Hear with Your Eyes

I will stand at my watch and station myself on the ramparts; I will look to see what he will say to me, and what answer I am to give to this complaint. Then the Lord replied: “Write down the revelation and make it plain on tablets so that a herald may run with it.”    Habakkuk 2:1-2

Recently challenged in our morning meeting with a message taken from this passage, I have been wrestling with what it means to set a goal and achieve it. ‘What does setting a goal and achieving it have anything to do with Habakkuk?’, you may ask. When this passage was explained to us, the speaker immediately pointed out something about verse 1: “I will look to see what he will say to me.” Weird, it seems, that we would look for something that should be heard. As he went more in depth into the challenges presented to us in this passage, I kept thinking back to one thing: my goals. All of my life I’ve easily set challenging yet attainable goals; in academics, music, work, or anything else I set my mind to. (This summer as a whole has challenged my views on setting and achieving goals, starting with StrengthFinders. That’s a different story, though.) How many times have you set a goal based on ‘logical’ thinking, planning out a reasonable path to get there, ensuring all the proper steps are taken, and focusing on attaining that goal? I know I have- my career choice being one of them. Not to say it was just this message that challenged me to examine what I am striving toward, but this is perhaps the moment I realized what I had been missing the whole time. I have realized that the goals that are in place were set based on what I had heard, what I had collected from various sources, what I knew to be true about my abilities and myself. In the passage above, Habakkuk is complaining and then waiting for an answer from the Lord. I don’t know about you, but so many times I complain, then forget to wait for an answer from the Lord. The problem is, I get impatient. If I do wait, I don’t wait long enough to hear what He has to say, to let Him speak to me. Habakkuk, though, stationed himself on the ramparts, standing watch to look for what God would tell him. He looked for God’s answer. Are you looking for God’s answer? Or just waiting for it to come to you, waiting for God to speak to you? I have been guilty of only waiting to hear God’s response, then when He doesn’t answer in my timeline, I make the ‘logical’ decision based on my own knowledge. How would my life change if I searched the Scriptures, hungry for God’s answer, like I searched a textbook during an open-book test? The speaker also mentioned a diagram from the book “From Good to Great,” where an example of three circles converging is used. Passion, impact, and skill collide, and in the center lies your watchpost. I am realizing that although my skills are being built up and refined, my choice of a career was not based on any skill I had previously, beside the skill of working hard toward what I had set my mind on. The impact of my career choice is obvious: daily, I have the opportunity to either encourage someone and point them to Christ or ignore the mission God has given us all- to go and make disciples of all nations (Matthew 28:19-20).   Don’t we all, though? Even outside of our job, we interact with people who don’t know Christ and need someone to care. My passion. Oh, great. Passion = burden. I may be burdened, but I’m not sure it ties back to passion. At this point, I think my burden is more “what the heck have I spend the last 3.5 years of my life on??” which doesn’t exactly equate to passion. More like panic. Is passion something that is innately inside of you, driven by what you’re naturally good at? Or is passion something built gradually within you, guided by your skill and the impact you want to make? Clearly, God has a mission for each of us, but I’m currently wondering if I missed something in regard to what He’s created me good at. As you can probably tell by reading this far, I’m slightly freaked out by this whole idea of standing at watch and looking “to see what he will say to me, and what answer I am to give to this complaint.” I feel as if I have missed something hearing from God in regard to my future. What can I deduce from this message and thought process racing through my head? Seek.

‘One thing I ask from the Lord, this only do I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze on the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple…My heart says of you, “Seek his face!” Your face, Lord, I will seek.’ Psalm 27:4,8

I’m not sure I have a conclusion for this ‘quandary’ I find myself in. Rather, I think this is something I need to reflect on, process through, and apply to my life. There is always something to grow in and work toward, especially when becoming more like Christ. Lord, help me to seek You in all my days and hear with my eyes to see what You are telling me.