Praise God Anyhow...

Life is a constant struggle to remain a. faithful b. loving and c. sane.  This is not a multiple choice exam, it is the truth.  When things come up and seek to dislodge us from God, staying faithful to the same God that we expect to be our protector from those things is difficult.  When times are hard, sometimes we don't feel like showing love to others.  When I am in a jam, I sometimes feel like pulling my hair out!

I know that I am not the only person that feels this way.  My job is not to do a better job at these things, but to do a better job of depending on the Lord.  We have to depend on the Lord and know that He is constantly in control.  He's at the control panel of the universe and since the world began, He has never made a mistake and hit the wrong button. 

Habakkuk 3:17-19 gives us a powerful tool to keep in our arsenal of prayer.  Let's look a those three verses:

Though the fig tree should not blossom,
nor fruit be on the vines,
the produce of the olive fail
and the fields yield no food,
the flock be cut off from the fold
and there be no herd in the stalls,
yet I will rejoice in the Lord;
I will take joy in the God of my salvation.
God, the Lord, is my strength;
he makes my feet like the deer’s;
he makes me tread on my high places.

To the choirmaster: with stringed^d instruments.

 

We need to understand that Habakkuk was written during a time of turmoil for Israel.  Habakkuk prophesied either while the Israelites were under Babylonian rule or Assyrian rule.  His writing is peppered with emotional cries to God for salvation of His people.  What we witness when reading his prophetic work is this, Habakkuk was very honest with God and he was also very upset with his circumstances.  However, he does not allow his circumstances to control him.  He closes his prophecy with these three verses here that are a small part of a larger prayer.  He says, although things look bad, there is no food, no livestock and no oil..YET, I will rejoice in the Lord.

 

How is this possible?  When we look at the first few verses, we see that before these verses are written, Habakkuk is recounting the deeds of God and remembering that the God that he is able to rejoice in is all powerful and almighty!  It's hard to rejoice in a god that can't do all things!  But, the God that we serve is mighty and He's strong and He has never lost a battle.

 

One other thing that we should consider here...this is not just a typical prayer.  This particular part of Habakkuk's work is dedicated to God as a praise.  The first two chapters are where Habakkuk vents his frustrations but this third chapter is different.  In the very first verse, Habakkuk indicates that this prayer is according to "Shigionoth". According to Easton's Bible Dictionary, the word denotes a lyrical poem composed under strong mental emotion; a song of impassioned imagination accompanied with suitable music. 

 

J. Lee Grady (Charisma Magazine "When Times Get Tough ")makes the following observations: There is some debate over the exact meaning of this musical term, but scholars translate the Hebrew as “a highly emotional poetic form.” Shigionoth is not slow, whiny or sad, and Habakkuk 3 is not a cry-in-your-beer ballad. Shigionoth is a high form of praise—wild, rhythmic and exuberant. It is praise with pumped-up volume and no limits; it is worship punctuated with exclamation marks!"

 

So we see Habakkuk praises God through this disappointing time and he wrote an entire chapter as a song of praise to God!  Notice this as well, in the chapter, only one verse (verse 17) is dedicated to the problem...but the entire rest of the chapter is dedicated to either 1. glorifying God for his might or 2. praising God for who He is! 

 

I'm not advocating that you go and compose a song, what I am saying is this: remember who we serve, remember His power, remember that He is not on our time (2 Peter 3:9) and if you have to pray to God through your tears...that's OK too!  We are programmed with emotions from the very beginning, to deny them is to deny a part of us that God gave us.  Should we be led by our emotions, no because they can deceive us.  Can emotion be a a response to our issues- yes, when those emotions are guided by God's Spirit!

 

Cry, shout and rejoice that God is your God!  Even when the trees are bare, remember that He can bring fruit back to them (Joel 2:18-25).  When the water dries up, He can do a new thing and bring springs up in the wilderness (Isaiah 43:19-21).  When the oil runs low, God can take that oil and multiply it (1 Kings 17:16)!

 

May the grace of God be upon you and may God make His face to shine on you and give you peace.