Habakkuk's Journey: Day 5

Habakkuk’s Journey: Day 5
(Habakkuk 3, 2 Peter 3:9)

God is love. God is also holy, though, and can’t stand sin. We have a different view of God today than someone would’ve had 3,000 years ago. Today we view God as the God who sent His only begotten son to earth to become a man so that He could be the sacrifice for our sins. His love for us is so deep that we have trouble even comprehending it. Because of that immense love we often forget that God is also still the God that we read about in the “Old Testament”. He’s not different – He hasn’t changed – He’s just done something which made us understand how much He really loved us, and we have trouble seeing past it, sometimes. All through the Bible (Old and New Testaments) we read that we are called to not sin, the biggest difference now is that, by the power of the Holy Spirit, we have the ability to live that sin-free life (2 Thes 2:13.)

Personal Reflection Questions:

1. What is the overarching theme of this chapter?

Unlike the previous chapters, this one is a prayer for God to be merciful, and a remembrance of how God has been merciful in the past. We see descriptions of God’s great works and His saving grace. In the beginning of the book Habakkuk was calling for judgment on the nation but when God delivered His answer, and Habakkuk was shown the judgment to come, he started asking for mercy, and for the judgment of Israel’s captors. This shouldn’t be seen as being wishy-washy; Habakkuk was shown the judgment, realized God’s hatred of iniquity, and cried for mercy because of its extremity.

2. What is the significance of “selah” and how should we respond to it?

A ”selah” was used as a pause in the music. In this instance it can be a pause of reflection of all that came before and a time to get ready for all that is about to come. Likewise, we should take time to reflect on our attitude toward all that is going on around us. There is so much chaos in the world that it’s easy to cry out to the Father for judgment. When we get wrapped up in thinking like that it’s good to “selah” and remember the love God showed us when He sent his Son. In fact in verse 13 of this chapter we read of a remembrance when God went forth for His people. And then it says “For salvation with Your anointed.” The name “Jesus” (Yeshua) means salvation and the word “Christ” (Meshiach) means anointed. Habakkuk is not only calling back to a time when God went forth before His people (probably when leading them out of Egypt) but he was also looking forward to a time when God would Anoint His Yeshua to save His people. So we should always remember that while God is holy and can’t stand unholiness, He has already sent salvation to us and we should do our best to call have mercy in mind toward those around us so that they can find His salvation.

3. Thinking back to the overarching theme: What is Habakkuk trying to communicate to the reader?

Habakkuk begs us to strive for holiness in our lives but to also forgive those who are not holy, just as we would want God to forgive us if we were the offenders.

4. How do we take this into our present world and apply it to our daily lives?

There is so much sin and immorality all around us and it’s easy to condemn everyone and everything, but God does not want that any should perish. When the world around you gets all broken, don’t forget that the person in front of you needs salvation just like you did/do. We don’t need to ask for their judgment. If they continue in the way they’re going then it will surely come. But God is longsuffering so that all can come to repentance, and find their Yeshua.

The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. (2Pe 3:9 ESV)

(Day One, Day Two, Day Three, Day Four)

The Good Shepherd

John 10:14-15, John 1:14, Psalm 119:105

"I am the good shepherd, and I know My own and My own know Me, even as the Father knows Me and I know the Father; and I lay down My life for the sheep. (John 10:14-15 NASB)

This is a fairly well known verse, so most of us know it or, at least, know the beginning of it. Or could at least paraphrase the first part of it. But how many of us actually pay attention to what it means? Jesus knows His own, but do we know Him?

Just so nobody is surprised in a couple days, this subject will be showing up as one of days of this week’s devotions. But it struck me as something which needs further explanation. And it struck me like that because I personally got convicted. I call myself a Christian but how much time do I genuinely spend reading the words of Jesus?

Over the past few years my thirst to study God’s Word has grown immensely. I still find myself struggling to just read the Bible. And, yes, there is a difference between reading the Bible and studying the Bible. I’ve done more study over the past 5 years than I had done in the previous 33 years combined, but I still struggle to sit down and just read. You know, like you’d read a James Patterson book, or something else as equally mind numbing.

Studying the Bible is kind of like doing a research paper on a person. You get to know the facts about that person, and you get to know things they’ve done in the past. Reading the Bible is more like spending time with the person and getting to know their character. You can study a person all you want but that won’t help you to know the person. That’s why we need to spend time with reading the Bible, so we can actually know Jesus, who is the Word of God (John 1:14).

While it makes me feel not-so-bad it’s also kind of disturbing to know that I’m not alone in this one. There are over 2 billion Christians in world, how many of those would you guess actually read the Bible like it’s the bestseller from the bookstore? I found a study that concluded that only 19% of professing Christians actually read the Bible every day. I do read the Bible every day, and I think that’s not really enough. What about the 81% of Christians who don’t read the Bible every day? Twenty-two percent of those say that they read the Bible about once a month or a few times per month. Eighteen percent of those people say that they “rarely or never” read the Bible. If we don’t spend any time with Jesus, how are we supposed to know His voice?

I have no answers here, just concerns. What are we going to do if we’re in a tough spot and our Lord and Savior is out there trying to tell us how to get through it, and since we don’t know what His voice sounds like we just think that He’s another voice in the crowd (Psalm 119:105)? And, even more importantly, have we really given our life to Jesus as our Lord if won’t even bother to get to know what He wants us to do? Or, have we just accepted His salvation and decided that’s good enough, we can figure it out from here?

So what do we do from here? I wish I had all the answers. But, I do know who has the answers. I guess that’s just another thing I’ll have to study. Until I figure it out, it seems like the best thing to do is to find a reading plan. Find a plan to read the whole Bible. Or maybe a plan to read the Gospels. Or you could find a plan to read the Torah. Read the whole New Testament. Read the whole Old Testament. Start small if you have to. Pledge to read a chapter each day, or pledge to read a book each day. No matter what you pledge to read, just read.

That’s my answer.

Life Is Messy

(1 Thes 5:23, John 16:33, Galatians 5:25)

Life is messy. Every day huge messes interrupt our lives and we do our best to deal with them, but life is messy.

I guess, for me, the next logical question would be, “what is life?”

Well, it should be no surprise at this point that when I try to figure this stuff out I first search it out through the Bible. So what does the Bible have to say about “life”?

The first time we see the word ‘life’ (in the KJV, at least) in the Bible is in Genesis 1:20: “And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl [that] may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.” Now, admittedly, most other translations will translate the original Hebrew words as ‘living creatures’, but I think the KJV translation will work in this instance because living creatures really are life. But let’s dig a little deeper…

What is the Hebrew word in this verse which is translated as ‘life’? Interestingly, there are actually two words in that verse which are added together to be translated into that one word. Two words, you say? Yep, even defining ‘life’, it appears, is going to be a bit messy. The two words which make up ‘life’, or ‘living creatures’ are ‘nephesh’ (H5315) and ‘chay’ (H2416). I’m not going to list out the entire definitions to these (though, I’ve provided the Strong’s reference numbers [or you could use the Brown-Driver-Briggs, if you want to get a little better understanding of the words] if you want to look them up); I’m going to do my best to give a concise paraphrase.

Nephesh: Breathing creature or vitality. This is the soul.

Chay: Beast or living thing. We’ll call this ‘a body’.

This actually is a really cool pair of words for us to use. You can’t have ‘life’ without a soul, but you can’t have ‘life’ on God’s green earth without a body. Life is a body and a soul. But it goes deeper than this. Yes, man has a body and a soul, but man also has a spirit. Now this can get into some pretty deep theological territory, but I think we can sidestep the whole concept of properly aligning our body, soul and spirit (although, if you would like to look into this, you’re in for an amazing time) and we’ll keep it on a more personally applicable tone. You can’t have life without the spirit.

Or, more accurately, you can’t have life without the Spirit.

There have been enough moments in my life that have felt like life was spinning out of control. In hindsight I can say that these have been times where I’ve focused too much on my body or my soul, and not my spirit.

I guess what I’m getting at is that life in control (not spinning out of control) is life lived focused on the spirit. And your spirit is how you are connected to the Holy Spirit of the Living God.

Now, I don’t want to promote the idea that if you’re “right” with God then you’re never going to get depressed, or anything like that. In fact, the Bible explicitly tells you that you’re going to have trials and tribulations. But the best way to live “life” is to stay “in the Spirit”. I know, the Christianese can get confusing (or, at least, annoying). But if the spirit is the part of ourselves that makes us more than breath and a skin-bag of bones and guts, it only makes sense that this is the part of ourselves that we should be focusing on when we’re trying to make life better, right?

So when life starts to get messy, take a step back and put a little focus on your spirit life. Life may not get less complicated but it’ll get a whole lot less messy.