Habakkuk did not especially ask God for things!
Rather, for “understanding.”
For a better knowledge of God’s “Ways!”
For example, “Why does God allow evil to go unpunished?”
Or, “Why does God allow particularly vile nations to overrun and decimate other nations?”
Or, had he lived later, “Why Hitler?”
Job asked basically the same question.
As did one of the Psalmists, Asaph, in Psalm 73.
Jeremiah, too. With Jeremiah 12:1 being especially clear. “Righteous art thou, O LORD, when I plead with thee: yet let me talk with thee of thy judgments: Wherefore doth the way of the wicked prosper? wherefore are all they happy that deal very treacherously?”
Wow!
But, in Habakkuk’s case anyway, no answer was forthcoming!
So, and here’s part of the “beauty” of the Prophet’s faith … he just “waited” on God!
So much so that he painted for us this word picture, literal in meaning but proverbial in supplication. “I (Habakkuk) will stand upon my watch, and set me upon the tower, and will WATCH TO SEE what He will say unto me, and what I shall answer when I am reproved.”
I WILL TRUST.
I WILL WAIT.
I WILL BELIEVE.
I WILL LISTEN.
AND, EVEN IF REBUKED, I WILL STILL COMMUNE WITH MY LORD.
This is mature faith!
This is prayer wrestling with a spiritual problem … and in so doing meeting with a spiritual discovery!
He took his questions to the Lord … and got a number new insights about the Character of the Almighty!
Waiting on God!
This “watch,” this “tower” Habakkuk mentions is merely a place a soldier would mount and keep an eye on the horizon, every direction … on the job, looking for any “sign” of movement, good or bad!
Habakkuk, I’ll stay “on the job” for my Lord.
I will not go “absent-without-leave!”
I’ll wait Him out!
The Hebrew word for “tower” is used in the Bible elsewhere as “fortress!” It is spelled “matzsor” in Hebrew.
A “waiting place” … also a “strong, safe place!”
Waiting!
Yet leaning!
Read this with me. “They that WAIT upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.” Isaiah 40:31
Or: “Behold, as the eyes of servants look unto the hand of their masters, and as the eyes of a maiden unto the hand of her mistress; so our eyes WAIT upon the LORD our God, until that he have mercy upon us.” Psalm 123:1
Daniel the Prophet believed: “Blessed is he that waiteth.” Daniel 12:12.
Isaiah preached: “For since the beginning of the world men have not heard, nor perceived by the ear, neither hath the eye seen, O God, beside thee, what he hath prepared for him that waiteth for him.” Isaiah 64:4
Habakkuk needed “light.” Did he know Psalm 130:6? “My soul waiteth for the Lord more than they that watch for the morning: I say, more than they that watch for the morning.”
Furthermore: “Truly my soul waiteth upon God: from him cometh my salvation.” David in Psalm 62:1, where “salvation” can mean “deliverance, help, welfare” too.
One of the key Hebrew verbs for “trust” is merely the word “to wait!”
The Old Testament concept for “hope” also involves expectantly “waiting” on God!
So … from Habakkuk who lived centuries before Chris, right down to the twenty-first century … to you and me. Are we willing “to wait” on the Lord.
To still keep believing.
Praying.
Trusting.
Expecting.
Leaning.
Not doubting.
Maybe even singing a bit!
With eyes wide open … knowing somehow, someway God is going to answer!
And if not … I still have been in the company of the Creator, the Redeemer, the Righteous God (the only True God) of the universe!
Paul may have said it best in Romans 8:25. “But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it.”
Dear friend reading here today …
Join Habakkuk on his watch, climb that tower with him.
Wait on the Lord!
By the way, two verses later, God did speak to His Prophet! “Wait for it (your answer). It will surely come. It will not tarry.” Habakkuk 2:3
What more could a believer ask?
— Dr. Mike Bagwell