The Vision
~Habakkuk 2:2-3
This passage has been dear to me for pretty much my whole adult life. I discovered it in 2019, looking for signs from the "watchtower" that came prior in verse 1, but these verses were the ones which resonated. They carry with them a vision and a promise that it will be fulfilled, and in doing so, they invite us to live differently.
A vision for the future empowers us. It propels us forward. And though it can twist in moments, it keeps us from getting discouraged in our present circumstances. As we wait, our discouragement often rises when our hope wanes. When we stop believing the vision will be fulfilled. When we get tired of waiting for it. When we stop believing the waiting will be good. But in this passage God gives a vision to hold onto, and He doesn't stop there. He anticipates the discouragement that beats on with time, and He addresses it. Part of the vision He gives is timing, and too often we miss that. We see the results, but we don't know how long it will take to get there. We imagine the what, which we can conceive of, which we can hold in a way, but we are blind to the when. That's what got Abram and Sarai.
That's what makes us want to take the promise into our own hands as they did. They believed in the promise, but as time wore on, they began to revise it. They took it into their own hands under their own understanding and justified their self-reliance as they tried to help God along. They read into it what wasn't there because the promise wasn't adhering to their expectations and timetables. They twisted the vision to fit the time they were in instead of waiting for the time in which it was appointed to thrive.
It's so easy to do that. To twist the words of God into confirmation of our ideas and timetables. To treat His promises as a permission slip to pick up our own strength and work towards the results of that promise instead of waiting on Him to do what He promised.
As we wait, we look to God, hoping for confirmation that our desires will come to fruition. We want Him to promise that He will do as our hearts ache for Him to do. But too often we lose sight of Him in the waiting, and that's why these verses have so much to teach us.
These verses promise that God's promises will come to fruition. And Scripture tells us that God's nature is to give His children good gifts and to fulfill the desires of their hearts. And that means we can let go of our desires because we can trust God with them. We don't have to hold them in our own strength because He's the One doing the work. And we don't have to grip them tightly for fear that we're the only ones who really care. God cares about us and the desires of our hearts (desires that He put there). We can wait with confidence, resting in Him and trusting in the work that He is doing.
This posture is essential for living in the yet unfulfilled desires we are holding most closely, and the cool thing is that we can adopt this posture with confidence even when we're unsure of the promises God is making us. And that's because this posture rests our desires within our God instead of putting the emphasis of our hearts on the desire itself.
Because what happens if we're wrong? If we're wrong about the promise, this posture doesn't make us fools; rather, it keeps us consistently drawing into God, which is wisdom. In that place of peace, we are able to release our hold and teach our hearts to listen. Seeking God's will is good, but at times we can get pigeonholed in seeking an answer. We can try so hard to discern God's will for a specific area, that we can't see outside of it, and we end up viewing God through the desire, making it harder to hear His voice. But when we seek God, submitting that desire to Him, He moves in our hearts. If what our heart is holding is not His will for our lives, He can change our desires as we release it to His hands.
For so long I feared a "no" for what I most wanted, and part of that fear was because I wasn't sure if I was strong enough to let it go. But one thing I've learned is that trusting God with our hearts will always be the right call. I tend to give my heart too much power, but God has shown me that I don't have to do the work. Instead of strongarming my heart to try to reflect His will, when I rest in Him, submit to Him, trust in Him, and seek Him, He shifts my very desires. We see this even in righteousness. When we begin to love God, surrender to Him, and seek His will, our longing for truth and goodness and even obedience increases. And if it's true of righteousness, why not of our desires? God can change our hearts. We can move in confidence with that.
On the other hand, if what our heart is holding is His will, it will surely come no matter how long the wait. It will not delay. And if that's the case, we need not rush to do it ourselves. We don't have to pursue our desires in our own strength. We can hold the promise with no hint of insecurity or fragility. We can rest in the waiting, knowing God will fulfill the promise in His appointed and good time because, as God tells the Israelities, His promises will always stand.
We have the freedom to hold the vision--to be inspired by it, motivated by it, assured of God's character in it--but to hold it loosely, giving it to Him to whom it always has and always will belong. When we hold our vision tightly, we will move in our own strength and seek our own path to gain the vision or protect it. But when we hold it loosely, we are freed to wait. The vision can put confidence in our steps to stay the course God has put us on. And even if the specifics aren't actually where God is guiding us, when we respond to Him and not the vision itself, He can use even those pieces to draw us into His promises for us.
God doesn't want us to live out of false promises, but I believe He longs to grant us a vision for our lives--in part (desires, passions, interests, people) or in full--because it empowers us to move forward in our ministry, seeking God, even as we wait. Where discouragement causes us to become complacent or upset, vision propels us forward not only towards the promise but towards the very goodness and character of God. When we keep Him central, we can move towards that vision (even when moving forward looks like stillness) out of the spirit and not out of the flesh. To bear fruit and bring increase to His Kingdom.
God longs to trade our striving, our fears, our insecurity for peace and confidence in Him. While placing our hope on the shoulders of our desire leads us further into ourselves, making God a means to an end and embittering us to Him if our desire is not fulfilled, truly trusting Him in it transforms our hearts. It leads us into peace. It allows us to live out of the vision and not for the vision. It allows us to focus our lives on Him and becoming who we need to be in Him (for the present and to sustain the gift He is preparing us for) instead of spending all our time and energy trying to make our wishes come true. Instead of waiting, fraught with emotion but not with growth, we can wait, stepping into what God has for us now even as we wait for what's to come. And when the waiting feels long, as time drags on, our belief never need be shaken because He promises that His timing is good.
That's another thing these verses teach us: the waiting is good. God has appointed a time to fulfill the promise. He will bring it in the fullness of time--in the moment He knows it will flourish.
If someone promised you a cup of hot chocolate, the promise would be fulfilled whether he delivered it in the dead of winter or in the heat of summer, but you'd enjoy it much more in the former--when the taste blossomed on your tongue and the warmth seeped through your body, bringing relief from the cold. It's essential that God's promises are placed in time because the timing of them is intrinsically tied to the goodness of them, and He's after our best.
Sometimes an early promise can still be enjoyed even if not to the same extent, but sometimes we don't even have the strength to hold it before the appointed time. Recently I was listening to a sermon preached on 4/24/24 from the Square Church Smyrna that tackled this issue of waiting and specifically the trials that can come with it; Pastor Phil Manginelli said, "Perseverance is making you whole; it's making your purpose whole . . . You can literally begin to discern and understand . . . God is bringing my future to me. He's actually leading me into the seasons I've been praying about . . . But this is what's true about God: He's a good Father. And He's not going to lead you into seasons of your future which require you to have a strength which you don't currently have . . . The significance of what [He's] trying to lead you into is so important you actually have to let your strength be developed so that you can sustain it . . . His delaying--His tarrying in the tension is not God abandoning you; it's actually the proactive work of God delivering His promises to you."
If what God has for us seems slow, it is only our impatience. He's preparing us to hold it. He's honing us. He's leading us. The promise is hastening eagerly to the moment of fulfillment. To the fullness of the vision, which is inseparable from its appointed time.
We need to write the vision, to hold it clearly, to allow it to light a fire under our feet, because our human nature is to forget and to rewrite with the passage of time. But the passage of time is not God's forgetfulness but His faithfulness.
When the vision seems slow, when we start to doubt, twisting our fickle minds to fuel deceit, God has not changed. He is bringing the vision forth. And yet because He knows our hearts need the emphasis, because He knows the waiting is hard and cares for us in that, He assures us that the promise still stands in the waiting. The vision hastens, it will not lie, it will surely come, it will not delay. When it seems slow, these verses remind us to wait with confidence in the God who sustains us in the waiting.
Store up your stones of remembrance, child of God. Dwell on His character. Remember His faithfulness. Rest in His peace. Let Him become real in the waiting, replacing head knowledge with heart meditation. God is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. And He will not delay.
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