Habakkuk 1:4 The Embrace Of Faith part 5

The Defiance Of God’s Law v. 4 

No Standards                          Therefore the law is slacked,

No Security                              and judgment doth never go forth

The Defenselessness Of God’s People

Surrounded By The Grotesque   for the wicked doth compass about the righteous

Strangled By The Gruesome       therefore wrong judgment proceeds

Surrounded, Strangled, Suppressed & Stifled   

The word Compass, in the Hebrew, means to surround and encircle in a menacingly negative way.  It’s to be threatened by the adverse, the damaging, and the destructive.

It’s perplexing to feel smothered by what’s outrageous, or worse to get choked and asphyxiated by absurdity.

But why are we stunned, it’s predictable.  God has explained what to anticipate in Romans 1, describing the downward spiral of a 12-step program of pushing God away.

When any individual or society turns there back on God, the political climate adjusts the laws of the land accordingly.

Prov.12:8 the wicked walk on every side when the vilest men are exalted. 

We shouldn’t be shocked that we’re legislating to eradicate God’s principles and design.

So as we see, our culture is on this strange race downward, which is a time warp of moral deterioration.  We can gage with accuracy, this proportional drift, and it’s directly related to degree we refuse and reject God.  We see it up close and personal every day.  Our media intelligentsia clatter out that we’re progressive, we’re taught that we’re enlightened.  But the trend and flow is we’re slathered in regression, reversion and decay, and that we’re actively barbaric on many levels.

What Habakkuk relates, in his day, is the current facts of our day.  This prophet of the past is proclaiming a contemporary frustration that we face now.   He demands an explanation from God, he’s saying, why is the Lord allowing these damaging effects to gain ground.  But God is only letting us have what we’re demanding and wishing after.

This prophet was a man of robust faith, and we can learn from his freedom of expression with God, that faith isn’t just passive and calm.  Faith can cling with a stout grip, demanding an explanation, especially in the face of irrationality and senselessness.

I find encouragement in this cry to the Lord.  We see the Spirit of God inspiring this story in these pages to show us feelings and faith running side by side in the face of the impossible and unexplainable.

Why do the distortions of evil, why do the jaws of disease and death, seem to swallow us up, and engulf us, from every angle?  Why aren’t the curses of evil and the consequences of the fall reversed?  Why do we taste bitterness and gall in our lives, to the point, that it caves us in?

But when we’re surrounded and feel crushed under a load of distressing odds we still are to stand in the veracity and authenticity of God’s Word.  We need to pray through, and hold on, for God’s sovereign enactments, and solid decisions.

It may appear that wrong judgment, and incorrect decisions, are distorting the hopes, and destroying the possibility of right things happening, too those we care for and love.  But we have to keep praying, stay in there with God, asking Him to enact His sovereign, beautiful, over-ruling love and mercy

When outnumbered, we need to call on God, to demonstrate His assuring truth, that nothing is against us when He is for us.  We need to boldly ask our Lord for His faith perspective.  We need to call to God to help us to rises above the impossible & to work through every difficulty & seeming setback.

We need the Lord to overrule with right, as we cry to Him for His perspectives, when destructive decision rage and threaten.

Eph. 5:16 confronts us with the responsibility to:

Redeem the time, because the days are evil.

The master of evil is stalking us, roaming all around, filling every day with negative alterations and destructive challenges.

Prov. 15:15-16 All the days of the afflicted are evil: But he that is of a merry heart hath a continual feast. Better is little with the fear of the Lord than great treasure and trouble therewith.

In the Gospel of Mark there’s a woman who experienced all her days being evil.  For 12 years she was drained with a bleeding disorder.  Her misery was incessant, unbearable and degrading.

I think it’s interesting the sarcasm of Mark saying she suffered many things from the physicians.

It’s bad to see your health flop over a cliff, but then to be a punching bag of research and experimentation for the medical quacks and pharmaceutical guru’s can leave you major bedraggled.

In utter desperation she bungled from one doctor to another, always yearning that someone or something could cure her. But she found nothing but stupidity and incompetence from the doctors.

To top it off she spent all that she had.  The medical profession bilked her of her money and nothing in her life improved but she was getting worse and worse. Mark 5:26

As John Phillips writes: she was bankrupt, broken and bitter.

That’s how we need to come to the Great Physician.  He’s a Doctor who has never lost a case and His fee is free.  Not only free but also He says of all our debts, put that on my account.

All she needed to do was touch His garment and the fountain of her blood was dried up. Mark 5:27-29

Touching Jesus garment is the  Better is little with the fear of the Lord of Prov.15  

With Jesus we find a merry heart and have a continual feast.