WHY? How many times have you heard this question? How many times have you asked it yourself? We start out our lives with a whole host of questions beginning with this word Why. Why is the sky blue Mommy? Why does the cat meow and the dog bark? Why isn't Daddy home yet? Sometimes we drive our parents nuts with these questions. In our spiritual lives, we do the same to our Father in Heaven. Why is this happening, God? Why are they getting away with this? I don't think we drive Him crazy or anger Him with our questions, though. Our questions when we were little (exasperating as they were sometimes) showed our parents that our minds were working and growing. It was a part of growing up. I believe God feels the same about our questions. He made us this way, questioning and growing. It is a part of our spiritual "growing up".
I listened to a sermon on the first chapter of Habakkuk this weekend. It was enlightening. The preacher talked about how Habakkuk was at a crisis of faith, asking God "Why are these bad things happening?" He said something that made a lot of sense to me. He said that when these questions and crisis of faith come to us as Christians we have three choices: 1) we can ignore them, just pretend that they never happened and that our faith is as secure as always; 2) we can decide that God is mean and end up going back to the beginning of our relationship, having to start all over again; or 3) we can let the questions do what they were meant by God to do... grow our Faith! I can see in my own life where I have handled my own questioning of God in all three of these ways. The first is only a cover up and it ended up making me feel like a hypocrite. As to the second way, the one time I handled a crisis of faith with deciding I could no longer trust God and maybe He wasn't there anyway made me feel so totally alone in my problem that I never wanted to go there again! But the third way has always led eventually to a growth in my faith in God. It was much the hardest way to handle a crisis of faith, but well worth it in the end.
Reading through the book of Habakkuk is a good way to see what happens when you question God. (by the way if you are wondering, as I was, where to find the book of Habakkuk: turn to the end of the Old Testament and go back 5 books) In the first chapter Habakkuk asks his questions: How long? "How long, Lord, must I call for help, but you do not listen? Or cry out to you, 'Violence!' but you do not save?" (Habakkuk 1:2 NIV) and the eternal question of Why? "Why do you make me look at injustice? Why do you tolerate wrongdoing?" (Habakkuk 1:3 NIV) He listened to God's answer which pointed out God's Power and Might. God basically told him that it was going to get worse before it got better but that He was in control and knew it would happen. And Habakkuk's answer was what our initial answer usually is: "Lord, are you not from everlasting? My God, my Holy One..." (Habakkuk 1:12 NIV) Ok I get that you are God, you are all powerful...but... Habakkuk ended chapter 1 with more questions of why and how can you let this happen: You Hate Evil God! So Why is this happening? I know my conversations with God have gone much the same way. "God you are awesome and powerful, but I have more questions: like, why don't you stop this and what I am supposed to do now?"
In chapter 2 Habakkuk says "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." (Habakkuk 2:1 NIV) He was going to wait and see what would happen now. He has questioned the Almighty, so would He get angry and blast Habakkuk to smithereens? Would something happen to change things? Would God answer him again? God did answer him again, with the same answer He has often given me: " 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." (Habakkuk 2: 3) It is not a popular answer with me and probably not you either: Wait!...Sigh.... We must take the time to stop and listen when things happen in our lives that make us doubt God. And sometimes He asks you to wait, sometimes the answers are shown at once. But during this time of questioning, looking and questioning again we are growing in our relationship with our Creator. We are building a foundation of trust!
Habakkuk ends his book with praise: "Yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior. The Sovereign Lord is my strength; He makes my feet like the feet of a deer, He enables me to tread on the heights. (Habakkuk 3:18-19 NIV) However it is the verses just before these last two that show us Habakkuk's growth in his relationship with the Lord: " Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior." Once we get through with our questioning of God and our crisis of faith, things change in us. Ultimately, we come to realize that our relationship with God our Father is built on nothing less than His Grace and our Faith. That relationship does not rely on what is happening to us or in the world around us. As Habakkuk said, even if the world is falling apart around me and everything looks horrible, I will still find a way to rejoice in God my Savior!
Sometimes we are in the valleys of despair and loneliness; we look to the mountain tops where we were just a short time ago, praising God and feeling His power. We long to get back up there again, and with God's help we can. Use your questions as hand holds on the rocks above you. Use His answers to map out a path to take, in order get to the "mountain top" again. Don't pretend you are not in a valley at all, don't decide that it isn't worth the effort to get out of this awful place of doubt. Ask your questions, listen for your answers and see the growth that happens. God does let us go through trials and problems, He knows we will question Him. He expects those questions and has answers ready for us. It is a part of the process of refinement, of burning away our doubt and letting our faith shine through as it was meant to do. "And I will put this third into the fire, and refine them as one refines silver, and test them as gold is tested"....(Zechariah 13:9 ESV) And what is the end result of our testing and trials, of our questions and answers? The last part of Zechariah 13:9 says it all:
"....They will call upon my name,
and I will answer them.
I will say,
‘They are my people’;
and they will say,
‘The Lord is my God.’”
(PS If you would like to listen to this sermon I referred to in paragraph 2, here is a link:
https://youtu.be/YGmABuH0sa0)