The Big Idea: Faith complains “to,” not “about,” God.

Day 1

Featured Verse: Habakkuk 1:1–4
- When have you cried out to God about injustice or violence and felt like He wasn’t listening or intervening? What did that experience stir in you?
- What does it look like for you to bring honest complaints or questions to God instead of hiding your frustration or doubt?
- What questions about God’s silence or apparent inaction are you carrying right now, and how might those questions shape the way you wait on Him?

“Now this passage teaches us, that all who really serve and love God, ought, according to the Prophet’s example, to burn with holy indignation whenever they see wickedness reigning without restraint among men, and especially in the Church of God. There is indeed nothing which ought to cause us more grief than to see men raging with profane contempt for God, and no regard had for his law and for divine truth, and all order trodden under foot. When therefore such a confusion appears to us, we must feel roused, if we have in us any spark of religion.” - John Calvin

“It would be possible to go to church for many decades and never hear a sermon on Habakkuk. It’s a short book in the Old Testament, and we know almost nothing about Habakkuk himself. But this book is very contemporary in its application. This little book talks about how to handle evil times, whether those are society-wide evil times or just your own personal evil times.” - Tim Keller

Day 2

Featured Verse: Habakkuk 1:5–11
- How do you wrestle with the idea that God sometimes raises up harsh, hasty, or even violent means, like the Chaldeans, to address the injustice and sin you’ve been crying out about?
- What does it look like for you to stay open to God’s answers when they come in ways that feel more overwhelming or foreign than the deliverance you hoped for?
- Where are you being invited to stand in wonder rather than demand a timeline, even as you watch events unfold that you “would not believe if told”?

“However matters may be, yet God is the Lord our God, our Holy One. We are an offending people, he is an offended God, yet we will not entertain hard thoughts of him, or of his service. It is great comfort that, whatever mischief men design, the Lord designs good, and we are sure that his counsel shall stand. Though wickedness may prosper a while, yet God is holy, and does not approve the wickedness. As he cannot do iniquity himself, so he is of purer eyes than to behold it with any approval. By this principle we must abide, though the dispensations of his providence may for a time, in some cases, seem to us not to agree with it.” - Matthew Henry

“God responds in verses 5–11 that the wickedness of his own people is not going unnoticed, and to Habakkuk’s surprise, God is already attending to it — by raising up the wicked Babylonians, ‘that bitter and hasty nation’ (verse 6), to punish his people. God is not only using the wicked Babylonians; he is raising them up for his purposes — to punish the wickedness of his people. (God is more just than Habakkuk thinks. Don’t think God is unaware of unrighteousness in any land, and we shouldn’t ever think that our nose is on the scent before his.)” - John Piper

Day 3

Featured Verse: Habakkuk 1:12–2:1
- How do you hold the tension between what you know about God’s everlasting holiness and purity, and the reality that the wicked sometimes seem to swallow up those more righteous than themselves?
- How do you practice the posture Habakkuk takes in 2:1: standing at your watch, stationing yourself, and looking for what God will say in response to your complaint?
- Where are you currently waiting for an answer you don’t yet have, and what would it mean for you to stay positioned to hear it rather than withdrawing or demanding an immediate resolution?

“When you are puzzled—when you are troubled, when you do not know what to do, then may God help you to say, ‘I will stand my watch, and set myself on the tower, and will watch to see what He will say unto me, and what I shall answer when I am reproved.’… The attitude of the Christian worker must be one of attention… But, next, it must be a patient attitude. Observe what Habakkuk says, ‘I will stand my watch.’ Not merely, ‘I will be upon my watch for a moment,’ but, ‘I will take my place like a sentinel who remains on guard until his time of watching is over.’” - Charles Spurgeon

“And then he says, ‘I will stand at my watch and station myself on the ramparts. I will look to see what he will say to me.’ … He’s standing at his watch. He’s stationing himself on the ramparts and he’s waiting now to see what God will say. And there’s a sense in which in leaving it here we leave it, of course, as unfinished business… but it is clear from the passage… that because God is Almighty he can and does at times do things that are the opposite of what we might anticipate in order that his purpose may be fulfilled.” - Alistair Begg

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