When God Is Silent Day 2: Hab. 1:5-11

Read Habakkuk 1:5-11. Meditate on what you’ve read using these journal prompts:

Read & Journal

• Thinking about what you read yesterday, what was Habakkuk’s main question or issue with God in verses 1-4?

• In your own words, how would you explain God’s response in today’s reading?

• In verse 5, God use two Hebrew words that come from the same root, translated as “look” and “watch.” When you look at your life, how can you see God at work, even in unexpected ways or ways you don’t understand?

• Are you watching for God to work in your life? Why or why not?

• What does God’s response reveal about his character, about who he is?

• Habakkuk had asked God why he wasn’t doing something about the injustice and unrighteousness in the world, and God’s response was that his judgment was coming. Have there been times when you have doubted that God is going to act, especially when it comes to injustice or sin? What did you learn about God in those times of waiting? About yourself?

Ponder

Why aren’t you doing something? In difficult times, it’s a question we volley at our loved ones, our leaders and our friends. When God seems silent, it’s the question we most often find ourselves asking him, just as Habakkuk had in verses 1-4.

God’s response to Habakkuk’s question must have been startling. “Don’t worry, judgment is coming, Habakkuk,” God seems to say, “and I’m going to use the most violent people on earth, the Babylonians, to exact it.” Earlier, through the prophet Micah, God had told the people of Israel what he required of them: act justly, love mercy and walk humbly with the Lord your God (Micah 6:8). God wasn’t unaware that his people were living outside of the boundaries he had set forth. He hadn’t turned a blind eye to their unrighteousness or the injustice that pervaded their society. Judgment was coming at the hands of the Babylonians, whose own strength was their God (Hab. 1:11).

Habakkuk had asked for an answer, and God had given him one: judgment was coming, and it would be terrible. But God’s answer also revealed an important truth about his character, about who God is. In using the Babylonians as his instrument of justice, God was declaring his sovereignty. The Babylonians may worship their own strength, and other nations their own gods, but God is sovereign. The Babylonians may be the most powerful nation in the world, but they were simply a tool in the hand of the one true God.

God doesn’t always work in the ways we think he should or through means we understand. But often, in those times when we cry out, “Why aren’t you doing something?” his response is to reveal more of his character. In those times when the world seems out of control and upside down, his invitation to us is to remember who he is: powerful, holy, and sovereign.