SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 2/18/2016
6:25 PM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-2 Prayer, Pray for the Work of God
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Habakkuk
3:1-2
Message of
the verses: “1 A prayer of Habakkuk the prophet,
according to Shigionoth. 2 LORD, I have heard the report about You and I fear.
O LORD, revive Your work in the midst of the years, In the midst of the years
make it known; In wrath
remember mercy.”
The first thing that we want to look at this evening
is that the hearing of God’s Word will generate faith in the heart of the
believer, and in this case we are talking about Habakkuk as his faith is
growing because of the Word that the Lord spoke to him. We can equate this to a truth from the NT
book of Romans “So faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ
(Romans 10:17).” Let us look at Mark
11:22-23 to show us that we cannot pray effectively with faith “22 And Jesus answered
saying to them, "Have faith in God. 23
"Truly I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ’Be taken up
and cast into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what
he says is going to happen, it will be granted him. 24 “Therefore I say to you,
all things for which you pray and ask, believe that you have received them, and
they will be granted you.” There is
something else that we can learn from Habakkuk that is also shown in the NT,
and that is that the Word of God and prayer must always go together: “"But we will devote ourselves to prayer
and to the ministry of the word’ (Acts 6:4).”
This verse comes from the mouth of the Apostles. John 15:7 states “"If you abide in Me,
and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.’” Dr. Wiersbe quotes D. L. Moody who said “I
use to think I should close my Bibl and pray for faith, but I came to see that
it was in studying the Word that I was to get faith.”
Let us look again at verse two from our text
today: “I stand in awe of your deeds, O
LORD (NIV).” This is the reason that
Habakkuk prayed, for he had seen a vision of greatness of the Lord as we will
see in verse 3-15 and as he saw this verse we see from verse 16 that it left
Habakkuk weak “16 I heard and my heart pounded, my lips quivered at the sound;
decay crept into my bones, and my legs trembled. Yet I will wait patiently for
the day of calamity to come on the nation invading us (NIV).”
As we think of what happened to Habakkuk as he got
to know the Lord better we will find out that that was not like what people may
think will happen in getting to know the Lord, that is that all will be well,
but let us look at a number of references that Dr. Wiersbe provides for us to
show that getting to know the Lord is not as enjoyable as people may
think. “Moses trembled at Mt. Sinai when
God gave the Law (Heb. 12:18-21). Joshua
fell on his face before the Lord (Joshua 5:13-15), as did David (1 Chron.
21:16). Daniel became exhausted and ill
after seeing the visions God gave him (Dan. 8:27; 10:11). The vision of Christ’s glory on the Mount of
Transfiguration left Peter, James, and John facedown on the ground and filled
them with terror (Matt. 17:6). When John
saw the glorified Christ, he fell at His feet as though dead (Rev. 1:17).”
A.W. Tozer wrote “To know God is at once the easiest
and the most difficult thing in the world.”
The writer of Hebrews says that God is a consuming fire. Once again I talk about the need of getting a
good book on the attributes of God and read it to get to know the Lord better.
Dr. Wiersbe writes and with this we will end our
study for this evening and then have to look at it some more in our next
study. “God certainly has the ability to
reveal Himself to us, for He can do anything; but it’s a problem for God to
find somebody who is read to meet Him. God doesn’t reveal Himself to
superficial saints who are only looking for ‘a new experience’ they can brag
about, or to curious Christians who want to ‘sample’ deeper fellowship with God
but not at too great a price.”
2/18/2016 6:55 PM
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