Psalm 31:1-3

My Shepherd met me in His green pastures and laid me down in Habakkuk. My heart was filled with gratitude as I read the opening verses of the prophecy: Habakkuk 1:1-4:

Habakkuk 1:1 ¶ The burden which Habakkuk the prophet did see.

Habakkuk 1:2 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 1:3 Why dost thou shew me iniquity, and cause me to behold grievance? for spoiling and violence are before me: and there are that raise up strife and contention.

Habakkuk 1:4 Therefore the law is slacked, and judgment doth never go forth: for the wicked doth compass about the righteous; therefore wrong judgment proceedeth.

I remember reading and weeping over America with the words of the prophet many times from 2008-2024. For sixteen years, this “Nation under God” was spiralling toward Hell (Psalm 9:17).*

I have asked Habakkuk’s question: “Why dost thou shew me iniquity, and cause me to behold grievance? for spoiling and violence are before me: and there are that raise up strife and contention” (Habakkuk 1:3).

Along the still waters, I reflected on Habakkuk’s prophecy. He might just as well have been describing America when he said, “Therefore the law is slacked, and judgment doth never go forth: for the wicked doth compass about the righteous; therefore wrong judgment proceedeth” (Habakkuk 1:4). The weaponization of government against the righteous peaked during the Obama/Biden Administration. The “sword” was held in the hands of the unreasonable and wicked who used it against the righteous. This is the opposite of God’s ordained appointment of the sword (Romans 13:1-6). These are indeed the “children of disobedience” (Ephesians 2:2).

They take “the kingdom” by force and violence (Matthew 11:12); they are lawless (1 Timothy 1:9); their method is to steal, kill, and destroy (John 10:10): all of this evidences they serve the “prince of the power of the air, the spirit that works in the children of disobedience” (Ephesian 2:1-2)—Satan.

Habakkuk goes on to prophecy of God’s miraculous deliverance, employing means to accomplish His ends, maneuvering the nations into position for His judgment (Habakkuk 1-2), and the prophet prayed: “A prayer of Habakkuk the prophet upon Shigionoth. O LORD, I have heard thy speech, and was afraid: O LORD, revive thy work in the midst of the years, in the midst of the years make known; in wrath remember mercy” (Habakkuk 3:1-2).

The prophet feared because He knew the corrective judgment would not be easy for him or his people. He knew his nation would pass through a great trial of affliction (Habakkuk 3:3-17). Paul warned us as he did the believers in Derbe:

Acts 14:21 And when they had preached the gospel to that city, and had taught many, they returned again to Lystra, and to Iconium, and Antioch,

Acts 14:22 Confirming the souls of the disciples, and exhorting them to continue in the faith, and that we must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God.

Acts 14:23 And when they had ordained them elders in every church, and had prayed with fasting, they commended them to the Lord, on whom they believed.

God moved, and His work was fearful, and the prophet trembled: “When I heard, my belly trembled; my lips quivered at the voice: rottenness entered into my bones, and I trembled in myself, that I might rest in the day of trouble: when he cometh up unto the people, he will invade them with his troops” (Habakkuk 3:16).

However, God comforted the prophet to know God is his strength, and righteousness would at last prevail: “Yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will joy in the God of my salvation. The LORD God is my strength, and he will make my feet like hinds’ feet, and he will make me to walk upon mine high places” (Habakkuk 3:18-19).

In the valley, my Shepherd gave me counsel on how I might follow Him through the present turbulence as the earth convulses against the rule of Christ (Psalm 2:1-12). He spoke to me regarding how I might be a faithful and effective soldier in this spiritual war. He showed me the key to having victory as I wrestle against principalities, powers, the rulers of the darkness of this world, and the spiritual wickedness in high places (Ephesians 6:12-21). He said, “run your race with patience, looking unto Jesus” (Hebrews 12:1-2). I imagined myself setting my feet onto the foot blocks, waiting for the starting shot, when Jesus drew near and whispered in my ear in His still small voice, Don’t forget the Cross. “If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me” (Luke 9:23).

At the table, He anointed my head with His oil and filled my cup with His grace, as goodness and mercy, wearing their running shoes, followed us into the harvest.

Praying for revival! 🙏

Going live asap:

https://rumble.com/v74e2h0-shepherds-pasture.html

[*Of course, our troubles began long before, with the Nimrod Tower builders launching a coup on this Republic with the assassination of JFK on November 22, 1963. There have been four successful assassinations of US Presidents. The first was Abraham Lincoln, assassinated in 1865, after the conclusion of the Civil War, by an aggrieved Southern Independence supporter and actor. Garfield, 1881. McKinley, 1901, by an anti-government anarchist. Then there’s John F. Kennedy, purportedly killed by Oswald, a man who defected from US Citizenship to become Russian (1959), returned to the US in 1962 (one year before the assassination), was known by US Intelligence to have visited the Soviet and Cuban embassies in Mexico City (1963), his name appearing is multipel CIA cabes and internet files, and was marked as a counterinteligence “person of interest” but regarded a not a threat. Even though he had these known connections, and even in the wake of the Cuban Missile Crisis. CIA tracked the guy as a person of interest but did not flag him as a presidential threat in a high-threat environment. They did not warn the Secret Service. Then there are these video clips I saw, indicating that the angle of the shot did not come from a sixth-story window, but from directly behind and possibly also from in front of the car. It is widely suspected that Kennedy was the first political assassination to have been facilitated from within our government. Eisenhower warned against ignoring the growing power of what he called the Military-Industrial Complex, controlled by an unaccountable body of upper-level bureaucrats embedded deep within the US government. We don’t know with the sort of certainty that could be used in a court of law or at Courts Martial to warrant conviction. It does appear, however, that one may start there and chart a series of significant events and movements that brought us to 2008, with a President openly supporting anti-American interests, and touting an agenda to transform America from something other than what the Founders envisioned. Violence became a feature of protests from this time forward (Communists agitated riots from the 1930s into the 1960s, with scattered incidents of violence. The 1963 Berkeley riot widened and escalated the violence, culminating in the “Summer of Love” riots in 2020, with current efforts to ignite a George Floyd-scale movement of protest violence against the enforcement of our immigration laws in the U.S.]