Zempel - Amazed and confused: when Gods actions collide with our expectations

ENDORSEMENTS

Heather Zempel is one of Gods great gifts to todays church. Her wisdom and insight on leading small groups, opening up the Scripture in fresh ways, and helping people discover new depths of God are breathtaking. This is a book you cant afford to miss.

Margaret Feinberg, author of Wonderstruck and Scoutingthe Divine

Heather ventures where most pastors fear to tread, grinding through the gritty pages of a neglected prophet whos been waiting for someone courageous enough to tell his story. Raw truth, relentless love, and enduring passion fill these pages. Prepare to be amazed!

Dr. Bill Donahue, best-selling author and professor, Trinity International University

Heather reveals her passion for stirring up the next generations love for the Bible as she tackles the book of Habakkuk head on. Thats right, Habakkuk! An emerging voice in the church, Heather is always willing to get into the mess of the difficult areas of Scripture. She asks hard-hitting questions about life and faith and pain, but she does so with compassion, grace, and a healthy dose of humor. To find strength for the journey, read this book.

Christine Caine, Founder, the A21 Campaign and best-selling author, Undaunted

When Heather Zempel speaks, I listen. She has a prophetic voice that will challenge your assumptions, helping you see God and yourself in new ways. She doesnt tapdance around the truth. She grapples with it in a way that is transforming.

Mark Batterson, New York Times best-selling author and lead pastor of National Community Church

Are you brave enough to ask the tough questionsespecially the tough questions about faith? Thats what I love about Heather Zempel. Shes not afraid to ask the questions the rest of us are thinking but are unwilling to voice. In Amazedand Confused Heather boldly confronts our questions and yet gently reminds us that God is love. Whether on your own or with a group, you need to allow yourself to take this journey where your faith will be both amazed and confused.

Jenni Catron, church leader and author of Clout: Discover and Unleash Your God-Given Influence

With the intellectual capacity of a theologian, and a social workers sensitivity to the abilities of the rest of us, Heather unearths the gospel through the story of Habakkuk. You will laugh, cry, and intimately engage with the true God, not just the God you have created in your own mind.

Rick Howerton, Small Group and Discipleship Specialist, LifeWay Church Resources; author of Destination Community: Small Group Ministry Manual and A Different Kind of Tribe: Embracing the New Small GroupDynamic

2014 by Heather Zempel

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Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are taken from The Voice translation. 2012 Ecclesia Bible Society. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked ESV are taken from THE ENGLISH STANDARD VERSION. 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers.

Scripture quotations marked NIV are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version, NIV. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com

Scripture quotations marked NLT are from the HolyBible, New Living Translation. 1996, 2004, 2007. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked NKJV are taken from the NEW KING JAMES VERSION. 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked NRSV are taken from the NEW REVISED STANDARD VERSION of the Bible. 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. All rights reserved.

ISBN: 9781401679231

ISBN: 9781401679248 (eBook)

Printed in the United States of America

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To my teachers at Cottage Hill Baptist School for instilling in me an insatiable hunger for the Word of God.

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

To Ryan Zempel, who puts up with me when Im amazing and when Im confusing.

To my Sawyer family and Zempel family for loving me and believing in me.

To Mark and Lora Batterson and National Community Church for encouraging me to write and letting me talk about Habakkuk all the time.

To all those who amaze me with their overwhelming prayer and supportMargaret Feinberg and Leif Oines for consistently pushing me; Dave Buehring and Heidi Scanlon for praying this book into existence; the Gang, Team D, Discipleship Journey girls and the Hungry Mothers for their constant friendship.

To Maegan Hawley for loving the Minor Prophets as much as I do and encouraging me to help others love them too. To Jenilee Hurley for loving life in all its confusion and amazement as much as I do. To Emily Hendrickson for wearing out her eyes reading drafts, wearing out her ears listening to ideas, and wearing out her knees in prayer during the writing process, and for consuming copious amounts of chocolate croissants with me.

To Mike, Aaron, Gregg, Christy, Leslie, and the Hendrickson family for trusting God in impossible circumstances so that His faithfulness could be put on display.

To Frank, Maleah, Jennifer, Bethany, my fellow Inscribed authors, and my Thomas Nelson family for believing that God is both amazing and confusing and for making this book a reality.

God is not nice.

Ive searched the Scriptures forwards, backwards, and sideways in various translations, and Ive yet to find one place where Scripture declares that God is nice. In fact, there are plenty of moments when God seems to act in ways that are anything but nice. He floods the earth, kills Egyptian babies, and makes Hosea marry a prostitute. And its not as though things lighten up at all when Jesus shows up. He tells a guy he cant go bury his parents before becoming a disciple, declares that a Syro-Phoenician woman is not worthy of his assistance, and calls the Pharisees whitewashed tombs (Matt. 23:27 NKJV). Thats ancient smack talk for You look good on the outside, but inside you smell like death.

God doesnt claim to be nice. He claims to be love, and there is a big difference. Our problem is that when we read, God is love, sometimes those words get translated from the page to our cerebral cortexes as God is nice. We expect and settle for a God who is well mannered and plays well with others instead of daring to embrace the wild, ferocious, and jealous God of love. If we fail to make the distinction between God is nice and God is love, we will also fail to grasp the beauty of the gospel, and we will misunderstand or ignore many passages of Scripture that reveal something important about the glory of God.

Its an incomplete understanding of Gods love that prompts us to say things like, My God would never... or I just dont believe a loving God would allow bad things to happen to good people, or If God is loving, how can He send people to hell? Our finite ability to comprehend Gods infinite love limits our capacity for reconciling what we believe to be true about Gods character with the problems of evil and pain we see in the world around us. When we come to those chapters of ache, confusion, suffering, and disorientation in our lives, we often follow a path that either ignores God or ignores the problem. We close our eyes, shut out the pain, and skim through those thorny chapters as quickly as we skim through those same kinds of chapters in Scripture. Or we respond with pithy and hollow statements of saccharine spiritualityGod must have His reasons, One day we will be thankful, I guess heaven just needed another angel, and other empty sentiments.