Habakkuk can confirm it. He learned that lesson well when God answered all his questions with one simple statement. “The just shall live by his faith” (Habakkuk 2:4). Or, as The Amplified Bible puts it: “The just and the [uncompromisingly] righteous man shall live by his faith and in his faithfulness.”
In a nutshell, that’s where Habakkuk missed it. He’d been complaining up a storm to the Lord, pleading with Him to fix the mess around him, but he hadn’t been operating by faith.
God works with faith and Habakkuk hadn’t given Him anything to work with.
The same can sometimes be said of us. Whenever we aren’t getting the results we want from God, it’s not because God is failing to do His part. It’s because we’re missing it where our faith is concerned. We aren’t doing our part to receive the victory He has already provided.
“But Gloria,” you might say, “I’ve been walking by faith for years. I know how to do my part!”
That may be true, but no matter how much you know, you can let things slip if you don’t stay on top of them. What’s more, every one of us is still learning. No one has arrived yet. So taking a faith refresher course is always a good idea. Especially when we’re facing various tests and trials, we want to make sure we’re handling them the way God expects—not like Habakkuk did, but like Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego.
You remember those three, don’t you? They went through a time of trouble the likes of which most of us will never experience. They were literally thrown into a raging inferno simply for refusing to worship a king’s idol.
MAY '14 : BVOV : 5
