Devotional Song: … GO TO THIS LINK … Please take the time to take in a YouTube video of images and lyrics from Steven Curtis Chapman singing … Be Still and Know … poignantly singing of our need, in this confusing world, to seek God’s presence in the quite places of our lives.
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Highlight Verse[s]: Habakkuk 2:1, 2:20 [NKJV} … USE THIS LINK …
… Habakkuk finds God by getting alone and listening for him.
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Highlight Passage [context]: Habakkuk 1:1-4, 2:1-3, 2:20, 3:17-19[NKJV] … USE THIS LINK …
… The confused Prophet, Habakkuk, seeks God’s presence/power; and God leads him to the truth in the silence of His presence.
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Reference Passage #1 [NKJV] : … Joshua 1:5 [NLT] …
5 No man shall be able to stand before you all the days of your life; as I was with Moses, so I will be with you. I will not leave you nor forsake you.
… Since God will never leave us, as Christians, we just need to find a place/time to be with Him and seek His power.
Reference Passage #2 [NKJV] : … Psalm 46:10 [NLT] …
10 Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth!
… God’s proclamation of His power … ALWAYS; … but we must be still to realize His presence.
Reference Passage #3 [NKJV] : … Isaiah 26:3 [NLT] …
3 You will keep him in perfect peace, Whose mind is stayed on You, Because he trusts in You.
… When we’re troubled, the best place to find God’s peace is in a quiet place where we can focus on God’s presence.
My Devotional Journal: Today's ODB author, Tim Gustafson, used the story of the confused Prophet, Habakkuk, to teach on how we need to seek God’s presence and power in the quiet places of life. The ODB author wrote: We welcome God’s judgment of others, but there’s a pivot point in Habakkuk that gives us pause: “The Lord is in his holy temple; let all the earth be silent before him” (2:20). All the earth. The oppressed along with oppressors. Sometimes the appropriate response to God’s seeming silence is . . . silence! Why silence? Because we easily overlook our own spiritual poverty. Silence allows us to recognize our sinfulness in the presence of a holy God.
The journal of the so-called “minor Prophet” Habakkuk is one of my favorites OT books, … probably because I so easily identify with the confused believer, who came to God in a moment where he felt distanced from the God he believed was not being the God of the prophet’s faith. And to seek God’s presence, Habakkuk went to a quiet place (see Hab. 2:1 and found God’s peace/joy in that quiet place (see finally Hab. 3:17-19).
In these harried times in which we live, Satan has fashioned a world where the flow of information and the power of technology have gotten in the way of the simple strategy (i.e., discipline) of getting ALONE and seeking God’s presence … in order to be reminded of the power we have in our relationship with Him. As Stephen Curtis Chapman sings and one of God’s psalmists wrote, we need to “… be still,” and know that God is God.
And that’s why you find me in this quiet place EVERY MORNING, doing what Isaiah proclaimed inIs. 26:3, … escaping the confusion of the world and focusing on God’s presence, which He promises will never leave me (see, Joshua 1:5 and also repeated in Heb. 13:5).
So, I exhort any reader here who needs to find God’s presence and seek His power, to get alone DAILY with our Lord in a quiet place, and experience the peace and joy, which Habakkuk found in the midst of the world’s trials.
My Prayer Today: Abba Father, … Lord, … Thank You for You for being here with me in this quiet place; and I revel in the quiet joy of Your presence. … Amen
Blogger Note: Everyday during this year, my daily devotional blogs are influenced by the reading and study of the online devotional blog entitled Our Daily Bread, distributed online via email by RBC Ministries. If you GO TO THIS LINK on the date of my blog, you can read/study the ODB blogs; or you can subscribe to the blog via email at that site.
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