Last year right around this time I was working at a health
fair on a Saturday, and I was feeling very down in my spirit. There had been a
promise God had made to me that had seemed on its way to being fulfilled, and
then suddenly there was a change in the human scheme of things and it seemed
like His promise had gotten sidetracked or even completely derailed. I know in my
head that God is real and that His promises are covenant promises, meaning they
will always come to pass, but sometimes in my heart and my spirit I can get to
feeling weak and then my head starts to wonder if maybe I didn’t really hear
Him right. I start to try to reason things out and make sense of things, and
many times things with God just aren’t logical. He doesn’t work according to
our rules – He made all the rules and He can remake them and remold them and
completely change them around any time He pleases. But even though I know that,
I still try to reason things out and figure Him out and when I start doing that
I start to get lost in the “facts” and start to doubt in His word over my life.
That day of the health fair last year, while I walked there
feeling very low, I was talking to God and telling Him that I just didn’t know
why I was doing anything any more. I was so low in my spirit that I couldn’t
even get to the point of thanking Him for the things He’d already done, or for
feeling grateful that I was even breathing. All I was thinking about was this
promise that He’d made that seemed like it was never going to come true, and I
was, and I have to admit this, I was very angry and hurt that He’d gotten my
hopes up to begin with. I was feeling like if life was just going to be
drudgery then why did He have to promise me the joy that He’d promised? If the
promise was not coming true than why did He have to let any of it start to
happen at all? I’d been perfectly fine, I told Him, without things changing in
the way He’d said they would. I’d have been perfectly fine without the promise
He’d made. Of course that’s not true, and the promise was something that was so
near and dear to my heart that when He’d made it I had been overjoyed. But
still on that Saturday as I made my way out to Brooklyn to work at a health
fair, I was feeling like He wasn’t being very fair at all.
When I arrived at the church where I would be giving my
presentation, there was a big banner draped across the building with the words,
“Believe, Believe, Believe! All things are possible if you believe!” (Matthew
19:26) and then when I got inside, right in front of the table where I would be
setting up was a similar banner with the same words plus “Abraham believed God
and it was accounted to him for righteousness.” (Genesis 15:6) As I just looked
up that passage, I found this one that is part of the same story, “Is anything
too hard for the Lord?” (Genesis 18:14) So here it is coming right back around
again, the same time of the year, still waiting on the promise, and those same
words beginning with “Believe” are coming back to me again to remind me that
the promise will be fulfilled if I can only continue to hold on and believe
that with God all things are possible.
During this year there have been movements in the direction
of that promise – it hasn’t been as if the Lord has kept silent and just wants
me to believe completely blindly. The same day of that health fair I got a
phone call that confirmed a part of the promise, and I fell down on my face and
wept when I heard the message. It seemed then that everything was going to move
forward again, but there were again delays. And then things would move forward
again and then they would stop. But the fact that they moved forward at all was
a miracle, because when the Lord gave me the promise, the landscape was in no
way showing any possibility of the promise at all. It was a word He gave to me
and asked me to believe at first completely with blind faith, and as I have believed He
has continued to show me that although things may not be working in the time
frame that I would want them to, He is faithful to do as He has promised.
There was a sermon I heard a while ago on the topic of how
God can turn things around on a dime. One moment we’re looking at a bleak
horizon, and in the next moment things have completely changed to overflowing abundance
and joy. That was how I felt that day when I got that phone call – one moment I’d
been asking Him “Why?!” and the next I was praising Him, flat on my face,
weeping with joy and thankfulness. The verses that were used in that sermon
were from Habakkuk 3:17-19, “Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no
grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no
food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I
will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior. The Sovereign Lord
is my strength, He makes my feet like the feet of a deer, He enables me to
tread on the heights.” Just before that, Habakkuk has been asking the Lord, “How
long, Lord, must I call for help, but you do not listen? Or cry out to you, ‘Violence!’
but you do not save? Why do you make me look at injustice? Why do you tolerate
wrong doing? Destruction and violence are before me; there is strife and
conflict abounds. Therefore, the law is paralyzed, and justice never prevails.
The wicked hem in the righteous, so that justice is perverted.” (Habakkuk 1:2-4)
And in verse 13, “Your eyes are too pure to look on evil; you cannot tolerate
wrong doing. Why then do you tolerate the treacherous? Why are you silent while
the wicked swallow up those more righteous than themselves?” Those passages are
part of a section titled "Habakkuk’s Complaint," and it is such a beautiful thing
for me to read that because I know that what I do often is complain of the same
thing. It is not beautiful for me to read because I enjoy having a companion to
complain with, but because the Lord answers the complaint with a renewal of His
promise, “Write down the revelation and make it plain on tablets so that a
herald may run with it. For the revelation awaits an appointed time; it speaks
of the end and will not prove false. Though it linger, wait for it; it will
certainly come and will not delay. See, the enemy is puffed up; his desires are
not upright – but the righteous person will live by his faithfulness.” And then
He goes on to describe the justice He will bring.
In this past year, not only has the promise He has given to
me not come to pass, but other things have happened that have made me doubt His
protection of the righteous from the wicked. I have said with Habbakuk, “Why
do you make me look at injustice? Why do you tolerate the treacherous? Why are
you silent while the wicked swallow up those more righteous than themselves?” There
have been times when I have felt so low in my spirit that it has been hard to
keep going at all. But then His word will come again, life giving water to a
dry and thirsty land. When that water flows to revive my spirit, I can know
with Habbakuk that I can rejoice in the Lord, even though I do not see the
promise. I can rejoice because I know that He is faithful, and that I can trust
in His promise that “those who wait for me shall not be disappointed.” (Isaiah
49:23)
I can also know that His timing is perfect – this is
something that we often say as Christians to encourage one another, and I have
always found it to be true, even in the earliest days of my born again life
when it seemed as if I could be waiting forever and that what I needed to
happen needed to happen now. But then when everything finally did fall into
place, I’d find that His timing was perfect, and that if I had only been able
to wait patiently with hope and faith in His faithfulness I would not have had any
anxiety or stress at all. I wanted to give a verse as a foundation to my own
experience, and as I just looked for one I found a devotional by John Piper, “His
Timing Is Perfect,” http://solidjoys.desiringgod.org/en/devotionals/his-timing-is-perfect.
It’s a lovely meditation, and it begins with the verse, “Let us then with
confidence draw near the throne of grace, that we may find grace for a
well-timed help.” (Hebrews 4:16) I had never heard that translation of that
verse before, and John Piper writes, “What if grace comes too early or comes
too late? The traditional translation of Hebrews 4:16 hides from us a very
precious promise in this regard. We need a more literal rendering to see it.
The more traditional wording goes like this: ‘Let us then with confidence draw
near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find help in time of
need.’ The Greek original behind the phrase ‘grace to help in time of need’
would be translated literally, “grace for a well-timed help.’ The point is that
prayer is the way to find grace for a well timed help. This grace always
arrives from the ‘throne of grace’ on time. The phrase ‘throne of grace’ means
that future grace comes from the King of the Universe who sets the times by His
own authority (Acts 1:8).” John Piper ends with this thought, “When we wonder about the timing of future grace, we
must think on the ‘throne of grace.’ Nothing can hinder God’s plan to send
grace when it will be best for us. Future grace is always well timed.”
Jannie Susan
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