I love the Book of Habakkuk. He was a guy who felt safe baring his soul to God. He’s practically yelling at God. Check it out:
2 How long, O LORD, must I call for help,
but you do not listen?
Or cry out to you, “Violence!”
but you do not save?3 Why do you make me look at injustice?
Why do you tolerate wrong?
Destruction and violence are before me;
there is strife, and conflict abounds.4 Therefore the law is paralyzed,
and justice never prevails.
The wicked hem in the righteous,
so that justice is perverted.
Habakkuk 1:2-4
He truly understood, as Isaiah did, that it was safe to contend with God. Isaiah 1:18.
As I was reading through this wonderful prophecy again, verse 11 of Chapter 1 really caught my attention.
“Then they sweep past like the wind and go on—
guilty men, whose own strength is their god.”
Here God is answering Habakkuk and telling him about the Babylonians, whom He is using to execute judgment on other nations. The Babylonians were people who trusted in their own strength as their god. They knew they could conquer if they just tried hard enough.
As I read that I realized that a busy person may be caught up in trusting in their own strength. As I wrote in my last post, we often decide not to do something, even something we think or know we should do, because we are “too busy.” When we are in a place where we don’t feel at rest – at peace with our life – that place of contentment Paul talks about (Philippians 4:11-13), then we often feel busy. We are too busy to talk to someone else who needs us; we are too busy to go to Haiti (even if God is calling us to go); we are too busy to take time to talk to our spouse or child. We are striving, not thriving, and the important things of life often begin to suffer.
Could this not be an indication that we are trusting in our own strength? Whenever I start believing that something just can’t be done unless I forsake many important relationships, then I am forgetting the greatest commandments – to love God and others. Whenever I am too busy to be loving, I am not worshiping God, no matter what I’ve accomplished in His name; I am trusting in my own strength. 1 Corinthians 13:1-4.
Oh, that we would rest in the Almighty! It is finished!