2026-08-16 Habukuk - Waiting Prayer

During the summer, a series on improving prayer life was discussed at the Vineyard. Many pray, even non-believers, but insecurities about prayer are common. God values all forms of prayer, and there's no set way to communicate with Him. The series aims to help people grow in prayer and address feelings of inadequacy. Breakthrough prayers, where God acts instantly, were highlighted, as well as the importance of waiting prayers and engaging in conversation with God, using the prophet Habakkuk's experiences as an example. During the summer season, we have been looking at a series together called Growing in Our Prayer Life. We tend to preach in series here at the Vineyard, either a book from the Bible or a theme, and this has been our theme. I don't know how you feel personally about your prayer life. Stats are that many, many people pray. People pray and don't even believe in God, but they give prayer a go. I'm guessing if you're here this morning or watching online, you are either convinced that God is real and so pray with certainty, or you're curious to know about God. If that's you, we'd love to talk some more about that. But one thing I have found in my time as being a pastor, that it's around our prayer life that people often have huge insecurities. We get into that headspace of assuming that everybody else we know either prays better, prays longer, prays more effectively, prays differently, and that our prayer life somehow doesn't measure up. If you don't feel like that, if you're feeling confident in your prayer life, give yourself a big pat on the back. But for the rest of us, for those of us in the room and online who maybe just feel insecure in how we pray, this series is designed for you, because the enemy would love us to feel insecure about our praying, would love us to think that our prayers are unhelpful, not enough, and I just want to call that out. God loves any way we pray. He loves every way we pray. He loves when we pray with words, and He loves when we sit silently with Him. We are not in a religion here where there is a set way that we have to communicate with God. We are in a relationship, and so every time we reach out to Him, we listen to Him, that itself is prayer. So, no shame, no blame, no guilt. Let us step into this beautiful relationship that God's given us. However, saying that, we can also grow in prayer. I often think as baby Christians, we're like little seedlings that God's planted in new soil, and He wants to help us grow in every aspect of our life, and that includes growing in prayer. So, wherever you are now, what would your next step be that you would feel more confident, more secure, more effective, more excited, more joyful about the praying that you do? So, that's what this series has been, and you can listen back and catch up. I'm going to talk about a very particular sort of train today. I've given you the whole series, and we're taking bites out as we go. But one of the things that many of us will have experienced is breakthrough prayer. When we've prayed for something, and we've instantly known that God has acted. Maybe we've been healed, maybe something's shifted, maybe we've had a revelation. Has anyone ever experienced that? You just know that you know that you know that God has done something, like right now and there. Those prayers are amazing. I was remembering with early birds at age, a time when I was little, and we lived next door to a Jack Russell dog, and it was a monster. It was really vicious, and so I grew up being absolutely terrified of dogs. Not a little bit scared, terrified. I'd cross the road. When my children were born, I began to be a grown-up and try and handle it better. So, I didn't want them to inherit my fear. I don't think they have. But I still was terrified, and I would then be crossing four children over the road, not just myself. What happened was that when I had my third child, my very best friend, she had two children, I had a baby, she bought a dog. And I just was like, oh my goodness, what am I going to do? How do I visit her? I loved her, but I did not love her dog. And so I remember, it's such a little thing, but I remember the only way I'm going to get over this is for God to shift it. And I prayed, I distinctly remember, Lord, would you remove this fear from my life, that I was hooked way back to when I was a little girl, I love my friend, and I just need to be able to go and visit her. And instantly, it went. I mean, isn't that miraculous? That God can do those things. I'm not a fan of dogs, I don't like it when they jump up, but I can be in a house now where there's a dog. He shifted something in me. That was a breakthrough prayer. Amazing. But what about those other times? What about those times when we've been praying for things for a long time, and nothing seems to have changed? That's what I want us to talk about today. Those waiting prayers. Now, if you were around last week, you know that Eva spoke to us about prevailing prayer. She smashed it. If you've not listened, catch up online. And she talked about those times when God really puts something on our heart, maybe for the world, maybe for ourselves, maybe for the situation we find ourselves in, and we prevail with Him. We seek Him for that thing. And that those things, often He can put those things on our heart, and then we have a little bit of a rest, but He brings them back to us. And she was talking about how we engage in that prevailing prayer with God. How do we do that? What I want to look at today is what we do in the in-between times, when we're waiting. We're not maybe actively praying for that one thing, but we know we're in a waiting space. What does waiting prayer look like? And how do we posture ourselves before God? How do we position ourselves spiritually in those places of waiting? And I would imagine all of us, if we had any journey with the Lord, we'll have had times where we are waiting for God to speak, waiting for God to act. We're going to be looking at Habakkuk. Habakkuk is a book in the Bible. He's a man. If you're finding your way around the Bible, Old Testament, Big Two Thirds, New Testament, One Third at the end. And Habakkuk is almost one of the last books of the Old Testament. Look it up in the index, it's much easier than just trying to find it. He was a really interesting man, in that we hardly know anything about him. There's hardly any information about his life. But I love it that he's in the Bible, because who we meet is a very worried and very confused prophet. A prophet is somebody that hears from God and tells the people what God's saying. So we think that they must have their prayer life cracked, right? But we meet Habakkuk and he is confused and he's worried. And in chapters 1 and 2 of Habakkuk, there's this conversation goes on between him and God. And it's pretty robust. Basically Habakkuk is saying, look at all this chaos around me God, where are you? Actually the phrase he uses straight out of the Bible, you do not listen. Have you ever said that to God? Where are you? You do not listen. And I love it that that's there, because it gives us permission to have really real conversations with God about the very real things that are going on in our lives. So over lunch this afternoon, if you've got nothing to do, read Habakkuk 1 and 2. Get into the tussle that goes on between God and Habakkuk. And then we come to chapter 3, and it's called Habakkuk's Prayer. And what we've been doing through this series is pulling out those prayers that God has left us in the Bible, these treasures, so that we can begin to think about how prayer works for people and what are the things that we can learn. So we're going to read Habakkuk's Prayer, this confused and worried prophet. Now let me say something before we dig in. What Habakkuk's Prayer is, he's got a canvas, and he's got his brushes, and he's going to paint this really big picture. He pretty much does the whole of creation and all of his people's history. We're going to go up to the moon and through the mountains and rivers. So we might get a little lost on the way. But it's helpful to know that he's painting this huge canvas. I'm not going to unpack every single word of his prayer. We wouldn't have time here. It would be an interesting thing to do on another day. But I'd rather invite you to catch the hugeness of this prayer that he's praying, and then together we'll look at what it looks like to wait in prayer. Is that okay? Okay, so it's one of those buckle-up passages. You're going like, oh, okay, what is he going on about? Here we go. Habakkuk. A prayer of Habakkuk the prophet. Lord, I have heard of your fame. I stand in awe of your deeds, Lord. Repeat them in our day. In our time, make them known. In wrath, remember mercy. Here comes the history. God came from Teman, the holy one from Mount Paran. His glory covered the heavens, and his praise filled the earth. His splendor was like the sunrise. Rays flashed from his hand where his power was hidden. Plague went before him, and pestilence followed in his step. And he stood and shook the earth. And he looked, and he made the nations tremble. The ancient mountains crumbled, and the age-old hills collapsed. But he marches on forever. I saw the tents of Cushon in distress, the dwellings of Midian in anguish. Were you angry with the rivers, Lord? Was your wrath against the streams? Did you rage against the sea when you rode your horses and your chariots to victory? You uncovered your bow, and you called for many arrows. You split the earth with rivers. The mountains saw you and rised. Torrents of water swept by. The deep roared and lifted its waves on high. The sun and the moon stood still in the heavens at the glint of your flying arrows, at the lightning of your flashing spear. In wrath you strode through the land, and in anger you threshed the nations. And you came out to deliver your people, to save your anointed one. You crushed the leader of the land of wickedness. You stripped him from head to foot. With his own spear you pierced his head. And his warriors stormed out to scatter us, gloating as though about to devour the wretched who were in hiding. You trampled the sea with your horses, churning the great waters. I heard, and my heart pounded, and my lips quivered at the sound, and decay crept into my bones, and my legs trembled. Yet I waited patiently for the day of calamity to come on the nation invading us. Though the fig tree does not bud, and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the sheepfold and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord. I will be joyful in God my Saviour. The sovereign Lord is my strength. He makes my feet like the feet of a deer, and he enables me to tread on the heights. That's big, right? It's big. Okay, how are we going to unpack this? What can we learn from confused and frustrated Habakkuk? I want us to look at how he shows us how to wait in times of uncertainty, and also how he shows us the power of waiting. Now, let's be real about this. For me, I find waiting really hard. I don't know about you. And often that's saying, well, just pray for patience and you'll be fine. Not a bad thing to pray for patience, but we need to be real that actually being patient and being in a waiting place is not something that comes instinctively to us. How do we live a life of patience and of waiting, especially when we find ourselves in a hard place? Let's go on a journey with Habakkuk. So number one, waiting prayer. If you are in a place today where you are waiting, maybe waiting for something to happen, waiting for God to answer, waiting for a breakthrough, waiting for a revelation. If you are in a waiting place, waiting prayer begins with honesty. Habakkuk held nothing back. He was absolutely real with God. Read the first two chapters. Where are you? Why are you not listening? And what often happens when we pray, especially when we've been waiting, we feel like we need to arrive at our prayer time with God, with everything sorted out, with the answer in our head, and then we're telling God what it is he needs to do. Have you ever done that? I've worked this out, I've put my best brain on it, I've got a solution, so God, here it is, if you bless that for me. But actually, it's the other way around. Often we come to God and if you're truly waiting, if you're really in a hard place, if you're facing things in yourself, in your family, in your life that are beyond your control, you'll know that when we come to prayer, we haven't got it all thought out. And what our prayer is, is God, I need you. God, would you help me? God, I'm lost without you. God, this is really tough. So just for us to have permission and maybe that reminder that it is okay not to have it all thought about. It's okay not to have the answers. As human beings, especially in our very sophisticated 21st century world, that is tough. It's tough to remember that we can be humble enough to not know the answer. And why is that okay? Because we're in this relationship with God where we can come to him just as we would a friend and say, do you know what, this is just pants right now. I don't know what to do. When a friend does that with us, when a friend calls you up, you go for coffee, you meet for a pint down the pub, you bump into each other in town. How are you? And those friends that we can be really real with, do you know what? I don't even know how to answer that question today. That is the God who loves us. We don't have to have all the answers. In fact, often when we don't know the answers, we are more powerfully open to what it is he wants to do in our lives. And in that, we don't have to pretend everything's fine. Now we say, I don't think I do that, but time and time again, again as a pastor, my privilege as a pastor, I'll say to him, what does God say about that? Oh no, he's so busy. The world's so complicated. There's so many things that God's got to sort out. There's war and famine and all of that is true. But he's God. He is omnipotent. He is enormous. And his love is sufficient. And we are never the bottom of his list. Because he's God, and there's a mystery in this, Each and every one of us is at the top of his list. Each and every one of us has his ear, so we can come to him in our raw emotion. Eva said last week, and I want to echo it, it's fine for us to come to God and say, do you know what, I am absolutely furious. I'm absolutely frustrated. I am heartbroken. I am devastated. I am confused. I'm lonely. I have no idea what's going on. Because he loves us in that place. We don't have to pretend that everything is fine. Saying that, I don't have trouble expressing my emotions in any place. That's how I'm wired. But one of the questions I've always had is, how do I deal with that then? If I'm bringing all my emotions to God, and I love it that he loves that, that I can be frustrated. I can be angry. Notice it says in the Bible, in your anger do not sin. So I'm bringing my prayers to God in my anger, rather than going and bopping someone on the nose. Coming to God. How do I not just get caught up then in all of my emotion? Valid. God gave us our emotions for a reason. They show us what's going on in our heart. But often we can get stuck in that emotion place and not move on, because our prayers end up being that, why me? Why me? Why my family? Don't mishear me. It's really fine to ask God why. Why is this happening? What's going on here? But so that we don't get caught in that place, because a why can quite quickly be an arrow that turns back in and ruins ourselves. It becomes a self-pity that begins to destroy our faith. Have you ever found that? So by all means ask the why questions. But also be asking God the how questions. God, how do I live in this? How do I respond in this situation? How do I find peace? How do I find purpose? How do I find you? And so balancing those why questions with the how questions begins to give us a place to wait that is beyond just how we're feeling. Our feelings are really precious and really important. But they're not always a reflection of the truth. And so the how question, God, how do you want me to be right now? can be a helpful place for us to begin to wait in a waiting space. Okay, so waiting prayer begins with honesty. And then notice what Habakkuk does. I love this. If it's me, I've come to God and blurted it all out. And this is what I need, God. But Habakkuk does something really interesting. He looks backwards as well as looking forward. He wants help with his confusion. But before he gets there, he says this, Lord, I have heard of your fame and I stand in awe of your deeds. And before asking God to act, he takes this pause and he remembers everything that God has done. And we've just read it all. It went on and on and on and on, didn't it? This huge remembrance of what Habakkuk is doing is celebrating the God that he knows. Let me tell you about the picket fence picture. When I was first a Christian and I was trying to learn how to pray and I found myself just praying for all the things I needed and all the places where I felt broken and they're really good. They were the gaps in my life where I was longing to see God work. But the picture of the picket fence is a reminder to also thank God for all of those places that are really solid, that are really anchored, places where I've seen God work, places where I've known that he's with me. Because that picket fence is made up of both the solid and the gap. And isn't that our lives? Our lives are made up of the things that we know that we have and also those places where we're still waiting and still questioning. What Habakkuk does is he looks at that picket fence, all of those places he's confused, and he begins by rehearsing all God's mighty acts. This bit's solid and this bit's solid and this bit's solid, that his life is secured in who God is. So for us, when we find ourselves in that waiting place, Habakkuk shows us that it's really helpful to remember our stories. Remember what it is that God has done. For those of you who know Jesus, for those of you who've given your lives to him, you have a story of the salvation of God in your life. You may have a hundred questions, you may have a hundred issues going on, but you know that you know that you know that you have been saved by God. That Jesus hung on the cross, and there was a moment when you recognised that he hung there not just for everyone else but for you. That you were saved by him. That is your story. There'll be others of you that there are times in your life when you know that God was with you. You were certain of his presence in your life. What Habakkuk does is remind us that in a waiting place, remembering those stories, remembering the nature and the character of God, helps us to wait. I wonder for you this morning, where has God been faithful before? Maybe bring something to mind. What prayers has he already answered? When was the time, and maybe it was just this morning in worship, that you were absolutely certain that God was with you? It's really good for us to look back as well as looking forward. So what else happens in these times of waiting, when we're waiting for God to answer, when we're maybe living in a place of frustration? Waiting prayer produces strength. Notice what Habakkuk says. He's facing an uncertain future, he's being really real about what's going on, and he's describing how this feels for him. He says, my heart pounded, my lips quivered, decay crept into my bones, and my legs trembled. Like this is real emotion. This is real spiritual turmoil. But I love the next verse. It says, yet. Yet, I will wait patiently. You see, something's happening to him during this prayer. Something's shifting in him. We know from that, that nothing's changed. I love this scarecrow picture. It's like nothing on the outside has changed. If you looked at Habakkuk's life, it's flapping around like an old shirt on a stick. But actually, what that scarecrow has is a firm anchor in the ground. And what Habakkuk is saying is, it all might look like it's flapping around, but as I wait patiently for the Lord, as I trust him, as I anchor myself in him, I'm building a spiritual resistance that will see me through my waiting. I don't know how that fits with you. Have you ever thought about building a spiritual resistance? And actually, that resistance is often built during these times of waiting. Some of you will have experienced it already. Where people that are in your life, maybe they don't know Jesus, and you are facing something really tricky, and they come to you and they say, how can you even cope with this? That bereavement, that job loss, that family issue. And you know that the only answer to that question is because God has you. God is that pole, like the scarecrow in your life, that holds you firm when it looks like everything else is flapping around. As we wait, God wants to build a spiritual resistance in us. Now how does that happen then? Because we should be asking questions about how does that just happen then? Well, it's the work of his Spirit, but it's also choosing to believe that God is at work. You see, biblical waiting is active trust. It's not a passive responding to nothing. Choosing to believe that God is at work. It's an active trust. I don't know if you've ever heard of faith being spoken of as a muscle. It's a muscle that we have to exercise. And if we don't exercise the muscle, it just goes flabby. In these times of waiting for God, if we choose to believe, that is so cool. I feel like God's about to arrive on the clouds. It's wonderful, don't worry at all. Choosing to believe that God is at work. So building this resilience in us is a work of the Spirit, but it's something that we choose. It's something that we long for. It's something that we look for. So that we want to exercise that faith muscle to grow into what it is that God wants to grow in us. And somewhere down the line is that that waiting prayer becomes more than just about getting an answer. Now don't misunderstand me here. I know some of you are praying for answers for things that are so precious, so huge, so personal. So it's not that we give up praying for the answer, praying for the healing, praying for the release and the rescue. Of course, of course, of course, we're called to ask God for those things that we need. But there's something about waiting prayer as we encounter God like Habakkuk did, in those places of confusion and desperation where we haven't got the answer. When all we can do is sit in his presence, that his presence becomes part of what it is we're longing for. We don't stop longing for this, but we absolutely don't want to live without his presence. Isaiah 40.31 says, Those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength. Those that wait on the Lord shall renew their strength. There's something that happens in the waiting that's about more than the answer. And can you see how Habakkuk's building? If we started with that slide, we'd be like, gosh, that's really hard. But can you see how he builds this? We express our emotion, we look back as well as forwards, we're choosing to grow some spiritual resilience and then we get to that place where actually our conversation and our relationship and our being with him is all part of the waiting and part of the answer. And then Habakkuk takes us one step further and I love this. I often say it's one of my favourite bits of the Bible and I think I say that every week because I've got lots of favourite bits, but this is one of my favourite bits. There's a waiting that Habakkuk describes here that is mind-blowing. Just listen to what he says. It's like the climax of his prayer. He says, He says, It's like this is devastation. As I look outside, to the outside world, this looks like a barren land, but it's that little word that the Bible loves, it's yet. Yet. Despite there being so many things that the world would look in on my life and say, that just looks a mess. As we grow in this resilience with God, as we anchor ourselves in him, as we seek his presence and not just the answer. Oh, I'm so sorry. Yet. I will rejoice in the Lord. I will be joyful in God my saviour. The sovereign Lord is my strength. He makes my feet like the feet of a deer and he enables me to tread on the heights. There's no denial here. Habakkuk's not pretending that there's fruit in the vines. There isn't. It is a mess. He is concerned. There is confusion. It looks barren. And yet, he's grown a faith that has learnt to worship before the breakthrough arrives. Yes, we will worship when that breakthrough arrives. Let's worship together and praise God for every breakthrough. But let's also grow a faith together and separately, individually, that can hold us in those places, knowing that God is for us, knowing that he's at work, even when we don't see it, that enables us to worship before breakthrough arrives. This is a journey of growing in prayer. Not always easy, but what an amazing place when we get there. And you wonder about that feet of a deer? That's a bit odd. If you've ever seen a deer on the side of a mountain, it looks like they've got Velcro on their feet. They're skittering up these slopes like this. That's the place that God wants to bring us to, that we are so secure in him that we can find ourselves in the trickiest places, but we know that we know that we know that he has got us, that he has the situation in his hands. So how do we grow in that? How do we become like Habakkuk? And I can only but point us to Jesus. To grow that active waiting, that active faith. Here we see Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, showing us what waiting prayer looks like. There is no passive resignation in him. But active trust, that even though the whole world is saying, oh my goodness, they're going to kill Jesus. Oh my goodness, his whole ministry has gone to pot. Oh my goodness, even his friends have deserted him. Oh my goodness, this was all just a fabrication. He knows that this is all part of God's plan. Not passive resignation, but active trust. And the sweetness of this prayer, Lord, Father, if you're willing, take this cup from me, honest, if you're willing, if we can shift this, yet, there's that word again, yet, not my will, but yours be done. And we come back to that prayer, don't we, over and over again. Faith isn't the absence of struggle. And if we're to just preach a happy, clappy life of Jesus, there is such joy in him. But we do face struggle. Faith is bringing our struggles to God. And because of the cross, it changes how we wait. Jesus achieved something on the cross that changes everything for us. That life comes from death. That injustice finds justice. That what looks lost is redeemed. That what was broken is healed. And we're often in the tension of the waiting. You see, the cross ultimately is empty. And the resurrection shows us that waiting is never the end of the story. So just coming back to Jesus. He's been with us all morning. And wanting to stand with us to help us in that place of waiting. For us to be amongst those who are learning to wait with active trust in God. To build a spiritual resilience in us that whatever our life looks like, and it might look pretty odd at times, we know that we know that we know that God loves us. And that he has all things in his hands. And that through the power of the cross, his will will be done.