SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 2/24/2016
10:09 PM
My Worship Time Focus:
I will Wait Patiently on the Lord
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Habakkuk
3:16
Message of
the verse: “16 I heard and my inward parts trembled, At
the sound my lips quivered. Decay enters my bones, And in my place I tremble.
Because I must wait quietly for the day of distress, For the people to arise
who will invade us.”
We are now in the last main point in Dr. Wiersbe’s
outline on the book of Habakkuk and he has entitled it “Faith: Affirm the Will of God,” and it covers the
last four verses of the book of Habakkuk.
He writes the following in his introduction: This is one of the greatest confessions of
faith found anywhere in Scripture.
Habakkuk has faced the frightening fact that his nation will be invaded
by a merciless enemy. The prophet knows
that many of the people will go into exile and many will be slain. The land will be ruined, and Jerusalem and
the temple will be destroyed. Yet he
tells God that he will trust Him no matter what happens! Listen to his confession of faith.”
When we began to look at this short book we found
that Habakkuk knew that there was great sinful problems in Judah, and so he
cries out to the Lord who then tells him that He will care for the problem by
bringing in the Babylonians to destroy Judah, and many will be killed, and many
will go into captivity. Habakkuk was
upset because we believe that he was hoping that the Lord would bring a great
revival to His people and then all would be better. As we move through this book we see the faith
of Habakkuk begin to grow and his knowledge of who God is also grow and so as
we come to this wonderful section we see that Habakkuk does not want to see the
Babylonians destroy Judah, but he now puts his total faith in the Lord to
accomplish His purpose and to bring glory to His name. We have to believe that there was some part
of Habakkuk that was frightened of what was going to happen, and that is just
being human, but there was also a part of him that put his faith and trust in
the Lord. As we think about how Jesus
felt when He was facing the cross we can get a little bit of understand of what
Habakkuk was thinking about. Dr. Wiersbe
writes “When he looked within, he saw himself trembling with fear, and when he
looked around, he saw everything in the economy about to fall apart. But when he looked up by faith, he saw God,
and all his fears vanished. To walk by
faith means to focus on the greatness and glory of God.
“One of the marks of faith is a willingness to wait
patiently for the Lord to work. ‘Whoever
believes will not act hastily’ (Isa. 28:16, NKJV). When we run ahead of God, we get into
trouble. Abraham learned that lesson
when he married Hagar and fathered Ishmael (Gen. 16), and so did Moses when he
tried to deliver the Jews by his own hand (Ex. 2). ‘In quietness and confidence shall be your
strength’ (Isa. 3:15).”
Habakkuk could wait quietly on the Lord for he knew
that God was at work in his life and in the world. Habakkuk had prayed to the Lord and He had given
him a vision. Waiting is a very
difficult thing to do, but as we learn to trust the Lord we can wait quietly
for Him to accomplish His plans in our lives even though things are not going
well. Psalm 37:7 says “Rest in the Lord,
and wait patiently for Him.”
Dr. Wiersbe concludes with some of his wonderful
wisdom as he writes: “Over the years, I’ve
often leaned on three verses that have helped me wait patiently on the Lord. ‘Stand still’ (Ex. 14:13), ‘Sit still’ (Ruth
3:18), and ‘Be still’ (Ps. 46:10).
Whenever we find ourselves getting ‘churned up’ within, we can be sure
that we need to stop, pray, and wait on the Lord before we do some stupid
thing.” All I can say about doing a
stupid thing is “been there, done that.”
2/24/2016 10:34 PM
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