Faith That Worships Series

Living by Faith When Life Doesn’t Make Sense

Faith that Worships

Habakkuk 3:1-3:19

Last week we left the prophet Habakkuk standing watch upon the city wall—listening as the Lord answered his second complaint. God had already responded to Habakkuk’s first cry by revealing a difficult and unsettling truth: He was raising up Babylon, a fierce and ruthless nation, to serve as His instrument of discipline against Judah. Their injustice was not the root problem -it was the symptom of something far deeper. Their love for the Lord had grown cold. They had turned from God’s Word to follow their own paths and had begun seeking wisdom from idols that cannot speak, cannot hear, and cannot save. God had warned them and called them to repentance repeatedly. Yet they refused to turn. And now, discipline was the only means left to awaken their hearts.

Habakkuk struggled with this revelation. How could a holy God use a nation more wicked than Judah to bring judgment upon His own people? Surely God’s purity would not permit such injustice. But the Lord made it clear that Babylon’s pride had not escaped His notice. Their confidence in their own strength, their military might, their dragnet, and their false gods would soon become their undoing. The very nation God used as His rod would, in time, be forced to drink from the same cup of His wrath.

Still standing on the wall, the prophet wondered when justice would come. God’s answer was firm and final:

“The revelation awaits an appointed time; it speaks of the end and will not prove false.”

Habakkuk was told to write it down—to make it plain—that the day would come when the conquered would rise as creditors, and the oppressor would become the oppressed. Babylon would cry out to its gods, but no answer would come. For what idol, formed by human hands, can speak? What carved image can give wisdom? And what false god can deliver from the judgment of the living God?

As chapter two closes, the reader is left in suspense. How will the prophet respond? Will there be another complaint? Another question? Another protest?

Instead, something remarkable happens.

Habakkuk began this book with questions—but he will end it with worship. Faith cries out. Faith waits. Faith learns to live by obedient trust. And ultimately, faith bows in joyful reverence before a sovereign God.

Habakkuk’s reverent complaints did not produce the resolution he longed for, nor was he given a timetable for God’s redemptive plan. Yet rather than growing bitter or withdrawn, the prophet falls to his knees in prayer. He asks not for changed circumstances, but for a changed heart—a heart that would tremble before God’s holiness and rest in His sovereign will. Faith that seeks understanding may not receive every answer it desires. But true faith never loses its foundation. It ends where it always must end in worship before the throne of grace.

Faith that Worships Cries out for Mercy

When faith can no longer demand answers, it learns instead to bow in reverent fear before the holiness of God. That posture is exactly what we find as chapter three opens – not a complaint, but a prayer.

A prayer of Habakkuk the prophet. On shigionoth.

LORD, I have heard of your fame;

I stand in awe of your deeds, LORD.

Repeat them in our day,

in our time make them known;

in wrath remember mercy.

Habakkuk 3:1-2

The Lord’s promise to act in Habakkuk’s day would have stirred the collective memory of Israel within the prophet’s heart. In deep humility, his focus shifts—from Judah’s corruption and Babylon’s cruelty—to the awesome might and sovereign power of God Himself. Habakkuk had heard, from generation to generation, how the Lord brought Egypt to its knees through the ten plagues, parted the Red Sea, sustained His people with manna and quail in the wilderness, and even caused the sun to stand still so that Joshua might secure victory. He remembered how God delivered Israel through unlikely instruments—Gideon with only three hundred men, Samson against the Philistines, and David over the giant Goliath. And who could forget the angel of the LORD striking down one hundred eighty-five thousand Assyrians in a single night?

These mighty acts of divine deliverance filled the prophet with hope—but they also caused him to tremble. For the same God who saves with overwhelming power also disciplines with holy authority. That power was now coming against Judah. And so Habakkuk begins his prayer not with protest, but with reverent fear—pleading that in judgment, God would remember mercy, and that His people would not be utterly consumed.

The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective when it flows from humility and a deep awe of God’s sovereign right to rule. We do not come into God’s presence demanding outcomes, as though invoking the name of Jesus obligates heaven to comply (John 14:13–14). God is not a genie to be summoned, but our sovereign Potter—shaping and molding the clay according to His will, His character, and His eternal purposes (1 John 5:14–15). The Lord invites us to pray without ceasing (1 Thessalonians 5:17), not to wear Him down, but to deepen our faith and draw our hearts into alignment with His pleasing and perfect will (Romans 12:1–2). And when God, in His wisdom, answers our prayers with a “no,” faith responds with trust—resting in the truth that His ways are higher than our ways and His thoughts higher than our thoughts (Isaiah 55:8–9).