Ray Rooney
Digital media editor
November 2014 – Sometimes it’s a challenge to be a hopeful, upbeat Christian in today’s America. The steady stream of news and events in our culture is both depressing and maddening. The church in America is receding in number, status and influence. Looking Christian is far more popular than actually being Christian. Apathy has gripped the church like never before. Pluralism is dissipating what little religious integrity remains. The words repentance and sacrifice are seldom heard from our pulpits in the context of a personal and eternal relationship with God.
The religious rights and freedoms our Founding Fathers tried so hard to ensure have come under attack by our own government leaders. America’s children are being taught that they leave their First Amendment rights at the doors of the school. They’re told they cannot pray, form Christian clubs or groups, or even say “Bless you” when someone sneezes.
Militant Islam has declared war on all Jews and Christians, but our civic and religious leaders keep telling us that Islam is a peaceful religion. The practice of homosexuality continues to split Christian churches and denominations. Activist judges with little regard for the Constitution continue to undo the will of Americans who have consistently voted to protect biblical and traditional marriage.
Sometimes I wonder where God is. I recoil at that question. I know better. God is where He always has been, is right now, and always will be: reigning in Heaven’s Temple and the Body of Christ in mercy and victory.
Long ago, the prophet Habakkuk was asking the same questions that God’s forlorn faithful are asking today: “Why do you make me see iniquity, and why do you idly look at wrong? Destruction and violence are before me; strife and contention arise. So the law is paralyzed, and justice never goes forth. For the wicked surround the righteous; so justice goes forth perverted” (Habakkuk 1:3-4, ESV).
Habakkuk voices the pain of everyone across time who has struggled with watching sin prosper while righteousness is demeaned and assaulted. Why doesn’t God do something? I think about Noah and the flood. I think about the tower of Babel and the confusion God sent. I remember Sodom and Gomorrah. The plagues against Egypt, the lone angel who slew 186,000 Assyrians (Isaiah 37:36). And the Bible list goes on concerning how God intervened in worldly affairs with a strong and mighty hand.
I want to say, “Come on God! So many people thumb their noses at You. They ridicule Jesus, blaspheme Your holy Name, legitimize sin, and worst of all, they demand that I get on board with them. Please do something!”
He never says a word, but somehow every time the desperation and angst overwhelm me, I see a mental image of the cross. And I sense God communing with my mind and heart saying, “I did do something. I did everything to ensure that no matter how bad it gets, you will never succumb to sin. My Son satisfied the wages of sin and then conquered death and Satan for you.”
Yes, Habakkuk questioned God, but what about God’s answer? In Habakkuk 2:2-20, Habakkuk grows humble before his omnipotent God. Finally, then, the bitter prophet is ready to celebrate God’s mercy and grace:
Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail and the fields yield no food, the flock be cut off from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will take joy in the God of my salvation. God, the Lord, is my strength; he makes my feet like the deer’s; he makes me tread on my high places (Habakkuk 3:17-19, ESV).
Quite the turnaround. The messed up world remains messed up. But the heart of the individual who believes in the God of the Bible turns when he or she remembers that nothing can ever change either the goodness or faithfulness of God. Maybe the most hopeful promise in the Bible isn’t so much about what God will do for anyone. Maybe it’s a revelation about who He is. Maybe the most important thing written is “He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it” (1 Thessalonians 5:24, ESV). Hang in there, Christians. Our God reigns. We win. 
