This week’s No Matter What Monday devotional is a special edition – I’m sharing today at the devotional website for Proverbs 31 Ministries. I hope you’ll head over there with me to read the entire devotional. Here’s a preview . . .
“Yet I will rejoice in the LORD; I will take joy in the God of my salvation. GOD, the Lord, is my strength; he makes my feet like the deer’s; he makes me tread on my high places.” Habakkuk 3:18-19 (ESV)
If our pediatric dental clinic keeps a Top 10 list of challenging patients, I bet my daughter is near the top. She can’t stand lying flat on her back while a stranger cleans her teeth with noisy tools. It doesn’t matter if Frozen is playing on the ceiling or if we promise her all the bouncy balls in the world. My girl hates going to the dentist.
Prior to one of these semiannual visits, my daughter repeatedly asked me to pray for her. We prayed over and over again for God’s help and peace, right up until the moment the hygienist prepared her instruments.
Then the cleaning started. My daughter realized that despite all her prayers, the experience was just as terrible as she feared.
That’s when she started screaming, “God isn’t helping me! God isn’t helping meeeeee!”
My daughter has something in common with the author of today’s key verse. Before Habakkuk’s declaration of trust in chapter 3, he questioned the Lord’s plans. Evil rulers oppressed God’s people, and Habakkuk wondered why God hadn’t intervened to rescue them.
“O LORD, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not hear? Or cry to you ‘Violence!’ and you will not save?” (Habakkuk 1:2, ESV)
Do these questions sound familiar? Do you feel abandoned in your suffering, like my daughter and Habakkuk? Have you cried out for relief from your struggles with your work, relationships, parenting or sin?
Maybe you’re weary from waiting for the Lord to intervene. You see suffering in this world and in your life and say with Habakkuk, “How long will you keep ignoring my struggle, Lord?”
Read the rest of the devotional at Proverbs 31 Ministries by clicking here!
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