THINK TOGETHER
What is faith? What is something that you do by faith?
READ TOGETHER
We all do lots of things every day by faith. Faith is trusting in something, maybe even something that we can’t see or completely understand. Faith is also trusting someone. Maybe even someone we can’t see or completely understand.
What do you do from faith? (sit in a chair? Do you ever jump into your mom or dad’s arms?)
Who do you trust? (Your parents, your teachers, your doctor, your pastor, your friends)
Habakkuk was a prophet in the Old Testament that had to learn about faith in God. Habakkuk saw that his people, the Jews, were being evil, and so he cried out to God. But God’s answer was not what Habakkuk wanted to hear. God told Habakkuk that he knew about the wickedness of his people, and that he was going to send the even more wicked Babylonians to conquer the Jews and take them into exile (do you remember what the exile was?).
Habakkuk did not like God’s answer. It didn’t seem fair to him. Why would God use people who are less righteous to punish people who were more righteous?
But then God said something to Habakkuk that would change everything. Here it is:
Habakkuk 2:4. “Behold, [the wicked person’s] soul is puffed up; it is not upright within him,
but the righteous person shall live by his faith.
You see, Habakkuk thought that people were righteous because of what they did. If they did good things, then they were righteous. And if they did bad things then they were unrighteous or wicked. So based on how good or how bad you are you are either more righteous or less righteous.
But Habakkuk failed to understand that we are all unrighteous. We all sin. We all do wicked things. And so God doesn’t keep score or give us grades on how good or bad we are. Compared to God we are all very bad. And there’s only one way for God to score us as righteous. There’s only way for God to call us good.
Faith.
We can’t be good enough or do enough good things so we have to have faith in Jesus that he was good enough and that he did enough good things. And he did! In fact, he never did any wrong. He was never sinful, or wicked, or even a little bit bad. He was always righteous. He always did what God wanted.
And that’s why he COULD die for us on the cross. And that’s why he DID die for us on the cross. He died for us because he was righteous.
And now we too can be righteous when we have faith in Jesus. When we jump into his arms. When we trust in what he did for us instead of what we can do for God.
Because of Jesus I have his righteousness score, instead of my own.
With Jesus I can live in faith, trusting him to love me and care for me every day.
DO SOMETHING TOGETHER
Here’s a great song to listen to about trusting Jesus.
Watch this scene from the movie Onward – how did Ian demonstrate faith?
PRAY TOGETHER
Jesus,
I know that I am not righteous. Thank you for being righteous for me and for giving me your righteousness by simply trusting you.
Amen.
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