HIGHLANDS GRACE REFORMED CHURCH

Meeting at 516 N. Pine St., Sebring, FL 33870 Tel. 863-385-3787, email esager@strato.net December 2007

“Yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will joy in the god of my salvation. The LORD God is my 
strength, and he will make my feet like hinds feet, and he will make me to walk upon mine 
high places.”
Habakkuk 3:18-19

Life’s journey can include being in some awful places. Habakkuk was shown things that made
 him so deeply affected that he trembled thinking about the coming of the day of trouble. 
God was preparing him to go through that day without any harm. The first way the Lord 
equipped him was to honestly face the fact that the future may indeed be extremely trying. 
God does not want Christians to live in a pretend world. He calls us to honestly face the 
facts of what may happen to us. Doom and gloom are constantly heaped on us by the worldly 
prognosticators. Daily they herald bad news about what could happen. This can become so 
commonplace that you forget that God is in control and his judgments are very real. He is 
the ruler of the nations and his long suffering does have limits. When and how he sends 
judgments are his prerogative. If he so chooses, he can bring famine conditions, drought 
and other environmental destruction, economic disaster, plague, fire, military defeat, or 
any number of horrendous expressions of his anger against sin. Turning men over to their 
own desires is another form of his judgment. God’s Word has ample material illustrating 
this. God equips his people to go through the times of his judgments without harm by 
listening to his judgments and believing him. Habakkuk considered honestly when fruit 
trees can’t produce, and flocks die and herds are no longer alive. Preparation involves 
honestly facing potential conditions. 

Secondly he gave Habakkuk the grace of faith. He would look beyond the disaster. It would 
not obscure his view of God, but heighten it. It is tempting to examine possible scenarios
 and try to figure out how to escape them. Habakkuk was facing things that are inescapable.
 It wasn’t like an evacuation plan in case of an emergency like fire, fleeing as refugees 
or getting vaccinations in case of a terrible disease. He was prepared by personally 
planning to rejoice in the LORD. This is the language of supernatural faith. He knew that 
the LORD is the God of his salvation. He was able to face this without being terrified or 
anxious even though it meant he would also be faced with the serious threat of starvation.
 He trusted God and so was even able to rejoice in him. He was a man who knew his God and
 was convinced that he would not be abandoned even in such a circumstance. So ahead of time
 his plan was to worship God and rejoice in him. Terrible conditions were not going to rob 
him of his joy, since it did not depend on his environment. Habakkuk was a man who knew 
that God’s blessing is not based on what he could see outwardly.

Third, he shows us that Habakkuk was prepared by hope. God was going to provide him with 
the ability to rise up in this horrendous ordeal above the surrounding terrain. God’s 
enabling was going to transform this deeply disturbing situation into an occasion of
 spiritual elevation. He knew God would not only save him from death and enable him to 
survive but would amazingly give him the privilege of walking in heights only accessible
 to those as sure footed as a deer. He referred to them as ‘mine high places.’ He knew God
 had places up there marked out peculiarly for him. Hope changed this outlook from one of 
gloom and loss to a time of enormous privilege and enrichment. 

None of this is self-confidence. He depended entirely on the future grace available to him
 in God’s provision for him. God’s strength would not fail him. This would all be a sad 
delusion if he wasn’t currently and practically living by faith and knowing God as his 
strength. What a lie it would be to think that somehow because he would face such a trial 
that faith and hope would then magically appear in his life. Tozer once wrote, ‘It is 
change, not time, that turns fools into wise men and sinners into saints.’ Habakkuk could 
say with certainty how he would respond because he really was in vital fellowship with God.
 Grace had already changed him into a man of faith. The life of faith equips you to rise 
above devastating blows and go through them not merely surviving but actually enriched by
 the experience. May God find you prepared as thoroughly as the old prophet was.

Your pastor facing the future with faith and hope in my God,

 Ed Sager