Friday, February 26, 2016

I will rely on the Lord from Habakkuk 3:19


SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 2/26/2016 10:15 PM

My Worship Time                                                                  Focus:  I will rely on the Lord.”

Bible Reading & Meditation                                     Reference:  Habakkuk 3:19

Message of the verses:  “19 The Lord GOD is my strength, And He has made my feet like hinds’ feet, And makes me walk on my high places. For the choir director, on my stringed instruments.”

We began to study the book of Habakkuk on the 28th of January and so it took us almost one month to make our way through this rather short book, but even though it is a short book there is much in it that pertains to how the Lord deals with sinful nations, and we can look at this book and see that the long-suffering of the Lord came to an end with Judah, and will come to an end with other nations that do similar things, especially those who have had great blessings from the Lord and are turning from that blessing.

Dr. Wiersbe begins this last section with the following statement:  “If my legs were shaking and my heart pounding, I’d find a safe place to sit down and relax, but Habakkuk began to bound up the mountain like a deer!  Because of his faith in the Lord, he was able to stand and be as surefooted as a deer; he was able to run swiftly and go higher than he’d ever gone before.  This is one reason why the Lord permits us to go through trials:  they can draw us nearer to Him and lift us above the circumstances so that we walk on the heights with Him.”

Deuteronomy 32:13a states “"He made him ride on the high places of the earth,” and so we learn that God make us for the high places, so, as Dr. Wiersbe says we can be with Him there.  I can think of a portion from a couple of the gospels where Jesus goes up on the mount of Transfiguration and meets up with Moses and Elijah to speak to them before He would go to the cross and while up there His glory was unveiled so that His glory was shining for a little while as three of His disciples saw.  However they all had to make their way back down to the valley where Jesus meets up with a man who had a demon possessed son that His disciples could not heal and so Jesus had to heal this man’s son.  He was back down in the valley away from the glorious time He had spent up on the mountains.  Let us look at another Scripture from Isaiah 40:30-31 “30 Though youths grow weary and tired, And vigorous young men stumble badly, 31 Yet those who wait for the LORD Will gain new strength; They will mount up with wings like eagles, They will run and not get tired, They will walk and not become weary.” 

We will complete our study of Habakkuk with some great quotes from the end of Dr. Wiersbe’s commentary.  “The great British expositor G. Campbell Morgan said, ‘Our joy is in proportion to our trust.  Our trust is in proportion to our knowledge of God.’  As the hymn paraphrase of this passage puts it:

 

‘Though vine nor fig-tree neither

Their wonted fruit shall bear,

Though all the fields should wither,

Nor flocks nor herds be there,

Yet God the same abiding,

His praise shall tune my voice

For while in Him confiding,

I cannot but rejoice.

 

“Habakkuk teaches us to face our doubts and questions honestly, take them humbly to the Lord, wait for His Word to teach us, and then worship Him no matter how we feel or what we see.

“God’s doesn’t always change the circumstances, but He can change us to meet the circumstances.  That’s what it means to live by faith.”  Remember the key verse from Habakkuk’s book:  “The just shall live by faith.”

Our next book to begin to look at is comes from the prophet Zephaniah, which God willing we will begin tomorrow.

2/26/2016 10:40 PM

No comments:

Post a Comment