Somebody's going to sing over you this morning, and it won't be the congregation.

Don't let your hands be weak. Zephaniah 3:16-17 is said to people with something to hold, and then it says what God does: he rejoices over you with joy, he calms you in his love, he rejoices over you with singing. The room is already being sung over before your first note. You're joining something that started before you got there. Then a blessing spoken over the whole team before the doors open.

Anchored in Zephaniah 3:16-17. Before the Doors Open is a short Sunday morning sending for the whole worship team.

There are shirts in my closet from a version of church I don't do anymore.

Habakkuk 2:5 is the last thing God says about the Chaldean before the woes begin. Wine is treacherous. He doesn't stay home, he enlarges his desire like Sheol, he heaps up all peoples and none of it fills him. Proverbs says Sheol is never satisfied and neither are a person's eyes. Ryan confesses the big attractional years, the shirts he still owns, and how much easier it is to measure eighteen singers on a stage than anything that matters. Last week was the net, the method. This is the appetite underneath it. Before the weekend, name the number that would be enough, and look at whether you've been working for that one or the one after it.

Anchored in Habakkuk 2:5. Part of The Waiting Season, a walk through the three chapters of Habakkuk.

Hundreds of people in a room, all of them singing, and I walked out sure I'd seen God move.

Habakkuk 2:4 is quoted three times in the New Testament and it cracked Luther open, and the prophet wrote it while still waiting for God to answer his question. Don't skip the first half: a soul puffed up, full of air instead of weight. The word for faith is emunah, steadiness, the word used for Moses' hands staying steady in the battle. Ryan confesses walking out of worship conferences he ran sure he'd seen the Holy Spirit move, and realizing he'd put hundreds of trained singers in a room and they sang. The person living by faith was the one who dragged themselves to church, fighting with their spouse on the way in, standing in the back holding a coffee. You're in that verse this morning. Stand in it and hold.

Anchored in Habakkuk 2:4. Part of The Waiting Season, a walk through the three chapters of Habakkuk.

If you've ever been told the conversation about your role is coming, and then watched it move, you know what this verse costs.

Habakkuk 2:3 says two things in one breath: though it takes time, wait for it, and it won't delay. The word that resolves them is appointed. The vision has a time, God set it, and it's only late against your clock. Ryan tells the story of a youth worship leader he let run for a year without guardrails, who worked himself into a small stipend and then into a whole position that nobody had the budget for. He was hurrying toward an end that wasn't on anybody's calendar. You do the job at the pace the job needs, and you let the date be God's, because you were never holding it anyway.

Anchored in Habakkuk 2:3. Part of The Waiting Season, a walk through the three chapters of Habakkuk.

"Yeah, it's Overflow. It's where you go when the room is full." It took us a long time to say it that way.

God speaks in Habakkuk 2:2, and before the prophet gets an answer he gets a job: write the vision, make it plain on tablets, big enough that someone running past can read it. A runner isn't studying. He's moving. Ryan tells the story of a church in California that opened an upstairs room for a couple hundred more people, put donuts in it, and spent a long time refusing to call it what it was. The plain name was for the person running past. The cute name was for us. Whatever your job is in the building, you hand things to people, and this verse is about how you write them.

Anchored in Habakkuk 2:2. Part of The Waiting Season, a walk through the three chapters of Habakkuk.

About a month ago a drum mic started ringing in the middle of a song, and the room sang through it.

Habakkuk 2:1 is the hinge of the book. After a chapter of complaint, the prophet climbs his own city wall and takes the watchman's post, looking out for what God will say and what he'll have to answer back about his own complaint. He expects an answer, and he expects it might land on him. Ryan tells the story of a feedback ring his sound guy couldn't find while the song kept going, and what it taught him about staying at a post when the fix isn't in your hands yet. Every one of you in the building while the parking lot is still empty has a post. Stay up there anyway.

Anchored in Habakkuk 2:1. Part of The Waiting Season, a walk through the three chapters of Habakkuk.

You've got a list of things that aren't finished, and the doors open anyway.

Hebrews 13:20-21 asks the God of peace, the one who brought the great shepherd back from the dead, to make you complete in every good work and to work in you what pleases him. The work you're about to do and the work he's doing in you happen at the same time, in the same body, on the same morning. You don't have to finish yourself before you walk in. Then a blessing spoken over the whole team before the first person arrives.

Anchored in Hebrews 13:20-21. Before the Doors Open is a short Sunday morning sending for the whole worship team.

The thing that finally worked is the most dangerous thing you own.

Watch what the fisherman is worshiping in Habakkuk 1:16. Not a god who handed him the victory. Not a national deity with a temple and a name. The net. He's burning incense to his gear, and the text tells you exactly why with no judgment in the sentence at all: because by them his life is luxurious and his food is good. It works, he eats well, and that's the whole theology. It never starts with idolatry. It starts with results, and one day you're defending the method like it's holy.

Anchored in Habakkuk 1:16-17. Part of The Waiting Season, a walk through the three chapters of Habakkuk.

You've had a week where you weren't a person to anybody. You were a slot that got filled.

The worst four words in Habakkuk 1:14 are not about the hook. They're no ruler over them. Fish don't have anybody. There's no shepherd who knows this particular one, who would notice it went missing, who would go looking. A shepherd counts; that's the job. Nobody counts fish, you weigh them. So when Habakkuk says God made men like the fish of the sea, he isn't saying people get hurt. He's saying people get processed, by something with no category for them as people. And then the line that stops you: therefore he rejoices and is glad.

Anchored in Habakkuk 1:14-15. Part of The Waiting Season, a walk through the three chapters of Habakkuk.

You know the thing you stopped praying about. You didn't stop caring. You got tired of hearing yourself ask.

Habakkuk 1:13 is the sharpest question in the book, and the accusation is not the one we usually make. He doesn't say God can't see it. He opens by telling God his eyes are too pure to look at evil, then asks why those eyes are pointed straight at this while nothing happens. The charge isn't blindness. It's silence. A God who doesn't notice is a God you can explain. A God who notices and waits is somebody you have to stay with while you don't understand him.

Anchored in Habakkuk 1:13. Part of The Waiting Season, a walk through the three chapters of Habakkuk.