‘Yet I will rejoice’ by Eleanor Trotter

Questions, questions, questions. ‘Why doesn’t God do something?’ ‘Does he not care about me and my people?’

The prophet Habakkuk confronts God with his perplexity and confusion. Strife and violence abound, and justice and judgement are failing: ‘the wicked surround the righteous’. No wonder Habakkuk is crying out.

Yet he’s using direct and personal terms: ‘My God, my Holy One’. He’s asking,

‘O, Lord, are you not from everlasting?’ The tone changes. The ‘why’ question gives way to an acknowledgment of who God is. Habakkuk waits to hear God’s voice.

Crucially, he realises that invasion, however unwelcome, is something which God has ordained. 

When things go wrong and we reel in shock and horror, it’s easy to allow questions to swamp us. Not unlike Habakkuk really. Our circumstances seem to contradict what we know about God.

But as Dr Martyn Lloyd–Jones reminds us in Spiritual Depression, ‘You have to address yourself, question yourself … remind yourself of who God is … and what he has done.’ 

Habakkuk didn’t ignore his troubling questions; he was realistic about the suffering ahead. Yet he didn’t stop there. The ‘hymn of faith’ at the end of chapter three is a challenge to exercise faith based on deep trust in God, our ‘refuge and strength’.  

If you want to share Jonathan Lamb’s teaching on Habakkuk with your friends, then you can do so. His wise insights at Keswick Convention have been helpfully served up in an accessible 30–day devotional as part of the Food for the Journey Series (published by IVP and Keswick Ministries).

Eleanor Trotter is Senior Commissioning Editor at IVP UK and has also worked with Jonathan Lamb on: 

• Essentially One: Striving for the Unity God Loves, which challenges us to think deeply about what true biblical unity looks like
• Integrity: Leading with God Watching, which encourages us to live counterculturally in an age when image is often seen as more important than the reality behind it
• Preaching Matters: Encountering the Living God, which shows how true biblical preaching changes hearts and attitudes, drawing us into a meaningful relationship with God