The Integrity of Waiting . . . Not Worrying, Part 2

Waiting is often a test of our confidence in God.

Today from Chuck Swindoll. He knows what's best. God knows what is best. I do not. And so when we embrace a life of faith and put our trust in a sovereign God, we say to Him, God, you know what is best.

I do not. I'm waiting for you to do what's best. It's possible you're waiting on God to come through right now. Maybe it's a financial matter and the bills are stacking up.

Maybe it's a prodigal who's far from home and you're waiting for a phone call. Well, today on Insight for Living, Chuck Swindoll is teaching from the Old Testament book of Habakkuk. Habakkuk the prophet carried a heavy burden for Israel and he was patiently waiting on God to intervene. In his story, we find fresh application for our times.

Chuck titled his message, The Integrity of Waiting, Not Worrying. And we begin with prayer. We have no one else, our Father, to turn to. Whom have we, Lord, but Thee, soul-thirst to satisfy? Exhaustless spring, the water's free.

All other streams are dry. You and you alone hold answers that no one else has. You and you alone can provide what no one else can offer.

You and you alone know the end from the beginning, when the rest of those on this earth only guess, only hope in vain. So we turn to You. You are our God. You've never once failed us. Now, You've often come later than we expected. You've often remained silent longer than we had wanted. But You were there all along. You were there.

You cared. Thank You, Father, for faithfully meeting our every need. Thank You for Your mercies that are new every morning, for Your patience that is at work every day, for Your grace that has won us to Yourself, and picked us up and dusted us off and never once shamed us, but forgave us over and over and over and over again. And so today, on this special day, we call upon You, our great God, speak to us through this ancient book, talk in terms that we can understand, and begin a work of changing our thinking so that we might be able to change our living. We remember those in difficult places and going through severe times. Meet the needs, Father, for they are more than we can count, and they are deeper than we can measure. There's a heartbreak in every row of this building today, and in every life who is viewing this work of ministry. So dig deeply, Lord, grab our attention and hold it as we listen to what You say to an ancient prophet and in reality to every one of us. Most of all, this morning we give You great praise for Your love. Oh, how You love us. Thank You, our Father, that You so loved the world that You gave Your one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him should never perish but have everlasting life. We worship You and You alone today from the depths of our hearts through Christ, our matchless Savior, who loved His own to the end, we pray.

Everyone said, Amen. You're listening to Insight for Living. To search the Scriptures with Chuck Swindoll, be sure to download his Searching the Scriptures studies by going to insightworld.org slash studies. Chuck titled his message, The Integrity of Waiting, Not Worrying. Habakkuk is the only prophet who never once addresses the people around him in his day.

Isn't that interesting? He addresses his God and God answers him. This is called interchange as we interpret the Scripture or a dialogue. Habakkuk speaks, God answers. Verses 1 to 4, Habakkuk is speaking and you get down to verse 5.

Look at the beginning. The Lord replied, 5 through 11. Those are the Lord's words back to Habakkuk. And after that, Habakkuk responds to the Lord. Habakkuk has this burden and his people around him, the Jews in Judah, are just as evil as they can be.

Some are even worshipping idols by now. And they are walking fast and furiously away from God and Habakkuk just can't stand it. And so he cries out and says to the Lord, oh, look at this. And as if the Lord didn't know. And so the Lord listens as he complains. And then when the Lord does speak, he says to his prophet, he says, Habakkuk, I have a plan and if I told you, you wouldn't believe it. And Habakkuk says, I'll believe it.

Tell me. He said, well, I'm going to send the Chaldeans in and they're going to wipe you out. I can't believe it.

I just can't believe it. Just exactly like we are. You will find what it is to serve a sovereign God when you back away and begin to listen. So when we get to Chapter two, Habakkuk is listening.

See what he says in 2.1? I will go up in my tower. And I'm going to wait. And I'm going to listen.

I'm going to see what it is you plan to do. I'm going to hear the whole story. And in Chapter two, verse two to the end of the chapter, verse 20, God speaks. He lays it all out.

We'll get there in a moment. After God has finished, of all things, look at Chapter three in verse one, the one who started with tears and crying out to God is now in Chapter three. What? Singing his prayer to God. It's one of the beauties of a prophet like Habakkuk. He's willing to listen and he's willing to change.

I'll get to that in a moment. Well, read along and think along with me as we read what it is Habakkuk is conveying to us. It's as if he wrote it yesterday to these people around us and to us as well in our day. Oh, Lord, must I call for help?

How long must I call? But you do not listen. Chapter one, verse two. Where are you, Lord? He says, Must I forever see these evil deeds? Why must I watch all of this misery wherever I look? I see destruction and violence.

I'm surrounded by people who love to argue and fight. That sound like the day? How long must that go on? Lord, where are you? And the law has become paralyzed. There's no justice. The wicked far outnumber the righteous, and when justice does roll down, it's perverted, it's twisted. Right is shown to be wrong and wrong is declared to be right.

What kind of a courtroom is that? That's it. That's my world. You see, when you're a prophet, you just don't waltz through life and shrug it off. You feel the pain of your times.

And you ache. And you have no one else to call on but the Lord God who called you into this role. So the Lord replies, Look, look for yourself.

Verse five. Look around at the nations. Look and be amazed. I'm doing something in your own day, something you wouldn't believe. Even if someone told you about it.

I would. Well, I'm raising up the Babylonians and they're going to march on Judah and wipe you out. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

The solution is worse than the problem. That was the Chaldeans. You don't know because you don't know about Chaldeans. By the way, it's the Babylonians, Chaldeans, they're synonyms.

They were the worst. Cruel, violent, hung their their prey on hooks, stacked up skulls and pyramids. Bloodthirsty brutes that came like like locusts across the country. He says, I'm sending the Chaldeans and they're going to take you into captivity. And he goes on to describe them notorious for their cruelty.

He spells them out there. Their chariots come from far away and and they sweep down like eagles. And, you know, Habakkuk doesn't need a lesson on the Chaldeans.

He's read about in the evening news. He knows how bad they are and he can't stand it. I mean, it gets worse as the Lord describes them. And he said, that'll take care of the Judah evil that you're dealing with. When I bring you into captivity and you're there for decades, you'll all learn your lessons. And Habakkuk goes, stop.

Just stop right there. I mean, times are bad, but God. This doesn't make sense. Now, you've had experiences like that, as we have, when the Lord does come through and he comes in a different way or does a different thing than you anticipated. And it seems at first like it's worse than it was. At the beginning, you think, you know. Is that really you?

Like the guy I read about that was hanging on the ledge and he was just falling off and he was hanging on by his fingertips. He says, help! Anybody up there that can help me? And he hears a voice.

The voice says, I can help you. What must I do? Let go. Let go.

Is there anyone else up there that can help me? We're not hearing what we want to hear. It's not the answer we expected.

Now, thankfully, he does, but not everybody does. Chapter 2, chapter 2, verse 1. My Lord, I can't put it together.

I can't figure you out. I can't see good coming from such a source of evil. I can't see how invading our nation will be best for us.

I mean, how can you give them another nation for them to brag about conquering? For your chosen people. So I'm going to look at it. I'm going to climb up on my tower. I'm going to stand quietly and I am going to... That's a novel thought. I'm going to wait and listen.

You don't know the truth. I've never known anyone who was disappointed that he chose to wait. It's often the last option we take. Those who wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. We have the promise in Isaiah. We'll mount up with wings like eagles. We'll run and not be weary. We'll walk and we won't faint. Just wait.

Don't worry. Here's the integrity of waiting, not worrying. At this point, Habakkuk left it in the Lord's hands. And now the Lord takes over and he begins to describe his game plan.

And he goes into it carefully as he spells it out. I want you to especially move down to verse four. This is the most important verse in Habakkuk 2-4. Look at the proud. They trust in themselves.

And their lives are crooked. Look at the next part of the verse. But the righteous one will live by faith.

He will trust in me. He will live by faith. Fifteen hundred years later, the apostle Paul picked up his pen. Actually, centuries later, he picked up his pen and he wrote in Romans 1-17, pulling this very verse as he writes about our salvation. It's not based on works.

It's not based on the law. It's based on faith. And he quotes, believe it or not, Habakkuk 2-4.

He quotes from Habakkuk. Now here's where the fifteen hundred years come in. Fifteen hundred years later, Martin Luther is struggling, struggling. He just can't stay quiet because of his own sin. In fact, he writes in what one of the biographers mentions, that he and his stone cell wallowed in his stone cell, saying over and over, my sin, my sin, my sin.

Constantly conscious of his own depravity, this monk. Searching through the letter of the Romans, he found in 1-17 his answer. And he became the foundation stone of the Reformation. Today is All Saints Day. It isn't Halloween. It's All Saints Day.

We've corrupted it. And because of what it is, we remember of all things, this verse. Martin Luther stood on it, drew strength from it, and he talked about how God in his mercy came to his need and brought him into his family by faith. That, by the way, is the only way you or I could ever come in, not by works of righteousness, which we do, or by keeping every element of the law, which we can't.

But by faith, we trust in our God. This landed hard and solidly on Habakkuk. He got it.

This began the change. God went on to say to him, there's more to my plan. I will wipe out the Chaldeans ultimately. I'll bring the people of God out of captivity and you'll become, again, a nation.

You will have learned a lesson. My plan will run its course. So Habakkuk realized I must let God be God as I stand back and wait for him to work. Now, when I say that, it sounds like a cliche. You've heard it most of your Christian life. I'm going to stand back and wait for God to work. So I decided to put that into statements, simple one-line statements. There are five of them, five statements.

I'm so firmly convinced that they will help you from this day on. I want you to find a place in your Bible where you've got a blank sheet, a blank piece of the Bible paper. Look for it there.

Maybe it's at the end of Habakkuk. You have a little space to write. These will be statements we embrace as we claim faith in our sovereign God. You say, I want to live like that. I want to believe like that. I want to have that kind of worryless faith and trust in my God. I'm tired of talking about it. I want to go there.

I want to make that a reality. Here are the five statements. Please write them down.

You ready? God is able. I am not. That's statement one.

Just write it on the first line. God is able. I am not. There's nothing Habakkuk could do to fix his day, to change people around him.

It was a great day in my life when I realized I can't fix anybody. But I serve a God who specializes in that. He's able. I am not. God is able. I am not.

Here's the second. He knows what's best. God knows what is best.

I do not. Now, because we're proud people, we think we do. That's why we keep doing what we think is the best. And we make a mess of things. And so when we embrace a life of faith and put our trust in a sovereign God, we say to him, God, you know what is best. I do not. I do not.

I'm waiting for you to do what's best. Here's the third. He sees the end from the beginning. I cannot. God sees the end from the beginning. He sees it all.

I cannot. That's called being infinite. And we are finite. He knows how all of this is going to work its way out. He knows all the answers at the back of the book. No problem is unsolved to him. We live in unsolved problems.

We can't see how they're going to work out. He sees it all. So this is third. He sees the end from the beginning.

I cannot. We've only had time for three points of application today, but there's much more ahead. This is Insight for Living, and Chuck Swindoll has titled today's study, The Integrity of Waiting, Not Worrying. It's the eighth message in a 12-part teaching series from Chuck.

The series is brand new. It's called Walking with Integrity in Times of Adversity. And if you'd like to learn more about this ministry, visit us online at insightworld.org.

And then let me give you a preview of what's ahead. Chuck will turn his attention from Habakkuk to a man that Jesus admired greatly, and he'll be talking about the integrity of true humility. Chuck will point to a man that defied convention.

He was quite unusual. But John the Baptizer taught us what it means to magnify Jesus without drawing undue attention to self. And in light of these topics, Chuck suggested a biography for you to read. It's about Joseph, a man who modeled so many of the virtues we're addressing in our new series. The book is called Joseph, a Man of Integrity and Forgiveness.

So if you're looking for your next inspirational read, we highly recommend Joseph, a Man of Integrity and Forgiveness. To purchase a copy, call us. If you're listening in the U.S., dial 1-800-772-8888 or go to insight.org slash offer. These daily visits with Chuck are made possible through your voluntary donations. To give a contribution today, go to insight.org slash donate. Or call us if you're listening in the United States, dial 1-800-772-8888. My friend, more than ever, Insight for Living Ministries is determined to serve as a lavish garden for people all around the world who long to smell the aroma of God's matchless grace.

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My power works best in weakness. Again, if you're listening in the United States, call 1-800-772-8888 or go to insight.org slash monthly companion. I'm Dave Spiker, inviting you to join us when Chuck Swindoll talks about the integrity of waiting, not worrying, Tuesday on Insight for Living. The preceding message, The Integrity of Waiting, Not Worrying, was copyrighted in 2021 and 2022, and the sound recording was copyrighted in 2022 by Charles R. Swindoll, Inc. All rights are reserved worldwide. The creation of copyrighted material for commercial use is strictly prohibited.