Prayer To Hang On And Wait In Faith For God To Act

 WAITING IN FAITH

These are challenging days to remain conscious of the God who cares and who is with us in the middle of everything that is taking place.  The extraordinary numbers of people who are getting sick with the virus in this second wave – multiplied times more people than in the first wave and some of them quite close to home with neighbours, relatives of close friends, a gathered church – these are just some of the ways our hearts are challenged.

Some days I think we all feel like the prophet Habakkuk who had prayed a long time for the troubles in Israel to stop and things only seemed to be going from bad to worse.  At one point he prayed this:

I will go up to the lookout tower.  I’ll station myself on the city wall.

I’ll wait to see how the Lord will reply to me. Then I’ll try to figure out how his reply answers what I’ve complained about.  Habakkuk 2:2

God graciously answered Habakkuk this way: 

“Write down the message I am giving you.  Write it clearly on the tablets you use. Then a messenger can read it and run to announce it.  The message I give you waits for the time I have appointed. It speaks about what is going to happen.

And all of it will come true. It might take a while.  But wait for it. You can be sure it will come. It will happen when I want it to.  Habakkuk 2:2-3

We feel like we have been waiting a long time for things to change only, as I mentioned a moment ago, this second wave is only much worse than the first.  Where is God?  Can God be trusted in these challenging times where we have months to wait for anything like a vaccine to come along to help?

What we can learn from Habakkuk is that when God said everything would happen as He said, it did.  God doesn’t lie.

I also thought today about Abraham who waited decades for a son to be born and then just as Isaac his son was about the age to be named a man, God instructed Abraham to take Isaac up a mountain and offer him as a sacrifice.  Abraham proceeded to carry out this instruction, stopping only at the last moment when God order him to do so. When Abraham trusted God, He showed himself righteous and God faithful to His word.

It happened just as the Scriptures say: “Abraham believed God, and God counted him as righteous because of his faith.” He was even called the friend of God.  James 2:23

We are invited to come to God in faith today, that He exists and that he rewards those who sincerely seek him.

It is impossible to please God without faith. Anyone who wants to come to him must believe that God exists and that he rewards those who sincerely seek him.  Hebrews 11:6

Heavenly Father, we don’t know how things are going to go in these days of this pandemic.  We don’t know when this wave will settle down and for how long.  We don’t know when a vaccine might be available to provide protection.  What we do know is that we can trust You to be with us with great care and more wisdom than we recognize as we face each day and each troubling set of circumstances.