Believing God Can Perform Those Bigger Than Life Promises
Habakkuk 3:2-4 "O LORD, I have heard thy speech, and was afraid: O LORD, revive thy work in the midst of the years, in the midst of the years make known; in wrath remember mercy. God came from Teman, and the Holy One from mount Paran. Selah. His glory covered the heavens, and the earth was full of his praise. And his brightness was as the light; he had horns coming out of his hand: and there was the hiding of his power."
- The fear and awe of God is priceless and absolutely vital in connecting to who He is and what He has to offer us.
- God cannot be too familiar or casual to us, even though we should be intimate with him. Nor can He be some distant character that we assent to, but not truly believe in. Once the mystique and our awe of Him is gone He cannot affect us. Nor can we believe in Him.
Acts 5:11, 12 "And great fear came upon all the church, and upon as many as heard these things. And by the hands of the apostles were many signs and wonders wrought among the people; (and they were all with one accord in Solomon's porch."
- Perhaps we need to ask God for a real experience that goes beyond some miracle that we can easily dismiss. Sometimes we need to see the anger of God so that our regard and faith in him is piqued. We really do not know Him unless we have experienced Him or seen Him at work. Witnessing His anger allows you to see His emotions and know that He is real.
- This author had no difficulty respecting God based on what he had witnessed. He, like Isaiah saw God at work. Just God’s presence was striking and weakening. He had seen the earth become subject to God’s greatness.
- When we are in awe of Him, we will be afraid to disobey Him and anxious to serve Him at the same time. The same power that heals is the same power that kills. Anointing destroys, it doesn’t merely tickle and arouse. He is both meek and terrible.
- Like John in Revelation, the real presence of God is silencing and disabling.
- The closer we get to Him, the more humbled we are and quieter we become. It is said that God does the talking in the Most Holy Place. We are too awestruck to speak. When we get that close, how can we talk? John fell at His feet as dead. We often experience the overflow or introduction to His presence and either become overwhelmed or so ecstatic that we do not venture further. We rejoice and are pleased. There are certain places in God where we become quieted because we do not know how to react or either we feel totally out of order to say or do anything. Have you been there?
- Just the dimensions of God that Habakuk and the other Bible characters were exposed was more than they could endure.
- Fear (the good kind) is the necessary prerequisite for enabling God to do as He would do for us. Fear is faith in the positive, just as fear is also faith in the negative.
- Because Habakuk knew the ability of God, He knew that God could deliver out of His goodness or His anger. When we truly fear God, we will believe that He means what He says on all fronts. Our fear or faith will cause us to obey Him as well as believe Him for provisions and Divine intervention.
Hebrews 11:3 "Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear."
- We must establish in our minds that God is the author and imaginer of all things created.
- Without Him there was nothing made that was made. As we embrace that He was before all things, we know that He is more powerful than anything that came AFTER Him. No servant is greater than his lord. The duplicate is not superior to the original. When we are pressed with a problem, we should go back to the beginning and unravel. Therefore, we go to God if we need to overcome anything or anyone. Backtrack.
Proverbs 21:1 "The king's heart is in the hand of the LORD, as the rivers of water: he turneth it whithersoever he will."
Daniel 4:17 "This matter is by the decree of the watchers, and the demand by the word of the holy ones: to the intent that the living may know that the most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever he will, and setteth up over it the basest of men."
Daniel 2:21 "And he changeth the times and the seasons: he removeth kings, and setteth up kings: he giveth wisdom unto the wise, and knowledge to them that know understanding."
- God’s sovereignty is a basic tenet that we must embrace. We must believe that God is so Almighty that He could have peacefully and confidently existed all by Himself forever.
- Unless we believe He created the heavens and earth, we cannot believe He is powerful enough to overrule the things that come against us. Anything artificial, man-made or derived, came as a result of some natural substance that God made. Man is not a maker on his own. He is a chemist or composer because he has to assemble components from various resources. All those resources got what they got from at least one thing God made.
- We cannot believe that God can do what He says if we do not believe that what He said He did He actually did. If we cannot believe what He said, how can we believe anything else he says? If we do not believe He did what He said he is yet to do?
- As we believe that God is the creator, we will have less fear of things that appear. They, too, are created beings that rely upon the Creator. They are powerless.
Matthew 6:27 "Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature?"
Romans 9:21 "Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour?"
Psalm 118:6 "The LORD is on my side; I will not fear: what can man do unto me?"
Romans 1:25 "Who … served the creature more than the Creator, …"
Until we see God and believe what the Scriptures say about Him, we will always be at the mercy of creation and creatures.