How Long Shall I Cry For Help?

The beginning of the book of Habakkuk is a prayer, or maybe better put, a cry to God about what is happening in his country. “O LORD, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not hear? Or cry to you “Violence!” and you will not save? 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 1:2–4) As I have been reflecting on the events that have unfolded over the past week in our country, I believe Habakkuk encapsulates well how many of us are likely feeling. With all that has happened over the past couple of weeks, I can easily picture many Christians having the same thoughts. There has been, the school shooting in Minnesota from a couple of weeks ago, then Iryna Zarutska was horrifically stabbed and killed on a train in Charlotte, Charlie Kirk was assassinated, another school shooting happened in Evergreen, Colorado, a motel manager who was beheaded right in front of his family in Texas, a father in Michigan shot his three children killing one of them and a man was arrested in Tennessee for killing the parents and grandmother of a baby and leaving the baby abandoned in the woods. And this is just what has happened in the last couple of weeks!  There are so many more violent acts that have been committed in the previous months.

It doesn't take one long to look around and see hate and violence everywhere. We can easily cry out like Habakkuk and say, “Why?” or “How long, God?”. How long must we witness unjust killings? Why are there so many unprovoked murders? How long must we witness assassinations and senseless violence? We could feel the same bewilderment that Habakkuk did about there being no justice and the law being paralyzed. A couple of these killings I mentioned were done by repeat offenders who were let out of jail prematurely or unjustly. Why God? Why is this happening? We thought you loved justice? We thought you hated evil? We read in the bible about you defeating our enemies, yet they are prevailing. Why? Where are you? Why does it seem to get worse instead of better? Once again, the bible captures our feelings and emotions. Let us take some points away from Habakkuk’s cry to help our weary souls.

The first thing I want to highlight is the need to wrestle with God. Habakkuk is not being disrespectful to God. He is asking honest questions. He wants to know why. He was taught the truth about God, yet what he is witnessing doesn’t seem to line up with what he was taught about God. So he is being open and honest with God. He is having raw emotion in his prayer. We need to do the same. We should have such a close and intimate relationship with God that we are not afraid to tell Him how we really feel. Not be disrespectful, mind you, but honest and forthcoming. Telling God what is really on your heart is not disrespectful. God already knows how you are feeling anyway, so why not express it to Him? There are many times in our life where we will feel lost, scared, emotional, depressed, angry, confused, trapped, defeated, and more! Who better to go to about what we are feeling than God Himself?

I myself am not a very emotional person. Yet when the news came out about Charlie Kirk's assassination, I was very sad. I was more emotional than usual. I couldn't understand why I was feeling this way. Not only did I not know the guy, but I didn't follow him or watch many of his videos. Yet I was still upset. So I went to God. I wrestled and was honest with Him. I said, “Lord, I feel this way, yet I don’t know why. Help me. Comfort me. Direct me.” It is a healthy thing for our hearts to wrestle honestly with the Lord. Make this a common practice in your prayer life. Walter Chantry, on this passage, says, “The weight of these burdens compels us to wrestle with God in prayer.”

The other point I would like to make is about the appearance of God not doing anything. We first must never assume God is tolerating sin. He never does and never will. What we need to keep in mind is that the very presence of evil and injustice can very well be how God is judging godlessness. When you read Romans 1, it explains that when people vehemently reject God, God will, as a form of punishment, allow them to continue in their sin and reap the consequences of it. The Bible says that God “gave them up…” to whatever sinful acts they wanted to practice. And the destruction of themselves and others around them because of their sin is a form of God punishing them. Chantry again, “It was Paul, in Romans 1:18-32, who taught us that when nations are far advanced in rejecting God’s revelation and in moral corruption, God does not always hasten either to reform them or to destroy them. Often, when it still seems to us that God has not acted to ward evil nations, the first wave of divine wrath against the evil has already begun.”

And have we not seen this? For decades, our country has been teaching that there is no God. That we are the gods of our lives. That there is no such thing as truth. Whatever you believe to be true, then that is true. That we are free to do whatever we want, however we want. We are so sovereign over ourselves that we can choose to have sex with whoever we want, marry whoever we want, and be whatever gender we want to be. That we are all inherently good. That there is no basic moral right and wrong. So many things that were basic common truths are just pushed aside as social constructs. They aren’t real. They don’t mean anything. And with our constant pushing back against, not only God and the truth, but also against His created order, God has let us go to our own devices. To work out our beliefs, theories, and worldviews. And this is what it has led to…violence, murder, butchering, and devastation. There is now no regard for human life. People not only wage war against each other, but even against themselves, cutting up their bodies to be something different. No, my friends, God has been responding to the sinfulness in our country. It has just been in a way we would never have thought of.

With all of this in mind, keep wrestling with God and trusting in his providence. He knows what is going on and knows how best to deal with it. God’s silence is not avoidance. Eventually, Habakkuk comes to this understanding. “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) So cry out to God. Wrestle with Him on your deepest and most passionate thoughts. Be comfortable with going to Him with what is heavy on your heart. And trust that even if you do not see it, He is always working things out for His glory.