Anybody here want to testify?

That's an old and familiar question in the country churches here in the southland. There's singing, and then there's time for testifying. 

It's nothing major. Nothing formal. Just a chance to speak and tell about how God has worked in one's life. To give Him the glory.  Others call it giving a testimony.

We'll see Habakkuk's testimony in the final verses of chapter three.

In verse sixteen he voices his acceptance of God's plan:

I heard and my heart pounded,
    my lips quivered at the sound;
decay crept into my bones,
    and my legs trembled.
Yet I will wait patiently for the day of calamity
    to come on the nation invading us. (v. 16)

Habakkuk is being honest: he is dreading the coming of the Babylonians. But he also says, "I get it." The Babylonians are going to attack us. Then you will destroy them, God. Now, he probably did not live long enough to see the fall of the Babylonian nation. They won't fall for almost seventy years. But Habakkuk gets the message.

Then, in verses seventeen through eighteen, Habakkuk says he is committed to the plan.

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,
18 yet I will rejoice in the Lord,
    I will be joyful in God my Savior. (v. 17-18)

Rejoice? Give a testimony about God's handiwork?

How is this possible? 

Habakkuk has described what we might call a recession, or even a depression . . . a total economic meltdown. Ancient Israel had an agricultural economy. If you ran out of figs, olives, grapes, sheep, and cattle, you were in deep trouble. There was no factory to go get a job at. No manufacturing to lean on. And this was not a random list, either. This was a total list of assets!

What would we do if we were wiped out?

What would we do if the stock market tanked? Our savings were erased? Our retirement drained? What kind of a future would we be seeing?

What about the present? What if we lost our jobs, our ability to pay bills, our food pantries emptied? What if our kids were jailed? Our spouse was considered "terminal"? Our country began to throw Christians in jail?

Could we still say, "Yes, Lord" when all of that happened?

There are many believers today who serve a God of the good times. They sing praises and pray and hold up their hands and love Him when all is going well. But what do we do when hard times come? If all we have is a God of the good times, we don't really have the God of the Bible.

(Tapping on screen)

Hey! That was important!  Did you hear? If all we have is a God of the good times, we don't really have the God of the Bible.

Sometimes the fig tree doesn't bud, and there are absolutely no grapes on the vines. Sometimes the olive crop fails and there are no crops in the fields; sometimes there are no herds or flocks. Sometimes we have no job, or we have no food in the pantry, or we have lost our good health.

What do we do then?

Well, we can get angry with God. Or we can even give up on God altogether.

Or we can choose to believe in God anyway. You see, faith is not based on feelings. Faith isn't about our circumstances. Faith says "I still believe in God" when it would be much easier to stop believing.

Habakkuk says "I will wait patiently" and he also says "I will rejoice." Habakkuk found new strength in the midst of desolation.

The Lord God is my strength, and he will make my feet like hinds' feet, and he will make me to walk upon mine high places. To the chief singer on my stringed instruments. (v. 19)

Those words "my feet" talks about our journey - our pathway through life. Scholars say that the "hind" referred to here is a species of deer that is extremely sure-footed in the barren hills of what we now call the Holy Land. We could be walking along the path in those hills, and we would probably slide and slip and fall. The hind? Not so much. He can frolic about in the hills and still keep his footing! 

Application? If we know the Lord, He will give us stability in the slippery moments of life. We can have His gift of grace to stand, instead of falling down or falling apart. 

Be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. But resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same experiences of suffering are being accomplished by your brethren who are in the world. After you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace, who called you to His eternal glory in Christ, will Himself perfect, confirm, strengthen and establish you. (I Peter 5:8-10)

I hope you have been blessed by the study we have done in Habakkuk. Personally, it has been so helpful for me. I've learned a lot and been reminded of much more! As we come to the end of the book, nothing has changed on the outside situation. The people of Judah are still galumphing along, forgetting God. Violence and wickedness still is rampant in Jerusalem. And the Babylonians are still going to come as God's instrument for judgment. There are hard times coming and there is nothing that anybody can do about it!

What's changed is Habakkuk. On the inside.

We are all different, right? Some of us are happy, and some are sad. Some of us are healthy, and others are sick. Some are looking at the future with excitement, and some are looking at it with dread.

But one thing is the same -- if we are believers, and God is our Savior, we can still tread on the heights in the worst moments of life. We can stand and be sure-footed while others are falling around us. 

We can take the message of Habakkuk and put it in our back pocket. If we are not treading the valley right now, we may need it tomorrow or the day after.

We may glibly say that Jesus is all we need. But we'll never KNOW that, until Jesus is all we have. And when He is all we have, we will truly understand that He is all we really need.

And we can testify!

Praise Him!  

Amen!