From Confusion to Confidence

MESSAGE BY: Apostle Dr. Samuel Ofori

MAIN TEXT: Habakkuk 1:2-4
‘How long, O 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? 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.’

INTRODUCTION

That God should move you from the state of Confusion to one of Confidence.

The prophetic book of Habakkuk is one of the obscure books of the Bible, but very relevant for our times. The Prophet struggled with one of the central questions of our age: WHY DOES GOD ALLOW BAD THINKS TO HAPPEN?

His issue was not about a pandemic, but he lived in a time of great national corruption – when the land was filled with: CRIME, HATRED, DIVISION, EVIL, IMMORALITY, FAMILY VALUES HAD BROKEN DOWN
He expressed horror at what he saw and put it as the opening message of his prophecy:

‘How long, O 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? Destruction and violence are before me; there is strife, and conflict abounds …’

Whatever circumstances of life that we go through as Christians, God is always behind the scene to rescue his people. In the current situation, the advent of Corona Virus disease, the spread of the infections, the precautionary protocols and now the lockdown, it would be very difficult and strange to see the hand of God, but I want to assure you that God will ensure that all this will work together for our good, even as we trust and obey Him.

STEP 1 – CONFUSION

The Prophet was in a state of confusion. He cries ‘violence’ but no answer. He is even more confused by the fact that he received no answer to his prayers. Here is the GREAT PROBLEM OF UNANSWERED PRAYER.

Here was a man disturbed about the condition of his nation. He sees everything wrong.
He is troubled because he is a man of God.
He has prayed, but receives no answer to his problem, which continues to escalate.
In his bewilderment and pain, he cries out, ‘Lord, how long’ do I have to keep this up.

This is the situation the world and all of us find ourselves today. BUT I CAME TO ENCOURAGE YOU WITH THE WORD OF GOD THAT IS ABLE TO LIFT YOU FROM CONFUSION TO CONFIDENCE IN THE LORD GOD ALMIGHTY!

STEP 2 – GOD IS NOT SILENT

From Chapter 1:5 God begins to answer Habakkuk’s question”.

‘Look at the nations and watch – and be utterly amazed. For I am going to do something in your days that you would not believe, even if you were told’.

God is not silent; He is active in all what is happening in the world.
Only we don’t know how to recognize the answer.
Sometimes God’s answer is different from what we expect that we’ll not even recognize it or believe it when we are told.

God’s answer to the Prophet even confuses him the more: Chapter 1:6-11 ‘I am raising up the Babylonians, that ruthless and impetuous people, who sweep across the whole earth to seize dwelling places not their own. They are a feared and dreaded people; they are a law to themselves and promote their own honor. Their horses are swifter than leopards, fiercer than wolves at dusk. Their cavalry gallops headlong; their horsemen come from afar. They fly like a vulture swooping to devour; they all come bent on violence. Their hordes advance like a desert wind and gather prisoners like sand. They deride kings and scoff rulers. They laugh at all fortified cities; they build earthen ramps and capture them. Then the sweep past like the wind and go on – guilty men, whose own strength is their god.’

God’s answer further confuses the Prophet:

How can God use an even more evil nation to punish His own people, JUDAH?
At that time the Superpower was Assyria, BUT God was raising a little nation to defeat Assyria and they will come and punish Israel – that is, BABYLON.
God was saying ‘I am behind this whole thing: these people are a very strange people- bitter, hostile, ruthless and cold-blooded. They will be powerful and conquer land after land, their strength is their god. The do not know Me or worship Me, but I control theiur destiny, and they will be THE ANSWER TO YOUR PRAYER.
Sometimes God allows certain things to happen to enhance His own purposes.
May the purposes of God for life be enhanced in this difficult period.
May the purposes of God for our nation be enhanced with Covid19.
May the purposes of God for the world be enhanced with this CRISIS.

STEP 3 – REACTIONS TO SUCH STATES OF CONFUSION IN LIFE

In the face of the Corona virus pandemic – our world has also been thrown into a state of confusion. This is the type of situation that bothers many people and threatens the faith of many when they view the problems of history? Why does God allow things to happen the way they do? Why does He permit such terrible events to occur?.

Why did God permit the persecution of Christians in Rome?
Why did He allow the plagues of the earth – The Black Death, the Influenza, the cholera, the SARS to come upon the world?
Why does He allow sufferings from Cancer, Aids etc?
Why did God allow the horrors of the Slave Trade?
Why did God allow the holocaust of WWII?
Did God not hear the death screams from Pearl Harbour, and the devastation of Hiroshima and Negasaki?
Why does God allow the sufferings of Vietnam, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Somalia etc.?
How can a loving God allow people to suffer?

REACTIONS:

For some, the answer is SIMPLE AND FATALISTIC – God does not exist.
BUT the apparent inactivity of God in such situations is one of the MYSTERIOUS things about God.
WILLIAM COWPER, a poet says: ‘God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform’.
The ways of God are mysterious, in fact, God is always doing the unexpected.
His ways are not our ways. Isaiah 55:8-9 ‘For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways? Declares the Lord. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts’.

STEP 4 – WHAT DO WE DO IN SUCH SITUATIONS AS BELIEVERS? THE SOURCE OF CONFIDENCE

The Prophet Habakkuk offers us 4 steps to revive our faith relationship with God in such situations to lift us from Confusion to Confidence: Do not panic and be anxious. Do not fear. This is the moment to think about the God you are serving.

Habakkuk begins to think about God and four things come into his mind:

Habakkuk 1:12 – the first thing he brings to mind about the God he knows is: ‘O Lord, are you not from everlasting’ (Hab. 1:12). He reflected on the everlasting nature of his God, the God of Israel. The one he served and the one we serve. Saying God is from everlasting is the realization that: He created history; He is from beginning to end; He is the God of eternity; He governs history; and all the events of history are under his control.

THINK about the God you are serving. He was God who controlled INFLUENZA, SARS, THE BLACK DEATH, HIV. He was God who brought the Slave Trade to an end, He brought the WWII to and end, and therefore: THIS ONE TOO SHALL PASS and He will continue to reign. HALLELUJAH!

Habakkuk 1:12 he said: ‘My God, my Hole One…’ He reminds himself of the HOLINESS OF GOD. Holiness means wholeness, completeness. A holy person is a whole person – He is always what He is, this is the unchangeable quality of God. Jesus the SAME, YESTERDAY, TODAY, AND FOREVER. Hebrew 1: 10-12 says ‘In the beginning, O Lord, you laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands. They will perish, but you remain; they will all wear out like a garment: You will roll them up like a robe; like a garment they will be changed. But you remain the same, and your years will never end.’ Our God is unchanging, He has supervised over countless of Pandemics and disasters and He knows how to take you through this one also. Be confident and put you trust in Him. He will never disappoint you. He did not disappoint Noah and His family in the Ark, those who put their trust in Him. He did not disappoint the Israelite who locked themselves up and applied the blood of the lamb on their doorframes. He is the same God that your and I are serving and His power to save has not depreciated.
Habakkuk 1:12 – Then Habakkuk said in the same verse: ‘We will not die.’ As a Jew he realized that he was in a covenant relationship because of his ancestor Abraham and this covenant is an everlasting one and therefore, the nation will be forever. The Babylonians would come, but God’s people would remain. God is a covenant-keeping God and his faithfulness remains. He is the Rock, He is unchanging. Have the confidence that YOU WILL NOT DIE! Like the Babylonians, God has allowed Covid19. We can’t fully understand all of God’s purposes in allowing such horrors to take place, but we do know that as a nation there are lessons we must learn from this experience: As share what we have with one another, we learn to eschew selfishness and wickedness wish is destroying our nation; the threat of Coronavirus should teach us the worthlessness of materials acquisition and covetousness and the need to be one another’s keeper. We should eschew all forms of moral bankruptcy and draw near to God, our maker. Through such terrible events, God shakes the nations and awakens people to their need of Him.
Habakkuk 2:1 – From all the reflections the Prophet had about his God, his final decision was: ‘I will stand at my watch and station myself on the ramparts; I will look to see what he will say to me and answer I am to give to this complaint’. This is the time to wait patiently and pray, because no human mind is wide enough to understand God’s purposes in these events.

STEP 5 – GOD’S RESPONSE TO THE PATIENT – Habakkuk 2:2-3

God has a response for those who patiently wait on Him. He told the Prophet: ‘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 lingers, wait for it; it will certainly come and will not delay.

This is the certainty we have that the prayers we have been praying will not be in vain. The answer is coming, it is coming for sure; It has an appointed time and will come to pass. This is the source of our confidence in God, that He has already spoken about the current situation and it will come to pass.

THEN GOD gives an important principle of life to the Prophet in times like these, in Habakkuk 2:4b ‘The righteous will live by faith.’ God has designed us to live by faith in what God has said will happen, not by circumstances, observations and reasoning:

Hebrew 11 gives us the roll of people who lived by faith and what they accomplished:

Hebrew 11: 32-34 ‘And what more shall I say? I do not have time to tell about Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel and the prophets, who through FAITH.
Conquered kingdoms; administered justice, and gained what was promised; who shut the mouths of lions, quenched the fury of the flames, and escaped the edge of the sword; whose weakness was turned to strength; and who became powerful in battle and routed foreign armies. Women received back their dead, raised to life again.’
They all, through faith, changed the course of history to the glory of God.

CONCLUSION – THE PRAYER OF FAITH

Habakkuk realized that in the all difficulties and afflictions, he just had to PRAY. And his prayer; Hab. 3:2 ‘Lord, I have heard of your fame; I stand in aw of your deeds, O Lord. Renew them in our day, in our time make them known; in wrath remember mercy.

OUR PRAYER IS THAT IN OUR DAY GOD SHOULD RENEW HIS DEEDS IN OUR DAY; HE SHOULD SHOW HIMSELF POWERFUL IN OUR CURRENT SITUATION JUST AS HE DID IN THE PAST; AND HE SHOULD SHOW MERCY UPON US. HE IS MERCIFUL AND WILL SEE US THROUGH. CORONA VIRUS WILL ALSO BE HISTORY.

GOD BLESS YOU!