I'm a youth leader at my church, and right now for our devotions, we're reading in Habakkuk. I actually just read this book because my Sunday school class was studying it; I think it's pretty awesome when God keeps bringing certain passages of his Word to my attention...it's always got to be for a reason, right?
Well, this time going through the book, a couple things have stood out to me (don't you love how God always shows us new things no matter how many times we read a certain book of the Bible??). First, the other night, I read Habakkuk's second complaint to God about how there was so much evil going on in Israel. After he had told God his complaints and asked him, "Will you let them get away with this forever? Will they succeed forever in their heartless conquests?" (1:17) Habakkuk then says, "I will climb up to my watchtower and stand at my guardpost. There I will wait to see what the Lord says and how he will answer my complaint." (2:1)
This really stood out to me, because so often I will ask God questions...or tell Him things that are on my heart, but then I'm "done praying" or whatever. I never really take time to WAIT for an answer. To be quiet...stop talking...just listen. That's what I need to be doing more often. Now, I don't expect God to answer in audible words that I can hear with my physical ears, as he did when responding to Habakkuk. However, I know that if I stop and listen, he will bring things to my mind that I know come from him. Or he will show me something in his Word that answers my question. Or he'll even use the words of a friend or even a person I don't know writing on their blog. I think sometimes these types of answers don't come immediately, but even the next day or next week or the next month! But that makes me think another thing... I need to be waiting and listening at all times -- not just for a few minutes while I'm praying. I can't just sit with my hands folded in my lap, listening for three minutes, and then put my listening ears away and go about the rest of my life. When the Bible says to "pray without ceasing" (I Thessalonians 5:17), I think that includes listening without ceasing. If you think about it, God already knows what's going on in our heads...if we have a question for him, we don't really have to ask him directly in order for him to know what we're thinking. But we do, because God wants us to ask him and talk to him. It doesn't go the other way, though...if we're doing all the talking, and not listening, we're not going to know what God has to say. We need to be constantly in our watchtower, standing at our guardpost, listening for what the Lord has to say to us.
The other thing that I particularly latched onto is where God speaks to his people of their practice of worshiping idols...idols that they themselves had created. He says to them, "What good is an idol carved by man, or a cast image that deceives you? How foolish to trust in your own creation - a god that can't even talk!" (2:18)
This caught my attention because the statement "how foolish to trust in your own creation" so easily applies to our own "creations" that are beyond physical creations. This applies to our accomplishments...our good grades, our position at work, our popularity among our friends, even the level of respect we've managed to earn from those we look up to. I so often find myself putting my trust in these things -- especially the last one. It's so easy for me to put my security in whether or not the people I admire in my life (parents, pastors, teachers, mentors) approve of me. But how foolish it is to put my trust in my own creation...my creation of a particular image that will win the approval of others. Why is this foolish? Because if I created it...then how easy it would be for me to destroy it. One mistake, and I could easily lose this approval. And then my security would be broken down. If I simply put all of my trust in my Father -- the one who created even those people I admire, the One who is stable, and does not change like the shifting shadows -- then my trust will be truly secure.
Now to actually apply these things...that's the hard part.
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