Still struggling devotion for 15-DEC-01

Every Day Light
Devotion for Saturday , December 15, 2001

Selection Taken From:
Every Day Light - Hardcover by Selwyn Hughes

Devotional reading is designed not simply to inform the mind, but to fire the spirit.

"Still struggling"

""Why are you silent while the wicked swallow up those more righteous than themselves?"(v.13)" - For reading & meditation - Habakkuk 1:13

Yesterday we said that those times when God leaves us waiting for an answer to our prayers and questions are some of the most difficult of our Christian life. Do the heavens seem like brass to you right now? Have the urgent questions you have put to God unanswered? Then look with me at how Habakkuk found himself in this same situation - and how he came through it. It is obvious from the verse before us today that although Habakkuk had come a long way in dealing with the fact of spiritual confusion, his perspective is still not clear. After affirming the fact that God is of "purer eyes than to behold evil, and cannot look on wickedness" (v.13, NKJ), he presents another provoking question. The Living Bible puts it like this: "Will you, who cannot allow sin in any form, stand idly by while they swallow us up? Should you be silent while the wicked destroy those who are better than they?" Clearly Habakkuk is still struggling with this idea that God is going to use the cruel Chaldeans to punish His people. What he is really saying is this: "If it is true, O Lord, that Your eyes are too pure to look on evil, then how can You allow the Chaldeans to do this to Your people? Judah might be bad, but the Chaldeans are a thousand times worse." Habakkuk is not the only one to be perplexed over the fact that God uses the unrighteous to refine the righteous. If God can't get to us one way, then He will try another. He loves us too much to let us stay as we are.

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