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 or someone. Often faith means trusting something or someone that you can’t see or understand.
Who do you trust? (Your parents, your teachers, your doctor, your pastor, your friends)
What is something that you do from faith? (Sit in a chair? Fly in a plane? Jump into your mom or dad’s arms?)
Habakkuk was a prophet in the Old Testament that had to learn about faith in God. Habakkuk saw that his people, the Jews, were going to be attacked by the wicked Babylonians. They would be forced into slavery and become exiles in a foreign land.
Habakkuk didn’t think this was fair. Why would God use the wicked Babylonians to attack his own people? 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.
Because we can’t be good enough or do enough good things 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 anything 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 Jesus’ 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, 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.
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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