Knowing God

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“O LORD, I have heard Your speech and was afraid; O LORD, revive Your work in the midst of the years! In the midst of the years make it known; In wrath remember mercy.” (Habakkuk 3:2, NKJV)

Habakkuk was a prophet who sought and spoke truth.  He was keenly aware of the spiritual condition of his nation and appealed to God to act.  God spoke and Habakkuk was shaken.  He then made an appeal for God to revive His work.

Pastor Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758), often referred to in these devotionals, was also a pastor-prophet who sought and spoke truth.  When God began to revive His work in Northampton, Massachusetts in the 1730’s, Edwards wrote: “We have been long in a strange stupor; the influences of the Spirit of God upon the heart have been but little felt.”  The truth seems unavoidable.  The people of God today, by in large, are in a strange stupor and the influences of the Spirit of God are but rarely, if ever, felt.

Pastor Brian Edwards writes that “the church has very little effect on the lives of the great majority; they hardly know we exist.”  Sadly the absence of the Presence of God is the most striking reality in the church of Jesus Christ today.  But who even notices anymore?  What has happened to the one people on planet earth who are responsible before God to prepare the masses of fallen souls for God’s judgment?

Pastor Brian explains that to compensate for the absence of God’s Presence the church has taken alternative paths: showmanship, entertainment, gimmicks, give aways, a club-like atmosphere.  One church offered free rabies shots to its members.  We assume this was for the pets and not the members. We are still, it seems, in a strange stupor.

Habakkuk stood in the midst of the years as he saw it.  God had acted in the past in a mighty deliverance for His people.  On the horizon was the dust-cloud of the mighty hooves of the invading beasts of the Babylonian armies.  Certain judgments were inevitable yet Habakkuk cries out for God to revive His work in the midst of the years.  We, too, it seems stand in the midst of the years, between God’s reviving work of years gone by and ominous clouds on the horizon.  Let us throw off this present stupor and pray in faith for God to revive His work.  The very desire to do so comes from Him.