When God’s Answer Unsettles You

8 June

Habakkuk 1:1-11

Some of us in this room are going through real pain right now. Confused by our circumstances.

Suffering, whether that's family, work, friendships, or things we haven't told anyone about. I want you to encourage you to bring that to God. Not a polished, theologically careful version of it. The actual version. Messy, chaotic, maybe even a bit angry. Because God hears the rehearsal. He doesn't need the finished product. He hears the cry.

That's what Habakkuk shows us.

No Car Park Miracles

You know the car park miracle? Everyone's screaming at each other on the way to church, someone can't find their shoes, there's conflict in the car the whole way, and then you step out of the car park and suddenly everything's fine. How are you? Oh, going great. The sunshine is out.

Habakkuk does none of that. He lays it all out, his questions, his doubts, his complaints, his confusion, right in front of God. And what's remarkable is that he also refuses to walk away from God while doing it. He won't leave. He keeps bringing it back. That's not a contradiction. That's what faith actually looks like.

The Cry: How Long?

This book opens with a complaint. How long, Lord, must I call for help? But you do not listen.

Those first two words — how long — tell us this isn't the first time he's prayed this. This is a prayer he's prayed over and over. He keeps bringing it to God and getting back silence. And his complaint isn't trivial. He's watching real harm happen to real people. People being exploited, crushed, publicly oppressed. Evil winning with no consequences. The law paralysed. Justice perverted. The very things meant to protect the people are the things causing harm.

And he asks something bold, not just why is this happening, but why do I have to watch it? God, you gave me eyes that see and a heart that breaks. Why do I have to keep looking at this?

One of the things we do with pain and suffering is move through it too quickly. We set up a lesson that's not meant to be taught, that the pain is just a setup for the real point, which is what God wants to say. But God doesn't do that with Habakkuk. And we shouldn't do it with each other.

We are called to mourn with each other, to sit in each other's pain. Not to stay there forever, but at least to be there for a bit.

God's Answer: Stand Back

When God responds, he doesn't apologise for the silence. He says: look at the nations and watch and be utterly amazed, for I am going to do something in your days that you would not believe even if you were told.

In other words: Stand back. Brace yourself. Because what I'm about to do is so big your mind won't be able to get around it.

Then God says: I am raising up the Babylonians.

Now Habakkuk has been praying about the violence in the streets of Judah, and God's answer is to send an empire that has made violence an art form. You think the Assyrians are bad? Wait. It's about to get worse.

One of the problems in our prayer life is that we bring our problems to God with a small picture of what he's actually capable of.

We think in terms of weeks and months. God speaks in terms of centuries.

We think in terms of our street. God thinks in terms of nations. Habakkuk's horizon was too small and God was about to blow it wide open.

To be clear, God raising up the Babylonians is not Him approving of the Babylonians. He's not saying they're right, or that their violence is fine. We'll see in chapter two that they face real consequences for what they do.

God is not endorsing evil — he's sovereign over it. There's a difference. The Babylonians are a tool in his hand. They think they're the ones in control. They're not. Their own strength is their god, verse 11 tells us. And we know how that ends, there is no Babylonian empire now.

God is like a surgeon using a scalpel. The scalpel is sharp. It cuts deep. But the purpose is healing, not cruelty.

A Bigger Canvas

Here's what this means for us. When we pray — especially those long, repeated, how long prayers — God is working on a canvas far bigger than we can see. We struggle to see the brush strokes in our own little corner of the picture. But he is always at work, even when we can't see it. God's silence is not the absence of love. It's not the absence of movement. He's working in ways we haven't seen yet.

And the biggest, most surprising answer God has ever given , the one that blew every horizon imaginable, was Jesus. When Paul quotes Habakkuk 1:5 in Acts 13, he applies it to the gospel. I am going to do something in your days that you would not believe even if someone told you. That something is the cross. God sends his own son, who doesn't become a king or fight battles but dies on a cross that looks like failure , and three days later walks out of a tomb.

It is the most astonishing, unsettling, unexpected answer in history. And it is the answer to the deepest prayer we carry, the one we don't even know how to put into words: God, I know I'm not as good as I pretend to be. I know that if you really looked at me, there'd be nothing there worth choosing. And God says: I have an answer for that too. My son will take all of that on himself. So when I look at you, I don't see what you've done. I see what he's done for you.

Come on in.

Bring It Messy

So whatever you're carrying, whatever that prayer is that you keep praying, whatever the tears are for, bring it to God. You don't have to clean it up first. You don't have to rehearse it. You can scream it if you need to. God knows the version in your head anyway.

When we bring those messy, chaotic prayers, we have this beautiful thing where the Spirit takes them and brings them before God in words so deep and rich we can barely believe they're ours. And God will answer. Not always the way we expect. Not always in our timing. Sometimes in ways that unsettle us before they settle us. But he will answer. He is working. He is moving.

Stand back and be amazed.