice in the God of my salvation.

And it says if Habakkuk can say, I will lose a lot and things will get really uncomfortable and unstable. Yet I will not lose the Lord. Therefore I can keep going. And I think to someone who's grieving if they're listening right now, I would say, don't think that the Lord has abandoned you in your grief.

And somehow we know that grief and joy can intermingle.

Now, the verses that you read, it's funny, but I was thinking, and we should probably read those verses because not only are they the most famous verses in the book of Habakkuk, but to me this is verses like that is why you read the Minor Prophets because almost every one of the Minor Prophets has a little jewel like this.

You read to someone, oh, that's beautiful. That must be from Psalms or that must be, that's from the New Testament. Those are the words of Jesus or something like, no, this is Habakkuk, this sort of things.

And then verse 19 even.

Yes, read it.

Sovereign Lord is my strength. He makes my feet like the feet of a deer. He enables me to tread on the heights of ends and so much of book of Habakkuk, I wouldn't say it's depressing, but it's real. This is the stuff, the struggles we deal with in life, but it ends on such a positive note.

It's like God enables me to handle these things in his strength and his power, of course, but he brings me through it and helps me to trust him. It gives me reasons to trust him by how he's shown himself to be mighty and powerful throughout both my life, throughout the scriptures and so forth.

But Habakkuk is such a beautiful book. I can totally tell why you would choose to write a book on it and also with the focus of Trembling Faith. And just to let our listeners know, we'll include some links to where you can find Taylor's book on Trembling Faith, because it's an excellent read.

And it's a topic that a lot of people need to be well-versed on. And Habakkuk is a book that's far too often neglected. So Taylor, as we continue, just give them, what are some other nuggets that you have found in the book of Habakkuk that you think would be encouraging and helpful to people who are going through a struggle similar to what Habakkuk was dealing with?

Justice, Idolatry, and the Earth Filled with God’s Glory

Yeah, no, that's great. Thank you. I think those ones we read at the end are some of the famous, wonderful ones, but I also have really been encouraged by this woe song in the middle. Sometimes we think of woe songs and we're like, oh, we just skim over and keep going.

But it's this song of saying that, if you see people who are doing things that are unjust or mistreating others, or maybe even mistreating you, like you have had people use their power to harm you so that they have more and you have less.

And we've been watching, even you read the news today and you see those things happening. And sometimes we ask, well, who's gonna do something? Like who's gonna hold people accountable? And it's as if the Lord is raising up his hand.

It's like, it's not you. I do that. Like I will hold people accountable who mistreat others. And though it's got some strong language throughout it, it ends in this stanza. So there's five stanzas. Kind of you would think about a song and it comes to the fifth one and it talks about idolatry.

And it talks about how ultimately these things of mistreating other people are rooted in the fact of like, what do we worship? And woe to him who says to wood, wake up, as if it's gonna teach you. And then it goes on to say, it's played with gold.

There's no breath of it in it. I'm in verse 19 of chapter two. And then verse 20, but the Lord is in his holy temple. Let the whole earth be silent in his presence. So it's as if reminding us that if you are in a place where it feels like other people are taking advantage of you and you just don't have any ability to do anything about it.

Kabakic would say, lament, call out to the Lord, but also know God will handle the justice. And if you don't see it in your lifetime, people will either have to stand before him.

Or it will fall on Jesus. And they'll be forgiven.

Because of the work that saved you as well. And that rather we can worship the Lord in his holy temple. He's the one who speaks. He's the one who teaches that the idols that others may follow ultimately don't bring them any good.

And it seems like kind of this bizarre section here, but it's been so encouraging to me. And in the middle of it, it's as if there's this jewel, like you said, and it talks about the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord's glory as the water covers the sea.

So even as God is gonna bring justice on the earth, he's also gonna fill the earth with his glory.

The Character of God in Habakkuk

Yeah, excellent point. And Habakkuk 2 has, the end of chapter three gets a lot of the attention, but there's what are we called jewels or nuggets throughout the book that's like, wow. Not only is, while Habakkuk was dealing with a very different situation than we typically deal with in our personal lives, but so many of the principles apply.

And one thing that's always attracted me to this book is how much the prophet Habakkuk focused on the attributes of God, the character of God as his reason for trusting God even when he didn't understand or trusting God in the midst of a lament.

He's singing a woeful song,.

Yeah.

But he's never losing his trust and faith. So what would you say, what are some of the attributes, characteristics of God that Habakkuk focuses on that we can also focus on when we're dealing with a difficult situation?

Yeah, that's wonderful, Shay. And I think that one of the things that this book does is it helps us to give words to prayer, right? Because so much of it is this interaction with the Lord. And it's almost as if he is helping us pray the character of God, because Habakkuk does that.

He prays the character of God. It's almost reminding God, but reminding himself as he prays it. And so even in the beginning when he's lamenting and saying what feels really strong to the Lord, I think we can remember that God welcomes us, that he is a God who has brought us into his family through Christ.

I think that as we continue on in verse 12 of chapter one,.

It says,.

Are you not from eternity, Lord my God, my holy one? You will not die. And then it goes on to call him my rock, quoting Moses from Deuteronomy, this idea of this is who God is. He is holy and he is our rock.

He's the one that's gonna stand even when everything else feels like it's shaking. Like he is the one that holds us firm. And in that, he's also calling out to God's justice. Like he believes that God is the one who does what is right.

That even if we look around us and see things that are really broken, we can believe that, okay, that is broken, but that's not the character of God. Like God is not unjust. God is not gonna take advantage of somebody else, but he is one who does what's right.

And that in that, it is his desire for his people to give them hope. I think that's really fleshed out in chapter two, verse four when he says, but the righteous one will live by his faith. Like the proud, his ego is inflated.

He's not gonna stand, but you, you who are mine, this is who you are. You are gonna live forward because of faith in me, faithfulness to me, like faith in the Old Testament, right? It's not just like a internal ascent that sometimes we think it can be, but rather it's a lived out belief in the character of God and following him with our lives.

And that we talked about chapter three. I think his trustworthiness is really there, that he is the God who saves and is powerful and he is worth everything we could possibly lose.

Closing Encouragement and Book Promotion

Yeah.

Excellent points throughout. As I went through the book, so many things that resonated with me, so many things that I had noticed in my study, but then also a few ways of explaining things or noticing some things that I had never really picked up on before.

So Taylor, Trembling Faith is an excellent book. I praise God for what God is accomplishing you through this work. And I hope many, many people read it. As I said earlier, we'll include some links to where people can purchase the book in the show notes when this goes live at podcast .gotquestions .org and also at the description on YouTube.

So Taylor, maybe to close this off, who is Trembling Faith for? If you were to describe like one person, obviously I think many, many people in many sort of different interests or situations could be benefited by reading this, but who would you say this book is particularly for?

Yeah, I mean, I think more broadly we would say it's for people who want to study the Bible and understand who God is. But specifically, I think it's for people who look around the world and are paying attention.

They read the news and they say, we are seeing pain, right? Just recently while we were recording, we've seen earthquakes on across the world and we're seeing images and our hearts are breaking and we're praying or we see injustice or we ourselves are feeling like things are happening.

People are making decisions that are hurting me and my family and there's nothing I can do about it. We are feeling like there is chaos in this world and we need to know how do we live faithfully, full of faith and how do we pray in the midst of that?

And this book is for them to say, this is the way,.

Let's follow Habakkuk's way.

He shows us what trembling faith looks like in a chaotic world and he gives us hope of like God's big plan across the whole, all of history, bringing us to a day of justice one day.

Amen. So thank you, Taylor Turkington for joining me today. Again, her book is Trembling Faith, How a Distressed Prophet Helps Us Trust God in a Chaotic World. So Taylor, thank you again for joining me today.

Thanks so much, Shay.

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