“For the vision is yet for an appointed time; but at the end it will speak, and it will not lie, though it tarries, wait for it, because it will surely come..” (Habakkuk 2:3)
It doesn’t take much to see we are living in troubled times and maybe you too are finding yourself asking the same question we ask in our household: ‘How long, O Lord? How long before You return and rescue Your people from all this darkness and wickedness running rampid through our land?
The more I look around at all the mess going on around us, the more I look into God’s Word for relief, and the more I read the Word of God the more I see that God, in His sovereignty has His own sense of timing.
And the reason why His way may appear to be taking more time than we like is because God is outside of our realm of time and so in answer to my plea, ‘how long Lord!’ With the Lord one day is as a thousand years and a thousand years as one day’ (2 Peter 3:8)
God has perfect timing: never early, never late; never in a hurry, but…always is always on time. “But I trust in You, O Lord; I say, “You are my God.” My times are in Your hand..”(Psalm 31:14)
Habakkuk was learning, like Job, that “no matter how difficult things get, no matter how conditions might become, he needed to just keep on believing, keep on continuing to trust the promises of God, remain confident that the Lord, will do and accomplish what He promised….at the appointed time.
In the meantime Habakkuk while he was waiting, was learning to sing praises to God, not just in good times, but especially when things didn’t look like anything was happening.
I can’t help but wonder if this, among other things, is what God is doing for the American church today…. to encourage us to sing praises to Him while we go through these times of waiting. The question remains will we keep singing?
There is a repeating theme in my Bible that says to me that hardship we go through while we wait doesn’t mean it’s the end of the road…..for because those of us who are walking in faith; as bleak as things may appear to be looking, know that devastation will not have the last word.
Six hundred years before Jesus Christ came, God gave Habakkuk a glimpse into the truth of what He had planned on a bloody cross and with an empty tomb, and in the middle of the waiting, the troubled times for the people, God was fulfilling His Eternal good plan.
It is when times appear to be the darkest when God is ready to shine His brightest. I remember one of my favorite writers Alan Redpath who said: “You can always tell when God is ready to do a great work, because Satan will show up to oppose it.”
Maybe you’re feeling discouraged, maybe you’ve been waiting on God, maybe even the adversary has showed up lately to, “oppose you.” Be encouraged, God is busy preparing the battlefield and preparing you, exposing your weakness that you might lean on His strength to give you the victory in His time.
So, in these most trying times, trusting God, trusting His Sovereignty, know and trust that the time will come when His plan for you will come to fruition and in the waiting God wants will enable you to live in patience and joy.
“Yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will take joy in the God of my salvation.”
Habakkuk accepted the reality of what he was going through while he was waiting on God.
Waiting not in denial, but in faith, not the kind of faith that God would do what Habakkuk wanted, but a trusting faith trusting in who God was and is, in His God’s character.
“God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change His mind. Has He said, and will he not do it? Or has He spoken, and will He not fulfill it? (Numbers 23:19)
God never changes, always does what is right and perfect, though it may be invisible, we trust Him nevertheless. (Psalm 119:60- Hebrews 12:1)
Habakkuk went on to say: that the Sovereign hand of God is doing something here, God has spoken it, so I’m going to accept whatever He is doing, though I can’t grasp it, see it, as difficult it may be to me.
Sometimes things happen that you don’t like, in fact it may be happening today, right now. Trust God, hold Him to His Word. (Psalm 138:8).
Remember back at all God has done for you and how He has never, not once failed you. (Isaiah 43:2-4).
Remember what God has done. Accept whatever God is doing. Trust in what God is going to do.
So maybe today you too are waiting on God’s promise He made you. And maybe you too see banners of discouragement flying about.
Do as David did in difficult times: 1Samuel 30:6. “But David encouraged himself in the Lord his God.”
“For the vision is yet for an appointed time; but at the end it will speak, and it will not lie, though it tarries, wait for it, because it will surely come..”(Habakkuk 2:3)
Walking the Berean Road 