Habakkuk 1:2 How long, LORD, must I call for help, but you do not listen? Or cry out to you, “Violence!” but you do not save? 3 Why do you make me look at injustice? Why do you tolerate wrongdoing? Destruction and violence are before me; there is strife, and conflict abounds. 4 Therefore the law is paralyzed, and justice never prevails. The wicked hem in the righteous, so that justice is perverted.

      I have had a few disturbing conversations with Christians (most of them in my age range) who have lost hope in their faith and God’s ability to change the condition of what they see as an incurable insanity that is crisscrossing the world like a pandemic. To them, God looks like an absentee landlord who has allowed the rats and vermin of the earth to flourish and leave His people in want. These people want to die and go to their eternal home and be rid of it all. They want off this planet being run by despots, dictators, and idiots. They have no energy left to listen to another rah rah rah sermon about how good God is! The desperation is palpable and my heart is crushed as I hear these people describe their pain.

      I do not claim to understand all their pain and reasons for so much despair, but I know that many of us have all had some thoughts along the lines they are expressing. I found these same anxieties in the book of Habakkuk. He is saying the same thing and lamenting similar feelings from many years ago. What many of the world’s population is going through, is what I call The Burden Of Habakkuk. Hab. 1:2 How long, LORD, must I call for help, but you do not listen? Or cry out to you, “Violence!” but you do not save? 3 Why do you make me look at injustice? Why do you tolerate wrongdoing? Destruction and violence are before me; there is strife, and conflict abounds. 4 Therefore the law is paralyzed, and justice never prevails. The wicked hem in the righteous, so that justice is perverted.

      As we can see, there is nothing new under the sun. These feelings and thoughts have been with us for a long time. One of our vulnerabilities is that we don’t like what we don’t understand. Even on our best days we will never be Jesus, nor understand the full plan of God. The question we need to ask is, how have we become so easily discouraged and offended? Maybe it is how we have presented the Bible and the Saviour this book is about. We get offended by those who reject our explanation of Jesus because of how we present Him culturally. These are only my thoughts. I find that we preach the accepting of Jesus, and His salvation from our cultural perspective more than the illumination of God’s Word, If the Jesus we teach does not reach the cultural idea of another person then we are open to being offended because our Jesus has been rejected and that reflects on us. Our narrow-minded views can create a solipsistic idea of who God is and when we see the world’s destruction we think God has left the planet, even though He resides in our hearts.

      We only need to look at the thousands of self-proclaimed YouTube prophets who always have a prophetic warning for America. Isn’t it interesting that there is never a warning from God for Russia that its dictator is killing his neighbouring countrymen at will and jailing his people for not agreeing with his scorched earth plan? Or, there is no prophetic warning for North Korea where that despot is murdering his own citizens. No, just warnings to America. Not a warning to the tyrant leading Syria who has starved off his people and killed them at will because they wanted to be free. No warnings to Africa where murder and slavery still abound. Nor warnings to Canada, Argentina, Switzerland or England. No saints, it’s just the good old USA who gets all of God’s warnings of doom and gloom according to these YouTube prophets because the people of America are not voting for some shallow soul they deem electable in God’s eyes. Forgive my sarcasm, but I know many of you are thinking what I am saying, and maybe we have been listening to too many online ministries and not digging into the Word of God for ourselves. No wonder there is no hope on the horizon for common sense.

      I realize that what I do online can affect people’s hearts and I recommend that anyone who reads my blogs, books, or articles and watches my videos check the scriptures and prove that my work lines up with the word of God. Just because the minister is a trusted person, does not mean we take everything they say at face value. Even the Apostle Paul (who wrote most of the New Testament) was checked and rechecked against the Word of God by the Bereans. Acts 17:11 Now the Berean Jews were of more noble character than those in Thessalonica, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true. We have been too long complacent in handing over our unquestioning trust to the evangelical TV machine that has become flawed and in some cases, corrupted.

       Many complex and deep revelations in God’s word cannot all be dumbed down to simple reductionism. Yes, through the Holy Spirit, Christ’s doctrines can be understood, when we allow the Lord to lead our lives. However, we cannot explain all the mysteries of the Godhead to people who do not take time to be with the Lord nor care what the Lord has offered mankind. We need the teaching and guidance of the Holy Spirit to find the peace of God that truly meets our inner heart’s needs, and we need to keep our souls coming back into God’s presence to be renewed afresh in the Holy Spirit. 1Cor. 2:14 The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit. After an encounter with the Spirit of God in our prayer time, we can then begin to understand the complexities that are going on in this world. With God’s help, we will have the understanding to pray for the said issues that are a concern to our spirit, and soon we will see and know in our hearts that our God is not an absentee landlord, but is truly upon the throne of our hearts.

      We were not saved by the stylism of Christianity nor by a rote formulaic arrangement of words. We are saved by faith in the blood of Jesus that was spilt on the cross, and we were saved by accepting His sacrifice only. As the burden of Habakkuk spreads throughout the world, let us first talk with God about all the evil that concerns us and ask Him what part of the burden He would like us to pray for so that God can heal that situation. God is not moved by needs, He is moved by faith. Remember, our lives are faith-driven and spiritually discerned. When we walk in the spirit, we will not kowtow to the flesh nor see every terrible thing that happens as a disaster that will last forever. Gal. 5:16 But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. Let us take our place on the prayer wall and use the weapons of our warfare to take down the strongholds that are corrupting the world. Jesus is Lord! Father God, help all the saints who have lost hope to find it again in Your love for them. Amen!