Habbakuk 1:1-13
1 The oracle that Habakkuk
the prophet received.
2 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?
3 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.
4 Therefore the law is
paralyzed, and justice never prevails. The wicked hem in the righteous, so that
justice is perverted.
5 "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.
6 I am raising up the
Babylonians, that ruthless and impetuous people, who sweep across the whole
earth to seize dwelling places not their own.
7 They are a feared and
dreaded people; they are a law to themselves and promote their own honor.
8 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;
9 they all come bent on
violence. Their hordes advance like a desert wind and gather prisoners like
sand.
10 They deride kings and
scoff at rulers. They laugh at all fortified cities; they build earthen ramps
and capture them.
11 Then they sweep past like
the wind and go on-- guilty men, whose own strength is their god."
12 O LORD, are you not from
everlasting? My God, my Holy One, we will not die. O LORD, you have appointed
them to execute judgment; O Rock, you have ordained them to punish.
13 Your eyes are too pure to
look on evil; you cannot tolerate wrong. Why then do you tolerate the
treacherous? Why are you silent while the wicked swallow up those more
righteous than themselves?
In the Gospel of John, there comes a time when Jesus
is at the peak of his popularity. You
find it in chapter 6 – a point at which the reader is not even half way through
the book of John’s Gospel.
After a full day of teaching this vast, vast crowd,
Jesus knows the people are getting hungry, so he turns to this disciples and
asks them what can be done to feed all of these people. Philip is one of the apostles, and he tells
Jesus it can’t be done. After all, feeding that many people would take 8
month’s salary to even begin to feed such a vast, vast crowd.
As the story goes, there is one boy in the crowd who
brought his lunch, and so Jesus takes it and has the disciples begin to
distribute the food. The miracle is that
the crowd is not only fed, but there are baskets full of left-overs.
Now, most of us know that part of the story. We were told as children about the boy who
shared his lunch.
What we tend to forget is that the next morning when
the crowd wakes up they are hungry again, and they look around for Jesus – their
meal ticket, and he is nowhere to be found.
When they catch up with him, they discover that Jesus has shut down the
all-you-can-eat miracle buffet. No more
free samples. Jesus tells them that the
only food they get from now on is spiritual food that feeds the soul and he
says to them, “I am the bread of life.”
John’s Gospel says that at that point many people no
longer followed him. They deserted him,
leaving him not with thousands, but with about dozen or so followers.
Kyle Idleman in his book “Not a Fan,” says that most
Christians are not followers of Christ, but just fans.
The dictionary defines a fan as “an enthusiastic
admirer.” Fans want to be close enough
to Jesus to get the feel-good benefits but not so close that it requires
sacrifice. Fans may be good with
slapping a Jesus fish on their car bumpers, but beyond that there is little
substance.
Jesus was never interested in having fans or
admirers. Instead, throughout the New
Testament he was more interested in getting followers and disciples rather than
simple fans who are easily distracted.
What is it that makes a true follower?
What are the marks of discipleship?
Over the next few weeks, we’ll be looking at the
Seven Marks of Discipleship, which will be printed on the front of each
bulletin every Sunday during the next seven weeks.
I hope that each of these seven marks will become
woven into the fabric of our church and into our own thinking so that
everything we do will somehow reflect our commitment to be more than fans, but
true followers of Christ.
One mark of discipleship is to pray daily.
In the New Testament we are told “Pray without
ceasing,” but are we doing that?
A national survey reveals that 91% of Muslims pray
daily or more than once per day.
Christians? Less
than half – and in one survey it is as low as 16% who pray once per day.
For many, prayer is something Christians do about
once per week, or even less.
Frequent prayer, however, is one of the marks of a
true follower of Christ. Why then, do we
not make this a daily spiritual discipline?
One reason, quite frankly, is that for some, prayer
sometimes seems futile. Some people just
do not feel that God is listening. It is
the problem of unanswered prayers.
And even for those of us who do pray daily, this
business of unanswered prayer is frustrating.
And the Bible is full of unanswered prayers.
In the Old Testament lesson from Habakkuk, we see
such a prayer.
As we look at Habakkuk, we find that he opens the
book with a struggle over unanswered prayer.
In verse two of chapter one, the prophet is pleading with God, “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?”
How do we deal with unanswered prayer?
Why is God sometimes so silent?
I. WE MISUNDERSTAND PRAYER
One reason is that we sometimes
misunderstand the nature of prayer. We
pray out of selfish motives.
True prayer is God-centered.
But we often turn prayer into a self-centered
activity.
In the New Testament book of James, we are told
(James 4:3), “When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong
motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.”
The object of prayer is that God might be glorified.
At times we think of prayer as an Aladdin’s lamp which we use to glorify self.
We often think of God as a genie who is at our bidding and command.
A theologian once said, “Our prayers often reduce
God to nothing more than a Cosmic Bellboy, who is neither very bright, nor very
reliable.”
Can we not pray for ourselves? Of course, but we
should pray for ourselves unselfishly. Unselfish prayer for self is prayer
which seeks not self-centered comfort but Christ-centered conformity to the
will of God.
The Bible promises that God will hear our
prayers. It never says that God will
obey our orders – and sometimes that is the way we treat prayer. So of course, God may not answer such
self-centered prayers.
II. UNBELIEF BLOCKS PRAYER
Another reason why prayer may go unanswered is that
the person offering the prayer does not believe. The prayer is simply an empty ritual, or
perhaps it is simply spoken as a superstition.
It’s like rubbing a rabbit’s foot.
Or reading a horiscope. Even
people who don’t believe in superstition may occasionally practice these,
thinking, “What’s the harm?”
During World War II, General
Patton was given the task of rescuing some soldiers trapped behind enemy
lines. The weather was not cooperating,
however, and the tanks could not reach the men, nor could the planes provide
proper air cover. So on December 8, 1944,
Patton called on Chaplain James O’Neill and asked, “Do you have a prayer for
good weather? We need a break in this
weather if we are to win the war.”
O’Neill looked through some prayer books and couldn’t find the right
one, so he composed the following prayer.
Almighty and most merciful Father, we humbly beseech
Thee, of Thy great goodness, to restrain these immoderate rains with which we
have had to contend. Grant us fair weather for Battle. Graciously hearken to us as soldiers
who call upon Thee that, armed with Thy power, we may advance from victory to
victory, and crush the oppression and wickedness of our enemies and establish
Thy justice among men and nations.
When the chaplain delivered a copy of the prayer to
the General, Patton ordered the minister to make 250,000 copies and to see that
every soldier in the Third Army got a copy.
Two days after the copies were distributed, there was a break in the
weather and the Americans were able to advance.
A few months ago, I saw an interview of one or
Patton’s soldiers who had kept his copy of that prayer. He said he used it whenever he was in
trouble. He said the prayer at the
deathbed of his mother, and it didn’t heal his mother. He said the prayer when he was diagnosed with
cancer, but it didn’t heal him. He
concluded that prayer didn’t work at all.
But prayer had been nothing more than a
superstitious ritual for him. Saying
that prayer at the deathbed of his mother was meaningless, because it was not a
prayer for his mother to be healed. It
was a prayer for moderate weather and success in battle. That prayer had been answered.
But for this man, repeating the words of this prayer
had become little more than a rubbing of the rabbit’s foot.
Prayer is sometimes spoken without any faith or
belief.
In the New Testament book of James, we read in
chapter 1, verse 6, that when a person prays, “he must believe and not doubt,
because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind.”
CONCLUSION
We often struggle with the problem of
unanswered prayer as if it is a failure on God’s part. Many of us feel like we have a contract with
God and that God is obligated to hear our prayers. We never stop to think that God might have
something better in mind, or that we have misunderstood prayer.
No matter what happens in our prayers and with our
desires, we should always be focused on the fact that God knows best.
Whether God answers our prayers
literally and strictly, or seems to do as he did with Habbakuk and seems to be
silent, we are given an excellent promise in St. Paul’s letter to the Romans. He tells us in chapter 8 of his New
Testament letter to the Romans, “In all things God works for the good of those
who love him.” (Romans 8:28)
Our responsibility is to commune with
God in prayer, without ceasing. Every
day, should be given to prayer.
Copyright 2013, Dr. Maynard
Pittendreigh
All rights reserved.
