A woman told me she had stopped describing it, and I asked her what she meant, and the answer took a while.
She said she used to have words for the situation in her house. She could explain it to somebody. She had a version she gave to people who asked and a longer version for people who asked twice.
And at some point, after enough years, she stopped having either one. She said the situation had not changed and neither had she and there was simply nothing new to say about it, and so she had stopped saying anything.
Including to God. That was the part she was most uncomfortable telling me.
She said her praying about it had become one word repeated, and that even that felt like complaining, and she had been taught that complaining is not praying.
There is a whole book of the Bible that begins with a complaint and it was not edited out.
How the book opens
Habakkuk does not open with worship. It opens with an accusation, and it is addressed directly to God, and it is the first thing in the book.
O LORD, how long shall I cry, and thou wilt not hear! even cry out unto thee of violence, and thou wilt not save! (Habakkuk 1:2, King James Version)
Thou wilt not hear. He says that to God, about God, out loud, and somebody wrote it down.
That is not a private moment that leaked into the record. It is the opening line of a prophetic book, preserved deliberately, read aloud in assemblies for two and a half thousand years.
You are permitted to say the thing you have not been saying, and a whole book of Scripture opens with it (Habakkuk 1:2), and the Holy Spirit is the one who preserved a complaint in the canon so that a person in a house where nothing changes would have somewhere to stand.
What he does next
The thing that makes Habakkuk useful rather than merely permissive is what he does after he says it.
He does not walk off. He does not go and say it to somebody else instead. He takes up a position and waits.
I will stand upon my watch, and set me upon the tower, and will watch to see what he will say unto me, and what I shall answer when I am reproved. (Habakkuk 2:1)
I will watch to see what he will say. Having accused God of not hearing, he then stations himself to listen, which is not the behavior of a man who has given up.
And he adds a clause that shows what kind of person he is. And what I shall answer when I am reproved. He is prepared to be corrected. He has said a hard thing and he is not defending it in advance.
That is the shape of an honest complaint rather than a bitter one, and the difference is not the temperature. It is whether the person is still available for an answer.
You are still available for an answer, and that is what makes a hard sentence a prayer rather than a departure (Habakkuk 2:1). The same Spirit is the one who keeps somebody facing the right direction after they have finally said what they think.
You are able to say a hard thing and stay in the room afterward, and the prophet who said the hardest one climbed a tower and waited (Habakkuk 2:1), and it is the Spirit who keeps somebody in position after they have finally said what they think.
Where the book ends
And the last chapter is the one people quote on cards, and almost nobody reads the verse before the famous part.
Although the fig tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines; the labour of the olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no meat; the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stalls: Yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will joy in the God of my salvation. (Habakkuk 3:17 and 18)
Read the first half. Every single clause of it is a failure. No blossom, no fruit, no oil, no crop, no flock, no herd. That is a complete list of everything an agricultural household had, and every item on the list is gone.
The rejoicing in the second half does not come after any of that got fixed. It comes after a list of things that stayed broken.
You are not required to wait for the list to change before anything else is true (Habakkuk 3:17), and the Spirit is the one who produces a yet in a person standing in a house where nothing has moved.
And this belongs here plainly, because this category reaches people in real danger. Where the situation in a house is dangerous right now, for anybody in it, that is not for an article to hold. Tell somebody today: a doctor, a counselor, a pastor you trust, somebody who can sit with you, or call the 988 crisis line, in the United States. Going is strength.
So say how long, and then say the cry.
You have a book of Scripture that opens with the sentence you have been afraid to say, and nobody edited it out in two and a half thousand years (Habakkuk 1:2), and the Holy Spirit is the one who kept it there for a person in exactly your position.
Now the counterfeit, and in a long unchanged situation it is quiet and it sounds like reverence, so learn its shape. It says: saying that is complaining, and complaining is not praying, and a person with real faith would not put it like that. That is vague, it names you rather than an act, and its only instruction is to keep saying nothing. Conviction from the Holy Spirit names one specific thing and hands you a door in the same breath, and here the door is one true sentence.
You are not complaining when you say how long it has been, and a prophet said far more than that and then climbed a tower to wait (Habakkuk 2:1), and that part belongs to the Holy Spirit, who keeps a person in position after they have finally spoken.
Nothing on this page promises the house changes. Habakkuk's did not, and the last chapter of his book is a list of things that stayed broken. What is settled is that the complaint was kept in the book, that the man who made it stayed and waited, and that a person who has run out of descriptions has not run out of things to say.
Declare this over yourself
Say these out loud, at the counter before anybody is up. You speak here as somebody in Christ, so the standing behind it belongs to you and was handed over rather than assumed. God kept a book that opens with an accusation and closes with a list of things that stayed broken, so speak to the rule that has kept you silent for years. An ambassador speaks the King's word and never his own, and the outcome is His to decide.
- Rule that says I cannot ask how long, you are not reverence and you are not what the prophets did. The Word of God opens a whole book with O LORD, how long shall I cry, and thou wilt not hear, and nobody edited it out.
- Silence I have kept for six years, you are finished in the name of Jesus. Scripture has the man who said it climbing a tower afterward to watch for an answer rather than walking away from the conversation.
- Father, Habakkuk 3:17 lists everything that failed and then says yet I will rejoice, and nothing on that list ever got fixed. I say how long it has been out loud tonight, and I thank You that Your Spirit has a new sentence for somebody out of words.
Habakkuk 1:2
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