God. God is big enough to handle our questions and God would rather have us yell and cry out to him than walk away in silence. I’m glad people heard that and found comfort in the message, but what’s bad is that if we are questioning God it probably means we are going through a difficult time. We question God when our prayers seem to go unanswered or when we have been doing everything the best we can, and being the most faithful we can, but tragedy and heartache still comes. We question God when we have doubts about God’s goodness, and if God loves us, and if God is able or wants to help us.
Sometimes our questions begin with why? Why God are you not doing something? Why are You not healing? Why are You not helping me or my family? Why are these tragic things happening to good and innocent people? Why do we still see prejudice and injustice? Why is our country so divided and divisive?
Sometimes our questions begin with where? Where are you God when bad things are happening in my life? Where are You in the chaos of our world? Where do You want me to go? Are You even there?
Sometimes we just question God by shouting, Enough. No more. I can’t take it. How long. Help. If you are going through a difficult time, I’m glad you are here today because it means that you have not allowed the struggle and questions and problems you are going through to drive you away from God. You are here because you are still seeking God and want to be drawn closer to God. I’m glad you are here today because God wants to draw you closer and speak to you, and we are going to learn how that can happen.
We are learning all of this from the Old Testament prophet Habakkuk, who wrote 600 years before Jesus. Habakkuk wrote during a time in the history of Israel when there was great injustice and corruption among God’s people, and some real opposition and persecution against God’s people. Habakkuk didn’t speak God’s word to the people as much as he spoke the people’s words to God. Like many of us, he questioned and cried out to God.
Habakkuk said, How long, O Lord, must I cry for help but you do not listen. Or cry out to you violence! And you do not save. God heard Habakkuk’s cry and replied, but God’s answer caused more questions because God said he was going to use the Babylonians to judge the people of Israel. God was going to use more evil people to judge the evil of his own people. This created more questions for Habakkuk and in the midst of these questions, we find him doing two things. He embraces God, and he wrestles with God. That is what Habakkuk means, to embrace and to wrestle.
Last week our focus was on wondering where God is and what God is doing, and we were encouraged to not walk away but to embrace God. This week we shift from wondering to waiting. If we are going to question God, we have to be willing to wait for God’s answers. But let’s be honest we don’t like to wait.
We live in an instant gratification society. Netflix means we can watch movies and TV shows when we want to. We might have to wait for a new season of a show, but they drop it all at once so we can binge watch the entire season at once and don’t have to wait from one week to the next to see what’s going to happen.
We have instagram and instant messages where we can share and communicate with people in real time. We have instant pots which can cook a whole chicken in 25 minutes! Why don’t I have one of these? And of course there is the microwave which can reheat our food in seconds. But as fast as the microwave works, we still don’t want to wait so we stop and open the microwave before it times out because we don’t want to wait those extra 5 or 10 seconds. (Or maybe that’s just me!)
We do not like to wait, and we often think of waiting as being passive, we just sit and do nothing, but the kind of waiting that is needed when we question God is not at all passive, it is active. This is what Habakkuk said when he told God he would wait for his reply. Habakkuk 2:1. I will stand at my watch and station myself on the ramparts. I will look to see what he will say to me, and what answer I am to give to this complaint.
When Habakkuk says he will wait, he uses the image of a watchman. If you think of a watchman on a tower, they are not idle, they are active, and they are constantly doing two important things. They are looking for danger during the day and listening for danger at night. When Habakkuk uses the image of a watchman he tells us that listening for God’s reply means paying attention, it means looking for what God is doing and listening for His voice.
If we are going to listen to God, we first need to be still. We need to quiet our lives, our minds, and our voices to make room for God to speak. Psalm 46 says, be still and know that I am God. For us to hear God we have to learn how to be still because good listening requires stillness. The problem is we are never still.
Many of us have bought into the idea that we can multitask well, so we do it all the time. We never just sit and do one thing anymore. We will read, and text, and post to instagram, and have the TV on in the background. We tell ourselves we are taking it all in, but we aren’t. We simply are not wired that way. Our brains are wired to only focus on one thing at a time, so when we are doing multiple things at once, our brain is actually stopping and starting over and over and over again. It happens so quickly that most of the time we don’t notice, but every once in a while as we multitask we tune something out, or only catch part of what is being said.
You know how this works, you only hear part of what your spouse said because you were watching TV, or you only caught part of what your kids said because you were texting at the same time. We aren’t meant to be doing multiple things at once, so if we are going to listen for God, the first thing we need to do is be still.
We have to create space and silence for God to speak because God still speaks. God can speak to us through His word. The Bible tells us that God’s word is living and active, which means that it can speak to our situations if we allow it to. It might take days, weeks, even months of reading until we find it actually speaking to our situation, but it can and will speak if we give it a chance. Can we open God’s word every day and allow the message to speak to us? Can we develop intentional and systematic ways of reading God’s word that can help us hear God’s word?
God can also speak to us through people. God can speak through trusted friends, family, and mentors. We have to be willing to listen, and sometimes we might not hear the power of those words until later, but God can speak to us through others. In college, when I wanted to move to California, my grandfather said, that’s too far away from your family. There was wisdom in his words that I didn’t listen to. In fact, twice I didn’t listen and tried to move to CA and both times it didn’t work out. God was trying to speak to me but I wasn’t listening.
Situations can also help us hear God’s message and give us a clear sense of direction, and at times God can also speak directly to us. I’ve shared before that there was a day when I heard an audible voice in a dream. It shouted the words, 2 Timothy 2:2. I woke up saying to myself 2 Timothy 2:2. It was not a familiar passage so I went and looked it up. The things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable men and women who will also be qualified to teach others.
I had to read and reflect and ask God for days what this meant, and in time God showed me how this verse needed to direct my life at that moment. Several years later I came back to it again and it gave me direction a second time. God continues to speak this word to me, which is why I am still a pastor: entrusting to reliable, faithful men and women what I know of God and have learned of God so that you can share it with others. If we will listen, God will speak, but we have to give God the time, and create the space, and the silence, so we can actively listen.
Listening to God also means learning how to write down what we hear. Habakkuk 2:2. Then the Lord replied, Write down the revelation and make it plain on tablets so that a herald may run with it. Active listening can include writing down what we hear and wrestling with those words to make sense out of it. Many people call this journaling, and I’ll be honest, this is not a discipline I have been very good at. I am convinced that God has said all kinds of things to me, but I never wrote it down so I lost the message, or I began to think that God never said it in the first place. If we can learn to write down what we hear as we actively listen to God, we can then begin to examine those words, pray over them, and discern what is from God and what is not.
Let’s be honest, some things we hear in dreams just come from the pizza we ate the night before, but some things might actually be from God. If we aren’t going to listen during the day, maybe God will speak to us at night, when we are quiet. If we can discipline ourselves to write down what we hear from God during the day or at night, reflect on it, discuss it, pray about it, and go back to it days later, maybe we will actually begin to see that God is speaking to us.
It makes me sad to think of all the things God may have said to me but I never took the time to write it down and consider it, or act on it. How many blessings have I missed? How many times have I not blessed others because I did not act? God encourages us to write down what we hear and then take the time to consider what that message says.
The final thing we are told to do when listening for God is to wait. Habakkuk 2:3. For the revelation awaits an appointed time. It speaks of the end and will not prove false. Though it linger, wait for it, it will certainly come and will not delay.
We want God to speak now, today. We want an answer the first time we sit down to listen, but that is not how God works. Often God calls us to wait and to practice the art of listening. Often God calls us to wait because he wants us to embrace him and wrestle with him. Second Timothy 2:2 was an answer to a prayer I had prayed about 5 months earlier. I wanted God to speak directly, and clearly, and he did, but it was in His time and not mine. God spoke in his way, not in my way. But God spoke. God will speak to us if we will wait.
Wondering where God is and what God is doing, and asking God difficult and painful questions is not easy. Waiting for God to answer and learning how to listen is harder. Waiting is essential, however, because if it’s not God’s time, we can’t force it. We can ask God to speak and act and help - that’s always ok, but we will never force God’s hand. God’s time is God’s time and we can’t force it, but here’s the good news, when it is God’s time, we can’t stop it. When God’s time to speak comes, and we are watching and waiting and listening, God will speak.
Last week, we learned that it was ok to question God and that our questions had the ability to draw us closer to God. Our questions weren’t answered and our problems weren’t solved, but we knew it was ok to ask them. This week, our questions still aren’t answered and our problems still aren't solved. We are just told to listen, and watch, and wait. Our life is not a sitcom where all problems are resolved neatly in 30 minutes including commercials, but waiting is not passive, it is active. It’s turning off the noise and creating the space and silence needed for us to actually hear God when he speaks. It’s writing down what we hear so we can consider if it is truly God’s word. And waiting means waiting, and waiting, and waiting some more, knowing that when it’s God’s time, He will speak and if it is God’s time, nothing will stop Him.
Next Steps
Habakkuk 2 - Waiting
What do you find hardest about waiting? In what circumstances do you find waiting to be the most difficult?
Read Habakkuk 2
What can you do this week to make room for God to speak? What can you turn off? How and where can you create silence?
Read Psalm 46.
How can this entire psalm help you learn to be still.
Write down some ways you have seen God move in your life and answer prayers. Use these as an anchor for your faith in times of doubt and more questions.
Journal both your questions and the words you hear from God. Try it for a week and see if it helps you listen better, or gives you confidence that what you hear is from God.
Act on what you hear and allow God to confirm His word.
If you are still asking questions and experiencing pain and doubt, know that you are not alone and that it is ok to question God. Read some of these psalms of lament: Psalms 52-60, 64, 70, 71, 74, 77, 79, 80, 83, 85, 86, 89, 90, 94
